About Me (April 1999)

[1969-1975]

The Twice Poisoned Dog, a.k.a. Benjamin Lee was born in Singapore in 1969, a few minutes after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. His mother, Judy, still drugged out and recovering from the caesarian section, contemplated naming him Apollo, after the lunar mission.

Sanity prevailed, however, and the child was named after the family doctor, Dr Benny Foo, to counter the ridiculous sounding Hainanese name 'Soo Yaw', which, when mispronounced in Hokkien, means 'lose and hungry'.

Despite being born with a head absurdly larger than nature (and t-shirt manufacturers) intended, Benny was nonetheless not very bright, and was confused by the significance of his birthday, and spent his early years thinking he was born ON the Moon.

Naturally, he was devastated when the truth was forced upon him by his kindergarten teachers. After having his sole claim to fame wrenched from him, the rest of his childhood days were abysmally unremarkable.

Being the second child of three, Benny was trapped between a high-achieving older sister, Meiling, and a younger brother with a violent streak, Kenneth. When Meiling was at home from school, she'd intellectually intimidate the poor boy, who then sought Kenny's company, only to be regularly clobbered on the head with two D-size batteries from his younger brother's favourite fire-engine.

He managed to seek solace in art, and was adept with crayon drawings. That passion however, was stymied by the wrath of his parents when they discovered he had done a mural on the entire upstairs corridor. His determination to suffer for his art was broken by a severe session with the rattan cane, and he has not worked on a mural ever since.

The trauma of life as a middle child aside, Benny was a sickly child. Asthma was a hindrance, as was a bout of Dengue Haemorragic fever. At six, he was misdiagnosed as having a hole in the heart and given only 6 months to live. In the months before getting a competent second opinion, Benny was doted on by all and sundry and enjoyed it. Then the bloody doctor had to reveal that it was merely a heart murmur, and life returned to being called stupid by sis and being hammered with D-size batteries by bro.

[1976-1988]

Ben was further punished by his parents by being sent to a Catholic Primary School. 6 years of primary schooling was uneventful, save for the time he was caned for setting fire to a garden next to the school when a self-conducted rocket experiment went awry.

what was worse about primary school was that it was a chinese language primary school. One of those ching chong chinaman sing chinese anthem mao is great schools, where in those days, the teachers (who hopefully are dead now) used to be active rioters in the days of the bus riots (it befuddled young Ben as well, how buses could riot). This meant not understanding a word in class, and scoring phenomenally low marks.

Miracles were to happen, as that primary school changed its policy and allowed young Ben to take the PSLE exams in Engllsh stream.

Ah, but exams was not what school life was about. The catholic schools in the seventies were all located in Singapore's CBD. This meant playing truant regularly to bask in air-conditioned shopping malls (MPH, Odeon cinema, Bras Basah Complex). This also meant that an alarming number of school children were involved in traffic and other accidents, such as getting laces caught in escalators, and falling into the many roadwork pits dug up by Singapore's public utilities departments.

In 1982 he crossed the great divide and spent the next 7 years at that venerable Methodist institution, the Anglo-Chinese School and Junior College, where he sang in the choir and played rugby union, where he soon gained fame as the worst scrum-half the school had seen.

Rugby was a blur then. No one knew what was going on. The skinny kids in Canterbury jerseys in thirty-plus degree tropical heat just chucked and kicked the ball, and then posed for team photographs at the end of the year.

As if the growing up in the eighties, fashion's and music's most painful era, wasn't bad enough, Ben was, on top of this, socially inept. Most of his contact with the fairer sex came from Sunday school, where he pretended to be pious, because it seemed as if the good guys in church got the girls. It didn't concern him that those good guys were a good foot and a half taller than him.

To top it all, Ben had to end the decade by being conscripted for National Service.

[1989-1999]

After school in 1988, came two and a half years of National Service with the 46th Battalion, Singapore Armoured Regiment as a reconnaisance rider. These years were defining ones. For before that, Ben could not even spell "reconnaisance rider". Now he are one.

It was not all fun. Ben is a certified nutcase even now. Screaming names and and places in far away jungles in the middle of the night is not uncommon still. And that's just when he has sex.

Army taught Ben a great deal. Such as "never point rifle at oneself", "No standing in front of moving tank", "always suck up to sergeant in charge of leave entitlement", and of course, the favourite, "pull out pin, THROW grenade, NOT pin".

With these lessons etched in memory, Corporal Ben survived the army and was released from full-time National Service in one piece, albeit a little frayed round the edges.

In 1992, Sydney and further studies beckoned, and Ben has been here ever since. Trying to pass his bloody exams so he can get on with life, which seems to have gotten stuck in a rut ever since the breakdown of his last relationship, which I really shouldn't start talking about because it makes me really really really MAD!

What keeps Ben going, however, is his love for all things computerised. Which is second only to his passion for rugby, even though he last played a full game for Lane Cove RFC in 1998 and subsequently tore all the ligaments in his left ankle. He hopes to make it back to the club this (2000) season.

Ben has been a fan of the internet since the pre-Web days, where there was only SLIP access at exhorbitant rates. His first webpage was compiled in 1996, and it continues to draw crowds from cyberspace (last count 76 visitors).

His love for computers was nurtured when his parents gave in to his and his brother's wheedling and needling and bought the two brats an Apple //e computer. That kept the brothers quiet for a while but did not stop them bashing each other over computer games, which in 1983 were quite primitive. Ben and Ken would sit at the computer for 5 hours as they flew their flight simulator from Chicago O'Hare to Los Angeles International. It was the age before the 'time-slew' hotkey. (For the record, they crashed on landing at L.A. Int'l. The brothers still fight over whose fault it was). The Apple //e suffered long hours of keyboard bashing with Karateka, Flight Simulator, Bolo, Asteroids, and the like, until it finally breathed its last (when they had to hold down the circuitboards with one hand to work it) in 1989.

Ben's ineptitude at computers soon showed when Ken bought himself an IBM 386 computer, and stayed away from computers until 1992, when coursework necessitated the use of one. Naturally, he was pointed to the most idiot proof of all computers. The computer made by idiots for idiots - The Apple Macintosh. It was so bloody easy to use that Ben started volunteering his services as a newsletter editor, graphics designer and a website designer. (Unfortunately, not many people took up this generous offer).

Unfortunately, the Mac was getting comparatively slower than any other machine on the market. Ben would have loved to own another Mac, but the prices were way too high, and he had to betray the faith and buy a Celeron system for $1000.

He is doing this website on the Celeron. So if there're any bugs or errors, even typos, blame it on the fect that he isn't using a Mac.