By Raymond Chuang
Frank Castle (a.k.a. The Punisher) mercilessly blows away at Takagi-san’s entourage of Yakuza warriors. The hero pulls out a twelve-inch long, double-edged serrated knife and commences to attack his enemies in gruesome ways that should not be described and be published in this delegate-friendly newspaper. Just as Castle grabs a grenade and uses it to attack his enemies in ways that are also too gruesome to be published in this newspaper, your mother opens the door to find her eight-year old son reading shocking, violent, and “philistine trash.”Whether you were caught reading heinous comic books, stealing cookies from the jar, or drooling at your older brother’s treasured Maxim magazines, those instances ruthlessly embarrassed you to a traumatic extent—the painful truths you had to face during puberty.Now that most of us are all mature, grownup, big boys and girls who can openly discuss with our parents the profound meanings of our blood and gore comic strips and bikini postcards, we face a new challenge. And the new challenge is this: “Do we or do we not have the courage to tell the truth to our advisors about our after-curfew activities?” Face it, people, they all know the truth; they’re just waiting for you to turn yourself in to show some integrity—some magnanimity, some nobility of spirit. To help you embark on such a quixotic task, I’m going to start off by revealing to the public some of your favorite after-curfew activities.One of the most popular ones would be the late-night phone calls. Although most of us have gotten past the addiction of harassing people, memorizing someone’s room number and making a dozen calls in ten minutes until the victim decides to throw the telephone across his hotel room still tops the charts on the most popular MUN games. You might have some explaining to do if your advisor happens to be room-checking your victim’s place and decides to pick up the phone, but you can always turn to the alternative by waking up at three in the morning to fwalk across the hallway to pound on the poor delegate’s doorbell.But hey, this is a four-day conference, right? Some of us stay in that hotel for six, seven, eight days—there has to be some other after-curfew activities to keep us occupied. What about jumping hyperactively with five other friends on the two single beds at four in the morning? And then you can all either snuggle cozily together in bed or lose a round of rock papers scissors and be forced to doze on the couch. If you feel that the phone/doorbell game and slumber party do not suffice, I’m assuming you’re one of the more “outdoor types.” By “outdoor type,” I mean that you have this twisted and almost sadistic problem going on in the darkest corners of your psyche that causes you to be totally unsympathetic to your roommate’s wellbeing. At around 3:30 A.M., you intuitively jump out of bed and decide to take a walk, but the walk would not be complete unless you coerce your friend with the hot iron you’ve stolen from the maid to get him to shuffle hesitatingly into the elevator. After you’ve blocked the elevator’s security camera with your THIMUN-Singapore badge, and slapped your sleepy buddy around a bit, the door opens and you and your buddy walk out to the lobby to find a seemingly responsible but highly annoying concierge who threatens to report you to your advisor. You dig your hands deep into your pockets to pull out a large wad of 100 Singaporean dollar bills, “tipping” the concierge for his discretion. After getting the concierge to call a cab, you and your pal inconspicuously enter the vehicle and tell the driver to drive to “that spot with the lion-fish thing.”Well, my fellow delegate, this is the end of your confession to your advisors. I hope you feel purified, liberated, and unburdened by guilt once again. You feel the same catharsis that you have not experienced since your mother shrieked hysterically at the sight of you reading about The Punisher throwing people into automatic meat grinders. You can finally look your advisor in the eye shamelessly and unflinchingly as your understanding teacher studies you with a forgiving gaze and tells you that “everything is all right.” Anyway, now that you’ve spilled all of your darkest secrets (or rather, I spilled them for you), don’t you feel a lot better? I certainly do.Note: Violent and overly honest events in this article have been tempered/deleted at the editors’ request.
Frank Castle (a.k.a. The Punisher) mercilessly blows away at Takagi-san’s entourage of Yakuza warriors. The hero pulls out a twelve-inch long, double-edged serrated knife and commences to attack his enemies in gruesome ways that should not be described and be published in this delegate-friendly newspaper. Just as Castle grabs a grenade and uses it to attack his enemies in ways that are also too gruesome to be published in this newspaper, your mother opens the door to find her eight-year old son reading shocking, violent, and “philistine trash.”Whether you were caught reading heinous comic books, stealing cookies from the jar, or drooling at your older brother’s treasured Maxim magazines, those instances ruthlessly embarrassed you to a traumatic extent—the painful truths you had to face during puberty.Now that most of us are all mature, grownup, big boys and girls who can openly discuss with our parents the profound meanings of our blood and gore comic strips and bikini postcards, we face a new challenge. And the new challenge is this: “Do we or do we not have the courage to tell the truth to our advisors about our after-curfew activities?” Face it, people, they all know the truth; they’re just waiting for you to turn yourself in to show some integrity—some magnanimity, some nobility of spirit. To help you embark on such a quixotic task, I’m going to start off by revealing to the public some of your favorite after-curfew activities.One of the most popular ones would be the late-night phone calls. Although most of us have gotten past the addiction of harassing people, memorizing someone’s room number and making a dozen calls in ten minutes until the victim decides to throw the telephone across his hotel room still tops the charts on the most popular MUN games. You might have some explaining to do if your advisor happens to be room-checking your victim’s place and decides to pick up the phone, but you can always turn to the alternative by waking up at three in the morning to fwalk across the hallway to pound on the poor delegate’s doorbell.But hey, this is a four-day conference, right? Some of us stay in that hotel for six, seven, eight days—there has to be some other after-curfew activities to keep us occupied. What about jumping hyperactively with five other friends on the two single beds at four in the morning? And then you can all either snuggle cozily together in bed or lose a round of rock papers scissors and be forced to doze on the couch. If you feel that the phone/doorbell game and slumber party do not suffice, I’m assuming you’re one of the more “outdoor types.” By “outdoor type,” I mean that you have this twisted and almost sadistic problem going on in the darkest corners of your psyche that causes you to be totally unsympathetic to your roommate’s wellbeing. At around 3:30 A.M., you intuitively jump out of bed and decide to take a walk, but the walk would not be complete unless you coerce your friend with the hot iron you’ve stolen from the maid to get him to shuffle hesitatingly into the elevator. After you’ve blocked the elevator’s security camera with your THIMUN-Singapore badge, and slapped your sleepy buddy around a bit, the door opens and you and your buddy walk out to the lobby to find a seemingly responsible but highly annoying concierge who threatens to report you to your advisor. You dig your hands deep into your pockets to pull out a large wad of 100 Singaporean dollar bills, “tipping” the concierge for his discretion. After getting the concierge to call a cab, you and your pal inconspicuously enter the vehicle and tell the driver to drive to “that spot with the lion-fish thing.”Well, my fellow delegate, this is the end of your confession to your advisors. I hope you feel purified, liberated, and unburdened by guilt once again. You feel the same catharsis that you have not experienced since your mother shrieked hysterically at the sight of you reading about The Punisher throwing people into automatic meat grinders. You can finally look your advisor in the eye shamelessly and unflinchingly as your understanding teacher studies you with a forgiving gaze and tells you that “everything is all right.” Anyway, now that you’ve spilled all of your darkest secrets (or rather, I spilled them for you), don’t you feel a lot better? I certainly do.Note: Violent and overly honest events in this article have been tempered/deleted at the editors’ request.
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