I

After lunch with my American classmate today I have decided to prepare, mentally, a biography to introduce myself once I'm in the US.

"Hi. I'm Eisen, my family name is Teo. I am the eighth out of thirteen children, although three already kicked the bucket before the age of five - two from SARS and one from avian flu. I grew up in a tiny village in Fukien Province in Southern China. My tiny abode was composed from bamboo and cow dung. Chickens and ducks roamed the backyards freely. Water had to be drawn from the well or the nearby stream. Picturesque mountains dotted the landscape. There was no electricity and everything had to be done by candlelight. Life was happy at first. I would spend my days planting rice and rearing fish with my father and brothers, while my sisters learnt embroidery, cooking and tea-making. I was the smartest of all of my siblings, so the family's hopes were on me to ace the province-wide examinations, qualify for the Imperial Examinations and become a court official. In China, once you become a court official, you are set for life. Your pockets will be so lined with bribes and kickbacks you will have to sew extra pockets on your shirt and pants. I spent many months studying the Confucian analects by candlelight at night, with only the rats, cockroaches and my mum's gingko nut and ginseng soup to keep me going - the gingko and ginseng painstakingly plucked from the Hua Mountain in the neighbouring mountain range. [cue sad expression] But good times never last long. Communism fell, the Soviet Union imploded, and the US refused to sign a free-trade agreement with China. [cue accusative expression] The economy stagnated, fruit rotted in the trees, cows keeled over and died for no reason at all. Civil war soon broke out in the south. I, like the rest of my clan, am a loyal novice scion of the Blue Lotus Secret Society, who reigns over the fiefdom of our province. The Red Dragon Secret Society from neighbouring Kwangchow Province unleashed hordes of marauding bandits and highwaymen to raid the villages of Fukien Province, killing, pillaging and raping as they pleased. Untold numbers of innocent villagers and clan members died. There was much suffering, similar to the atrocities in Sudan and Rwanda that the US ignored. [cue accusative expression] In fact, our house was burnt down and our cows and goats slaughtered. Two of my sisters were kidnapped and never seen again. [cue really sad expression] Finally, my parents had had enough; they decided to brave the stormy pirate-infested South China Sea to seek a new life in Singapore to the south. Singapore is to the south of China. It's a really tiny, fucking hot and humid island which has everything we don't have in China - electricity, clean tap water, paved roads, cars, toilet paper, hair dryers, laptops, fountain pens, USB cables, cars, condoms, etc. Singapore is a great place - the ladies there all love Western men, because they dig bigger dicks, blond hair and blue eyes, and everyone basically worships all things Western, so yes, do visit that place sometime in the future. You'll have to be careful though - you'll get caned for drawing graffiti on walls and you'll get fined for not flushing the toilet. And chewing gum is banned. Yes, I'm not kidding you - chewing gum is banned. And did I mention the ladies there love Western men? Ok. I mentioned that. Anyway, I digress. My parents, my seven surviving siblings and I escaped our province one stormy night in a wooden sampan. We had to leave everything behind, save our ancestral tablets. I was ten then. You wouldn't believe how terrible the next fourteen days were. We had to eat fish caught from the sea, we had to drink our own urine. Finally we were picked up by a fishing trawler headed for Singapore. (All the fishing trawlers head for Singapore, since Singapore imports almost anything and exports almost anything.) We landed in Singapore and were granted refugee status. I chose to renounce my Chinese citizenship and become a Singaporean instead. I studied in their education system for the last ten years and look at how kiasu I am now. You don't know what 'kiasu' is? Look it up in the Oxford English Dictionary, you noob. Anyway, I am very happy now. Now, my family has electricity, clean tap water, paved roads, cars, toilet paper, hair dryers, laptops, fountain pens, USB cables, cars, condoms, etc. Although we miss our home in China very much. Do you know how the Chinese language is like? Do you know how fucked up it is? Let me show you..."

II

my humble ambition
to be travel writer, food reviewer, CD reviewer, book reviewer, freelance writer, occasional war journalist,
and have X amount of credit in the bank,
were X tends toward infinity.

WAKE UP EISEN
WAKE UP