About Kenneth

On the basis of having been born in K.K. Hospital in Jul 1980, Kenneth would like to think of himself as the quintessential Singaporean guy. But given the increasing number of people who has described him as "weird" or "strange" or even as "alien" it would appear not so.

To his great surprise, after vegetating for 7 years, he was forced to subject himself to the daily torture of sitting in classrooms full of noisy children at Poi Ching School. He considers it a great show of self-control that he did not go after anyone with a kitchen knife, not least the adults who always seem to want him to do homework.

This feat was continued at Guangyang Secondary School, where pretty much the same was repeated although this time the children used profanity with a vengeance and the adults gave even more homework. For four long years, he endured this outrage to his sensibilities and was quite relieved to learn that this sort of thing did not need to go on forever.

Kenneth considers it a great achievement that he somehow managed to swindle his way into Temasek Polytechnic where he thought that the people in it would be different and nicer then what he had encountered so far. He was disappointed but not overwhelmingly so. Along the way however, he managed to acquire a piece of paper that certified that he was awarded the Diploma in Logistics and Operations Management.

He is not quite sure where that came from but it could have something to do with all the "projects" they kept giving out at TP.

It came as a shock to Kenneth that for no other reason then being a reasonably unfit but otherwise (physically) healthy Singaporean male that he was chosen for something called the Physical Torture Phase ran by an organisation called the Singapore Army. This soon progressed into Botak, Marching and Torture and after Suffering In Silence Plus Extra Confinement, he was posted to an ulu, ulu place called School of Animals to undergo training as an Armoured Infantry Section Leader.

It was here that Kenneth gave a sigh of resignation and joined his fellow males in the use of expletives. He used it so well in fact that he was given to the 41st Battalion, Singapore Armoured Regiment for an advanced course in the use of the Hokkien vulgar language. Having been so indoctrinated, he was once again released into society.

Thus now, Kenneth realised that he was suddenly also an adult who would give children plenty of homework if he could. Seeing that he'd better not, he gave another sigh of resignation and in Feb 2003 went to work for Madeira Asia Pte Ltd and later P.T. Madeira Indonesia as a Logistics Executive.

Somwhere along the way, someone also persuaded him that it would be a good idea to temp at the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports as an answering machine for the Baby Bonus hotline.

Having amassed enough money, he ran as far away from Singapore as he possibly could and returned to his original vegetative state at the University of Tasmania. He is still waiting for the peice of paper from UTAS to say that he has a Bachelor of Commerce (major in Business Management) to show for all those assignments he wrote.

Having now ran out of money, he is looking for someone to give him some.

-- Kenneth Kwok, 1 Jul 2006