Recapping 2025
- Trips to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Switzerland, Portugal, the Netherlands and one more time to Taiwan.
- Two crappy elections. One was crappy because of gerrymandering, fear tactics and unfair competition. The other was crappy because the haughty psycho alpha bitch who got elected got elected because no one else wanted the job.
- The passing of a dear colleague. RIP, Sang Y Rhee.
- Just learned of the death of high-school buddy Dr Stephen Meng How Leow. He passed way in January last year. Shocked! In our teens, we even appeared on TV together to perform magic. The program was Sharp Night, which was aired every Sunday night and Zhang Wei, the host, introduced us as ” Southeast Asia’s youngest professional magicians.”
- 15 days in Portugal prevented me from ruminating obsessively about a piece of news regarding someone close. That news was totally unexpected, came from left field, and was an excruciatingly painful kick to the balls! Thanks, Ernst, for the very nice break! My stay with you restored my sanity.
- Daily emails – and occasional books – from Umina Beach also kept me sane and grounded. Much appreciated, Ian. We are on the same frequency!
- My buddy Phil celebrated his 70th birthday! I like Phil, he’s a no bullshit guy! Back in 2019, we spent a month in Greece together. How did we know each other? He read my blog, I read his blog, we connected online, met in Greece – two strangers meeting in person for the very first time – and explored the country together for a month. What an extraordinary friendship! I mean, we could both have been globetrotting serial killers or psychopaths right?
- Saddened to witness an elderly ex-student turning into a total douche and intolerable prick. It’s one thing to contradict oneself, it’s quite another for me to see you making a fool of yourself. One moment you said you won’t do something and next moment you were doing the very same thing you said you won’t do. Stay far away from me please!
- In Eindhoven, I reconnected with a much-loved former colleague from my Thai office, a sweet young lady who used to address me as “godpa.” We’ve not met for six years. Poor girl has gotten herself married to a wooden block of a dork in the Netherlands. I hope that their baby son of theirs would be the glue that will hold their union together. I hate to envisage her getting hurt.
- Noticed that for some, things have been really tough lately, and it pains me to see a couple of longtime good friends having to deal with drastic changes in lifestyle.
- Heartbroken to see HG going downhill cognitively and health-wise. The deterioration has been rapid. He wasn’t even able to communicate coherently. Conflicting and contradicting messages from his son and daughter didn’t help. In the end, I wasn’t able to meet him when I visited the his country. A pity and a shame!
- Made a decision to unfollow and disconnect from family members, cousins, relatives on social media. I respect your privacy, you respect mine – and dear (one particular shit-for-brains) cousin (son of an aunt) please for fuck’s sake, stop WhatsApping me irksome and bothersome “Good Morning” messages every fucking day (which I had to spend precious time deleting) – but this blog is open to all and sundry, so just pretend you haven’t read any of my posts, even if you have. No discussion pertaining to what I wrote about you will be entertained. Nuff said.
- I have also made a conscious effort to reduce contact with people who cause me tension and stress. Yes if you suspect that I am avoiding you, I am. You know who you are, shitwit. And please try to catch hints – if I continue to read my book, then know that I want you out of my sight and stop yakking.
- I have been brought up never to look at a gift horse in the mouth. That said, I continue to be profoundly sorrowful whenever I receive stuff from a husband-and-wife team (the husband is definitely a beta male). Clearly, they have never heard of the law of reciprocal returns. I know you guys are on a budget, but you need to prioritize decent gifts for your mentors and benefactors. Well, no expectation, no disappointment. At 68, I should have known better. But my late darling mum – God bless her kind soul – taught me never to let the bad behavior of others determine my own behavior, so I will continue to be magnanimous. Lucky bastards, you!
- When I was a child, we had a gossiping, self-obsessed, utterly irritating neighbor from hell, the one who lived for melodrama and whose mouth wouldn’t shut up about her own embellished nonsense – the one who always had to have the final, irritating, know-it-all word on everything, no matter what the subject, the one who was always a follower, never a trendsetter, the one who was inexplicably insecure, forever searching for something to fill her emptiness, the one who was so hypersensitive, extremely petty, super quick to get angry at anything and everything and anyone and everyone. This year, I saw her soul leach out and possess someone I know, someone falling into that exact, sickening and disgusting pattern. It was not just super irritating; it made my skin crawl. I was incandescent with frustration and genuinely, deeply hurt to see a friend become that very thing I spent my childhood trying to escape. This person is now a mirror reflecting my worst memories, and I can’t look away without feeling my bile rise. I am watching a human being becoming the very embodiment of my most irritating, memory-haunting nightmares. Every time I hear this person speak now is a brutal reminder of how a carbon copy of the thing I despised is existing before my eyes. Narcissistic Personality Disorder indeed! It is fatal to everyone except to the narcissist. Some people are just so self-centered and so full of their own damn crap.
- Decided to walk away from a friendship that was toxic and one way. I’m glad I’m still at peace with my decision. “Close the window that hurts you, no matter how beautiful the view is.” Yup, great advice indeed! Toxic people contaminate and pollute. When you meet one, don’t hesitate. Fumigate! Goodbye, You-know-who. You put up a facade, told lots of lies trying to put up a front and I was taken in – probably slightly smitten even – but ultimately your toxicity showed when you grabbed what you wanted and I was awaken from my daydreams. Good riddance to bad rubbish! Thankfully, those daydreams didn’t turn into nightmares. Lesson: Never be afraid to walk away, delete, block and ignore. It is actually not that difficult to treat some malignantly reprobates as completely invisible. Give it a try!
NOTE: I started this blog in 2009, after shutting down a previous blog (straightfromtheshoulders.com) due to the hosting site’s annoying and all too frequent technological breakdowns; so it’s been some years, and I think I’ve said enough rubbish here. This could be my last post on LohandBehold.com. But don’t bet on it, as I have a big mouth and it’s hard to shut me up.
One more thing: some of you know that in the past two years I have been posting – using my real name (and “Loh” is part of it) – on a professional networking site. I am thinking of stopping that too. No decision yet though. There are too many puke-inducing, self-adulating braggadocios there – shameless morons who buy doctorates (not worth the papers they’re printed on) from degree mills just so they can be addressed as “doctor” and be appointed as “professors” of fake, self-accredited “universities” no one has ever heard of because the scammers and crooks who own them operate out of P O boxes.
So much shit in this world, right?
Enough!
And oh yes, happy new year!
Not that the greeting is of any point, given the state of the world today.