Who am I? Its a question I've hardly even begun to answer myself truth be told. Sure, I know a lot about myself, but there's a lot more to find out. But I guess I'll start with the basics.

Most of my friends call me Yang. Idiot friends who irritate me call me by my first name which I will not say. People who first meet me enjoy making me suffer through the 'Yang/Young' pun, not realising I've heard every joke there is to hear.

Lessee...what else. I'm tall. 1.8 the last time I checked. I'm a writer, I write whatever I think people will enjoy or at least interest them.

I'll leave it at that. Anything else you wanna know, just talk to me sometime. And here's my opener.



I had dinner with an old friend tonight. Knew her in Primary, and just got in touch with her sometime in the middle of the year, so that's what, about a 6 year gap in contact.

She's still pretty good looking, like I remembered. And she also makes me smile once in a while. And while having dinner, our discussion drifted to issues of relationships. More specifically, about what we're looking for in that special someone.

By the end of dinner, I felt like I'd been worked over by a goon with a monkey wrench and a diploma in human pain points. Mentally anyways. Why?

Because by the end of dinner, I realised that I no longer really liked the person my friend was. And it really hurt that much finding out first hand.

Maybe I'm being a little harsh here. I intend on becoming a journo, so I have to worry about a little something called 'disclosure'. Basically it just means I'm supposed to reveal to my readers any of my own opinions or biases which might influence what I write.

So here's my disclosure.

1. I was made to realise that there was no way in hell this girl would ever go out with me. And that unless she changed, the feeling was 100% mutual.
2. There was some small (really small) part of me that actually thought otherwise.

I mean that in the sense that if a friend had come up to me and said, Yang, I can see you and her going out, I'd have shrugged and pretty much agreed.

Alright. So I'll leave you to decide whether my writing here was influenced. Now to continue.

All the way home, I couldn't stop thinking about some of the things she had told me. She was honest with me, and that I appreciate, in the sense that she really gave me her honest opinion on what she liked in a guy, and what she was looking for. The thing is, if anyone other than her had told me these very same things, I'd have roughed them up for badmouthing her.

And what really got me a little depressed, was how shallow and pointless it all seemed.

When I say 'all', I mean the games girls and guys play when they're looking for that someone. I'll admit, I play along as well. But the only reason I do, is because I pretty much realise that its part of the whole deal. Just being honest with a girl doesn't really cut it.

And that's really disillusioning sometimes. I mean hell, the thrill of the chase, whatever, I enjoy it when I'm at the club, buying a girl a Screwdriver or a Midori Lemon and chatting her up, dancing with her. But when I get home, and I start thinking about how if I didn't put in the effort I'd end up being labelled anti-social, loser or whatever hell else, it just seems so... twisted.

Honesty really isn't worth jack. You have to have looks, or you just don't have it. Playing the game works so much better than trying to be different from the rest of the crowd.

So I'll leave it at that note. Go think about it a while, and I'm interested, if any girls actually read this thing, to hear your opinion on whether or not you agree, even if only a little. How many of you would actually prefer honesty to our twisted modern day rituals? Truthfully?

Because the more I care to learn, the more I discover, that shallow seems the norm, rather than the exception.