Random Occurences in a Fob Workplace

Yawn. Morning everyone. Hot day in Hong Kong today, decided to do an update about work.

• I taught everyone a new word yesterday. That word was "pimp". There is now a person whom we call Pimp Leung.
• I found out on the same day that the translation of "gigolo" in Chinese is someone who sells his bum.
  
• I've managed to get a decent number of people into the Circle game (see previous post). It's hilarious to see accountants punching one another.
• I won the official work bet for the Barcelona v Arsenal final. I win a cup of tea.
  
• Having a smoke downstairs with someone from the filing room. He asks me if I listen to Spice Girls. I laugh and shake my head. He proceeds to sing "Wannabe" to me, though the only word he knows in the entire song is "wannabe".
• My nickname (or name) has developed into Lai Fun. This is because jong lai fun, which means Scoop Milk Powder, sounds like Jonathan to them.
  
• Everything has a nickname. Eugene = gene gene. Computation = com. Manager = ah jer. Yannick = yun yun ... etc.
  
• Not a single person has a social life on my level. They either work 7 days a week, or work 6 days and sleep on the 7th. Their idea of a social time the bunch of us playing the PSP after work.
• The average work hours are 8:30am - 10:30pm. I get advised when I work 8:30 - 6:30 that it doesn't look good to the managers. I actually feel the need to sneak out if I leave around that time (our work contract specifies that we are meant to work till 5:30pm). There is a dude in front of me that works 8am - midnight, 7 days a week. He has a family too. I regularly see him sleeping at his desk after work.
  
• There are actually people who leave 10 minutes after lunch starts just so the managers think they're working hard.
  
• Jonathan is strange name to my workmates (as opposed to Vega or Eros).
• My Spice Girls buddy keeps getting me to teach him English swear words. He now enjoys greeting me every morning with a "You f*cking guy", or "F*cking a**hole mothergirl."
• I crept up on Silent Li ... silently. Just to see if she would appreciate my punning-through-action.

The Circle Game

You remember the game we used to play in high school?

Where you make a circle out of your index finger and thumb - and if people look down at it, you get to give them a punch?

Well, I've started teaching the fellow Honkys at work how to play, they're actually getting quite into it.


"Why Kaiser Kwan, someone drew smiley faces all over your tax return!"

"What!? Let me have a look ....... Hey wait a ... "

*pow*

Da Vinci Code

With all the hype surrounding the upcoming "The Da Vinci Code" movie, I've decided to summarise briefly how I really feel towards the book. I'll still go watch the movie and enjoy it though - I love Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou.

I think everyone here, whether they like Da Vinci Code or not - can agree that the novel is a work of fiction.

The book is no doubt an easy and interesting read. Most educated readers probably take it at face-value and understand that it is merely a work of fiction, despite the author heralding at the beginning of the novel that "all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents [...] and secret rituals in this novel are accurate".

Thus, the critical difference here is that unlike other works of fiction, Brown hails his book as being "accurate". The carefully worded opening is a somewhat deceptive, yet powerful statement, and has lead to many perhaps-more-trusting individuals to accept writing as being "factual". Just, watching the 6 o'clock news the other day, a group of women were interviewed on camera - each of them boasting that they "believed that every single part of the novel was definitely true."

Now, I would not say I am a religious fanatic, atheist or conspiracist. Like most of us, I am merely an interested reader that is also concerned about the impact of novels such as these. By categorizing a book as fiction, and then proclaiming to the world that it is "factual" - there are always going to be a few poor buggers that won't spend the ten minutes researching to see how un-true Brown's "research" really is.

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Random quote for those interested (taken from http://www.aina.org/ata/20060511101121.htm)

"... But (and this is a big 'but') because Dan Brown wrote in the beginning of his book that all information about the texts and rituals and history were accurate, people have been duped into thinking that he has written historical fiction that they can trust.

"In fact, Dan Brown has not based his book on scholarly knowledge and does not have the simplest facts straight. Because Americans have been taught nothing about the history of religions in public schools (a result of the separation of church and state), unless they have taken college courses on the subject or worked hard to educate themselves by reading scholarly publications, Americans are largely ignorant about the history of Christianity. So they have had no way to critically judge Dan Brown's account, and many think it represents scholarly knowledge. It does not.

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Mm hoe choe

Went to the movies the other night. I watched Silent Hill.

Met a new colleague today. Her name is Silent Lee.

... coincidence?

Next time Gadget ... next time.

Started doing a bit of work today and began developing a slight paranoia of becoming workaholic. Consequently, I decided on trying to figure out would make the the greatest super-villain of all time.

Been going through some of them in my head. Feel free to add.

• Magneto is without a doubt one of the most badass (human) supervillains out there. With the mutant power of manipulating anything or anyone that carries a trace of metal (even the iron in their blood!), he can single-handedly take on most of the villains in this list. He is well-developed as a villain as well - being a Jew in Auschwitz, his family was further persecuted for his mutant powers - which contributed to his hatred of all those non-mutant. He has a sick outfit too - especially when his consciousness manifests itself as Onslaught.

• One of the first supervillains I came across was Shredder (from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). Vengeful, spikey and equipped with antique ninja gear the chief problem is he can't do much besides martial arts stuff. He's also not very developed as an villain; rather he runs around and performs evil acts simply for the sake of being evil. The fact that he had to enlist Krang after failing to take on the turtles on his own cost him a few points as well.

• Orochimaru of the popular Japanese anime Naruto. An outcast ninja powerful enough to take on the Third Hokage (the most powerful ninja of Konoha), he excels with ninjitsu techniques of various types and has refined his art to a point where he can defy death itself. His specialty is with snake-like techniques and can generally seen riding a giant snake. Even when stripped of his ninja powers and the use of his arms, he still has enough power to fight toe-to-toe against two of the most powerful ninjas in Konoha. Sick bastard but reminds me of Michael Jackson sometimes.

• Professor Chaos is a re-curring alter-ego of Butters from South Park. Aided by his side-kick, General Disarray, he seeks to spread fear and chaos as revenge upon the world that has forsaken him (made him socially unpopular), but has a problem with scale. An example of his typical exploits is attempting to flood the planet by leaving the backyard hose on.

• Darth Vader from Star Wars is definitely one of the most recognised super-villains of all time - having three (be it crap) movies dedicated his journey towards the dark side goes to show how much complexity and interest surrounds this Jedi. Even the thematic elements of the original trilogy (namely, the antithesis between the 'Light' and 'Dark' side) can be reflected in the internal struggles of our young Anakin Skywalker. Plus he's got the Force Choke Power.

• Professor Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes is one of those diabolical masterminds. I'd say that within his own domain, he would kick other villain's ass through sheer intellectual power alone (he's the only villian that was successful at killing off Detective Holmes; before some lame attempt at resurrecting said detective a decade later). Problem is that compared to any of the other superheroes or villains, he doesn't actually possess any special powers whatsoever.

• Captain Pollution the polar opposite of our good friend Captain Planet. Created from Professor Blight's dark variants of the original Planeteer's rings - Deforestation, Super Radiation, Smog, Toxics, and Hate (how can you go wrong with Super Radiation?), this villain represented everything that Captain Planet was not. Definitely an interesting deviation from the usual preachy episodes (does anyone remember Planetwatch?), yet his beach-surfer voice quickly got on my nerves.

• Megatron is the chief antagonist against the mighty Autobots in the Transformers universe. His primary weapon is "arm-mounted fusion cannon, capable of levelling a city block in one blast, which he can sub-dimensionally link to a black hole, generating even more powerful antimatter blasts." (how can you mess with someone that can summon a black hole?) Though powerful and highly megalomaniacal in each of his manifested forms, Megatron seems to lack the patience or the tactical ability to succeed in each of his tasks. The fact that when he transforms, he turns into a gun a fraction of his original size doesn't make sense to me either.

• Gargamel (courtesy of Pickos) from The Smurfs. This horrible sorcerer is evil, cunning and somewhat of a dimwit - he hates the Smurfs and is constantly in pursuit of them but the Smurfs always outwit him and manage to escape. Like so many other lame cartoon villains, after each setback Gargamel swears he shall be revenged. I always thought his cat Azrael was kinda cool though.
  
• Dr Evil
• Mr Burns crossed my mind too.

But my favourite has to be Venom from Spider-Man:

Formed from an alien symbiote combining Eddie Brock - a journalist whose reputation was tarnished by (I've just realised I sound like a huge nerd), the alien had the effect of fusing with whichever organism it touched to form a black mesh-like costume with the powers stronger than Spider-Man and his own form of webbing. The symbiote's shapeshifting ability allows Venom to camouflage himself like a chameleon or to assume the likeness of nearly any person. Venom's also undetectable by Spider-Man's spidey-sense.

Unlike Carnage (one of the offsprings of the symbiote, with the same crazy powers but bonded with the mind of a death-row inmate), Venom is curiously protective of those he sees as 'innocent'. In his quest for vengeance against Spiderman, he'll avoid killing bystanders or innocents - and has teamed up with Spiderman (and The Punisher) as an anti-hero ...

Oh ... and he's in the next Spidey movie :)