Sleepy as Hell

So it's Tuesday and I'm sleepy as hell.
Yes, the title is like a work of divine inspiration.

So here I am, at Pitney Bowes.
Struggling to build a proper pipeline,
to identify the people I need to be speaking with,
to close deals.

I'm also struggling to find the time for Unified Inbox.
Truth is, I do have the time.
But lately I feel like I'm trying to swim against a strong current
with heavy clothes on.

Everything just moves along slowly.

I don't know if things will work out here.
No idea.
And this goddamn fog of sleepiness isn't helping either.

Back at home,
it just hit me recently.

Jenia doesn't love me as much as she used to.
That's my theory.
The Russian words hold more power and meaning for her...
whereas English words are sort of like echoes of the true meanings,
at least when it comes to her.

I hadn't realized this initially.
I'd continued to use the Russian words for 'I love you'
and 'My darling',
but she'd switched to English the past couple of weeks, or
is it months?
I can't recall anymore.

Didn't think much of it at first.
Sometimes we joke about calling others 'bitches' (shut up),
and when I use the Russian word for it,
it has a noticeable impact,
and she says that for her,
it sounds more harsh,
more vulgar.

The English version to her is,
yeah, like an echo of the real meaning.
Not quite genuine.

The words used above are not quite elegant (am I ever elegant?)(again, shut up),
but I needed to get them out as fast as possible.
I'm in the office but my eyelids are heavy.

So yeah, while she did tell me a couple of days ago,
that she is happy,
and that she doesn't want me to think that she's not...
I think a part of her is also trying to convince herself
that she's happy.
That this life is what she wants.

It's a sad situation.
She's a beautiful, smart, funny girl.
I love the way she smiles, the way she walks,
her silly dances, and the way she tries to
save face when she knows she's lost an argument.
Heh.

And we have a beautiful baby together.
Alexandra's growing up so fast.
She laughs so much now these days,
filling the room with sunshine even on the darkest, most stormy nights.

But people do drift apart. They do. It happens.
Maybe (probably)(highly likely) I've been making mistake after mistake...
relationships take effort,
and these days it's hard to find the time and energy for it.

For my part, I will continue to try.
Work out, to look good. Treat her nicely.
Run some game on her...
romance her.

But I need to be prepared that it might not work out.
Maybe in a few months. Maybe in a few years.

And when the time comes,
I'll need to focus on staying in Alexandra's life,
while ensuring I land on my own two feet.
I need to maintain my confidence.
Re-learn The Game.
Continue to have a positive life.
And I hope that she has a positive life as well.

Well enough of that.

Seriously?

How many days has it been now? 6? 7?

And we're still going on and on about Lee Kuan Yew.

Reminds me of mourning periods for Lenin and the Kim Jong Un's granddaddy.

Why is it so hard to have a decent conversation with some of his supporters?

I mean, even if you're supportive of his racist policies,

I could still respect that.

Just fucking acknowledge it.

The most infuriating are the supporters who come from minority groups.

The same minorities against whom his policies openly discriminated.

The same minorities he inferred were inferior to the Chinese (and Whites, of course).

Say what you want about the guy,

but once his grip on power was firm,

he didn't hide his bias, his disdain for the non-Chinese (and Muslims, in particular).

Hell, he even once blamed Muslims' specifically when economic progress stalled.

And let's not forget the things that are hidden from view.

The innocents executed, tortured, imprisoned, exiled.

Singapore has one of the highest per capita execution rates in the developed world, if not the highest.

And if I remember correctly, we have a 97% conviction rate.

Ninety-Seven fucking percent!

Why is it so hard for some people to at the very least, agree on this:

He was a very smart, cunning individual who did great things for a lot of people,

and also horrible, horrible things to others.

Learn to look past your own goddamn privilege, 

and re-connect with your humanity.

Fucking idiots

Well enough of that.

Just Another Death

Lee Kuan Yew is dead.
He died this morning,
and already people on Facebook have begun
to post news articles about it,
or change their profile pictures to a weird darkened image of him,
or write furious posts about those who are actually happy he died.

Since I have very little respect for him and the rest of the Lees,
I will keep this short.
He does not deserve a good article.

He was a despicable, conniving human being.
Intelligent, no doubt.
But also extremely racist and cruel,
and the policies he implemented reflected this.

I already expect the Chinese equivalents of privileged Whites in the US
to become furious at whoever does not mourn his passing.
Hell, I've already seen one post on Facebook.
More will undoubtedly come.

Some will claim that without him,
Singapore would have never prospered.

Well, we'll never know now, will we?
What we do know,
is that not only did he implement racist policies,
which will likely continue to remain in place for many years to come.

What we do know,
is that he imprisoned and tortured many political prisoners.

What we do know,
is that under his regime (it doesn't matter who the Prime Ministers were at the time),
many, many people have been hanged.

And having gone through the court system myself,
I can attest to how deeply flawed it is.
I have little doubt many innocent people have been executed.

What we do know,
is that he greatly enriched himself and his family and cronies.

Not a single major institution in Singapore is free from the tentacles
of the Lee family.

The damage is done.
Any major changes will only be the result of a great upheaval,
and the suffering of many ordinary citizens.

Am I happy that he's dead?
No. A human life is gone.

But am I sad?
NOPE.

Well enough of that.

Light on the Horizon

Things are starting to look up. At long last.
Yesterday I finally received the official job offer from Pitney Bowes,
and after many, many restless nights,
I finally got a peaceful night's sleep.
Well as peaceful as you can get with a 4 month-old baby!

Every time I get optimistic,
another part of me wakes up,
and reminds me of all the times things got really fucked up for me
nearly each time something great happens.

Sometimes I fuck it up.
Sometimes others do.
Shit happens.

But when I look back at how far I've come...
from staring down the barrel of perpetual low-income jobs not too long ago,
to earning an amount I never even thought of earning...
I realize I have a LOT to be thankful for.

And yeah,
I may not be the nicest guy around,
but I am a Muslim,
and I am so very thankful to GOD for all I've got,
words aren't enough.

I'm still working on changing my lifestyle, religious-wise.
It's not easy.
But it needs to be done.

Anyway there's a lot to do before I start on the 1st of April (perfect date to start, I know).

One of the most important things: I've got to finish my business plan for Tryt Clothing.
As much as I'm thankful for the new gig,
I'm well aware of how fast it can go fast.
And with a wife and hungry little baby to look after...
contingencies are in order.

The long-term plan is to run my own business for a few years
to the point where I'll be able to sell it off and retire.
I don't need a life of immense luxury,
just a nice house in the countryside of place like New Zealand or Sweden.

I mean I'll still work after officially retiring, but what I really want is to get into a position where I know that if I do lose my job,
we're all still going to be OK.

At the very least,
the business should be able to provide me with some income
in case things go south in the mid-term.

Oh and there's one more thing to add to my long-term plan.
A Porsche. Yep. Just one!

Next up, I've got to get on-boarded with a start-up
I've been working with on the side for a while now.

Well, 'working with' is a bit of an exaggeration.
They've only just launched,
and I haven't sold shit.
Don't even know if I will be able to.
But you can get your ass I'll try.

There's an Action Hero story I've been working on.
Sort of.
I need to firm up the story before
joining.

And I need to do all of the above,
while cycling every morning
and losing this belly.
Confidence is important,
and the belly is like a motherfucking black hole
that tries to suck up whatever confidence
manages to find its way towards me.

So much to do,
so little time.

Well enough of that.

Worrying

Yep, a really inspired title, I know.
I need to lay off of the mainstream and non-mainstream news about world events,
particularly that which involves Muslims being targeted.

The comments on some of the sites are particularly appalling,
and not only do I feel like responding (a futile exercise when dealing with motherfucking dumbass bigots),
but I feel a similar type of hatred that they have for me,
welling up inside and directed at them.
Not good.

Half-way through this entry,
and I hear little Alexandra's cries.

And now, I'm sleepy.
Dammit.

I'm worried about so many things now,
sometimes it's hard to keep it together:

About our finances,
about starting a business so my girl can go to a good school,
about my fitness,
about my wife's fitness,
about my baby's health,
etc.

Last thing I need is to add racism,
and state-sponsored terrorism targeting people like me,
simply for my beliefs, ethnicity, and the fact that I have relatives in Pakistan.

Well enough of that.

The New 12-Week Routine

It's 11.30am,
and I'm exhausted.
Exhausted from my earlier workout,
exhausted from feeling unwell,
exhausted from looking after the baby,
from thinking about finding a job and income for my family,
from all the horrible things that are happening around the world,
especially to Muslims.

And no,
I most certainly do not feel the need to condemn so-called
extremists I've never met before in my life.
I abhor murder and violence against innocents.
But to ask to me condemn acts by specific people simply because they claim to belong
to my religion?
Fuck you and those like you.

Hey, if I claim to rape puppies in the name of your mother's crusty anus,
does that make her responsible, you dumb fuck?

Anyway,
I need to get a thought of my head before it disappears.

Discrimination.
Unless you've been living under a rock,
you've probably heard the following:
Blacks and other minorities in White-majority countries experience discrimination in every aspect of their lives; education, work, etc. (for Singapore, it's the Singaporean Chinese who do the discrimination).

The second most well-known (probably) type: Women are discriminated against by men.

And of course there are Whites and men who cry foul and claim THEY are the ones experiencing discrimination.

Now I'm generalizing, of course.
There's a wide spectrum of opinions on those two things,
but you couldn't guess it judging by the shit news that keeps coming to the forefront.

It's not black and white.
People can be great. People can be shitty.
There are those who will take advantage of a situation when the opportunity presents itself,
whether or not it's ethical (another motherfucking debatable issue which I won't get into here).

It is entirely possible that in some Black-majority neighbourhoods,
Whites get discriminated against.
And don't even get me started on the divorce custody cases when it comes to discrimination against men.

Marketers have known this for quite sometime now.
You may be targeting females aged between 25-40,
but your advertising needs to target the sub-groups within that group.
The women who are working professionals,
the ones who are fitness enthusiasts,
the ones who have a crazy obsession with kittens, etc.

It's not black and white.
There are sub-groups, and sub-groups of sub-groups.

Now don't get me wrong.
White on Black (or Chinese on Non-Chinese) discrimination is a serious issue and needs to be tackled.
But the approach must be localized.
If you misidentify the problem in an area,
how can you possibly provide the solution?

If you're targeting White-on-Black discrimination
in a Black-majority area where Whites get the shaft,
then you're only going to generate more resentment.

Also, it's fucking stupid.

All victims deserve our help.
Man, woman, child, Black, White, etc.
Be a fucking human being.

Man, despite my not being as articulate
as I'd like to be,
I'm glad I got that out of my skull.

Anyway, today is the first day of my 12-week transformation process.
By the end of this process,
I hope to be lean, with a bigger chest, arms and shoulders.
No more cutting corners.

I feel like shit,
and I know there'll be a ton of obstacles along the way.

But this mountain will be fucking scaled.

Day 1: Completed.


Well enough of that.

Charlie

It's Friday afternoon,
but the temperature is unusually, and pleasantly cool.
I'd say 25 degrees, if not slightly lower.

The baby's on the couch,
hopefully about to sleep.

And soon,
lunch will be ready.
So I don't have much time.

There was a shooting a few days ago in Paris,
of employees of a magazine that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad S.A.W.

People from 'around the world' were shocked and mourned their deaths.
By the way, when it comes to the mainstream media,
it appears 'around the world' does not include those living in villages and towns that are being ravaged by Western and Western-backed forces.
Nope.
Those are the 'un-people', don't you know?

The shooting did make me sad.
And as much as I disliked those who (in my opinion)
created and spread libel about someone they either know very little about,
or just don't give a damn about,
they did not deserve that.

They deserved criticism,
or even to be ignored.

But murder?
No.

On an article about this on the Intercept,
I came across a comment from someone named 'Glenn' (not Glenn Greenwald),
which mirrored my own thoughts:

"Modern wars kill 90% civilians and 10% soldiers.

Normal war has become terrorism.

I am outraged every day at the number of civilians targeted for killing. I am usually a somewhat isolated exception to the indifference to these murders of civilians and wonder why most people are so indifferent to the state war crime of killing civilians.

I am not an exception in my outrage on this exceptional day. Today I have company.

However, I expect most people to go back once again to their normal state of indifference once these “exceptionally worthy” victims are superseded by the more usual “unworthy” victims.

You know, the normalcy of war."

Already a few cartoonists have decided to express solidarity with the magazine

by publishing cartoons that remind me of the anti-semitic propaganda pieces the Nazis loved to use.

Almost as if these tragic deaths are cause for celebration for them:

Something that enables them to openly declare their bigotry,

or express it more brazenly.

All while hiding behind the cloak of 'solidarity', 'freedom of expression', and 'justified' anger.

The murderers should be brought o justice.

But were the victims protectors of the much-vaunted 'Freedom of Expression'?

Of course not.

Here's a nice little tidbit about them: They'd actually refused to publish cartoons of Jesus.

Why is that?

Can you imagine the drop in revenue and the condemnation they'd receive?

Nothing admirable about satirizing a community 

that's already facing a lot of discrimination in France. 

Real courage means satirizing the powerful, the oppressors, not the oppressed. 

I'd write more, 

but once again Windows 7 has slowed down to a crawl

and reminded me why I'm switching to a Mac. 

Well enough of that.