5 more hours to 2006. We live on a continuum but we love to date time with checkpoints. All the better for us to pause and reflect.

"I look back on this year with love and gratitude for all I have learned and all I have accomplished. I am very pleased with everything I have created. Now I look forward with joyous anticipation to each day of 2006. All is well in my world!"  
-Hayhouse calendar for 31 Dec 2005

It’s easy for me to be positive and powerful.

525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear. 525,600 minutes – how do you measure, measure a year? In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee. In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. In 525,600 minutes – how do you measure a year in the life? How about love? How about love? How about love? Measure in love. -Rent, Seasons of Love

…rather than making America more Christian, the mega-churches have simply succeeded in making Christianity more American…

Two very insightful articles from The Economist about Christianity and America. Jesus, CEO and Onward, Christian Shoppers. Americans are attending church far more than ever, led by their monkey president, Dubya. Will we see the franchising of super-size churches around the world? Euros are damned, they don’t go to church no more, but Asia seems to be a fertile new land to save some souls (more than 3 billion actually). Christianity seems to be quite booming in Singapore actually. China, with its rising middle class, would be a potential market. There’s something about Christianity that appeals to a class driven by economic prosperity (re: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber). Definitely a debatable concept, however.

I don’t know if those articles require subscription; if it does, email me for the articles. kellog@kelchan.com or just subscribe to The Economist lah (product placement alert).

Let there be lightning.

"Religion is the opium of the masses" – Karl Marx

We leave our hearts in San Francisco, then took a direct flight to Montreal to meet Pat’s mom & step-dad for a short holiday before driving south to Vermont for the 2nd holiday.

Montreal has great colours:

Screw the gaz guzzlers, this is my dream car!

On our 2nd night (Tues), we (read: Natalie) met a local boy after dinner and we asked him where we could go out that night. He took us to a gay bar. All night, Natalie wondered if her ‘boyfriend’ was gay.

The hottest trannie cashier

This is where we met the diva-licious Mdm Simone.

Right after Mdm Simone tells me that he has been married happily for 18 years to a beautiful Ukrainian boy and he is a one-man man, this cutie slides up to Mdm Simone as we are talking and promptly gets his crotch grabbed. Bitch.

A buddha bar we went to the next night. Buddha is very hip these days.

Me and my sister-in-law & best buddie, Nattie…she hams it up, I ham it up (only to the best of my ability because no one hams it up like she does)

  No one denies: Natty takes the best photos!

Merry Belated Christmas! As my reader, I present to you this gift, which I emailed out to all my loved ones on Christmas day:

In honor of the spirit of loving, sharing and giving, I have made a donation to Grameen Foundation USA this Christmas in your honor.

Please visit their website for more information.

Grameen Foundation is a non-profit microfinance institution based in the USA providing financial services to the very poor worldwide, with the view that once the very poor are given opportunity (e.g. credit to start a small business) that rich world institutions would otherwise ignore (who would you grant a loan to? Donald Trump or a poor African farmer?), they can work their way out of poverty.

I have been inspired by the idea of microfinance since I read a survey on it on The Economist.

Microfinance is but one prong in the fight against poverty, but I personally believe it’s an important drive. It provides an opportunity for the poor to work their way out. Being the staunch capitalist and objectivist (read about Ayn Rand’s philosophy here), I am usually uncomfortable with simple charity, and more comfortable with the Chinese saying “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” However, due to aberrations of history, some societies have been kept oppressed for a long time that our global playing field is grotesquely skewed.

There are many elements to why to poor remain poor, and many theories to explain why. I take the view that poverty is, most of the time, due to political & historical legacies beyond their control. We in the rich world are who we are with the combination of our own work and achievements certainly, but also because of a blessed fate that borne us into our world of opportunities. And I believe that microfinance is a step, albeit a mini one (but we all cannot save the world overnight, can we?), in balancing the playing field.

Another step that is quite beyond most of our individual control but within the power of the people we elect into government, are the gross subsidies that rich world governments give to their rich farming community (most of which are conglomerates), America and France are biggest culprits, that pretty much removes the fair economic opportunities that poor nations could have had. However, this topic is beyond the scope of this ‘gift’, but I would like to bring awareness to this issue and hope you will go out and read more about it. This is a start.

Perhaps it’s time for us to be a little more socially aware of the poor world around us that supports the unsustainable lifestyles that we in the rich world have the luck to enjoy. All the same, ‘tis a season of giving and exchanging gifts is a lovely and wonderful way to show our love. This year, I chose put my Christmas gift budget into a cause I have done some research in. I have also chosen to highlight to you one of the many issues we have in our world today that I passionately believe more of us should be aware of.

I give this information to you as your gift for Christmas 2005 and hope you found it as valuable as I did.

“I am grateful to others for the kindness they show me. I am filled with praise and gratitude. Love flows through my very being. It touches everyone I meet and leads me to greater compassion.”

Much love,

Kelly

Sucks to be my friend this year, huh? ;p

Ironically, this year, I receive some awesome material gifts:

(1) My parents got me an IXUS 55 (woot! woot!)!! Complete shocker! Man! They are too much! The original Kelph is still alive and kickin’ after 3 years (eternity for the gadget world), pretty darn sturdy camera I hafta say. I lent it to Pat for his holiday on condition that I get a new one if it breaks, but it survived 2 bachelor parties and 2 camping trips. Then I lent it to J and K for their trip to Rawa with the same condition ("it takes pictures underwater! try it! try it!), but still it comes back to me in perfect shape. I still love Kelph, but the biggest problem with Kelph was that it took 30 seconds to take any night shots with flash, leaving my poor photo subjects grinning for a painful 30 seconds each time. And I now have a beautiful slick new IXUS. The problem is that Kelph is named after the Canon series "elph" which is called "IXUS" in Asia/Europe. So I have a…KELIXUS?

(2) Pat’s mom got me a whole bunch of gifts, ranging from a scarf to cute costume jewelry. But I gotta say, my fav gift was the 2006 HayHouse calendar. Most of my quotes you see in the Words archive were from the 2005 calendar. I love it so much and it’s become an important part of our day to read each daily affirmation out loud. It’s invaluable to me.

(3) Pat got me a weekend trip in Bintan. Woot! woot!

(4) Pat received a "Learn to Speak Mandarin" book/CD from my parents…and a gorgeous tie to wear at our wedding. I guess he has to wear a tie for our wedding then. HAHAHA

(5) And the most beautiful gift of all: we got news that Pat’s brother and wife are PREGGERS!!! WOOT! WOOT! WOOT! WOOT! (don’t ask me where I got "woot" from. It just seems to convey how I feel)

Pat’s brother, Brendan, has an alter-ego called Crin. Crin comes out usually when he is partying. Crin has been kept in the closet since he got serious with his now-wife Amy. So for his bachelor’s party, his friends made a T-shirt with "Crin’s last dance" scrawled on the back. I edited it (amateurly) as such:

Happy Holidays! 

Find out your political stand at political compass:

kellykelly’s compass point (glad I’m closer to Dalai Lama than George Bush):

The quiz is one of the more insightful fucking-around-internet-cos-I’m-bored online quizzes around. Definitely made some statements that caused me to stop and think, and blush because I stopped and thought about it. You’ll see what I mean.  

Today is the future I created yesterday.

Re: Word Archive 

Rewinding back to Aug 05, here are just some of the many pix, long overdue, from my trip.

These photos were taken by Patrick when he went on a pre-bachelor’s party camping trip with his best buds. America really does have some of the most spectacular national parks. 

We’ve had some great times on Amin’s truck. Amin’s a tour guide and professional ooga-booga. So he takes us to the greatest natural places

This gives new meaning to mountain biking.

Back in SF, a classic SF scene: gay man doing yoga in Dolores Park.

Between Tammy and I, we are 1.5 Asian. She is 0.5 Middle Eastern.

A proper wedding cake made by the bride’s friend. Not a dummy cake like we have at Singapore weddings. If we get a dummy cake for our wedding, I’m going to pop out of it in a bikini.

It was a stunning wedding. Beautiful, simple, amazing. The bride and groom had their friends involved with everything, including the photographer, cake maker, musicians, etc. I never cried at a wedding before and I cried buckets this time. I’m only sorry I didn’t take more photos, especially of the bride and groom, because I was fumbling with both a camera and a camcorder and they were having professional pix taken the entire day anyway…

She’s Persian so they had a traditional Persian ceremony. He and his family grew up in a sailboat, so they had it by the water where we could watch sailboats go up and down.

Check out the bad-ass boots!!! I want!! (BTW, even her wedding dress was made by her friend).

Spectacular wedding. Completely original, lovely, sweet, simple and un-packaged. Just like the bride and groom themselves.

That’s the way I want mine done. Simple and sweet. God forbid I get a frilly wedding gown with ‘dry ice’ effect…*shudder*

More pix to come soon… 

After Blink, I was peckish for better writing. So I turned to my loved one, Bukowski. And then I loved him more.

Excerpt from ‘A Bad Trip’ in ‘Tales of Ordinary Madness’ (okay, I tried making it an except, but I pretty much typed out the whole darn essay because it’s just so darn great)

did you ever consider that lsd and color tv arrived for our consumption about the same time? here comes all this explorative color pounding and what do we do? we outlaw one and fuck up the other…there are some basic grounds for outlawing lsd, dmt, stp – it can take a man permanently out of his mind – but so can picking beets, or turning bolts for GM, or washing dishes or teaching English I at one of the local universities. if we outlawed everything that drove men mad, the whole social structure would drop out – marriage, the war, bus service, slaughterhouses, beekeeping, surgery, anything you can name. anything can drive men made because society is built on false stilts. untill we knock the whole bottom out and rebuild, the madhouses will remain overlooked. and cuts in mad-house budgets by our good governor are taken by me to indirectly imply that those driven mad by society are not fit to be supported and cured by society, especially in an inflationary and tax-made age. Such money could be better used to build roads or to be sprinkled ever-so-lightly upon the Negro to keep him from burning down our cities.

granted, bad acid like bad whores can take you out…the law creates its own disease in poisonous black markets. but, basically, most bad trips are caused by the individual being trained and poisoned beforehand by society itself. if a man is worried about rent, car payments, time-clocks, a college education for his child, a 12-dollar dinner for his girlfriend, the opinion of his neighbour, standing up for the flag or what is going to happen to Brenda Starr, an lsd tablet will most probably drive him mad because, in a sense, he is already insane and only borne along on social tides by the outward bars and dull hammers that render him insensible to any individualistic thinking. a trip calls for a man who has not yet been caged, who has not yet been fucked by the big Fear that makes all society go. unfortunately, most men overestimate their worthiness as basic and free individuals, and it is the mistake of the hippie generation not to trust anybody over 30. 30 doesn’t mean a damn thing. most beings are captured and trained, totally, by the age of 7 or 8. many of the young LOOK free but this is only a chemical thing of body and energy and not a realistic thing of spirit. I have met free men in the strangest of places and at ALL ages –as janitors, car thieves, car washers, and some free women too – mostly as nurses or waitresses, and at ALL ages. the free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it – basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.

an lsd trip will show you things which no rules cover. it will show you things not in textbooks and things which you cannot protest to your city councilman about…lsd is another society within itself. if you are socially orientated, you can probably mark lsd off as a “hallucinogenic drug”, which is an easy way of getting off and forgetting the whole thing. but hallucination, the definition of it, depends upon which pole you are operating from. whatever is happening to you at the time it is happening does become the reality – it can be a movie, a dream sexual interocourse, murder, being murdered or eating ice cream. only lies are imposed later; what happens, happens. hallucination is only a dictionary word and a social stilt. when a man is dying to him it is very real; to others, it is only bad luck or something to be disposed of…when the world begins to admit that ALL the parts fit the whole, then we may begin to have a chance. whatever a man sees is real. it was not brought there by an outside force. it was there before he was born. don’t blame him because he sees it now, and don’t blame him for going mad because the educational and spiritual forces of society were not wise enough to tell him that exploration never ends, and that we must all be little shits boxed in with our a,b,c’s and nothing else. it is not lsd that causes the bad trip – it was your mother, your President, the little girl next door, the icecream man with dirty hands, …it was a list 30 pages long and 3 miles tall.

a bad trip? this whole country, this whole world is on a bad trip, friend. but they’ll arrest you for swallowing a tablet.

I have never tried LSD and don’t intend to. I like my present consciousness and my control of how I think, thank you very much, no need for the ‘other’ side. However, due to my personal bias/interests, I find links with his words to:

Abnormal Normality (insane in the insane world = normal?)

What is Acceptable? (not that I condone drugs, but why are alcohol/cigarettes legal?)

There is so much unhappiness with people these days. It sneaks into them insiduously with the poison in our air and culture. And the only thing they have to do to be happy is to be conscious of the unseen poison. That’s all.

I finished Blink a few days ago. That I didn’t write a review about it right away probably is evidence that it wasn’t a great book. Not that it was bad. Far from it. It was a very easy read. It was almost too easy. Now, I’m not into super cheem books where you have fuck-all about what’s going on. I like easy reads too. But I can’t quite place my finger into why I feel so unsatisfied with the book. Perhaps when dealing with topics that crosses the sociological, cultural and psychological unconsciousness, I wanted the story-telling descriptions to come with harder facts (that would probably have made the reading less easy and light). He also makes arguments that seem pretty obvious. Like experts can make better quick judgements than non-experts.

However, I still feel guilty about giving this book a flat ‘B’, mainly because Malcom Gladwell seems so darn likeable. And a lot of his stuff was insightful. E.g. why displaying less choices for your customer will make it likely for your customer to buy something and how couples can be analyzed in just one short interview (I thoroughly belief that unconscious contempt between couples is a seething dangerous evil that couples never realize till too late). But I would treat this book as a mere introduction to interesting topics he gave us a cursory blink on. I’d definitely do a little more research with the links he gave in his endnotes.

I read the book and really enjoyed it. But I am so boycotting the film. I, of Pan-Asian fame and who failed alllooksame.com, am not going into a Yellow Power rage here, but the aberration of casting a very Chinese actress as a Japanese geisha is unforgivable. Yucks.

The saving grace: this films has gotten one of the funniest reviews I have read.

It’s melodrama at its most overheated (if Fabio were Asian, he’d be in this film).

In a word, Memoirs of a Geisha is icky.

- Film Freak Central