Hiatus

Not been blogging because:

(a) I was determined to finish Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince before the last book was released.

(b) I went to Myanmar for holiday after a golf trip to Kunming was aborted because a bunch of Singaporeans here decided to act like poor pussies at the very last minute and claimed that they had no money. No money to spend US$350 on a golf trip but somehow got money to buy Cartier and Gucci for their cheap girlfriends and hooker friends? Yeah . . . I really can understand.

(c) I went to Luang Namtha, the furthermost remote north of Laos (I was 100 metres away from entering Yunnan) on an official trip. Wouldn't believe the hassle but my word, what amazing things you can see there.

(d) I am determined to finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (I was the first guy in whole of Laos to get my grubby hands of the book) to avoid the tragic repeat of the Half-Blood Prince which I spent a year reading it. And of course, to avoid having my reading experience bloody ruined by all those fuckers who post spoilers online and even in the papers. Nobody wants to read about your opinion, dumbass. You ain't Rowling. So quit ruining the ending for everybody. No one wants to hear about your opinion about Harry, Ginny, Snape and you-know-who.

I wish I could Expelliarmus all those dumbasses.

Dumbass Header

(Dumbass Blogger made it difficult for me to click on the title box.)

Anyway, my spare time has been tied up with several charity stuff I am doing for the handicapped kids at the Rehabilitation Centre. Also some furniture I ordered for the school is finally coming in so I have to go and inspect the stuff. I need a holiday.

And I just met someone who looks exactly like a friend of mine. Absolutely, positively EXACTLY down to the last detail. Hair style and even manner of speaking. Uncanny. It is as if Mystique just walked by. Anyway, got to go off and see the students and the school who are planning some welcoming ceremony for the arrival of the furniture.

I couldn't add a title to this entry. Strange. Blogger is acting up?

Speaking of Chinese and Vietnamese girls having higher street-smarts than the average Singaporean man, I recall meeting this Singaporean businessman some months back.

This Singaporean businessman (SB) wanted to invest in Laos and he approached me to ask for advice. SB wanted to do some import/export business. He was the typical Singaporean businessman and I have met many of his type. Mid forties and pock-marked. Thick gold chain or watch (rolex). All talk loud and speak brashly of their ambitious plans to have a big investment here - as if they are Bill Gates. So, SB was waxing lyrical over his plans - as if he would be the next BIG THING in this country. The curious thing was that he brought a lady "companion" who was from, yeah you guessed it, China. She was tall, slim, fair and pretty.

I know better to be judging books by its covers but seriously, you know instantly that these two are not your usual platonic, sex-free friends. Loud Singaporean businessman with a Chinese "lady companion"? Yeah, right. And pigs can strap up jet boosters and attain aerodynamic efficency i.e. can fly. Ooh look, that's one flying across my window now, waving a burger at me.

This Chinese lady was plainly embarrassed to be seen with SB. According to SB, she also wanted to look into opportunities to set up a massage parlour. Hmm. Well, so SB was yakking long and short before this happened:

SB : So, I plan to bring in all my good through the seaport in Laos and move them to these warehouse in Vientiane . . . . .
CO : Excuse me, did you say move your good through the port in Laos?
SB : Yeah. The SEAPORT in Laos.
CO : SEAPORT?
SB : Yeah, why?
CO : Laos is landlocked. There is no sea bordering this country.
SB : Ha ha, you are joking?
CO : No (show map to SB). See landlocked. Closest port is in Thailand. All goods move through Bangkok than by overland transit to Laos.
SB : Cannot be lah . . . . . .
CO: Yeah, can be. Trust me, I have been here for years. I should know whether there is a sea around Laos or not.
SB : . . . . . but but . . .where got country has no sea one? (a truly dumbass question. The Swiss will also be happy to answer this one.)
Chinese lady : (tug her man's sleeve). Please keep quiet.

Basically, the fucker wasted my time telling me his grand plans about shipping things to Laos via a non-existant sea port. BLAH, BLA, BLAH. I WILL MAKE SO MUCH MONEY. BLAH, BLAH. In the end, that moron didn't even know his geography. He just assumed every country was like Singapore and got a sea line and had a port.

The Chinese lady "'companion" was much smarter. You can tell she was embarrassed to be seen with an idiot. The more SB yakked about his grandiose plans, the more embarrassed she was. Regarding her plans to set up a massage parlour, she asked some sensible questions like tax and labour costs. I wish I could have told her that she should ditch this dumbass but I think she already knew that. A smart and pretty lady like her could do better than being "booked" by a forty-something year-old Singaporean dumbass who talked big and didn't know a thing about geography. Singaporean men like those deserved to be cheated.

I fully support Singaporean men marry Chinese and Vietnamese women. Just to show them how smart women from other so-called 3rd world countries could be. Sometimes, you get the feeling that Singaporean men are treating them like pets from 3rd world countries with no education and are therefore stupid and easily manipulated like sex toys. Just be there to cook for them and have sex with at night. YEAH, RIGHT.

I also just heard months ago that my brother is having an affair with a Chinese lounge hostess. No sympathies here. Good luck to that bastard (just in case anyone wonders, I am not close to my siblings). I wish the Chinese lounge hostess would cheat all his money to teach him a valuable lesson which no money in the world can buy.

Money

Lots of people approached me to do some charity work or make some financial contributions. Quite simply put, the social organisations here need a lot of help. I have already committed myself to buying some furniture for a primary schools. I thought of buying some whiteboards for the kids also but hey, I got to draw a line somewhere. Someone also approached me to help the drug rehabilitation centre which apparently is in bad shape due to lack of funds. It is tough since it is a financial drain on me (I ain't exactly made of dollar bills) but also takes up a lot of my time to look at the proposals and visit all these places to see whether their requests are genuine.

Speaking of money, I have been losing money in almost all my unit trust investments with OCBC. This is such BS. It lost 10% of its value in just three months. How did this happen? I thought everyone has been making money on the market? This convinces me that I should have invested on my own by doing my homework and reading up the prospectus first. I think I lost 2k + already. I should have just use the 2k to just donate to charity and buy books and chalkboards for the poor. Shows you that bank agents are almost as clueless as me when it comes to playing the market.

On a brighter note, I was in a golf tournament over the weekend and I won a prize. Still not happy about it because my overall game was shit. Not shit as in "bad", but like really "tragic". I have half a mind to sell all my golf clubs away. Anyway, a prize isn't bad. It was a lucky shot at hole 16 using my trusty rescue club. Less than 3 metres away from an outright hole-in-one.

Now, I have this Singaporean golfmate which is a bit odd. He is a businessman here and he just asked me to lend him 50k at 6% interest to rent a business. I find it odd because he claimed earlier to have half a million in investments elsewhere. Furthermore, he is a known POSB squirrel (aka a saver). He scrimps on his meals and drives one of the most beatup pickup I have ever seen. He spends his last eight years in Laos eating S$1 meal for lunch everyday and scrimps on everything. So why is it, he has to borrow 50k from people?

You see, this man may have been saving so much money by scrimping on necessities like food but he ended up buying Cartier and LV for his Lao-Vietnamese girlfriend. I really don't get it. Maybe I am not that romantic kind of person but it seems to me that it is terrible that you are willing to forego every luxury (and even food) in order to splurge on expensive stuff on your girlfriend. In fact, he just bought a 32 inch flatscreen TV for her. And I met his girlfriend and honestly, she has the "gold-digger" aura radiating from her. We are talking about at least Level 7 Gold Digger Class B+ with at least 9000 points in mana level. Possibly a Drow Spider handmaiden (pardon the nerd speak).

Seriously, she always wears all kind of branded stuff like prada and some shit Italian brand. She also asks for Mont Blanc pens. Mont Blanc pens? Not even I could afford Mont Blanc pens. And she always want to eat expensive stuff like tiramisu at L'Opera (the most expensive western restaurant in town and a place I like to boycott simply because of the prices). A tiramisu at L'Opera costs US$4 and although this may sound cheap in relation to S'pore prices, it is exorbitant by Lao standard and trusts me, it all adds up. I don't understand how a Lao lady could develop such expensive tastes for food and clothings. This is terrible. The last time I hear, he is buying a car for her. Holy shit. But you got to give it to the girl. One thing I learn from around here is that most girls will do anything to get out of poverty and I can't say I blame her.

I don't know how to tell him that his girlfriend sucks. I don't think she likes me either because she always give me the BLACK EYE everytime we meet for meals. I think she is trying to cast the death gaze spell on me but thankfully I am almost immune to all gaze and poison attacks. I think she knows that I think she is a gold digger. Like those old Atari games called "digger" where the digger just runs around and tries to eat as much diamond and minerals as possible before the time is up or it is caught by a ghost (Ooh, I like those games). Every golf game, this Singaporean guy complained about his girlfriend for being a "money blackhole" but still faithfully goes to Thailand after the game to buy some new branded shit for her. It is as if he is a masochist and enjoys the pain or something.