From the ‘No shit, Sherlock’ news department: Serial Killers Crave Power, Experts Say. We are told that “Killers such as the Kansas man who called himself BTK are ‘basically losers’ who never distinguished themselves except through brutality.”

When Neil and I returned from Singapore, and I plugged my Chinese SIM card back into my mobile, I received the following text: Drinks at 8pm at The House in memory of Peter. Being immediately mystified by this cryptic message, I rang the originator of the text and found out that an Australian bloke we barely knew had passed away in Xiamen upon his return from holidays in the Philippines.

He was only 31. And he was an alcoholic.

So perhaps it was fitting, maybe ironic, that we were gathering at a bar one week later. Peter had been working in Xiamen for less than a year, and had made a number of friends. Three of them chose to speak, reminiscing about great times with Peter, which all seemed to revolve around the themes:

• Peter was a great guy
• He was looking to get drunk / he was completely off his face
• He whipped his little fella out to have a whizz in public whenever he felt like it
• He was addicted to Handjob Parlours™
• Wasn’t Peter a great guy?
• He’d want us to get drunk in his memory

Hey, remember that time Peter drunkenly head butted a complete stranger because this stranger happened to tell Peter off for insulting and harassing his wife? What a kidder!

It is, naturally, a great shame that someone so young passed away. But there’s no gentle, diplomatic way to say this — romanticising his excessive drinking is bad. Treating his alcoholism as a charming personality quirk instead of an addiction that most probably killed him is not, in my humble opinion, a fitting send-off for someone who was supposed to be a friend. The sad thing is, the only memories people have of him are that he was a drunk who managed to get away with extremely bad behaviour.

• had dinner at the Garden City Cafe (mmm, prawn noodles)
• went for a massage at Chang Sheng Tang
• slept in
• had a great dinner at the Night Lily Guesthouse on Gulangyu
• stayed up far too late at The House
• had lunch with John and Cindy at Sun Dance (hungover)
• walked around in the rain looking for presents (still hungover)
• had dinner at Little Chilli (still hungover)

The Starwood Preferred Guest is apparently a Singaporean woman who shags Western men because she thinks they represent a road to a better life — and provide foreign passports, too (tip: the URL should tell you everything you need to know).

This may come as a surprise to my legions of loyal fans, but I’ve been hiding something from the Internets.

For over a decade, I’ve lived with the knowledge that I have a kidney condition known as minimal glomerulonephritis*. I’ve sought no help for this disease, I’ve spoken with no doctors since it was detected+. I have to live with the fact that hardly anyone with this illness will progress to renal failure#. Beating all odds, where the greatest majority (80%) of cases are detected prior to the age of six, and the average age of adult onset is 40, I was found to be suffering from this racist disease (’Asians may be at increased risk’) at the age of 16.

I must protest that I did not receive an eight-week course of steroids to battle this illness that has not prevented me from doing absolutely anything over the intervening years. I can only imagine the incompetence of the medical staff who first advised that my lifestyle was not going to have to change in any way in order to cope.

Suffering indignities as only the truly elegant could under the circumstances, I allowed myself to be confined to the premises once every couple of years, in order to relieve my bladder into a cheap plastic bottle. Why, you ask, why is such a humiliation necessary? My dear friends and adoring fans, that was the only way they could determine if my ailment had improved or worsened. But like a trooper, I accepted that some things in life will not be able to live up to my high expectations.

Through nothing but my own diligence and strict dietary regimen, I can now claim to be free of the debilitation that has dogged me for more than ten years.

* Try saying that three times quickly after a couple of G&Ts.
+ Except for my mum.
# Also called minimal change glomerulonephritis or minimal-change disease, “Glomerular disease causing heavy proteinuria characterized by absence of obvious histologic glomerular changes on light microscopy.” That is, I have protein in my pee. I was assured that it would likely clear up on its own, as long as I was somewhat careful with my diet. My latest test results (via e-mail from Mum) tell me that it’s gone, wahey!

Via Terry, Shakeskin - a gallery of shaken faces is ample proof that people are very peculiar indeed.

How to fix China’s banking system, from The McKinsey Quarterly (bugmenot).

Felt (synthetic, no wool), craft glue (I need my ventilation), and random wooden and plastic bits and bobs (ooh, fancy sparkles!) were purchased while in Singapore. As you can imagine, random wooden and plastic bits and bobs (ooh, fancy sparkles!) will be attached to various things with craft glue. Hopefully the various things don’t include accidental attachment to my body parts.

Hooray for Spotlight!

Spent Chinese New Year with the family. This year, I learned that many of my distant relatives are Chinese teachers. I saw my cousin and her husband twice, the first time at my grandfather’s, and the second at their new flat. Pebbles the dog is as overweight and happy as ever.

Communed with nature. The treetop walk at MacRitchie Nature Reserve, that is. The walk to the bridge was quite lovely (but warm), the actual treetop walk was a little too short and non-death-defying (even Mum agreed), and only in Singapore does the last section of a nature walk run along a major road. The heat made me feel quite unwell.

Watched a movie in the cinema. Xiamen is not known for English language movie theatres (mainly because there aren’t any). Due to my mother’s irrational crush on Keanu Reeves, we were taken to watch Constantine in Balestier’s Shaw Plaza. I went along with it because: 1) she’s seen all the other films I wanted to see, and 2) it’s based on Hellblazer, which I haven’t read, but looks all right.

Went to Zouk on Mambo night. I haven’t been to Zouk in ages, let alone Mambo night. As I’ve informed Neil many a time, I was there when Zouk started Mambo night, in 1993. Back then, it was bone-crushingly busy, with queues to get in lasting practically all night. Only the coolest dancers had the balls to get up on the hexagonal platforms. Oh, how times have changed. When on God’s green earth did it become cool to mime the lyrics to songs? When did those who mimed identically become the people to emulate? In short, when did 80’s pop line dancing get hip? I need to know.

Saw Kristen. Which was a lovely, lovely thing. We spent one evening searching fruitlessly for a decent pub to have drinks — underscoring how truly uncool we are.

Caught up on my reading. Went to Borders and proceeded to purchase The System of the World, Fleshmarket Close, Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Harry Potter an the Order of the Phoenix (I may be late, but I got the hardcover edition for a mere S$7.95). Also bought Death’s Acre at a later date, and re-read Roots. I’ve read everything but The System of the World.

Bought CDs. I think we spent a lot of money on new CDs. We got the Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, Sarah McLachlan, The Killers, Bloc Party, Green Day, and Franz Ferdinand newies. We probably walked away with more, but those are the ones I remember right now.

Ate my way through Singapore. Black Angus. Prawn noodles. Minced pork noodles. Prata at Farrer Court. Ipoh hor fun.

And now I’m back in Xiamen.

I can’t wait for the Fantastic Four! As a kid who read too fast and got bored really easily, the three or four issues of the Fantastic Four comic sitting in the shelves of my grandfather’s house really fueled my imagination (She-Hulk, of which there were one or two issues, really didn’t do it for me).

I had a real thing for the Human Torch — when you’re a kid, you can have a relationship with a cartoon character. Mr Fantastic was the older, distinguished gentleman you respected like a cool uncle.

It’s so exciting, it’s so exciting!

Singapore’s National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) is pushing for job re-design to deal with the structural unemployment that inevitably occurs as countries develop and change. A much more practical and effective way of dealing with jobs being replaced by machines, productivity gains, and goods and services production moving to China and India.

Via Asian Labour News. Yes, I know, late to the party, I am.

Stumble home at 5am on a Sunday, bouncing off the walls because you’ve had a kajillion beers and Lord knows what else so you can’t walk in a straight line, and turning the bedroom lights on and off because you’re so off your face you can’t figure out how lights work.

Especially as I went to bed at 1am and had to get up at 6am to go to work.

Lifestyles of the iPod Shuffle. Heehee. Via Gizmodo.

Wannabe Lawyer writes a fantastic piece on the dilemma of freedom of speech in Singapore. My take is that many Singaporeans long for this elusive freedom, but are unwilling or unable to take on the responsibility that (necessarily) comes with it.

This is one of the reasons for my being so extremely busy. This, my friends, is the first super-official issue of What’s On Xiamen — it’s gone back into print. Yes, it’s a proper magazine and all that. I had very little time to put it together, and I work with a group of people who barely speak or understand a word of English. They do work very hard, though, and we managed to get an issue out in time for the Spring Festival holiday.

So, to celebrate the re-launch of the magazine, did I go for a fancy dinner and have a few self-congratulatory drinks? Did I go out and party? Did I go out and throw a party?

No. I came home and re-designed the website. I shit you not.

I have no time to party like it’s 1999. I have to work all this weekend (ah, those wacky Chinese holidays), and I go back to Singapore for a fortnight next week (impending hiatus alert — my mother doesn’t own a computer). So it’s a quiet magazine re-introduction to the Xiamen scene, with the hope that people like the new version.

It’s now very late, and while I’m pleased as punch that the first issue is out, I now have to prepare the second.

Certainly, one of the things that a lot of people have to miss when they leave China must be the cheap (non-dodgy) massages. I was at a Chinese therapy centre last night for an hour’s massage, I paid 60RMB, and I slept extremely well when I got home. This is the first time I’ve been so awake and alert on a work day in years.

The only thing about massages is it really tickles when someone digs into my back. I’m not sure how often they get customers who giggle like mad when it’s supposed to hurt, but I know I mustn’t be alone in this. Using their fists to pound on my back and legs feels bloody good, though.

Dooce’s baby girl Leta is one year old. Just reading that makes me go all, awwwwww, aren’t babies great when they aren’t yours?

The McKinsey Quarterly posits an explanation for the ‘jobless recovery’ in the United States (bugmenot).

My old flatmates Kris and Mark appear to be leading a double life. Dastardly.

What does a Malaysian entrepreneur do when he spots an unused Soviet air base? Build a tropical lagoon resort, of course.