When simple just doesnt make the cut anymore....

Tired

2012-02-07T18:31:00.001+08:00

I sometimes wonder that how is it possible that at such a young age I can be so tired, and not tired in the physical sense, but just weary of the world and everything. It's a marvel how most people grow old and trudge through life as if it were mud at chest level.

A friend once asked me about dying. She said what would you have done if you knew your death was imminent, would you regret not having done enough or certain things. I would, but if it happens, it happens, I just feel as if I'm not looking forward to anything so nothing should really hold me back in that regards. Of course, I would regret things like leaving my family behind and my friends would have one less person to care about, but it's quite surreal to think about it.

To think about dying is to essentially think about leaving and not coming back. My mum and most of my relatives like to talk about dreams, particularly dreaming about my deceased grandmother. Like how she seems to be waiting for something, or holding someone's hands, or walking to or away from certain places and in certain peoples' dreams, crying. They like to speculate about how Mother was trying to send them messages, because the older generation in my family are having quite a situation with themselves over greed and such. It's not in my place to say, not that I know anything significant anyway.

In my work, I have encountered many instances where I am encouraged by people not to say anything when I don't know enough. Which is fair, because as GP teachers they apparently really listen to anything I'm trying to describe and i end up having so many holes in my descriptions that it sucks as a story.

Anyway, back to leaving, if I really hard about not doing certain things, I would have regretted not enjoying life more, like having sex or going for skydiving. But these seem trivial compared to the grief of those around me. That would really be my only concern, if any.

I just can't believe such a young mind can grow so weary despite experiencing so little.

Hello brave new world.

2012-01-30T21:18:00.000+08:00

This post should act as some kind of disclaimer. I foresee a few new student stumbling onto my facebook page and seeing that I in fact do have a blog. (I actually realized it's much harder than I expected to find this page) No matter.

If you do choose to read beyond this post into my history, do take what I say with a pinch of salt. I am an incredibly vulgar person, (which at this point I'm still debating if I want to tell that to my class in the first place), and the views represented in my history is one of a younger kid, one much like yourself or even younger, if you choose to do that far. Some of the views I present are pretty one-sided and in terms of language, horrible.

But I'm choosing not to take it down or hide it because I think anyone, and most importantly you guys, should be able to discern what to listen to.

That said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Stuff people say 2012: army edition

2012-01-09T01:02:00.002+08:00

Stuff people say is a (supposedly) annual feedback gathering session from peers that have been a major part of my year. This year, it will mostly be my friends from army, and not people i hang out with on the weekends, just so I can make the point about "major part of my year" clearly.

Its' supposed to be annual but skipped last year and that year before because I switched camps 3 times and they didn't know me very well as well as bmt respectively. This year will also be a bit different in the sense that some of my friends have expressed concern over issues of anonymity and because I forgot to disclose how this information will be used until someone asked about it yesterday. Instead of copy and pasting wholesale of any particular persons' words, I will be extracting one-liners that exemplify my point as much as possible. I hope that's enough anonymity for you. No, I really do.

In my time in army, I had a particular image of myself. It's not a very glorifying image of myself but not a very humble one at that. That image was so shattered today when I read the consolidated texts.

Perception is generally the key to the questions I ask about myself, because I felt that no matter my intentions, people's reactions will always a based on their perception of me and my intentions and so forth. It therefore became unnecessary and even unhelpful to argue about what I meant by this or why I did that in that order.

On to the actual reflection:

There are 2 very consistent points that people will always bring up across the board, save a few individuals.

Number 1 is that I am rude. Words used in this vein include: brash, arrogant, overbearing, impatient, My first impression to almost everyone is that I am not only rude (or impolite) to my peers (fellow 3rd sergeants) but even worse to my men.

This is what predominantly got me in trouble at 40SAR at the start. Most of my men hated me because I was the only one who really raised my voice, at least that's what they will remember me for. Also for those of you who didn't know, I eventually gave up trying to scold them down and ended up bitching to them about army stuff. I was rewarded by one of my men with the following quote, "Now you more like men than like sergeant leh." Granted, that was because I told them I wasn't going to pack my field pack after Wallaby.

The rude problem has been a thorn in my side for many years now. If I'm not mistaken, it stems from the fact that I started sounding like that in high school because I wanted to be different from everyone else in my triple science class. Then it became that I didn't want to change who I was or how I spoke just because you want me to. Whatever is the case, I think I need to eventually take after my father with the salesman style talking. Although it does feel like I'm intentionally leaving a part of my childhood behind.

Another sub point or offshoot to the impolite thing is that I do have a tendency to blurt out whatever without going through my brain first. There was once I came off an intense argument I didn't even know I got myself into about physical fitness. I just instinctively replied every sentence without sensing that it was such a "sensitive" issue.

One thing that unintentionally lifted my spirits was this:

if only through the way of speaking, it would be a bad reflection of me, not a reflection of actions

If it sounds like bad grammar, this was rephrased from the point form in my notebook.

Honestly, I think about this point and I don't really know how to remedy this. My problem is that I am trying to influence the people around (particularly students that I will be teaching) that we need to stop being tight lipped about issues and questions because our society cannot speak up for itself. And yet, if I were to take the obvious solution and intentionally slow myself from talking, it would feel as if I'm painting myself into a corner. On one hand, I don't want to blurt out things and hurt peoples' feelings but yet, I don't want to create an atmosphere where everyone is held back and thinks too much about what he wants to say.

The second is that I'm lazy. Remember when I said about that particular image of mine. I thought I was the kind of person who would help you when you needed help. Sure I knew I was lazy, but I thought I was lazy to an acceptable extent. Turns out wrong. The interesting thing about this is that out of so many times I thought I was being voluntarily helpful didn't stand out in their mind as much as they did in mine. It's interesting how psychology works in that way. That, I would remember more vividly the times I volunteered while others would remember more vividly the times I slept in bunk. Perhaps it was because I could somehow justify it in my mind that I was able to "forgive" myself much more readily.
Also, I'm fucking lazy.

Other things people have said about me:

Stubborn.
People like to say I am inflexible. Nicer people would say I have my own way of thinking and don't like to be told how things are done. It is a bad habit to break, I must admit, and sometimes, even voicing my opinions would make me sound stubborn. Granted, I won't say it in the nicest way. I really do wonder how does one go about being less stubborn, because if you had a plan and I had a plan, I would find faults in your plan and you would in mine, then we would see which one is better. If I don't voice the faults that I find, wouldn't it disadvantageous to the whole team? I truly am puzzled

Did a good job as DC6 even without 2IC
I feel like I have to explain why I actually didn't really do a good job as a Det Comd. 3 things are in order. 1, Det 6 men are really A grade men in terms of initiative and knowing what they are supposed to do and not do. They were very different from my old Det 1 men, who were dependent on direct instructions but very hardworking and precise. Det 6 men do cut corners like normal human beings, but they do know their limits so I didn't have much trouble in terms of command and control, discipline, etc.
2. Things that generally needed a 2IC at the start eventually became a group effort by the end, especially things that had a deadline. Things in the field that needed to be done by a 2IC ended up split up to the 3 of my men, HH doing comms and WL taking tarpaulin out and settling bombs. And in camp was the only time when not having a 2IC felt like there was a void to be filled. My job is not that hard without a 2IC in a sense that, things that needed a 2IC to be done ended up being done by Bryan and the rest of the 2ICs, such as moving the OVM to the crates for Wallaby and painting. Accounting didn't have a deadline so I just strolled in when I happened to need to do something else, like rev the vehicle.
3. HX is essentially the interim Det Comd. Most of the time something needed to be done and I was just too out of my mind, he ended doing it without me telling him to. I recommended him to become a 3SG in the event that I would not be available, ie reservist and whatnot. He has the initiative and moreso the 6th sense that something needed to be done and no one wanted to do it. Quick example: when the ptp guys were ording on the 10th, the camp passes still had not been collated yet. The only thing I did was to get Keqin to call the Int Spec. He gave instructions to just leave it. I, at the time was just in ORD mood I didn't want to act like a sergeant again and say ok all of you all hand in to me, I be camp pass IC. So I just walked around pretending it was none of my business. He was the only who did anything about it and collected from the rest of the guys, sure some of them had THOUGHT about collecting it, but nobody did anything.

And with HX and the other reasons I wrote, I felt as if I really didn't do anything much. Maybe I picked up a
bit or 2 about vehicle. Maybe about the level of competency my driver had at year 1.

Improve a lot.
Funny thing is that when you start at a very bad point, it is very easy to come across as the most improved one out of the lot. Also funny is that, the point where everyone seems to think I started improving is when I stopped really caring.

Loyal
I really don't know how to respond to this. On one hand, I could see how my actions would be perceived as one of loyalty. But yet on the other hand, I could remember myself trying to distance myself from these people for one reason or the other. I feel guilty when people call me loyal. My mind is sort of betraying my actions. But I think it's just another one of those times, like when you just feel so sick of your girlfriend that you would do anything to get away, even though you've always loved them and always will, its' just one of those phases, I guess.

Some quotes:

"What is asked from his superior usually will be accomplished
Can set aside personal grudges and complete his task"

I really like this quote in particular because it sets me aside as a really focused

"I dont think you treat people unfairly cuz you treat most ppl the same."

Which is also true, I treat everyone just as shittily, also refer to paragraph about rude.

The unique thing about this is that some people do manage to see through whatever facade I have left and they do in fact understand or at least know a part of my personality or my thinking. It doesn't happen very often and usually different people will see something different.

One person saw me through as a negative, pessimistic person who is also proud. Seems spot on.

One person described me as this: giving instructions is a breeze. That is my intention when I talk quickly, loudly and like an asshole, which turns out to be my normal way of talking.

One person described me as "like , will do when told, but will kpkb" : )

That's it for now. At 0102 am.

Some honorable mentions:

"Change your wardrobe"
"cannot run"
"if properly motivated, will get things done"
"it's a pity to not overcome first impressions"

Doing my part

2012-01-06T18:05:00.004+08:00

Rick Santorum has a bunch of weird beliefs. Good thing I'm not living in USA where Santorum might actually be my president.

Some people

2012-01-01T22:20:00.001+08:00

Some people find in easier to stomach the fact that god doesn't care as opposed to that of god doesn't exist because it seems mighty impossible for this world to come to be. It seems a more proper answer as to why and how.

Personally, it wouldn't make a difference.

Choices in games

2011-12-29T23:15:00.002+08:00

There has been numerous discussions over the use of choice in gaming, whether it be a moral one or otherwise.

Here's a bit of what I'm talking about for those unclear.

I don't want to go into too much detail of the discussion, except my own opinion of it. I feel that games being the interactive media that they have the ability to make us reflect about the choice we make and reflect about us in particular. It's different from a movie or a book where we judge a characters' decisions and whatever happens happens, all for the sake of the narrative.

In most games, choices are boiled down to simple questions, big sword or big shield, money or power, good or evil, etc. Playing games often enough, I generally have a sense of which choice I'm going to pick even before they ask the question. (I'm good by the way.)

Anyway, this game comes along and throws me out of my comfort zone. Bastion

This is an amazing game. And I bought it for only $5.

Choice in this game reflects the idea that there is no right answer in the real world, and we have to make decisions regardless.

I want to discuss this here but I really don't want to spoil it for anyone who even is 1% interested in playing this game. Which is that case, BUY THE GAME, or tell me, I will get it for you.

ANW SPOILERS KTHXBYE.

there are essentially 2 points in time you have to make a decision. Here's a brief outline of what happened so far. There has been a great disaster that wiped out most of your people. You go around looking for things that will power your "bastion" or safe haven. You end up finding a few people who also survived and they will agree to go back with you. You find out that the disaster was a genocide attempt meant to wipe out a certain race of people but backfired, causing everyone to die instead. One of the people you rescued, who is that race targeted, finds out before you do and leaves, but not before he sabotages your safe haven. You after much salvaging, go after him, because he stole a thing that you need to keep the safe haven afloat. When you finally meet up with him, you see him being battered by his own people because they believe he brought you here, who at this point rips apart their defenses and soldiers. He is helpless and wounded and possibly dying. You on the other hand, are holding a weapon that requires 2 hands. You retrieve the magical item and the choice comes up.

Do you save him and forsake your weapon, which is your only defense, or do you carry him back and leave your weapon.

For me, this choice was fairly simple because I am a straightforward good guy. The only difficult part about this choice was that he was not particularly my friend at this point, after all he did sabotage my bastion and also some other hurtful things (even though he was not wrong to do so).

After you return home (with or without him) you learn that the magical thing that you found powers a machine which again with 2 options.

To restore the world to a time before the disaster, or to evacuate into the new (albeit more or less destroyed) world.

I was genuinely stuck at this question because I grew attached to the characters (courtesy of the amazing storytelling) by the end of the game and restoring would mean that I would not know these same "people". But to escape is to leave it in ruins and that's also not acceptable. This was a choice that had no slant towards good nor evil and so most of the things I have become used to was now useless. This became a difficult decision just like that. So I'm stuck.

My brother happened to be in the room so I asked his opinion. He said, If you go back in time, how would you know that it wont happen again? And that struck a chord in me.

So I chose to evacuate. And I felt like the game somehow rewarded me, because the achievement I would got for completing the game was titled

The Beginning.

SIDW

2011-12-26T15:13:00.002+08:00

When you have forgotten someones name, simply say : "I'm sorry, but what was your name one more time." They may act offended, but when they give you there first name you simply reply "No, I meant your last name." (more socially acceptable to forget). Bingo. First and last names.

If you park in a large parking garage/shopping centre, get out and take a photo on your cell phone of the nearest parking sign (Area B2, etc). You will never lose your car again.

In class, if it's a presentation where someone has to present without looking at notes or anything like that, and while they're up in front of classroom presenting, some people forget what they're talking about, space out, freak out, and lose their train of thought. To counter this, nod your head at the end of each sentence they say, confirming what they're saying. They will somehow use this as a motivator and 9 times out of 10 will keep presenting without fault.

If you're in a crowded social group, restaurant, bar, party etc... and you want to know if someone is checking you out try this:

Turn sideways from them (they will be either 90 degrees right or left of you), then very obviously, look at your watch (even if you don't wear one, lift your wrist) then point at your watch and nod thoughtfully. Over acting is perfectly acceptable.

If they are keeping tabs on you, even peripherally, they will have a sudden urge to know the time and will either look at their own watch, cell phone, or casually look at the various obvious places where someone would put a clock.

I'm a paramedic. When a patient is possibly faking unconsciousness we have 2 tricks to determine if they're really unconscious or not. First, you can lightly brush their eyelashes with your finger. Their eyes will flutter if they're faking it. Alternatively, if they're on their back you can lift their arm over their face and let it go. A conscious person will drop their arm away from their face.

Finally, a trick to see if someone is faking a neck injury or neck pain. Put a thermometer in their mouth while checking their vitals, then ask them a yes or no question while looking them in the eyes. If you aren't looking directly at them they tend to answer with a strained "uh-huh" or "unh-uh", but if you're looking directly at them they will usually nod their head. Someone who is faking the pain can do this with ease.

And yes, there are a lot of calls where people fake pain, illness, etc. for various reasons...

The door-in-the-face technique. The general idea is that you ask someone for a huge favor which you're relatively confident they'll say no to. Then you ask them for a small favor.

Subjects who initially refuse the huge favor have a much higher compliance rate on the small favor than if you just ask directly for the small favor or if you present both at once.

If they end up saying yes to the huge favor, that's also good.

If I need to remember to do anything at all the next day I will put something in my room out of place. This works every time. Say for example I really want to remember to email my professor before leaving for class I will put a movie on the floor. I will initially think "Why is that-oh right email Ernie".

When trying to convince somebody to do something...offer them two options...either of which is OK with you. Humans have a hard time selecting outside of the given options.

Example: So, did you want me to pick you up at 7:00 or 7:30? Did you want me to pick up the $50 one or the $35 one?

"Nobody questions a man with a clipboard who looks like he belongs there"

A few months ago, a few local gas stations were robbed of all their red bull by a guy wearing a red bull polo and a clipboard. He walks in a tells the clerk that the red bull has expired and that he's replacing them. He loads the "old" red bull on a cart and leaves never to be seen again.

You would be shocked to find out how often "Hey look, a distraction!" works. Sure, they usually get mad right afterward, but I spent the time between them turning and catching on to what they just heard leaving the room.

Protip: it is best to do this next to a door, especially if you can get out of that door's line of sight quickly.

Proofread documents backwards. You'll catch more misspelled words.

Shit i didn't know, Courtesy of Reddit.com

p.s. Get a "Security" shirt.

To Do List: Big Ideas Edition

2011-12-22T01:06:00.001+08:00

1) Learn to cook, at least at a basic enough level that I can either (hopefully both) cook for myself when I move out to a hostel, eventually my own house, and cook for my eventual couchsurfing host when I stay at their house.

2) Write a book about the life of my parents and the environment that they grew up in.

3) Learn a new language, either French or German.

4) Make more CouchSurfing friends

5) Put a (few) disposable cameras around Orchard Road and various other places for a single day and printing out the pictures.

6) Finding a new tumblr (or other) name/server so I can transfer, so that my potential readers can have a relatively (user-interface wise) better experience reading.

I'm still not 100% sure if I want to export the history to my new blog or just leave it here as part of history.

Quips

2011-12-19T23:38:00.001+08:00

If I just found out about an issue and I have no opinion of it, would the first few opinions of others affect my own judgement? Would it be mildly immoral to want to find out about others' opinions so that I don't have to formulate my own and think too much about it?

Also, I'm looking to transfer this blog to a tumblr or wordpress style blog, but I'm not sure what to use as my url. Suggestions?

Vocals and Lyrics

2011-12-17T16:26:00.001+08:00

Stupid stupid shit, on stupid stupid people

See, I have this friend, and he will definitely know I'm writing about him because he is pretty much the only person who reads this blog aside from the 20 hits I get from bots and IT programs very other week. I've heard him, and by him I mean you, say that it's easy to go back to being depressed or being numb or whatever whenever you, and by you I mean him, hear certain songs.

And I heard him, you, say that you, he, listens to the lyrics when it comes to music. Obviously, most of the sentimentality (I'm not sure if I'm using that word right), comes from the words. I, on the other hand, am more of a mixed bag of tricks. Because I have some kind of hearing deficiency that doctors have not yet identified, I can't pick up lyrics as easily as other people can, so I enjoy music that generally have a very nice tune.or rhythm. or melody. Basically everything but the lyrics. I can't remember words, almost as badly as I can't remember sounds. What I can do is mostly recognize songs, like in the first 2 seconds, which is a very weird trick. So, to be frank I'm less of a mixed bag of tricks, and more of a empty bag save a hammer. But hey, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

An interesting story about lyrics, or vocals to be more exact. One song I really enjoyed, and still do. is How To Save A Life By The Fray, so after listening for about 500 times, I decided to learn how to play the piano part. I was watching the tutorials on youtube when I noticed that after 4 "cycles" (I don't know what they're called) the melody repeated itself. Which I thought was strange, given that I have no training with any musical instruments (recorders don't count). So I listened to the full version again, and right at the part when the "cycle" is about to repeat itself, the guitars and the vocals pick up, masking the piano. That felt strange to me, but yet it reminded me of that Linkin Park song in the Transformers movie, the first one, not the other ones. That too had a starting melody that got covered up by louder instruments.

So, intrigued as I was, I blew out a puff from my smoking pipe (I didn't have a smoking pipe) and decided to play the other common pop songs at that point in time, which if I remember correctly was The Script. Interestingly enough, I found out that most (very obvious in The Script) songs actually feature the vocals as another instrument as opposed to rhythmic poetry. If you listen closely enough, most songs without vocals sound like a different song entirely, which is strange as it is. What the vocals does is that it takes the song in another direction tune wise, and makes it possibly more palatable. And that is why most pop songs actually feature very very bad instrumental versions.Because more often that not, the vocals play a key component of the entire melody.

"Now where are you going with this, old chap?" asked Watson, flustered. I paced around the room back and forth, trying to figure where the hell that voice came from.

Anyway, with this newfound understanding of the music world that I just blew you mind with, it becomes easier to appreciate songs as not so much entertaining poetry, but music which doesn't have meaning. But it's not as easy when you lack my (dis)ability. I suggest J-POP songs. Typically the only j-pop songs I picked up where openings from popular anime shows such as:

Pretty good for newbies, it actually has TWO words that you understand at the start and more if you listen on.

Also one of my favorites.

More ladylike, no less, um, loud?

Also more recommendations, Opening from Tenga Toppa Gurren Lagann, and the collected works of FLCL (which is the full name of the anime just FLCL). the entire album of FLCL is pretty awesome. There was also an opening from Gundam SEED which I can't seem to remember.

Disclaimer: I Don't Watch Much Anime, As You Might Think.

There is a side effect of listening to J-pop music though. When you eventually listen to the translated lyrics, it may turn out that the very hard rockish music are actually talking about some more fluffy idea like friendship and trust and some weird crap like that. Also another side effect, I will repeat those same wrong lyrics, loudly, and in public. This may not happen to you though.

I get that some people just like their music with a bit more meaning than just coordinated sound, I totally get that. I wish most things in life had a deeper meaning. But why keep doing it to yourself and feel sad, or nothing if that's what you feel. I used to be the same way. Intuitively, something told me that what I was listening to was affecting me at some level, whether conscious or not, and I steered the fuck away from those music. In fact, one of the songs I kept on repeat was "When It's Over" by Sugar Ray, which was very "happy" in some sense, but at least I felt like *meh* instead of *teardrops* or *cutting-myself-to-make-the-pain-go-away*. And the *meh* was very funny because that's how I would feel if I failed an exam at that time. Music has a strange way of reprogramming our moods, and trust me listening to happy music when you're sad does make you happy. People just don't do that because it doesn't "fit" with the atmosphere or they just want to go back and sulk or brood.

DEDICATIONS, BITCHES: to Zhengyang, because he's the only one who still reads my blog.

Taxi fare not fair

2011-12-15T20:22:00.001+08:00

Lately, taxi companies have decided to increase fares. Actually, they phrased it as "revising their rates", which I naively thought not to be increasing fares. How naive of me. Anyway, as of now, I'm still not exactly sure what changed and what didn't. I was still trying to adjust to the last fare hike.

One interesting observation though, the loudest people complaining are the young people. Of course that could easily mean I haven't been talking to enough older people, which it does. Anyway, I find this interesting because young people seem to be devastated by this, and it really sounds like they have been crushed by such an increase in fares.

Personally, I don't see this as such a bane as I would, perhaps a bus rate hike, because I see a taxi ride as a luxury. And if my economics hasn't failed me, it just means I will take less cab rides in the future. And when I really really want to do it, say for instance I have a lot of stuff to move, I'm still going to take a cab, the increase in fares isn't going to affect my decision much.

I think it affects young people that much is that we have started to see the taxi as interchangeable with buses and mrt, perhaps not to such a great degree, but people nowadays do take it at some kind of regularity. My parents and their generation tended to see taxi rides as something to be avoided, an unnecessary expense. I like to think like my predecessors as often as my values would let me. Sometimes, (i.e when I'm crazy) I wish I got married at 16 like the Arabs and the farmers in the past. Anyway, moving on, I do marvel at the regularity that some (of course not all) people who seem to take taxis every other week, think about it, you definitely know a few.

This doesn't "outrage" me because this is companies being the companies that they are. They are not supposed to look out for your welfare, they are supposed to look out for their profits. I have a GodGrandfather who is a taxi driver for as long as I knew him and retiring soon, and he doesn't make much, any way you look at it. Generally, from what I understand, nobody seems to profit from these fare hikes. Drivers lose more potential customers every time the price hikes, and they still have to pay back that same amount to the company, who in turn subsidize the petrol they use, which drivers will tell you is not enough. Taxi is an industry that is lose-lose, and you still expect the driver to smile at you.

I also don't get as outraged because this is actually, many of you don't know this, a trend in developed nations. Japan is one of the countries where taxis are so ridiculously expensive that people don't ever take it except for emergencies, such as late for interviews. I use the term "emergencies" loosely. To put it in perspective, The flag down rate for a Jap taxi costs 710 yen for the first 2km, close to $12sgd, whereas a Singaporean taxi would cost $2.80 + $0.60 for a 2km ride. Few places are known for taxis, the only one I can think of is New York City.

My third reason is that people who are less well off financially don't ever really need to take cabs so it doesn't cut an even bigger chunk of their already small amount of disposable income. I doubt you want to hear me elaborate on that.

I think I just wrote a GP essay without even really trying. I'm not going to write a conclusion.

Happiness

2011-12-13T23:19:00.002+08:00

The search for happiness is dead. Stop looking for happiness. You will get there when you get there.

And until then.

Do things not because you think they will make you happy. Do things because you want to do them. And if you want to do nothing, do just that.

Because happiness will find you, not the other way around.

HPatDHp2

2011-12-12T18:16:00.001+08:00

That is a terrible picture of Snape.

Finally got around to watching HPatDHp2. ON BLURAY. Tried out rigging my laptop to my tv for the first time. Pretty cool, except that the sound quality wasn't really as impressive and speaker kept producing the kind of sounds when u slap a piece of paper in mid-air, but only when the orchestral plays the really low sounds, so it didn't affect my much except when Voldemort BLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEP.

Set-up wise, the video was pretty awesome for a movie, very clear except certain parts it gets glitchy which is weird. The sound was quite low although I was pretty confident that can be fixed, because I intentionally kept the volume of my VLC player at 100% instead of 400% which is what i normally do, thinking that it might improve my sound quality. Ended up having to turn the volume on my tv up all the way to 100 (normally at 20) and resulted in the slap sounds, I THINK.

Story wise, it felt weird for a movie to feel too rushed and too dragged out at the same time. This is the first movie where I read the book beforehand so I knew what was supposed to happen where. And for future reference, ALWAYS watch the movie first, even though it's bad business for the author, I'm sorry to all authors. Movies will always be restricted by time and will always cut parts of a book out and this is no different. The pacing of the book was a little strange at the end, but because it was exciting, nobody questioned it mid-reading. In the movie, it becomes very obvious. There is a lot of back-and-forth not only between people but also between places so it feels stuck in some parts. The front, on the other hand, feels rushed. From Shell Cottage with Bill Weasley and his beautiful wife all the way to the conversation with Aberforth.

The visuals are obviously spectacular, except for any part with floating objects. I can't believe it's 2011 and we still haven't nailed down floating objects yet.

Something I want to give massive props to is the acting. Particularly that of Snape and Voldemort. Surprisingly for the end of the series, the protagonists' don't stand out in particular. Many times, it feels like this whole army of good guys (which while filled with all brilliant actors, all have too little screen time, another flaw of books-turned-movies) versus one person and his horde of cannon fodder.

Snape was great in this movie and the actor, I think, Alan Rickman deserves an Oscar. I think this might be the single best acting I have ever seen. The only other movie to have won the honor of being the best in something (in my mind) is the first 8 minutes of Up the movie. Specifically the best part was Harry reliving the memories of Snape. That short clip really took the cake. Even as I read the books, I never felt any sort of attachment to him as a character, despite what the fangirls out there would say. He was a good character in terms of character development but I just didn't like him that much.

Well, Alan Rickman's acting changed all that.

Voldemort also appeared pretty impressive, acting wise. First time seeing him as a desperate character, pretty good in my book.

All in all, great movie, disappointing on the not-enough-Emma-Watson department. : )

To Do List

2011-12-10T12:40:00.001+08:00

As of now: Nothing. ORD LO.

Updates: The second I pasted the picture, my mom called me to help teach my cousin math.

You win this round, Universe.

Back And Forth

2011-12-07T21:38:00.001+08:00

I think people generally assume that when we have a particular view on a subject now, it would not change over time. People give politicians a lot of flak for being inconsistent over certain issues and I can see why they might be upset. When someone running for office changes his stance, it could be misconstrued as trying to win over voters and become unreliable. "Is he saying that just to get my vote?"

But people do change their views, even without external influence. It's understandable that, say when perhaps someone bears children who develop mental retardation, their views on mental retardation would definitely change. But one thing people do not seem to understand is that people can in fact change their views without being influenced by anything.

I believe it is human nature to be questioning. To be curious, if that's how you like it. And we, as the curious human beings that we are will apply that same attitude not only to others but also to our own viewpoints.

Something that I have noticed pretty often is that while some people do admit that they have "struggled" with a particular belief in the past, having gone back and forth several times, they inadvertently come back to the same conclusion that they have always held. I have never encountered or even heard about a single person who after much deliberation with himself, come to the opposite conclusion.

Sometimes when I see someone (usually politicians because they're the easiest to spot) stick to their guns and maintain their stand in spite of overwhelming evidence, I can't help but feel like he never really thought it through.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

Anyone who has given any serious amount of thought understands that there are serious flaws in his beliefs, and he believes it because the alternative has even more flaws. He who thinks knows that he could be wrong.

I think it is easy for people to remain absolute when they do not think about that particular topic much. Like me, for example. I like to think that in the abortion debate, I am a pro-choice person. But I never had to make that particular choice, nor anyone else around me. I used to believe that abortion shouldn't be taken off the table because a woman has a right to choose. To me, at that time, it was very simply an issue of choice, that one should not take a person's right to choose away from her. Abortion is more than that. It is about life. It is a very difficult question and even when I picture my hypothetical sister or girlfriend or wife making that choice (sorry, I just can't picture myself with such a responsibility as being pregnant), I, even hypothetically, am totally and utterly void of any coherent thoughts. I cannot think logically at that point, not even when I place myself at that hypothetical level.

How hard must it be for someone to deal with that?

The thoughts in this post was a lot more logical in my mind. I got distracted and by the time i got to writing it, which is only like 10 minutes later, it just became a string of vaguely connected points. Sorry if you read all the way and still have no idea what I wanted to say. I kind of forgot too.

Updates

2011-12-04T19:57:00.001+08:00

Update: I am currently in the process of "acquiring" The Blu Ray edition Of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 so I will be more awed by the improved graphics.

P.S. I haven't watched any version of it yet. Except the book, in which case, I read it, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Note To Self

2011-12-04T14:19:00.001+08:00

If you ever need information, call up the appropriate organization and pretend to be a reporter or director or writer.

Some information are harder to obtain because people naturally become defensive when being asked, like passwords, IC numbers and specific people's information, whether others' or self.

Anticipation

2011-12-03T20:35:00.001+08:00

Currently I have Harry potter and the deathly hallows part 2 on my phone. I haven't watched it yet and I also didn't get to watch it in the theaters, as I would have liked because I couldn't get anyone to go with me. It's been on my phone for a month.

As much as I desperately want to watch it, I cannot bring myself to do so. There's too much anticipation and the bar has been set too high in my mind for this movie to ever reach. I'm expecting too much from this movie that it is as if I am forcing myself not to watch this, even though I want to very much.

This is a sick feeling. I feel dirty. Haha

Excerpts From My iPhone: Naked Eye

2011-11-29T22:20:00.001+08:00

At one point, I was quite interested in finding out how far the naked eye could see. At that time, in my mind, all I could really picture was a person or a building or an object walking or somehow being further and further away until a point where i could no longer see them with binoculars or other aids.

Eventually I got motivated enough to actually google for the answer. Most of the pages that turned up were about astronomy, which referenced things like biggest star you could see with your naked eye, or furthest celestial object visible and things like that.

My entire frame of mind changed as I read more and more into it.

While I was more interested in finding out a particular distance to which a person disappeared from my sight, I had failed to take into account any other factor at all. Granted I did think about sizes like buildings and such but they were always more of an afterthought. Seeing astronomy pages turn up in my "research" was eye opening because it introduced the possibility of other more important factor to a simple question like brightness, size and clouds or fogs.

I don't really know why I wanted to share this particular story. I couldn't pick out a moral of the story, at least not one that is not vague. Maybe you learnt more from it than I did.

The Hobby That Is Reading.

2011-11-26T22:04:00.001+08:00

I only finished reading my solid can-be-thrown-at-someone-and-injure book at 18 when i entered the army. It was one of those de-evolution that takes place when you are forced into a place without Internet. I finished reading one of the harry potter books because i was looking for hints of Hermione romance, so i was a little disappointed at the incredibly short few words, but the amazing storytelling of JKR more than makes up for it.

I have read quite a small number of books, and even less fiction novel-style books. It's not so much that i hate reading but more that I find it hard to get interested in reading books in particular. I mean, I read quite a lot online. I absorb information at a relatively quick pace and I am genuinely interested in getting new information. I also enjoy the fine art of storytelling in all its forms, movies, comic books, music, audiobooks, games, well, except interpretive dance.So it doesn't quite add up that someone who enjoys both reading words and stories would dislike reading novels. I enjoy both immensely, but separately. Here's why. About half the books i have read so far, which probably numbers about 4, are non-fiction, revolving information woven into hopefully an interesting narrative, something similar to books by Malcolm Gladwell. In other words, it's about learning new things or tips or even trends regarding life and society. This proportion is generally atypical of most people who consider themselves capable of reading books.

The problem I have with reading novels in particular is that it takes a lot mental energy and time. Compared to all other forms of media, it takes a lot more concentration to finish a book. A movie takes about 2 hours average nowadays and even when I'm watching a bad movie, it would be over in 2 hours, and perhaps more importantly, there will always be some element that draws my attention when everything else sucks, like action scenes or less commonly, music. With a book, both factors disappear. Books are woefully one-dimensional to me, someone without any real literature appreciation. I know what it feels like to be gripped thoroughly by a book's storyline but not much else. It's hard to separate different elements of a book, especially in mid-reading.

To someone who doesn't read as much, here's how i enjoy my books. Half of the satisfaction comes from be gripped as i said and wanting to flip the page as soon as possible. The other half comes when you're done and analyzing the finer and subtler elements, like characterization and pacing and why the author chose to depict one thing instead of the other and what that meant from a storytelling perspective.

So to really explain why it is harder to enjoy a book would be that my enjoyment of it is completely up to the talent of the writer. A movie or video game is different in that different elements come together under direction to create a beautiful piece. A movie or game can excel as either a cohesive whole or individual elements, but not a book. In that sense, with the larger time investment and less potential to be as interesting or even distracting, books are really not ideal for randomly picking up and just doing. I could randomly pick up a dvd, read the back and catch my attention enough to pop it in and finish it, but i just cannot do that with a book. Almost every book i have read is from a recommendation and I don't have enough confidence in the authors of the world to pick up a book and be convinced that it was going to keep me entertained for the next 12 hours.

And That's Why I Don't Get People Who Can Read At Any Kind Of Regular Pace

idea for cartoon

2011-11-21T20:57:00.001+08:00

just had an idea for a kids cartoon.

Shot of kid in bed besides mom, not being able to fall asleep. Mom finishes telling her story and little kid is nowhere near sleep. She tells him to try counting sheep instead.

Camera pans up, passes through roof, sky, clouds, to a shot of sheep general telling his men "get ready!" or "we have our orders!" The cute sheep soldiers say yessir then hop down the clouds to the kids head. and start jumping over the fence.

Then the kid starts to fall sleep. "good job boys."

Sidenote

2011-11-15T20:35:00.001+08:00

P.S. I finally beat The Binding Of Isaac. And it only took 10.4 hours

... when everything else comes so close

2011-11-15T17:42:00.001+08:00

There's this game I've been playing a lot lately.

It's called The Binding Of Isaac.

According to Steam, I've played it for 9.5 hours, and in that time, I've beaten it zero times. This is not one of those endless survival type games where you just try and beat wave after wave of enemies until you eventually die. This is those type of beatable games that i have yet to beat.

There are 6 levels (for now) and by all accounts, this is not an unbeatable game. It's just really really hard. But as a game it's very solid, considering that it is an indie release (much less funds compared to a publisher backed studio). The music is incredible in that it really sets the mood and atmosphere of the game. Graphics are clean and fit well with the art direction. The gameplay is unique in this day and age because it combines random dungeon generation with rpg elements. You play as Isaac who enters the basement and goes into different rooms, mostly filled with monsters, but occasionally other assorted goodies like items and shops. To complete one level, you need to beat the boss and go (fall) into the next level. Now this sounds pretty formulaic until you add the fact that when you die at any level, you go back to the first level and lose all your items. (ALL your FRIGGIN items). But while that sounds like a gamebreaker, the fact that every new game is randomly generated makes it a whole new game every single time.

This is the most frustrating game i have ever played and yet i can't stop playing it. A little anecdote to put you in the right frame of mind. After 3 (not continuous) hours of playing, i finally reached the last boss for the very first time. At that time I thought i was pretty prepared for it, I had about 6 hearts and 2 or 3 soul hearts, totaling to about 9 hearts. (keep in mind, most enemies only hit for half a heart even though few do hit for one full heart). I can easily take on 18 hits from the last boss. I also had quite a few items that made me more faster and something called Halo of Flies which were these 2 flies that circled my head and could take hits for me. All in all, I'm pretty decked out to kick his ass. But because this was the first time i faced the last boss, i didn't really have any idea what to avoid so everything is completely new to me. I ended taking 3/4 of his health before dying. I thought to myself, ok pretty reasonable, no i know what to expect.

The next game i played, i found an item which could instantly kill the boss, provided it was at full charge. It was the middle levels and i had to sacrifice some other items in order to get it because i could only hold on to one item with "charges". I finally scrapped my way to the level 6. At which point, i had about 5 hearts left. I also had a map in this run through so i figured the best way was to go straight to the boss and take him out. I struggled the whole way there. And when i reached the second last room, just besides the boss, i had only 1.5 hearts left. I knew i had to be careful. I went in and ran straight to the corner. Unfortunately, I got cornered by them and they took me out in 2 hits. I was so pissed. I had the item that could insta kill the boss and i was only 1 room away. FUCK.

That is the kind of frustration you face in this game.

As a game it is incredibly fun and addictive, there's lots of replay value and it's only 5 USD which is more bargain for your buck.

But I'm not sure if I can recommend this game.

I left out the story of this game. It involves Isaac and his mom who is a christian, so for those easily offended please skip the following paragraph. Also the video.

Hopefully, you would have watched the video so what I'm saying will makes sense. Apparently "The Binding Of Isaac" is an actually tale from the bible, which i didn't know before this. Obviously people are going to be offended by this, not even the religious, just well meaning reasonable people would be offended by this. I wouldn't even show this to my own mother. So you can imagine roughly what entails the contents of this game. The items, are in fact items of religious value like the bible (which was the one hit insta kill item) rosary, Whore of Babylon, etc, along with items related to Isaac and his mom like a dead cat named Guppy and Mom's underwear and lipstick. No, I am not kidding. Mom's Underwear is an ingame item. All your projectiles are body fluids, mostly tears, but also sometimes chocolate milk and pee. The game has poop and flies around and the final boss (at first) is Mom herself. You can see how people could get offended by this.

This is not a game I could recommend to many people. You have to be genuinely open-minded about the subject matter and understand that while this wasn't meant as a joke, it's also not meant as a statement of any kind.

Which is sad because as a game, it is really incredible because many of the elements are from past retro games and this can actually act as a history lesson in terms of gameplay mechanics go. Everything else is really so close to perfect.

To see this kind of everything-about-it-being-great-except-the-subject-matter, watch this next clip by The Lonely Island. Music-wise, it's pretty awesome.

The Creep (Feat. Nicki Minaj)

Weak

2011-11-15T12:18:00.001+08:00

Perhaps one of the scariest part of growing up is coming to terms with one's own shortcomings. Not the parts we secretly admit to ourselves that we are really proud of like being arrogant or brash. We are really just in denial anyway. It's the big things and questions that we don't like to ask that scare the hell out of us. They linger in the dark recesses of our minds, these questions, like are we not strong enough as a person that we cannot face our past and not let our mistakes define us. Are we strong enough to face those criticism and hold our head high knowing full well we are fully conscious of making that decision. It scares us to know that we are weak.

Ho Jia Jiu Ho

2011-11-06T19:27:00.002+08:00

Life is Hard

2011-11-04T12:05:00.002+08:00

Life is hard, things are never easy, we will always find ways to look at them and find them imperfect.
But what gives us any kind of motivation to keep moving

why are we so afraid to die, so afraid to let go of the material things.
I guess what i'm trying to say is that if life is so hard, then why are we afraid of death.
why do we not look forward to it as an escape from the struggle that is life.

And i don't really have anyone to ask, because my closest friend also doesn't really look forward to life.

If i were to really dig deep, I figured the answer is the people around you that you love. It's hard to let them go.

Someone once asked me,
why do i live my life, what is my purpose for living.

I told him nothing, that i had nothing to live for.
He replied, then why are you still here? Just jump la, there's nothing here anyway.
I told him i wanted to spare my parents the agony of burying their own child.
So i rephrased my answer. It turns out that my purpose in life was to outlive them.
He asked me if i was sure that was the answer. He said that are you sure you are living now to love them?
And that sentence never really made sense to me. It was as simple as my presence alone made them feel loved. So i couldn't really take that next step and jump even if i wanted to. I owed them that much that i could not willingly do something that i know would hurt them.

Inaction, becomes an act of love then.
It sure doesn't feel like it.

I figured out a long time ago that when i no longer had anyone to live for, i wouldn't. It was as simple as that

When the day comes and no one depends on me for happiness anymore. Then i'll leave, on my own terms.

Excerpts from my iPhone: Affecting Others

2011-11-03T20:01:00.001+08:00

When I was a kid, I couldn't really comprehend how my own decisions affected others close to me, particularly my family. It made no sense at that time that when I chose to stay at home and play my computer instead of going out with them would cause them to be easily infuriated. It still doesn't because i perceive that to be an individual decision that would only affect myself. I wasn't making any kind of statement or proving any point by not doing something in particular. "No, I refuse to be in the company of those who choose to eat lunch on time" I wasn't saying that. But people would somehow twist and turn my perceived intentions until i, for some reason became the bad guy.

I still struggle to catch many of these really subtle implications of my actions these days. But its' easier now when i see my own brother making the same decisions i made 5 years ago. Then, i wanted to stay at home as often as possible to play because that was the only thing in my mind. He does the same except he has a choice of skating or playing video games. But the general implications are the same. My mum would get frustrated at trying to talk to an adolescent son and my dad gets frustrated but quiet, when my mum does. Now, at least seeing it from a third person perspective, you get to see what went wrong in the communication. Sometimes it's the tone of voice that gets people jumpy, sometimes the fact that people are rushing for time or that the activity in question has been pushed back for a long enough time. Of course i still miss many of the cues that arise with this and my dad is hardly useful at all (in that regard). He just keeps quiet. I wonder if he's figured it out yet.

Excerpts from my iPhone: Beliefs And Such

2011-11-03T19:52:00.002+08:00

16 Oct 2011

For the longest time since i became "atheist", one belief that i held very religiously was the fact that with as much potential for evil that men is capable of, we are also capable of great good. And that is a good enough justification for one to be good as an individual, because sometimes we all need that glimmer of hope to know that mankind is not a forsaken race. I call it a religious belief because it was something i believed in because i had faith in the humanity of all people, and because if we were to really take a look closely, it would be quite hard to find any reason or logic to do so. But i persisted, and believed that man was good for the better part of 4 years.

Now, I am having what some would call a spiritual crisis or religious crisis. That the one fundamental belief that you held which kept you grounded to the world was so shaken it almost feels like nothing is true. Something akin to God is not real or perhaps not as dramatic, more like there is a fourth holy book after the bible, a new New Testament.

I can never truly process how people can remain persistently selfish. It always feels like a major flaw in one's moral code when helping others is replaced by self-preservation. Perhaps I'm the weird person. Perhaps this world really does run on greed and self-preservation. Perhaps altruism really does not have a place in our culture. Perhaps I was really really wrong for those 4 years.

I'm not sure. But all I know is that if the people surrounding me (in this tent) represent the greater demographic of how Singaporeans and the Singapore Society is like, then there really is no good reason to defend these sons of bitches.

hypocrisy

2011-11-03T19:42:00.000+08:00

i have a great deal of respect for comedians. They are able to make people laugh even in the worst of days.

and yet for that same reason, i pity the television hosts, with their fake smiles and larger-than-life attitudes.

I often find myself saying why do people run for fun, even though i know very well its' the same reason i enjoy eating meat.

Excerpts From My iPhone: About Adults

2011-11-03T19:41:00.001+08:00

This is a series about some of the notes i have written in my iphone. Most of the time i type away at my phone when i have no access to a computer and yet something comes to my mind that i have to write down. They generally are written much more quickly than regular blog posts and tend to be more emotionally charged, so expect grammar errors.

At 18 or 19, i figured out that adults were also growing and capable of making mistakes and not as infallible as i thought they were. They used to have this high and mighty place in my mind where they were always right and if you chose not to listen to them, you were either trying to be deliberately wrong or just alternative and rebellious. There was usually a consequence associated with no listening to adults. Like going to detention or failing grades.

But at some point, I figured out that they were as clueless about most things as I was, perhaps just slightly less. This realization changed many things. I became more understanding of adults as one capable of making mistakes and yet i also held this reverse view of them not "supposed" to be wrong"

Ultimately, the biggest change was that it allowed truly pointless people to exist as adults. There are remarkably lazy, greedy, evil or otherwise pointless people who exist. And as a kid, i couldn't really comprehend them other than being this one-dimensional creature who exists solely to make life miserable for other people. Much like the boogieman, or in my context, Ah Bu Neh Neh (Indian) who would come and catch us if we disobeyed our elders by wandering outside a safe place like our homes or the 5 meter zone around our parents. Eventually i grew up and while i still had to cross paths with pointless people, i had the mental capacity to equate them as either born flawed or poor childhood. There literally was no other explanation i could give to explain why they are or who they are.

Being another adult who makes mistakes, it becomes easier to comprehend these people as people who kept continuing to make those same mistakes throughout their 20s and 30s, never really having grown up, much like myself now. And the justification i can give when someone like my father makes an irrational decision, is the same as when that asshole cuts my path and flips my off when i've done nothing.

Eventually, i will reach another milestone in my life which explain another mystery of humanity that i never knew existed. Perhaps one day i will figure out why humanity is capable of so much greed and justify it as self-preservation.

Picture concept

2011-10-19T17:22:00.000+08:00

close up macro shot of a handcuff with a hand inside, with either the lock or the side engraved with the apple logo.

APPLE SLAVE.

yeah, im going to get the iphone 4s. yay hypocrisy

MY BOOKS ARE HERE!

2011-09-24T17:46:00.000+08:00

I would probably be the last person to be excited about books. But the excitement surrounding these are not so much the books themselves. Funny story actually.

So I will be going to Wallaby in less than 48 hours. Last week i decided to bring some first generation entertainment to bring along. Originally i had planned to buy just one of those books but i couldn't seem to find it anywhere, considering its' not a very famous book by an American (hence, import) author. Anyway, being unable to find it, i decided to go online to Opentrolley to get it.

On the website, they were advertising a September discount where you could get books at about 10% discount and free delivery for 3 books. So i just picked 2 books that happened to catch my attention.

So with my 3 books at the shopping cart, i was wondering, and this happened over a few hours, whether i would want to spend slightly over $50 on just books. And by around 8pm, i noticed that there was a delivery info that said that it would deliver in 4-7 working days. this was sunday and i thought to myself, if i want to use this opportunity (the discount ended in a day), now would be the only time to do it. So i panicked and bought it in the end.

And the story does not end here. Those of you observant enough would notice that since i bought it on a sunday, the shop could technically deliver it to me on the next sunday, where i would already be in Australia because my flight is in the morning. Which means the reason i bought the book in the first place would result in me not having it. So i stressed about that for a good half a day.

And then i got over it.

Because i have something better to stress about. On Tuesday morning, i noticed that it was 4-7 WORKING days, working days did not include weekends. Which means i had 2 reasons to not get my books on time.

So obviously when it came, there was an immense sense of relief. btw, it came 2 hours ago.

Speaking of Wallaby, YES THAT IS A PLACE THAT I AM GOING TO AND WILL BE FOR THE NEXT 3 WEEKS. For those of you that still use this blog as a place to track my whereabouts (you're probably the only one.) I will be leaving tomorrow morning and coming back on the 17th October.

Also for your reference, my carry on bag. It looks bulky and weighs a lot, but that's just because I'm too lazy to pack all my things nicely. So instead, throw and squish until a vaguely bag-shaped thing appeared.

For your information, this is the only actual book i intended to get. It was recommended by a guy on the internet called John Green of the Vlogbrothers. For some reason, i felt compelled to buy this book because he was the one who chose to plug it. When the 2 of them try to sell you things, things that are either their jobs or their friends' work, i always want to buy them because they sound so sincere. It's really a good marketing strategy, even though it's not even in their business to begin with (one is an author and the other is a musician).

Also the lady on the cover looks pretty cute. I'm not going to lie, she is probably half the reason i bought this book anyway. Even though this book has no picture.

with regards to new facebook layout banner thing.

2011-09-23T14:22:00.000+08:00

idea for picture as new banner layout thing over facebook.

take for very relaxed but pretentious pose, like the lonely island, e.g sit on giant reclining chair, like a boss. then with bold words. at the right side. with each word over each other. like angry. pretentious douchebag. at the right side.

Sidelining And Baselining

2011-09-22T22:48:00.003+08:00

So what I do on long moments of silence where I am both alone and separated from technology is to ponder and reflect. I know that may make me sound deep but it doesn't, it's actually more of letting my mind wander on to various unconnected and seemingly random ideas and events and things, which unfortunately happen to be myself more often than not (our brain is actually more selfish than we think we are), thus, reflecting.

You may be thinking, hey you have an iphone, you could use it on the bus. To that I say, not all the time, as i get car-sick when i read on a vehicle sometimes and that stops me from doing anything other than listen to music, which for some reason takes a backseat to pondering.

I will call this activity sidelining for reasons i will explain later.

So in the past i find myself sidelining pretty often, usually in the shower or on long trips in the bus. This particular trip was from my GodGrandma's house to Mustafa Shopping Centre. But now, i find that i have much less time for that. Don't get me wrong, i'm still as alone as ever, but the number of bus trips I've been taking have sharply decreased since i only need to take them twice a week. I also used to be able to do a lot of sidelining before i slept when i was young, up to 2 hours on my bed, in the dark. But now i usually find myself tired enough to fall asleep approximately half an hour, i don't know, time is much harder to gauge lying down without my glasses.

Honestly, i find this activity to be one of the most self-destructive things that i do. Mainly because I am such a pessimist and have such a low self-esteem that most conversations with myself, which unless i'm thinking about an abstract idea, would devolve into a self-blame session. Granted, this has happened a lot less lately, but still, given a large enough amount of time doing nothing and without access to other activities that keep my hands busy, self-worth levels down pretty quickly. (quote stolen from friend)

As a direct result of this, many of my self-descriptions for interviews or biographies, i like to tell people that i want to experience life through doing and not watching (and consequently sidelining). Because it seems like a pretty reasonable goal to have. That i (and also, everyone) should take more time to do things instead of watch things.

However, if there was no sidelining, this blog wouldn't exist. Or maybe it would, in the form of, i had bee hoon for lunch today.

~~~

On a completely unrelated note, i will explain to you what is baselining.

Multiple sources have confirmed that (by logical inference) HAPPILY EVER AFTER DOESN"T EXIST.

and not for the reason you would think.

(dubious science ahead)

Our squishy human brains are designed to lower your endorphin level (happy juice) if you experience the same type of happiness over a period of time, thereby requiring you to do something that will bring about a greater level of happiness to get the same amount of satisfaction. In other words, your brain is deliberately making it harder to be happy if you are happy for too long. Granted, it works for the reverse as well, because if your too sad for long, your brain will treat that level of sadness as normal or average and thus you need less to be happy with your sad pathetic miserable life.

I'm not sure if you can guess why i call this baselining.

Happily ever after does not exist in the way humans understand it because most stories talk about it like it's an award, something to be given out when you've finished your quest or saved the princess. As happy as marrying that princess may be, you will not so much as become happily ever after, but more like happy for quite a while before this joy tapers off. But that's not catchy at all.

The only foreseeable way to remain happy is to continuously do new and different and exciting things that will bring joy from different sources and different perspective.

Also, this brings up the fact that being sad actually enhances the experience of being happy. Like i mentioned, your brain will keep your "average" low if you are sad for some time. Thus, wouldn't the joy of doing something amazingly joyful that much greater if you had lived in a state of immense sadness.

Would it be worth it?

also, unrelated note, my dog can no longer walk on his hind left leg. I still haven't gotten the details from my vet.

People Are Dumb

2011-09-09T21:03:00.000+08:00

The Sims 3 Medieval (turns out to be a much better game than i expected) has this short intro video where out of the blue the narrator just says, People are dumb. He was talking about just watching people evolve as a society and civilization without influence, and they ended up screwing themselves.

I forgot where i was going with this.

Oh yeah,

I was thinking about the idea of leadership development in Singapore. that's a weird segue.

Anyway, I'm not sure about the system of other countries, but we as a nation seem so obsessed with bringing up leaders so much that every kid is encouraged to be one. I'm not sure if you know this, but no system in the world requires a bunch of leaders and no followers. So it makes very little sense that education doesn't really teach you to be a good one. I mean there are very obvious personality types that are not suited to be leaders and while teaching them certain things are useful, it is ultimately futile to try and get them to stand up in front of a crowd when they have nothing to contribute, unless of course your aim is to teach them how to bullshit their way through such a scenario.

To get people to lead in a situation that they have no expertise in is quite counterproductive because only a very small section of the population are prepared to do that, psychologically. I understand the business and future need for such a quality but at the age they are in, leadership seems to require a slow approach. Especially for kids who never want to talk in the first place.

I think the system stands to gain more by teaching kids to take the initiative in things they already know, or at least they are interested in. And i see the problem in that kids are interested in topics that aren't very academic, but shouldn't that be the job of the teacher. Maybe trying to spin a non-academic topic into something with some sort of a teaching point seems more useful a skill than say, powerpoint presentations. We all know we've had enough of them.

Students are less equipped to absorb what we have to say than we are to teach them what they want to learn. And I'm always interested in people who can turn something mundane into a genuinely interested thing to talk about. I've recommended Extra Creditz before in the past because while gaming is not a certified school-friendly topic, i find that they have so much more to teach us about the medium of storytelling than anything else.

And today i want to recommend someone who actually can teach you something useful. Vi Hart. Maths turned into poetry, impressive stuff. Watch her doodling in class series, that's what i'm most impressed by.

Anyway, i have a steak to get to, so i won't elaborate anymore.

Joy of Youth or The Criteria Of Sad

2011-09-09T00:35:00.000+08:00

Since my birthday video, and possibly even before that, I've been thinking the Criteria of Sad. To explain, at what point can a person be sad about his life and not get shit about it (gossip, complains, other negative things).

But that's not what drove me to write this post. For a better part of today i was thinking about growing old, and being a senior citizen and particularly looking back and reflecting part. I wanted to ask an old person, like my god-grandma, was there an age or a period of time, where her life was the greatest. Because, in this world, some people are truly happy and they will tell you that they have never been happier. 2 cases that may be true, one, eternally optimistic, happy throughout his life, or 2 just so happen that his old age coincides with the happiest period of his life, i.e he had to suffer a lot as a youth or adult and could finally retire with relative peace and happiness.

So, naturally, being the selfish person that i am, I put myself in that shoes and thought, would i want to be that old. Because for most of my life, all I've wanted is to reach that semi-permanent state of happiness where i have a great wife and awesome children. And while I usually think of my end-state when i do reach any of my long term goal is around the late 40s or 50s. That is the age i would be when i either "win" or "lose" at life, in my imagination. So, as a result, i never really think that much about the silver age with greying hair and whatnot.

A few moments ago, i did. And it occurred to me that i don't want to grow old. Well, i pretty much assume that but i never really had a good reason besides dementia and other brain or age-related disorders. Not 10 minutes ago did i realize the most compelling reason to want to be a kid (or youth) forever. This is the only time in my life where i can wake up and not do a single thing and then go back to sleep again. This is why bachelors never want to be tied down and mentally 12 year olds never want to get a real job.

So i guess i should be happy about that fact, but I'm really not, aside for just discovering something that I hadn't before. Perhaps it would be necessary to go through the pain of doing something in order to appreciate nothingness. Like how people living in peace like to complain about boredom and other high-maintenance problems, while the people in violent conflicts just want to get out of it.

That was part one, moving on to part two, something i actually thought about for quite some time now.

The Criteria of Sad is something i came up with after going to about 3 or 4 funerals. At that point, i was pretty sure i was at the lowest point of my life. Turned out, the universe wasn't done with that. There has been a seriously ridiculous number of health and/or medical things that have struck at my extended family this past 1 1/2 to 2 years. And it has gotten to the point when my god-uncle called me, i hesitated for a while before picking up. And while i am forever thankful nothing has happened to my parents and my brother, this constant stream of bad news is very unnerving to hear. I can be talking about a certain topic in the car and all of a sudden one of them just talks about another one of my relative who went to the hospital and i would be shocked at hearing this 3-4 day old news.

And it's not just health, personally, i have been suffering a lot of blows to morale in relations to work and SAF but not only that. my friend has also suffered a major episode in his life which I obviously feel bad for him.

So it's been a bad year all around and i was thinking about whether it gave me a reason to brood and act all emo-y about it. Here' a thing about me that you may not know, I like to complain a lot on this blog and facebook and other medium but one thing i hate doing is being sad to attract attention. I would very much rather act stupid to do so. But still, acting normal or even somewhat happy when you don't feel that way takes a toll on you, and just externalizing some of the sorrow or fear or disappointment feels great.

I think about that magic point where you can in fact brood around in life where no one will give you shit. Because brooding is the emotional equivalent of letting your shoulders down after you've tensed them up. But even after going through all that, it still feels like i somehow not "qualified" to do any brooding because as far as anybody's concerned, nothing has happened to you. And just to be clear, most of the things that happened, happened to someone else, and i only feel sad because i am capable of empathy, more so than other, it would suggest.

So i never really feel comfortable telling others about something that happened to someone else, even when that someone else is related to me, because my relation with that guy, the "victim" not my friend, has never really been that close in the first place. As opposed to someone who, say his father died. That, everyone can empathize with. So it's extremely understandable that he can choose to avoid people and keep quiet.

I find it so remarkably strange that while other people in SAF and thinking about how to get more days of compassionate leave while i'm here thinking about how to be emo without people complaining.

MESSED UP PRIORTIES.

Cross-Specialization

2011-09-07T21:30:00.000+08:00

Recently, I just realized something. i have 2 friends in camp who are essentially nerds, in other words, they have nerdy interests like gaming and computer hardware and some other stuff. I actually have more, but for this case, just the 2 of them will do. So you have these 2 "more-or-less" nerds but they do have a very distinguishing trait from other nerds.

They are very avid runners. They have essentially blended 2 very different and often times contrasting hobbies as their Main interests. In other words, if they were to have to fill out a survey or governmental form, they would have to put running beside another pretty nerdy activity like gaming. They have Cross-Specialized, a term i just borrowed from D&D

And it never really occurred to me until very recently, because these 2 activities are so far removed that they never ever come up simultaneously in the same conversation.

I think for any non-sporty person like myself, it is quite a reasonable worry that girls will be attracted to people who are generally smart and fit at the same time (of course good-looking is also somewhere in the equation). So I used to think about the fact that my "prime" would be the years immediately following either BMT training or SISPEC training because I would be the fittest and therefore most physically attractive at that time, given that my intelligence or even maturity would not fluctuate wildly.

So when it hit me that these 2 guys have actually Cross-Specialized, I got a little worried for a while, like about 2 minutes (yeah, it sounds weird to be worried about someone else being a "better catch", i know). Then I realized that both of them are actually single and more importantly, have pretty bad track records with the ladies. Granted, experience-wise, I would be the least knowledgeable about any and all Boy-Girl Relationships. But, still, observation would still suggest that while they may have successfully Cross-Specialized, they are actually not as great as others may be.

For example, both enjoy running, but neither can consistently get a Gold for IPPT 2.4km runs. In other words, they may be good but not as good as people who just mainly do that 1 activity. Also, even in the realm of intelligence or knowledge, both are actually "muggers" who work really really hard for examinations instead of just being able to absorb information quickly and apply them.

So to provide a gaming metaphor, they may have put their points into 2 different Tech Trees, but they aren't as far ahead as those who only put in one.

Disclaimer: Of course i know that there are virtually no people who do just one thing and identify their whole personality by that one thing, I just meant that even if they have different things, its usually related, like sporty people like soccer and running and basketball. Stuff like that. It's more important to show the contrast between such "clashing" activities like running and passively gaming.

You will never get this picture

2011-09-03T19:30:00.000+08:00

Moe Little Pony by ~waiwaiwai on deviant ART

Unless You're as Childish as I Am

Idolization

2011-09-02T20:47:00.000+08:00

When it comes to music, i never really came to a point where i love a particular singer or band so much as to the point of "idolization". So i could never really "get" why my friends around me enjoy "chasing" after certain bands, especially given the rise of Taiwanese boy bands like F4 and 5566 in 2004 (?) and more recently K-Pop groups like, I don't even remember their names.

So do they dance? or sing? or something?

Something particular weird about this trend is that people seem to have favorites among these 12 or 13 almost identical girls, which blows my mind because i can't recognize their faces if they so much as switched positions. Here's the curious thing about me, i can never garner enough enthusiasm about a particular artist or songwriter or band because at some point, my mind would go, well, he is bound to screw up some of the times. Now, To give you a better picture, i'm not really the guy who's not into music, i actually can put songs on loop for a month or so because i love that particular song so much but yet i can bring myself to like the artist half as much. For example, some of the songs i enjoy include, Low from 2009 or 08 by T-pain and some others where, upon hearing just the first 2 or 3 seconds can hum out the rest of the tune.

But yet, i can't ever seem to give into the "fanatical" fandom that is how some of my friends are. I mean i do actually like a few artists like The Fray and B.O.B and The Lonely Island, but it will always be those same few songs that I hear instead of the artist themselves. In fact, the only album i remember buying was when i was 5 or 6 when i bought this album by this guy

Zhou Hua Jian

And even then it was still those few songs at the top, which i would get up and walk over to the stereo just to repeat them.

So when it comes to movies and books and pretty much everything, i can never really like the artist as much as i like the work itself.

So when Emma Watson came up with this weird fragrance commercial, i felt "obligated" to like it even though, i didn't like it as much as i think i should have.

Side note, she never speaks in this 1:45 minutes of advertisement, so that may be a root cause.

"Too many air quotes"

Public service vs. personal vices

2011-09-01T23:49:00.000+08:00

Tbc later when i have access to a keyboard

Have you ever had the feeling?

2011-08-30T15:56:00.002+08:00

where you close your eyes and you feel like your mind or your brain or "you" are actually leaving your body in this convulsing manner. It's mostly centered around your head area. The closest thing I can describe to it would be like taking the roller coaster or those spinning Gravitrons, where you feel like your body is constricted by the safety mechanism but your head is just flailing around and you're using your neck muscle to hold it in place.

It's been happening every so often for the last 3 weeks. Sometimes, it feels like my brain is "sinking" into the back of my skull and my body feels higher than my mind. Sometimes, it feels like my head is being jerked forward. Sometimes, it feels like something is forcing my head to turn to the side, and my muscles are pushing against it. Most of these happen when I close my eyes and try to sleep. Sometimes, my vision encloses on itself like tunnel vision and I get disorientated for about 5 seconds, which typically happens after I've been sitting down and looking at a screen like my laptop or my phone for too long, and try to stand up after that.

I think its' mostly because of my irregular sleep pattern these few days, but it's not really as irregular as most would think. Just a few hours here and there. Sometimes it would also feel like my eyes and eyelids are on fire which is very irritating.

I always think that just by sleeping for a while I would recover. But that never seems to happen, because if i sleep in the day i would end up to energetic to sleep at night and end up playing til 12 odd before I sleep. which is quite stupid.

anyway, stupid pseudo-medical condition.

Changes

2011-08-30T00:28:00.000+08:00

6 weeks +

Direct ferry from UK to holland, takes ~16 hours and less than $100.

UK -- London (4 days) Cambridge (2 days)
Daunt Books, London
Thorpe Park http://www.thorpepark.com/ Roller Coasters (day trip), slightly south west of London, By train. Either 40 or 22 Pounds per pax, not sure

Italy (18 Days )

France

paris (3 days)

Louvre, Versailles

Language School viable?

Spain 12

Haro 2days (wine festival is on june 29th, NEED TO REARRANGE)

Madrid-Arcos 4-6

Barcelona-Mar Bella Beach 4

NUDE BEACH!!

http://www.kitesurfbarcelona.com/kitesurfing-lessons.html
Single kitesurfing lessons 90E per person

Ferry to italy either Civitavecchia (rome) or Genoa, nearer to Milan

Venice (5 days
Madonna Dellorio
santi giovannie paolo
scuola grande di san marco
basilica san pietro di castello
arsenale divenezza (port)
san zacca ria
santa maria deicarmini
santa maria della visitazione
squero di san trovaso
palazzo ducale di venezia
San Giacomo di Rialto
santa maria gloriosa dei frari
Torre dell'orologio
ponte rialto (bridge)
basilica di san marco !

Milan(4 days
streets
duomo
armani flagship store
some other famous flagship store
saint maria della grazie
basilica san lorenzo
galleria vittario emanuele
Apperitivo drinks

Florence(4 days
Santa maria del fiore
santa maria novella - "I was once what you are"
san lorenzo
mercato vecchio/ponte vecchio
santa croce
santa trinita
palazzo medici (palace of Medici family) !
palazzo vecchio

Rome (Vatican City)-2 days
Colosseum, pantheon
St Peter's Basilica, Sistine Chapel,
Coffee, Macchiato, Caffè Sant’Eustachio
bookabar

WE SHOULD DEFINITELY GO TO AMSTERDAM!!

Storytelling

2011-08-27T20:57:00.002+08:00

At one point in time, I used to think my life was boring because I never really had any stories to tell. Any interesting ones anyway. That was a point in my life where i went out very little and didn't have many outgoing friends, so i simply assumed that I didn't have stories was simply because i didn't experience enough of life, and that those among my group of peers who did in fact have really interesting stories to tell either went out of their way to experience life or had life thrust upon them.

And then i went to the army. Any Singaporean who has ever been conscripted, even as a clerk would have their fair share of interesting slices of life to share. And i did. I experienced a whole lot more than i would if i had continued and went on to the university instead. If i went on studying, i would always have this mindset that life is a series of semesters where you get one piece of paper in order to qualify for the next piece of paper to eventually qualify to put something onto that paper called resume and get a job. If i never went to the army, i would never really understand that sometimes you have to reach out and grab the things that you want in life because the System is not simply going to arrange your schedule for you.

But i digress. I went to the army, and i experienced life. I had some pretty interesting things happen to me that i could probably tell other people about. But for the life of me, i still don't really have an interesting story to tell. And my army life is plenty interesting, for one thing, I almost shot my friend in the arm, with a live round. And i got to fire the only Artillery piece that can be fired in Singapore, and freaking dropped the bomb in too early. I also go tmy friends into trouble quite a few times, biggest of which getting me a nickname, which i shall not put here.

And yet, i still can't hold someone's attention long enough to tell my story. I eventually figured out my problem. I cannot tell a story in front of anyone without thinking (or planning) first.

You see, i have a friend, who happens to be my Platoon Sergeant. He has the uncanny ability to speak and hold attention even though most of what he says is not very coherent. In fact he speaks very typical Singlish and he doesn't have the type of impact one would associate with a leader when he tells stories. He is only loud when he is trying to get your attention, which he never really tries to do when he is speaking to a group of say 10 people. And yet for the life of me, i can't figure out why he is so good at commanding attention of the room.

And I've heard quite a few of his stories which are in fact really mundane when you think about it, because most of us like to talk about what happened over the weekend when we book out. At first, it seemed like lots of interesting things happened to him in particular but as time went by, his stories are really all pretty mundane. Which is very curious because he hold your attention long enough to finish telling you a boring story without you realizing its' a boring story until it is over. It is quite peculiar.

After my interview with SMU, I realized that i had a particularly average incident that happened to me during my time as a student councillor, which could be spun into a pretty cool sounding story, which would have helped my interview at that time. Unfortunately, i only realized at the end. Instead I chose to go with one (during the actual interview) that had particular emotional value to me and to us at that time, and because i had such poor storytelling skills, i fudged up the story to the point where i couldn't really figure out what my point was.

If I do have such poor storytelling skills, I sincerely question any of you would really reach this sentence without skipping a few paragraphs.

Colourblind

2011-08-27T13:49:00.000+08:00

I watched a funny short video about a guy who couldn't play Puzzle Quest (a game) because he was colourblind. He lacked the ability to process certain colours in his brain.

which got me thinking.

Colourblindness is essentially a group of people who cannot perceive a certain quality that everyone else takes as part and parcel of nature and the universe. But the funny thing is, colour doesn't exist as what we think it is. On a Subatomic level (or something like that, my physics is quite fuzzy), colour is merely a certain wavelength of electromagnetic radiation. In other words, it is just a vibration of a thing. Likewise, so is sound, albeit vibrations of another thing. These vibrations have no meaning until it enters our brains (not exactly the way you think but ok) where it manifests itself as an image. So our brains are the only thing that make any of these meaningful in anyway.

So for something other than a human, i.e a dog, he would not be able to perceive colour. But it wouldn't matter to him because all dogs cannot perceive colour. So if a dog were to "speak" to another dog, he wouldn't say something like "hey, check out the tasty brown steak" because colour doesn't exist in their minds.

Colourblindness is merely a disability whereby others can see what you cannot. What if inherently, inside everyone except you they could perhaps taste a certain flavor of ice cream but you couldn't. It would perhaps be disappointing but it wouldn't really strongly affect anyone in any way.

What if it was something with a much greater impact such as the ability to "smell" radiation gas which could poison you. That would really means something in a nuclear winter type world.

What if aliens came down and perhaps they could see all of the spectrum of EMR. Would we be disabled then? because all along this spectrum existed and we, by nature or our body and mind, are unable to perceive them and yet theses alien beings are. Would we really be disabled for not having something that we have lived without for the most of our history?

The Process of Learning Everything

2011-08-14T19:56:00.004+08:00

There is this simple "journey" that everyone goes through when they learn something new. If it were a graph, the difficulty of mastering anything would become exponentially harder as you pick up more and more little "tricks".

I like to break it down to 3 simple stages that everyone goes through.

When you first start to pick up any skill, assuming you have any sort of interest in it at all, certain "big" basics you will pick up relatively quickly compared to anyone else. For example, when you learn guitar, there's the 3 simple chords and voila cool sounding songs. If you learn pool, you pick up how to hit the ball in a semi-straight line and hit another ball. To put it in a nutshell, as soon as you finish picking up about 70% of the basics, you can pull off some pretty impressive tricks, of course to an outsider.

This stage feels the greatest because you feel like at this rate, you can master the game in a few more months. Mastering what seems like a very big part of the game or sport or hobby, is an immense morale booster.

Then we come to the intermediate stage. This is where you pick up the really small nuances that will polish you ability that much more. BUT, it is going to take up a lot of time and a heck of a lot of disappointment. The reason is because the only way you can go through and find out what you don't know, is to do it over and over again and by accident, come up with a certain way or tactic of doing it that makes it easier. And people can never really teach you these things because its more of a problem of you than a problem of the activity. If you were learning a martial art, a certain stance or twist of the muscle will improve your ability that little bit, but your sensei couldn't teach you that unless he is observing you extremely closely, or he is very professional.

This is the stage most people quit because to go through this much repetition without seeing as visible an improvement as the beginner stage puts a dampener on you. Something I came across puts this totally into perspective, and even cooler, it's in video AND image form.

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

And then you go to the advanced stage. Now by this time the disinterested would have already dropped it, or at least stopped really trying to get better. This is really for Olympic athletes and the like. At this point, you're just going thru the motions to become what is essentially a machine at what you do, reduce mistakes. Like swimming for example, or tennis, where the winner is the last to make a mistake. It is incredibly difficulty to even reach this stage, but some do, and people who do are running on pretty much their passion. Which means, I probably will never reach this for anything because I have never felt passion, like ever.

So there you have it, just know that when things start getting tough, it just means you made it over the beginner stage and actually making some kind of progress.

The Comprehensive Guide To Understanding Glennard Part 2: Laws and shit

2011-08-12T19:43:00.003+08:00

Many short sentences influence my decisions and/or actions. Many of these are actually quite contradictory if I were to sit down and think about them, but i don't, because when I make a decision, i think about these short rules.

I should really come up with a quick and catchy name, but i'm lazy, so i'll call them laws and shit for now.

Some of them are generic and meant for everybody, while others are specifically for me because I know my various flaws better than others. But almost all of them come from pop culture, so there's that. There's probably more but that's all i can remember for now

Here goes:

1) No one is normal so don't bother trying.

2) Don't expect things, so that when good things happens, it's a happy surprise, and when bad things happen, your hopes were kept realistic.

3) You can't move forward without falling down a few times, so why not speed up the process by making yourself fall as often and as quickly as possible so you can learn from those mistakes.

4) The end goal: Happiness.

5) Never chalk it up to a personality and character flaw when a person does something that you disagree with even though the majority of society does it. People are just generally stupid like that.

6) People are also seldomly DELIBERATELY evil, just stupid and irresponsible.

7) Creativity is the most important ability to cultivate when a baby is growing up.

8) Everything can change in an instant, don't be surprised when you meet an old friend who you haven't spoken to in a while and see him completely changed. One accident in the family or one bad influence can do a lot.

9) I possess all 7 sins, so when I get to Hell if it exists, I wouldn't be surprised.

10) Long-term happiness is very difficult without someone to share with

11) Money is not (currently) a big enough motivator to do something I dislike from 8 to 5

12) Memory is a fickle thing

13) Science is dependable, Art is inspiring. It depends on the mood.

14) Life is short, you are young, take more risks.

15) People are more irritable when they are hungry and just before a meal.

16) Own your work, whether it is terrible or awesome.

17) I don't do minimalism. I just have a nervous every time my own work seems too little

18) I will always envy people who can create art, because they are able to make work that we actually enjoy without having any actual purpose. In other works, people like it even though it has no practical use.

19) We all need to vent sometimes.

20) I'm always here to lend a shoulder to cry on.

Visitors

2011-07-24T20:39:00.002+08:00

I've always wondered who visits my blog.

i know perhaps i have one "regular" reader. perhaps just that one guy.

and i also know that sometimes bots and other internet programs like Google will pass by for caching purposes and such and such.

and i also know that there are some less regular people. like those who come maybe every few months just to see what's going on. especially now that there seems to be so little people blogging about themselves, it would seem to make sense that those same people looking for other people blogging about themselves would drop as well.

but the making sense trap is a very easy one to fall into.

i'll explain more about the trap in due time.

but i'm always curious to see who goes to my blog, because i do have a visitor tracker, which is remarkably featurefull, which is a word i just made up. i get to see which visitor uses which type of browser, which websites they came from and also when and how long they spent here. not to mention ip addresses, which at this point seems useless and pointless.

perhaps this is my first blog post where i have absolutely no point at all. just thought i'd share something with you.

Fix

2011-07-16T21:16:00.003+08:00

we all have our own fixes, something we will always end up thinking about, even in incredibly weird situations. Something we end up doing because it does something to our psyche and makes us feel all tingly inside, even if it shouldn't. For some people it becomes second nature, something they instinctively reach out for without making a conscious choice to do so, like breathing or reaching for water.

For some people its' shopping, for some people its' music.

For me its' women, Western women, but more importantly beautiful women. Yeah, i know that makes me superficial and perverted or a superficial pervert. but thats' how my brain functions apparently. Sorry for confirming all those stereotypes you had about men. Its' not like i have many other things to fall back upon, right? I mean, i don't play music or shop for clothes. I don't even have much to fall back upon memory wise, since my memory is so bad.

whats the one thing you always seem to be thinking about when you get bored?

Musings

2011-07-16T17:31:00.004+08:00

Who are we to judge a person's actions that were we to be in their place, would do just the same. It's neither fair nor just nor wise, but it is human, to be on both ends, receiving and giving.

I have no idea how my train of thought led me to this, especially since i was playing a children's puzzle game. But retracing it would put it closest to harry potter and the bad people who decided to help out voldemort simply because that was the best or only way they could survive.

People who stand up to the face of death are tremendously brave but does that make the rest of us, those not strong enough to do so, weak or cowardly? I think it simply makes us mortals and that is nothing to be ashamed of. Granted i do not know what i myself would do in such a situation, but i honestly am a bit afraid of the answer. i fear that i would instinctively cower away and would not be able to live with myself after.

Been quite a long time since i blogged about what actually happened to me, so im gonna start with as much as i can remember now. last week i watch transformers 3 with yang and edmund. again. because i love watching robot porn. also, the 2nd time around isn't really that good when you're watching it, but when you're not, you keep telling yourself, its so awesome you HAVE to watch it again. but it seldom really is. Watched it at the newly refurbished shaw theatre at orchard, the lobby is quite cool, looks more like a hotel lobby though.

the week in camp was mainly occupied by the 4d3n exercise which consisted of 3d2n of waiting and eventually sleeping. 1 night we spent getting lost and eventually, and this really made my week, we eventually ended up on the road that ran along from the section live firing range to the actual 300m and 100m range to the friggin pasir laba camp, in my m113. which is funny as hell because the 6 of us were on main car-friendly road all the way till we saw the back of the camp near the SOC grounds and we couldn't tell because it was so dark out. but riding a m113 on a normal road and approaching buildings with multiple lights felt really epic, like we were finding civilization for the first time after traveling for so long.

and then we had to turn back.

nothing much after, just waiting for the 24th investiture coming up this tuesday.

Emotionless machine

2011-07-07T23:54:00.002+08:00

I used to think that, back when i was a very young kid, that the best say to "win" in life ( and my naivety proves itself when all i understood about life was that you either win or lose and there is a best way to go about it.) was to abstain from all emotions and work towards success based on science and logic. Emotions to me were a meaningless distraction at best and a harmful influence at worst and it had no place in life.

At this point in my life, its very hard to revisit that statement and agree with it, even though i would like to believe very much so that it could be true. Perhaps it is because now i am willing to accept that love is a fundamental, if small part of my life and the love that i have for my family and friends and my surroundings supercede that statement. In simpler terms, as much as i want to and sincerely wish to believe what i did as a child was true, i want to love the ones that i love even more and these two philosopies cannot coexist at the same time.

In 2010, most of the emotional turbulance i felt were very major in terms of impact; there were aignifcant highs and lows in that year which made those periods of "lull" for emotional roller coastal rides seem almost pleasant in retrospect, even though at that time it probably felt like i was bored out of my skull. In 2011, the emotional ups and downs happen much more frequently and even the smallest things, it seems, would affect me quite adversely, for some unknown reason. This pretty much bi-weekly state of feeling a little happy and a little sad and a little excited and a little disappointed is wreaking havoc on my "peaceful" state of mind.

To put into context, a major drop in morale would be when i failed to get into ocs or seeing my father get weak in the knees when my grandmother's body was being moved from the wake down the road to the crematorium. On the other hand, a minor but pretty regularly occuring minor drop in morale would be when somebody mentions in passing that i am incompetent or when i get shut out of a conversation when i am being serious, Or when i find out someone is withholding information for no other reason than he doesnt feel like telling you when you obviously need that information for your work.

I sort of realized how "addicted"( probably too strong for this context) i was to anger and raging at someone. Last weekend i needed to speak with my brother urgently about his behaviour for the last month, which has turned for the worst. After asking politely for 3 times and being shot down because he was more interested in iphone, i had to raise my voice to get him to understand the urgency of what i had to say. We had a talk for what feels like two hours about his worsening state of respect for people around him including his parents. Anyway after that when i came back to camp 2 days later, i was tasked to get the lecture room ready and it was in quite a mess. A fellow spec was playing the drums while i asked politely for him to clean up once. I got a meh response and i immediately raised my voice, ironically asking if he wants me to raise my voice before he starts to move. At that point, it felt like i released a flood of holding back i was doing since i came to this batalion and it felt damn good.

It really felt good to get angry even for that 3 seconds.

I haven't emo-ed in a good long time.

diversity of opinions

2011-06-19T16:00:00.002+08:00

sometimes when i think about other people, particularly what decisions they made (or what decisions were made for them) and how they come into this incarnation of themselves, it is inevitable for me to come to this conclusion that because they experienced XYZ or that they were brought up in ABC family or background that they did this, particularly if that was what i would have deliberately chose not to do.

this is probably going to be a long post.

i wonder how at a micro level that we are able to coexist with people fundamentally different from us and come away from such an experience as a better person, WITHOUT thinking that this person I'm conflicting with is a bad person in some respect. let me explain, it's quite rare to argue or come into bad terms with people we think are correct. Usually we disagree when we think we are right and they are wrong. Case in point, opposition presence and how Singaporeans feel about it. We disagree when we think that their point is either wrong or somehow "less correct" than ours. It's hard to walk away from this thinking "hm, he's correct but yet I can't help but not agree with what he said, DESPITE HIM BEING RIGHT."

when both parties have sound arguments and logic, any compromise they make will definitely result in at least one side at a disadvantage. The only way for a compromise to work into a win-win situation is if one or both parties have made mistakes and rectified through said compromise.

So when things like this pop up in our daily lives, one side will usually relent because it's a small enough issue that he wouldn't be bothered, simply because it's easier that way and it's not worth the trouble.

we celebrate diversity in backgrounds and heritage and yet we are unable to progress forward in public decision making because of these often times conflicting opinions.

TBC, because i can't gather most of my thoughts and they are all over the place right now

Artistic Ability

2011-06-04T21:41:00.003+08:00

I like to think of analogies quite often, many of which don't make sense.
this is one of them.

I liken my ability to create anything of any vague artistic value to my simple inability to draw a perfect circle. Case in point.

So here you have this imperfect circle. The curious thing about art is that people can see , as imperfection and embrace for all its' worth, as something else other than a circle. Take for example, most comic artists use circles as their characters' heads, and yet they are never perfect circles. But nobody complains and they never seem to mull over the fact that they can't draw circles for shits. Their disproportionate circles become a unique part of their drawing style and they become recognizable for their artwork, not just as individual components but as a whole.

My problem, therefore arises not because of my inability to draw a perfect circle, which as artists before me and many more after will attest that it is simply impossible, by any reasonable standards. It is my inability to accept what is impossible and move on from there.

Many times throughout my life, I would try to draw or doodle. And every single time, i get so worked up over small insignificant details which even if it were to "be perfect", it would in fact worsen and ruin the artwork as a whole. Over time, I have taken this into consideration and then something weird happens, the mindset that i go into anytime i try to "create art" becomes one of "hope everything works out for the best". Every line I draw would be like buying 4D and hoping luck will carry you forward. I'm not sure how many of you would know this, but there are a lot more elements that go into drawing a line that the simple action would suggest. Sometimes i would draw one line over a major section of the paper for a body, therefore it would need a bit of curves, but for some reason if the curves were slightly off and at a wrong direction, the work itself would seem off because of it.

So stupid things like that happen and ensure that I never stay interested in art for long, or at least in creating it.

Maybe that's why i've always been more interested in using digital tools. That way, the Undo button won't leave marks on my paper like an eraser does.

I have always been more of an "idea guy". It's always easy to see something in my head than it would be to translate that onto paper. My creative process is a simple matter of looking at my surroundings, focus on one detail and think about what it is related to and what that is related to and so on until i get a pretty awesome idea. Much like Wikipedia.

Let me show you how it works:

On my table is an empty can of Coke, then i focus on the fine print, then i think about an old article about cheating where the guy prints answers in fine print and puts on his coke bottle, then i think about the hoody i imagine the guy to be wearing, and that he seems to be putting his hands into his pocket very often and him walking through an empty hallway and then i think about the scenery outside.

and now i would create 2 art pieces. One with more subdued colours, probably water colours because that's how i envision the strokes, of that boy with the dark coloured hoody walking along the hallway with lockers to his right and a giant wall window to his left with the sun shining in. the boy is of course looking down.

And the other piece of him, viewed over his shoulder of him looking to his left in mid-stride looking at the inviting scenery outside.

Its' pretty easy to think up of all the metaphorical representations you could do with just this 2 pieces. Its' not even challenging or funny for that matter.

I have a friend in camp who is basically the opposite of me. He is pretty talented, drawing wise, or "creating" wise, but he once shared that he had this problem of not being able to come up with ideas simply because he could not catch on to the "logic" of whatever he seems to be doing or what his teacher is suggesting, i should say. I should say that he takes both art and physics at H2 level, which pretty much qualifies him as a weird person, but he does have a girlfriend so maybe he isn't really so. But then again weirder people have proven themselves not lacking in that area, time and time again. But i digress.

I never would have imagined someone with such an ability to ever have problems like this because i always thought them to be interconnected. I do know of "writers' block" which does strike most creative people at least once, but it somehow seemed strange that he would have this problem of asking why is this done like this and for what literal and figurative reason. I think my mind is just incapable of processing how that would work and still have a killer arm for drawing. Coming up with metaphorical reasons for pretty much any art piece is, from what i understand is stupid. because anything and everything can have a metaphorical reason for being. The Coke can can be red to symbolize passion, the laptop is rigid and solid to represent cold, hard, unrelenting productivity and my socks are made of wool because they are all snuggly and creates a warm homely feel. And i can't be wrong because symbolism is subjective.

and to think i sought out to write a short blog post this time.

Letters

2011-05-30T21:56:00.003+08:00

So my friend al sent replied to a letter i sent last christmas. It's always nice to see your friends reply to you. Even if it took 5 months. Bu honestly, what she wrote was touching and i would love to keep this penpalship thing going,

Since she never picks up her phone or replies to her emails.

Thanks al, really appreciate it

Lots of love.

Novel idea

2011-05-30T21:35:00.003+08:00

So recently im thinking about writing a story, not so much a novel type fiction. More of a biography style. But considering how i have never read either of them, i figure im going to do a pretty had job at it.

Also, in case you were wondering, im thinking about writing about my parents or maybe only my father. Im also thinking about interviewimg them during weekends around their schedule, like how the writer of "The Last Lecture" wrote. I think there as pretty serious gaps in what i know about my parents' life before my birth. Not just what decisions they made but also the social circumstances surrounding them as youths.

It should be easier to write about my father because he went through polytechnic and army life, which means everything that happened before is pretty easy to extrapolate from my own life because school is still school, although i would still ask a bit here and there.

My mum should be more difficult considering that she stopped schooling at secondary school due to good old sexism. Also she lived in Penang as a kid so there's more to find out.

Some of you may be wondering why i'm doing this. It's pretty simple. My parents have never been great storytellers, at least not with their lives or their past. When they do tell, it's mostly about a funny thing that happened to them that day. So while occasionally i do get glimpses into their past lives, like how my mum knows how to read fortunes from this red chinese book, it never really paints a clear picture. I mean all my life i have been told i was lucky to be born in this generation, in this country and in this time. I think its time i started to examine why people call my generation lucky and appreciate, for what it's worth, what those who came before us struggled for.

I also wanted to know what major decisions my parents made and the circumstances revolving around them. Form what i've heard since my grandma's death, they did have some pretty dramatic moments in their lives and it's a shame i still don't know about them. May be i will learn some lessons here and there. Who knows.

I'm also thinking about learning cooking, particularly on sundays when my maid leaves for her lessons. That usually leaves our lunch unaccounted for and either me or my brother has to go somewhere to buy. It's getting very tiresome to do so and i figured might as well squeeze in some time to pick up something useful. I used to worry that i could not settle my own meals when i moved out to hostels in university life and more urgently, when i went to europe, i would have something local to offer to my couchsurfing hosts.

Here's hoping both ideas succeed.

Eating

2011-05-30T21:32:00.001+08:00

Im pretty sure someone at some point in time made a scientific imquiry as to the link between hunger and crankiness. I actually read about this quite long ago as merely anecdotal evidence and was reminded by a blog post from revered genius, and dilbert artist scott adams. I myself noticed the link in that most rage occurs happens just before meal times and almost never occur after.

I think most people frown upon my suggestions of going for makan because i always seem to suggest it more often than others. Because i am not exactly skinny, people get annoyed when i do so and i know for a fact that the more vocal people like to call me out on it. Saying that all i think about is food. Which is only partially true. Sometimes i have a good day simply because im looking forward to a particularly delicious meal later in the day. Yeah, im easy to satisfy like that.

Accounting Interview

2011-05-01T19:14:00.004+08:00

I was thinking back about my interview at SMU. they asked me about what i did as a student councillor and what my leadership style was. i blabbered on abou tthe open house and getting everyone down to talk about internal politics which was stupid as hell. only in the shower did i realise i could have told a much better story.

this is it.

i headed the student study program where we invited a few ex students who scored exceptionally well to come back and tutor some of the weaker students after school. my head teacher advisor was worried about the growing trend with student councillors and other high profile cca-involved students that their grades were steadily declining due to cca involvement. she approached me to head the program to help these kids improve their grades by spending more time in school studying. i had to come up with a way to get reliable tutors for them as more teachers were in meetings or other commitments after school, also there was a problem with not being able to stay awake for such prolonged periods of time, especially when self studying. we managed to solve both problems, with my relatively small team of 4 people, but we did a lot of good in that time. most students grades started to pick up and while it was not an overnight jump, it was better than nothing. and it helped those kids get back to the rhythm of studying after most of their major events such as SYF and A division competitions.

sounds quite impressive until you consider how little i actually did.

Through the eyes of madness

2011-05-01T17:00:00.007+08:00

I'm not really sure what this says about my childhood, but since i was a kid, and i do mean when i was like 5 or younger, because i specifically remember thinking this in my god grandma's house until my nursery years.

I used to think about perception and colours, particularly, would the colour red that i see be the same as the colour red that you see, and even if it isn't, we wouldn't know the difference because that same object would always have been that colour and if what i saw red i called red and what you saw was (to me) green, you would also call red as well. I'm to really sure how to make this clearer, but i'm going to try.

Consider that a dog is essentially colourblind, which in case you don't know doesn't mean that a dog's world is black and white and gray, it merely means they can see much fewer and less rich colours than humans. （Scroll to the spectrum to see what i mean). In this case, red to use would appear brown to a dog. But if you had 2 identical toys where one was red and another, say blue, and you trained a dog to pick up the red toy. the dog would in fact pick up a toy that to you is actually red, but yet to him brown, even though he was "trained“ to associate red with that colour in his mind.

So, i was rethinking this old question (in the shower, unsurprisingly) when i thought of a plot for a movie script. i wish i could direct it. it goes a little something like this.

A guy/girl who goes on through life seein

g images (ala Constantine) and words on surfaces(ala Splinter cell conviction) and hears things and occasionally is able to do things like move a cup with his mind or anticipate a phone call or other "randomly coincidental things".

He goes on this great adventure (which i haven't figured out yet) through fantastic landscapes elements embedded in his modern 21st cityscape and suburbia. But as he drags his friends along (the movie actually chronicles their life and friendship from about 10 or 12 to 16 or 19, to capture the difference). It becomes increasingly clear that his friends are unable to see the things that he can see and he is the only one that can do so yet things around him revolve and changes in such a way that it would be impossible for him to have done it himself (ala Calvin and Hobbes, see below panel 3). eg in movie, a crater appearing in the middle of the city. It also becomes increasingly unclear to the audience as well whether he truly does have powers or whether he is schizophrenic or mentally unsound.

So at the end the audience sees (from the camera) pulling out from his eyes and he is sitting in a white room on a brown wooden chair surrounded by his 2 friends in civilian clothes, looking at him and he is in this white flowy clothes that resemble but ultimately do not look like hospital gowns. At first, he has this intense look as if he has been thinking about a very difficult problem and then he just smiles and the screen fades to black.

i have a basic, almost fundamental (if you know what the word means) belief that eventually i will reach a stage in my consciousness and mental facilities that i will no longer be able to differentiate the illusions in my mind from what is going on in the real world. Even now, when i get a message or a phone call in the middle of my sleep, even if i can remember the exact details of the message and the details, i never seem to fully trust that said message didn't just happen in my mind, (and nobody actually called me.)

Often, i wonder how other people perceive their world. That's one of the reasons why i enjoy shows with narrators, like Burn Notice or How I Met Your Mother or a particular episode of 30 Rock, where they showed the individual viewpoints of the different main characters.

In Burn Notice, the narrator is the main character who is a blacklisted spy who can't work, so he goes about his day helping people solve problems they couldn't ordinarily solve. While that on its' own is pretty boring, the narration adds another layer of depth because as he is faced with different situations, you can hear him explain what is going on in his mind as he analyses like for example, how to take out a large biker guy while he is much smaller, or how a certain plan where he needs to physically hurt himself to con another person. How I met your mother works differently, as a comedy, much of it is directed in such a way that what happens to the main character's is different from what he actually thinks. For example,

Ted: That girl totally got the hots for me

Future Ted: She didn't

Something like that, i can't remember the exact scenario where something like that happened.

So, as i have explained i enjoy learning how others perceive the world. So, i figured i share my perception of the world. I cannot see the last sentence of any text message. it has been repeatedly proven with 4 different occasions where i was either early by an hour or even a day, or late by 12 hours ( I didn't see the AM in the text).

Example:

I also have this peculiar way of listening to music. Because i can listen to music on loop for about 2 weeks before i get tired of it, i often will be able to hear the background tracks or tunes or whatever it is called only after hearing it for about 200 times, roughly. about 1 and a half weeks in then i can hear that background beat. but when i hear that tune, it almost changes that song completely, such that i can filter out which "layer" i want to hear, becoming possible to hear 2 different songs. I'm sure musicians are able to do this immediately, but it's quite surreal when i found out about it the first time.

Another weird tidbit, which i'm pretty sure happens to most people, i explained it before. When someone, a stranger, is far away, I see them as if it's someone i know, but as i walk closer the face "morphs" into one of a stranger. I believe it is because as my eyesight is pretty bad, my brain is processing on limited perceptive data and so, fills in the rest with pictures from memory, forming a part stranger part memory kind of face, which is totally not as horrific as it sounds. as you get closer more data and information becomes available and the face becomes what it actually looks like.

And of course, there is how I would look at a woman (LIKE A PIECE OF MEAT, joking). I originally thought of using a picture to describe like what i did with my phone then i realized how completely inappropriate that would be. But suffice to say, my concept of attractiveness, stems from the face. I see someone's face first before moving down, in that order. Generally i find women attractive if they have a nice face, especially so when they smile. But like i told some of my friends before, she has to have a nice voice. Having a nice voice is a greater factor in how attracted i am to her.

So this is how i view, through the eyes of madness.

Uniforms

2011-04-16T19:41:00.003+08:00

This is a pretty funny video if you actually can take the vulgarities

it gets me (shocked, surprised, empathetic, disgraced, pissed) when I see the that troops of other countries get to do stupid things like that and nobody gives them any flak for it. i mean we are all people, just because a guy is in his uniform doing stupid things, doesnt make everyone wearing uniforms a retard.

and while sometimes the things that SAF people do are actually pretty stupid, there are times when it actually gets funny and yet we still treat them with the incredulity (i don't even know what that word means) of a kid.

and then there will always be some joker in the background asking, why is there a camera around when there shouldn't be any cameras in camp in the first place.

I do sincerely and humbly ask for and wish that our people grow up a little, and then maybe, just maybe the Saf guys can grow up a little more and maybe do things that are actually funny, in uniform.

You don't deserve to know what happened to her

2011-04-12T23:33:00.002+08:00

You dont deserve to know what happens
Its times like these that make me wonder if it is or ever was a good idea to make friends.
I wonder how many of my friends are willing to be honest with me. And if those who are not should i consider them my friends at all. I think i have the maturity of a fifteen year old when it comes to times like this. Like people treating you as if youre just a small kid and dont deserve to know anything. I getthat sometimes people may be guarded and they dont want to share secrets. But i seem to have friends that believe im retarded. And that i cant handle information. You know that feeling sucks.
I understand that most of the time i dont give a shit about whatever goes on with people that are two social connections away from me. But when your own friends withold information from you. Its time to think about why you consider them friends.
I used to think that i have friends because there are people i care about. People i would switch places with in an accident, in a heartbeat. i would jump in front of a train if it meant i could save them. But i found out that its hard to care for somene when you dont know anything about what goes on in their lives. Surprisingly its because you care about them. That you give a damn about their mundane details of their humdrum lives. I would never in a million years thought that not knowing about what happened to my friends when im not around would affect me ths much. But apparently it does. And its pissing me off.

I hate knowing the feeling that somebody's attitude changed and i don't know why or what happened to cause that change. I hate knowing that if it ever came to something drastic that might or might not happen and i would attend the funeral and when his parents or family ask me what happened i can't answer them.

Maybe im the asshole here. Maybe im not doing enough to find out about my friends. But how do you get more information when nobody seems willing to part with it.
Fuck tt shit.

Maybe this is all the alcohol talking but i dont feel any level of high before. Ever. Not once.

I wonder if alchol makes you more pissed.

I think smoking changes the mindset of people. People start changing theirworldview that they have somehow become bad and that the way they perceive things changes. That they start to separate people into different groups where they always appear to be agreeing with wrong people. Or maybe its the other way around. Tt they start thinking of themselves as bad or rotten apples and tts why they do the shit tt they do. I think those who actually feel guilty about what they do still have some chance of recovering from this unconscious segregation of the society around them.

Because at the end of the day, would you be able to sleep soundly at night is all that matters

Financial Planning

2011-04-08T18:44:00.004+08:00

So I had this existential crisis in the middle of a financial planning talk yesterday. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's essentially asking yourself why are you here but in a much more panicked manner, probably hyperventilating if you're into that sort of thing.

Here's the progression of events.

We go for a talk about the importance of financial planning and why we should start early. He starts going on about the costs of living such as the most obvious for us which is to further our studies. Then he talks about getting married and owning a car vs public transportation. Nothing really peaks my interest except that its quite refreshing to see actual numbers on things that always seem to be just vague concepts. Then he goes on to talk about retirement. That's when the shit hit the fan. He talks about his past clients wanting and thinking they are able to switch lifestyles dramatically after retiring like giving up a car. He also talks about how much it takes to live from 65 to 83, i cant remember exactly what numbers he used, but it was precisely the point where he said the age in exact numbers that i start thinking that i actually planned to live til 40 and give my money to whomever was still living. Then i started thinking about dying. And whether or not it was just like a long blackout like sleeping or it was more like going to hell or heaven or whatever. I actually pictured the chinese version of afterlife which was a bit strange but i imagined drinking that cup of teat and reincarnating into a kid all over again after living through so much. I wondered if my interests and viewpoints in that new life would be similar. I also wondered if i would live halfway across the world from where i was. Then it got a little overwhelming and i hyperventilated a little. Just a little.

It was a little strange to think about dying so nonchalantly. I think it simply means that there is nothing to live for. Or rather i havent found somethign worth living for yet. Maybe i will someday in the future. Who knows. But i know now. My grasp on my life and my future doesnt extend beyond year 40.

30 70

2011-04-02T19:08:00.002+08:00

my throat's pretty fucked up.

been quite sometime since an actual update on my life. so here it is.

3 weeks ago I went on AOAC Full Troop support. If you were an outsider looking in, you could think of this as a few trainees using a batalion as real live practice on the ground. Chess pieces if you will. If you were an actual soldier on the ground, you could call this

a normal batalion exercise with a shitload more old guys with heavy ranks looking down on you and tsking loudly. they also tend to talk loudly, at us.

I can't remember much about it, except that my vehicle was down for the first half of the day and then being the enemy forces for the rest of the exercise. my troopers were pretty irritated with the fact that they have to be enemies, again.

then came 2 weeks of rest/prepping for the next exercise. that passed pretty quickly, because on one of those weeks i had to fly back to Penang for a funeral. oh i forgot to mention, my grandma died.

It was quite surreal for me, because she cared about me more than all my other related by blood grandparents. She lived with my family once and she would always asked if i ate my lunch or what i did that day. and yet i didn't feel sad that she left. i didn't cry, id didn't even whimper. i'm not sure if its' because i've went to too many funerals, or that i'm actually genuinely relieved that she left in peace. Still, there are a few problems in the family area that my mum and her family is trying to resolve and she won't tell me about any of it.

So i came back, and it was exercise time. this time, it's a pre-assessment exercise to see how deep in the shit hole your batalion is. and boy is my hole deep. that didn't come out right.

to cut it short, we had an umpire who pretty much has no clue on how artillery works, and pretty friggin stringent on what armor is supposed to do, which we had no training on whatsoever. So, in reality we were being tested on what we didn't know and what we actually knew was not being tested.

and my pc is pretty much dying from all the extra work he has to do, which is i don't know what exactly.

anyway, our performance is bad enough to warrant a re-shuffling of the commanders. in other words, we need to switch around the roles and responsibilities of some of us, because it's simply not working.

So i became the new detachment commander of Det 6. my pc and ps refuses to call it upgrading or demoting, but whatever. Don't make this into any problem, my ps says. thanks for the pre-warning.

anyway, i heard from him that, the initial reaction from the announcement was quite big from my det, so of course i got worried. and then the vehicle ic and my other spec junrong also told me that the driver remains very stubborn to "accepting" me as a commander, because he, along with pretty much everyone else likes to pull up my old first time impressions. which if you've been anywhere close to me in the past 15 years would know, that it sucks.

so i had to get my det down and explain a few things and find out a bit about their SOP (standard operating procedure). i also needed to in a sense bring down their expectations of me, not only as a detachment commander but also as their leader. because our platoon functions in such a way that during component training we seldomly interact with others, so we have very limited ideas on how others work, which i personally find a bit disappointing. so i needed to tell them 2 things, which was that at times they may see me as a bit of "trainee mode" which is because i'm trying to catch up with the det comd things and also managing people from another point of view. I also needed to explain my working style and my (especially important) tone of voice. i needed to tell them i was straight forward and i said things that were on my mind without beating around the bush, which was different from the way they worked in the past. i also told them that because i have this problem of being a lot louder and harsher than i actually think i sound, so i always come off sounding very fierce. So they needed to focus on what i said as opposed to how i said it. which is what i honestly believed.

then one of my guys, Mahesh, says this, "sergeant ar, i think that you cannot say that it's because you can't change, like i mean your tone of voice this kind of thing, because they say ar that what you say is only 30% of the conversation and then the other 70% is body language."

and that struck me a little. i wanted to explain that, in the field, we don't have time for niceties and pleasantries, but it felt like i was making excuses. all i could say was that i am actually trying to not be so fierce especially in the admin time, but again out in the field i can't make this kind of promises and if they hear me talk like an asshole, it is to be expected and don't take it personally.

i think about what he said, that this kind of thing that can be changed. i guess i've been trying to change this behaviour of mine for the last five years, its an estimate but its' roughly when girls started becoming interesting, which was in sec 2 i believe. but yeah, what you see of me now, is actually 5 years in the making and there is still a hell of a long way to go, so if anyone ever tells you otherwise. Yes, Women have made a difference in the world.

Condensed: the rough guide to first time Europe

2011-03-15T20:27:00.002+08:00

Below is the more or less summarised version of the important parts.

Exchange rate as of 150311. 1E to 1.7783 SGD

Museums:
British Museum, Free
Lourve, 6E after 6
Prado, Spain, Free from 6-8pm
Tate Modern, London, Free
Uffizi, 6.5E
Vatican, 14E

Get the appropriate taxi cab rate estimate

Daily Budget:
40-70E per day, including accomodation
Monthly 1200-2100E

starting costs:
Backpack: 200-300$
travel gear, toiletries, Medical Supplies: 100$ ish
Insurance: 50-300
Discount card 20-30$
Vaccinations: ?
Plane ticket: 700 one way, possibly 1100$ two way
Train pass: Brit 318E, Eurostar 42.50E, 5CTY 480E , italy 228E

Food Saving tips
Stick to restaurants that dont take credit cards or have english menus. choose places where you dont see other foreigners
look for restaurants near universities
sample street food, find a few favorites and make meals out of them
cook in hostels, preferably with groups
supermarket dining
try the samples in supermarkets
walk for ten minutes away from major tourist attractions
pizzas. worth it single serving
bring food onto trains
buffets are worth it if its cheap
eat seasonal
gallery openings serve free wine and openers

bring change for bathrooms
find out tipping from the locals

check for service fees and cover charges in restaurants
avoid changing money in hotels airports and changing counters

travel countdown:
submit forms for activites like classes and bungee jumping
look for tickets and insurance
get discount cards
buy travel gear, medical gear
arrange communications
photocopy important documents
check for security issues
pack
test pack
confirm flight

Backpack test
pack in 5 minutes
easily lift over head and wear for 2 hours without back or shoulder problems
able to sit and throw the pack
as little unbreakables as possible
fit comfortably

Clothes pack list
1 tshirt
1 long sleeve polypro shirt
1 microfleece
1 rain jacket
1 plastic poncho
1 thin beach towel
1 pair of trousers
1 wrinkle free travel shirt
1 pair of socks
2-4 sets of underwear
1 pair of sports sandals
1 collapsible hat
1 bandanna/hankerchief

sleepsheet
toiletries
toothpaste
toothbrush
dental floss
cologne
foot file
lip balm
spactacles
face body lotion
sunscreen
mosquito repellant
mirror
all purpose soap
deodorant
condoms

misc gear
earplugs
hard disk drive
marker
spuerglue
tape
sewing kit
padlock
lighter
power adaptors
knife
spoon
comscord
water bottle
plastic bag
cards

first aid kit
elastic wrap bandage
anti diarrhoea medicine
laxatives
antihistamines-allergies
hydrocortisone cream-skin conditions
panadol
compeed-blister cure
plaster
water purification tablets
rehydration packets- 100plus
melatonin/arnica-jet lag
motion sickness pills
tweezers
vaseline
sports tape
antiseptic wet wipes
tiger balm

daypack stuff
map
guidebook
shades
notebook
marker
pen
knife
laser
camera
charger

money belt
6 extra passport photos
railpass
license
id
passport
student id
insurance card
one anti diarrhoea pill
pen
Candy/chocolates

points of confusion
cologne is Koln
geneva is geneve
munich is munchen
prague is praha
venice is venezia
vienna is wien
florence is firenze

germany is deutschland
italy is italia
spain is espana
switzerland is schweiz
sweden is sverge
switzerland is CH
germany is D
spain is E
liechenstein is FL
united kingdom is GB

confirm flights 72 hours in advance

wrong times to go
uk july august to march
fra mid july august
ger july august november to feb
Ita august
netherlans late oct to feb
spa july aug nov to feb
switz nov to feb

Iphone stuff

2011-02-27T13:04:00.002+08:00

lock screen all systems operational

halo 3 rank battery

clear lockscreen

clear lockscreen 4.0

no icons iblank

transparent dock

Sources

cydia.hackulo.us

sinfuliphonerepo.com

cydia.xsellize.com

Packages

activator

afc2add

airplane sbsettings

all phone sbsettings

appsync

backgrounder

Understanding Equality

2011-02-13T18:52:00.002+08:00

i'm just going to gloss over the chinese new year and just say that my dad and i (he actually doesn't much) gambled and earned quite a bit over the weekend period.

i was actually thinking about this in the shower (which is a really nice place overall to think about things). I think writing this in the form of a story would help most people better understand what i'm trying to say. i actually have heard of this story before when someone told me when i was a kid. For some reason the 2 guys in the story are always set in historical China, maybe because i was told in that language.

anyway, the story goes that there were these 2 childhood friends. one came from a poorer family while the other came from a more well-to-do family. Despite their differences, they grew up pretty close and remained good friends as they reached adulthood.

Now, as young adults, they try to figure out how to earn money to support their individual families, as all young adults must do. So the poor guy comes up with a great idea for a business and discusses it with his friend. His friend thinks this is a great idea and proposes that they start up this business together as partners. The poor guy is ecstatic about it but tells his friend, "I would not be able to pay for the starting capital as my parents have ailing health and I need the money to support them." The rich guy says "hey, it's no problem" and they agree to pit their money together to start the business, with him contributing 70% and the poor guy giving 30%.

So they start working on their business. They work equally hard each and every day, putting their sweat and tears and heart and soul and countless sleepless nights to ensure that it succeeds. Alas, it does, and one year later they make a profit.

At this point, they need to decide how much profit to take as their salary. Now the poor guy is humble and comes from a poor background. He knows that he shouldn't take so much because he only put in 30% of the capital at the start and so tells his friend that he should only and rightfully take only 30% of the profit.

At this point, think about whether or not you agree with the poor guy before you read on.

The rich guy says to him, "Nonsense, you need the money more than I do to help you family, you can take my share. It is only fair." and decides to give him 70% instead even though they both did the same amount of work.

I can't really remember how this story ends, but my main point is about fairness and equality in some sense. I am going to use them interchangeably unless someone can explain to me the difference.

How do we put our idea of equality and apply it in the real world when both sides seem fair and unfair at the same time. Is it possible to distribute wealth fairly and equally when it is actually possible to do so in both ways and not come across as morally stepping over the line and being greedy.

We take the poor guy's viewpoint for example. He knows that when you put in a smaller share of capital, regardless of effort or ability or willingness, you will come away with smaller profits. That's how the world is run, on the fact that you get to take ownership of your own wealth and possessions and if you put in little, you come out with little. Makes sense. Fair and square. Even coming from the poor's perspective

On the other hand, see the world from the rich guy's perspective, he knows that his friend needs the money more than him and decides to part with it because it would help the poor guy more than himself. In a sense, running it on a needs-based philosophy, that the ones who needs it most should get the help they need, whether or not because it would do more good then. That would also be fair from the perspective of the world, if in this case the world only consisted of the 2 guys and their families. Granted the rich may not think so because you're taking their money, supposedly their rightful hard-earned money.

So which is fairer, if you were not the individual, but from the bigger picture.

I actually thought some semblance of this question when my father was complaining about the government. Mostly the only things he talks about when it comes to politics are how they are taking his money to give to someone else. I mean he's not wrong, it is his money. And that's how the economy is run, by self-centered people working towards their self-centered goals. Apparently, if A levels Economics has taught me anything.

I like to think about it from the government's perspective because i like thinking about taking money away from unhappy people. Actually, no. I like to think about how people make certain decisions and then how they justify (or rationalize, if you prefer) them afterwards.

So the government and taxes are the issue at hand. Assuming the government is actually doing what it's supposed to do, which is the betterment of the lives of its' people. It can be presumed that it is better to raise the welfare of everyone, as opposed to helping the rich and marginalizing the poor. So here comes taxes to save the day in financial redistribution. But how much can you really take away from people and STILL come across as being Fair and Equal. Also, this is assuming that the government doesn't make any money, which is impossible.

When you think about both models of wealth distribution, both seem fair and equal, from a higher perspective, especially so when it's not your money.

But then again, you could go, they should just split 50-50. But that's communist and not good at all and all communists are evil. I actually do have a reason that is wouldn't work and that's people would not be motivated to work hard if they not what they have would still be the same as everyone else.

And now you say, AHA, so can be said about needs-based model. What is different about that is that granted people have less incentive to work, every dollar has a greater value on the community because it is helping the poor people which in turn would raise the bottom limit and society, all the more raising the OVERALL welfare of the community. Thus, incentive, from a slightly higher "plane of thought".

At this point, I become ashamed of myself because we are no longer talking about fairness and equality but just simply which way is better in terms of welfare or growth or other economic jargon. When people think about fairness, it is generally closer to a debate of basic human or civil rights as opposed to economic welfare or other buzzwords like that. In a sense, it feels like the government or all governments are reaching out towards a practical approach, as opposed to ideological. which is great and all, until you realize that this argument can be set forth against many things. Granted, they won't say extreme things, but it takes time.

I think fairness should be redefined. It should no longer be confined to equal treatment per se. But more of a both parties can walk away happy, as opposed to compromise. On second thought, that idea sucked.

iphone

2011-01-29T22:55:00.003+08:00

so my brother broke his iphone and its' my fault because i wanted to use the fan, which outlet he was using to charge his iphone, to clear up the air which smelled of fried things and smelly smelly things. it took sometime and a very peculiar position to charge his iphone because of what initially simply appears to be the ports being too loose or something like that. so i took it out and plugged it in.

which ultimately led to a chain of events which resembled plugging in and removing the iphone charger into the phone repeatedly and then it somehow becoming my fault that i just didn't LET him charge in the first place. for one thing, upon closer inspection, there was quite extensive damage done to the phone already. the home button was a bitch and the volume control button was no longer there. now you iphone owners out there must be thinking, how the hell can you remove the volume control on the side. apparently you could, and the inside is all rubbery, like the old nokia phones when you stripped the number pad. the silver casing was also shifted apart from the bottom piece, which was white for him with the stress mark visible from the screws at the bottom. the dock also show signs of damage, since it repeatedly shows the device is not optimized and charging is not supported when nothing is plugged in.

anyway, now its my fault he can't even switch on his phone. which on normal occassion already sucks because he does this whole routine where he basically tries to get me guilty for doing something that i allegedly did while at the same time showing disdain for so much as breathing the same air as him. now factor in the fact that he's pretty much addicted to his iphone, he literally uses it until he falls asleep, you have one hell of a problem.

just for fun, i would try to describe his addiction to his iphone. now something you need to know about my brother is that he is a pretty social animal. by the age of 8 he was using the house phone, land line phone so often i had to squeeze in to get space to use the conjoined tables. by comparison, the first time i had a meaningful conversation over the phone that lasted more than half an hour was between sec 3 and jc 1. i may be 5 years older than him biologically, but he is 5 years ahead of me socially. now you see why my fears of him getting a girlfriend before me may actually come true.

anyway, describing his iphone antics. he is pretty much wired to his iphone. he uses msn facebook sms voice calls on his iphone. and his (along with his just as bored friends) comment threads on facebook are 30 plus long. with one commenting over the next within seconds. that is how wired he is, and yet he is still able to ignore and be ignored by the same bunch of people at the same time. so understanding how connected he is, i am actually more interested to see him without an iphone for at least a day or 2, preferably with me out of the way, just to see if he could cope. i mean he is suffering from pretty serious withdrawal symptoms, only minutes into not using his phone. literally minutes.

normally, i would put this on facebook in 140 or less characters, trying to sound funny. but i figured, according to the way he (and most people for that fact) already would complain about me for what i allegedly did, i guess i shouldn't add fuel to the fire. according to his friends, i'm just adding iphone destroyer and social network wrecker onto my long list of evil deeds and accomplishments like have a megalomanical ego and hogger of computers.

then again, 2 more isn't so bad.

also, i found a dog, whitish grayish brown, has an ava dog tag 208977. probably a maltese or a shih tzu, i can't really tell. and male apparently.

Mortality

2011-01-23T15:49:00.002+08:00

so i went to the funeral of a friend's father. i was pretty sure what or rather why i was there. i didn't know his father personally or even in a passing manner. i never heard of him talk about his father so i had no idea what kind of a person he was. so for a while there was a little identity crisis.

why was i going to the wake of a man i did not know?

i figured the answer pretty quickly. i was going to be there to support a good friend of mine who has experienced a loss.

so it was pretty different from the other funerals i have been to. the one where i felt down because my friend who had so much potential had to go so soon or the ones i could feel my parents' loss even though i was not close to the deceased.

it was also the first time i went to a wake where people talked about the deceased's life and the relationships the people around them had. so going there with the expectation of being a friend for support as opposed to being a mourner is a little different.

i learnt a few things that day.

1) most of the 20 year olds i know havent been to more than 1 funeral or less even though they have lost someone, usually a grandparent.

2) when people talk about things and events and emotions, it is only natural that you will put yourself in that situation. in a funeral, people talk about loss and you immediately think about losing the ones closest to you. when people talk about the fun times they had with the guy, you laugh with them even though you haven't the slightest clue of anything they just said. when they talk about how fortunate the family is to have him, you think of your own family, whether or not you've been with them recently.

and yet, all throughout this time, i could only feel guilty for thinking about myself when this is a funeral about somebody else.

the last weekend was pretty fucked up because 2 people lost family members at roughly the same time, albeit under vastly different circumstances.

many of the people who spoke had great stories of the deceased. i wondered what story i would tell if my own father had passed on. when my grandmother passed, i didn't really know much about her. on the car ride my father told me a few stories, of a man who insulted his ability to do anything decent with his life, and of another who gave him a chance.

someday im going to sit down with them and ask them the story of how they came to be who they are.

had a pretty good conversation with a cab driver when i went to camp last week. he had this great voice like a old wise man, and he looked like the sensei from the old karate kid movies.

celebrated yangs birthday this weekend.

to build a secret hallway

2011-01-08T13:34:00.002+08:00

you don't really need to carve a hole in the wall. just get a door that's placed semi-hidden and along the side. preferably a room to another room. then place a big wardrobe over it and cut a hole through wood.

TRIP CHANGE TO EUROPE!!

2011-01-01T17:32:00.008+08:00

so because of air tickets and the like, we have decided to change our backpacking trip from USA back to europe

so some things remain untouched like this

to note down here is that the university vacation days are as follows
SMU
30nov to 3 jan for term 1
19 april to 15 aug for term 2

NUS
5 dec to 9 jan term 1
8 may to 1 august term 2

NTU
27 dec to 21 jan term 1
23 may to 29 jul term 2

Locations for now:

London

Cambridge

Manchester (old trafford)

Paris

Venice

Milan

Florence

Vatican City

Rome

england 3 weeks

France

Netherlands bicycle travel

Germany

Italy 1 month

Weather conditions:

for reference sake:

Singapore:

June 88F/76F

Today(jan) 86F/75F

All in June

Berlin, Germany: 72F/54F

London, England: 68F/52F

Madrid, Spain: 81F/59F

Paris, France: 73F/55F

Rome, Italy: 82F/63F

Stockholm, Sweden: 66F/52F

in other words, expect temperatures colder than the coldest aircon in singapore, probably for nights and rains. the sun should prove sufficient with just a tshirt. its warmest in spain and rome and coldest in sweden and england.

Railway Information:

Significantly cheaper to get a 8 days in 2 months trip and just use about 1 month, in other words, make 8 "cross country" trips, generally long ones, as opposed to small ones around the city itself. within the city itself, possible to go by bike or bus or walking.

UK: BritRail England pass works with eurail pass holder discount 50% or youth discount 20%, only one applicable because we are not going to scotland/wales/ireland plus BritRail London Pass does not get us to Manchester.

The Rest Of Europe: Eurail 5 country prices at €480 15 days in 2 months, group saver price not as applicable because it is at €627 per person.

Get a 5 country pass for france-germany-netherlands-denmark-sweden. then Boat ride to poland/ukraine for Euro then fly to Italy then boat ride again to spain or train or fly.

Things to do:

Bungee jump (more info: most probably going to Verzasca Dam, 007 Jump, price roughly 170 Euro, http://www.trekking.ch/eng/buchung.asp website for more details.)

Skydive england ( Aff course deemed too expensive, SG price 4k, going for either AFF level 1, or some other alternative, preferably no tandem.)

kitesurfing

roller coaster

Visit sistine chapel in vatican

visit st peter's basilica vatican

watch euro poland

eat fish and chips in england

pizza and pasta in italy

Amsterdam markets + flower auction (get more info)

france lourve, versailles

go language school german preferably (change to spain, roughly 700+ SGD for 1 week home stay)

bike tour around amsterdam free and easy follow book

go university cambridge

nazi sites germany

watch euro 2012 in poland/ukraine (FIND OUT DATES OF MATCH AND GET TICKETS) Qualifying Match Starts from 8 june to finals in 1 July In Kiev, Semis in 27,28 June Warsaw,PO and Donetsk, UK

In other words, most likely mid part of the trip.

OLYMPICS tickets open on MARCH 15

Packlist stuff

Camera

video camera

shades

jacket/windbreaker

weather appropriate clothes

credit card

money belt

map

plug adaptors

To Do list:

Sim cards/ Communication

Hostels

Activity List

get more info on working small jobs

TBC

Budget:per person

Airtickets: Msia airlines 700+ SG-KL-LDN (stansted airport) paris -kl(269E) ONEWAYONLY

Accomodation: Couchsurf as much as possible.

Insurance:

Discount Card: 25 ISE discount card, HI youth card 22,

Transport: Britrail Pass 318E, eurostar 42.50E, Eurail (US 672)ita (169)
Food

Backpack: 100-120

How to make a biography documentary

2010-12-27T09:55:00.002+08:00

Open with either a cinematic landscape shot or a very zoomed in then zoomed out shot of the person or something closely related to that person or a thing that will be of significance later on in the documentary.

then do a short introduction of the person, by interview and/or showing short clips and old children photographs. clips must be reasonably poor quality. during which time the background must be playing jazzy or acoustic music, must be light, not to overpower the subject. narrator must have relatively pleasant enough voice to not sound boring.

do interviews with people who used to know him in the past so as to fit a chronological order. at this point the music must be sufficiently light to cover up the background buzz but not the voice of the interviewee, or no music at all if it does not disrupt the atmosphere.

then do a quick montage of growing up, if said time does not bring with itself any thing significant enough to talk about. this time use upbeat faster music. show maybe footage with friends, graduation, school, etc.

start delving into any problems. start by showing the roots of it. perhaps signs or symptoms of a much deeper problem. perhaps interviewees have seen it coming but never do anything about it. perhaps an event foreshadowing it would occur. music at this point become darker. narrator must take note not to over dramatify the script and let the video take care of the change in mood. remain as neutral as possible.

at this point decide whether or not the documentary goes up or down. whether it becomes a tragedy or an uplifting story.

i may actually do this one day you know.

my problems are hardly worthy of a documentary.

Is it wrong to ask for someone to bitch to this christmas?

2010-12-25T19:43:00.003+08:00

and yet when when that person comes, i become so focused on wanting to spend as much quality time with that person that i just forget all about kao peh ing (cursing) on all my friends and the words never come out.

im probably using ironic wrongly, but it's ironic how much i wish i had a friend to spill my guts to and yet when that person comes, i don't give a damn about any of it anymore. i guess its those moments in between working and hanging out that really eats the person up, i.e me. Also, i guess the only real way i can bitch without being hypocritical is to tell it to a stranger or in this case write it down. i mean when a person does step up and say, hey im your friend, tell me your problems. at that moment my problems literally disappear. THAT person appearing is precisely the solution to my problems.

i know its' wrong to wish the world revolves around me. i mean people have a legitimate reason to not go out with me today, for real. like work and church and stuff. but its those times where you realize that you are actually not their top priority that bugs the hell out of me. and not the kind when his/her grandma is passing away and you still feel jealous she's taking up more of your friend's time than you. that's just plain bastard. its' those times when yo feel like your friend is putting his friends above you even though you think he's closest thing you have to a friend. i guess one way to describe it would be to think that you're best friends with Felicia Chin, even though she just treats you like a hi-bye friend in college. i mean you'd think sometimes people really have legit reasons, like the fact that the time or the place wasn't firmed up so she or he made plans with other people, it happens, i accept that. but then there are times when you make plans so far ahead of time, like 2 weeks, and everybody all confirmed and stuff, then the morning she or he calls you to say, oh sorry i made plans with some other guy yesterday, totally sorry. NO YOU'RE NOT, Fuck.

i guess its' really the holidays that get to me. every holiday i find a way to mope around the house. even my brother has friends around playing dota with him.

i think i can finally understand why people become workaholics. their excuse of a life is so soul crushingly disappointing the only way they find gratification is through their achievements in the career. i probably would if i wasn't so damn lazy. but a the same time, when i see someone useless achieve the same qualifications as me, i think to me, am i really that useless? It kind of demeans whatever glory or at least pride you could have in that achievement. maybe this is what people feel when i get my grades.

i want to volunteer in disaster relief. i want to risk my life to help those in other countries dying. i want to have a legitimate reason to not be able to hang out with my friends. at leas that way, when i re-evaluate my life on my deathbed. i can say to myself. well glennard, you didn't really have much of a social life, but at least you did a lot of good to a lot of people, so i guess that makes up for it somehow.

I hope they don't judge my parents when i eventually turn out to commit suicide/be a serial killer.

FUCK.

so there's this game

2010-12-05T11:29:00.002+08:00

so i recently stumbled upon this game, not a video game, but a board game and a "game" in the loosest sense of the word if you expect it to be any fun at all.

its called Train by Brenda Brathwaite.

i already know the ending but i really don't want to spoil it for you guys, but i do want to say this.

the impact of this game is so deep that without even playing it, just reading about the gameplay and allowed to to drop my mouth in reaction, i think proves how powerful this game and particularly the medium can be.

i just want to touch on the idea of emotional involvement for a short while. i remember a year ago or two when my father started taking an interest in the stock market after it crashed, and i was watching the Business channel or whatever it was called, and i was watching the numbers across the screens and i told him, what the hell the numbers are so big and they still say they don't have enough. and then i read across a small headline in the bottom bar that said that a firm was losing upwards of 6 or 7 digits a day. A DAY, they were losing that amount a day. people can scrape that amount in a lifetime and they can lose it in a day.

and then over the next few days we went back to my extended family for some thing that i can't remember and i overheard my accountant aunt saying that seeing this kinds of numbers is a normal and everyday thing, and you don't really care since it's not really your money. and i thought to myself, did the money people can so used to seeing these kinds of numbers that they don't feel anything when it's going down the drain or is it that it's not their money so they don't care.

i was surprised that people could be so emotionally unattached to a number as ridiculously large especially when what they were losing were not only money from fat cats, but also grandparents' retirement funds. so i thought about how people no longer had any emotional attachment to statistics, especially numbers in any form of way simply because we were overwhelmed as a kid, in a country like singapore with overt emphasis on education and proof and evidence and all that.

so when i think about the fact that there may be 1 in 10 psychopaths around and that 80% of the world population lives on less than $10 a day, i wonder how many people really have any sort of reaction to something like this. it feels really pointless when people really are apathetic to simple issues like that.

let me draw you a word picture, courtesy of ~danny

the weight of an elephant is 10000 pounds, that means nothing to anyone
it is equal to the weight of 2 SUVs, way easier to quantify that 10000 pounds
now lets take the number out completely, it is equal to a big slab of metal that could make you a stain on the carpet if it was dropped on you, so much a stain that not even your teeth would survive the impact. nothing would be left except a funny pink stain and the echoing shrill of a person who has just been squished under a giant slab of metal.

and that is information without numbers

Brenda manages to do this with history such as slave trade through the medium of games. i wonder if i could do it.

i wonder if i could convince people of things

just some thoughts

too many people

2010-12-03T18:04:00.002+08:00

We Don't Know Because We Don't Care

i finally figured out what's wrong with our political system

too many people

when you give too many people the same type of job, most people will stop working, giving the hardworking ones too much to do

im pretty much an oddball

i want to be the best and yet at the same time i want to do as little as possible

for some reason people seem to think these are mutually exclusive ideas, that one cannot exist without the other

so as a result i end up hanging around either people who want to do as little as possible and yet never want to achieve anything. OR people who want to be the best and yet despise me because i seem to be doing very little. hanging out with either group always leaves a sour taste in my mouth because i feel like the other half is missing

i think i fully cemented my post as the worst sergeant.

because i made a decision on the spot after AFTER asking a stupid amount of people on what was supposed to be done, and actually following their advice or instruction. only to find out i (and by extension, they) was wrong and yet the only person to have done anything about it.

there really are too many commanders in our company. it's like my hands are tied everytime somebody asks me what to do. i cannot remember the last time i told somebody about what to do in a concrete and firm manner (aside from stupid things like smoke breaks and toilet breaks) without going on the phone and asking someone else. it's like im just a messenger and my mouth is just somebody else's by extension. i can't even friggin decide on what time to fall in without 2 or 3 people breathing down on my neck, asking me why i didn't do this or why i did that. I DID THAT BECAUSE SOMEBODY ASKED FOR INSTRUCTIONS AND IT SEEMED LIKE THE ONLY THING LOGICAL AT THE TIME. it feels like nobody treats me like i have brains of any kind.

im probably being oversensitive. but i always seem to be around when bad news needs to be announced and yet conveniently lost when good news comes around.

and i become the bad guy because i had to make a decision at that point in time and now people think im incompetent even though i have yet to be punished. you know what i really hate that. in fact sometimes i hate it so much i wish i was punished so at least i get some sympathy points instead of people pointing and talking about how incompetent i am.

yeah im the bad guy. i hate being the bad guy

Rapunzel

2010-12-03T16:42:00.003+08:00

watched rapunzel over the nights out this week. actually watch 2 movies over the week, easy A on the last weekend.

i think i fell in love with rapunzel (the character) like 10 or 15 minutes into the film. i just could not stop smiling everytime i see her. but honestly i don't recommend rapunzel or any disney movie in fact to brooding teenagers. i think disney movies require a very specific frame of mind before you can start watching it because its Meant to be a kids' show, so anybody going in with a mentality of over 15 has to accept various plot holes or unbelievabilities (i just totally made that word up), and not be so cynical. im surprised i enjoyed it so much, although it probably had something to do with my mood on that particular day. anyway, i also downloaded the princess and the frog at home after watching rapunzel. the music and the characterisation is incredibly amazing and it is so rare to see such a light hearted yet musically great film, i think. because with films like inception and i can't think of any off hand, they have great soundtracks but the movie itself is so intense or otherwise draining that it's hard to remain retardedly enjoying the music for music's sake.

that was surprisingly long for a paragraph on disney films.

yay all my friends are having exams now, an actual reason for not being able to go out with them. anyway i think ntu exams are already over, granted they actually started term 2 weeks early. i suggest to all ntuians (i have no idea what to call them) to gloat about this and rub it into THEIR faces before your term starts and they rub it in yours for starting early.

update on army life

all my troopers hate me. like for real, no exaggerations no emo dramtic going on. i am literally the worst sergeant in my platoon, of 13 specs no less. even my friend (who talks to them on a more personal level because he smokes) says that im being too harsh on them. really? its quite difficult to walk this fine line between letting them go and maintaining discipline, especially when they think they can get away with anything if you let them go and they hate you if you punish them. i really have no idea what to do. like literally, because everytime i see some things and i let them go, it becomes something easily forgotten and yet if i do something about it, they kick up a big fuss.

if any of my troopers were to read this, they would probably disagree completely. but i seriously have no idea what to do in such scenarios. but what another of my friend said was i felt wuite true, that being a commander is not a popularity contest (and if it was, hell would freeze over if i ever had a chance of winning), its about doing your job and doing it properly. it shouldn't matter what they think about you. but yet on some level, what they think about you will determine whether or not they listen. so you see why i'm torn over this issues.

also, ive been trying to get the mailing addresses to some of my friends in hopes of writing a letter. because i find letter writing to be on a more personal level ever since ive read harry potter. which admittedly is stupid.

yes it is stupid don't try to change my mind about it.

insensitive

2010-11-28T09:38:00.003+08:00

a few hours ago, i found out (through facebook of course) that an old friend of mine, well i can't really say friend, more like schoolmate, was pregnant.

to me that came as a shock, because she was only 1 year older than me. so naturally i decided to find out more. in that short span of about 30 seconds from being on facebook to going to her blog, i was about to say some really insensitive things about her, things like how she's too young to have a baby, things like well i never really thought she would not have had sex by now. you know insensitive things.

so then as i read the "whole" story (its about as whole as it can get without speaking to her). i realized that they went through the same thoughts that i would have had if it were my girlfriend who was pregnant. they were about to abort the child, before realizing they could not live with themselves if they ended it. and then at that point i realized.

it doesn't matter how sound your logic is and how practical a decision may be, there is no way you could have gone through with a decision like that without any thing going on in your heart. the couple sound like they are very much in love with each other and i hope they do so for the rest of their lives.

some life lessons

2010-11-20T21:43:00.001+08:00

been playing Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, its an incredibly awesome game. it feels like ubisoft finally made just enough adjustments to the point where it gets fun. particularly the addition of having more control over elements around you and in fact being able to decide between stealth and active combat and these elements aiding both significantly. one particular disappointment is that the music which made the AC2 experience so immersive seems to be lacking in this game.

anyway, i cant remember the last time i blogged so im not going to recount all the things that i've been doing since. the only things i can think of that i've done lately is that going to pizza hut because evon decided to pang seh us and wayne decided to be sick and that i watched harry potter 7 part 1 with some of the platoon. admittedly, (spoilers) the most disturbing part of the movie was that harry and hermione starting kissing semi-naked, and that one of my friends thought that moment was hot and he was surprised i didn't think so. personally i don't think that body was emma watson's, maybe that was with cgi or whatever.

anyway, quite a bit of free time and quiet time at home, since my bro is out. and as per usual been thinking. here's a few pieces of my mind.

remember when somebody told you that practice makes perfect, that be the best that you can be, eliminate your flaws and fix your mistakes. what i actually started thinking about recently was that how much of your flaws is actually part of your humanity. you know like people say be yourself. so when you start trying to reduce your imperfections, are you really becoming less human in a sense. i know this question is really pretty inconsequential. but as i went further along that lines, there are actually people who are innately flawed in such a way that they hurt either themselves or society in general. on one level, there are people who are prone to addiction, either in a way that is harmful or not, and in case you didn't know there is actually a real cluster of nerves or grey matter of whatever the hell is in your brain that is the center of addiction, which can be physically identified in a brain scan. when we try to help them be a better person, are we taking away their ability to be human in a sense, because so much of addiction fixes is actually patched on sensory cues that really just cover up the problem in the first place.

and then there are the even more dangerous, where people like psychopaths (which by definition
are people who cannot feel. granted this is an oversimplification) or even serial murderers and perverts who take pleasure in causing pain. when people remove these urges from them, we call it curing them when in a sense we are taking away their humanity. granted you could reason it with the fact that by letting them be themselves, we are placing serious threat on other people, other people who are doing something positive or at the very least not being a negative influence on people.

then again its a pretty stupid question

every so often, i like to pretend i can teleport, or at the very least walk through walls.

never stop learning and keep your mind open, because you won't know where you pick up the
cleverest nuggets of information you never thought about
i.e.

when you're in a conversation, people say more when you keep quiet and let them talk than when you cut in and try and ask a question to probe him more.

source: surprisingly fan fiction.

also, friends remain friends when one thinks they are smarter than the other. which i can't say is not true for most of my friends, sounding really arrogant now.

i sometimes wonder ( and worry) if I'm gay when i think about whether or not i will remain friends with another guy friend for a long time and the fact that i enjoy his company quite a bit. Then i remind myself that men don't turn me on, only women do. men don't make me stare to the point of drooling no matter how good looking they may be, only women do, and they don't even need to do a lot.

i also realized that i was quite a hypocrite when i criticized facebook birthday messages for being insincere when I was tempted to do that on so many occasions. i settled for sending smses.

i think something that actually passed through my mind quite a number of times that a comedian by the name of jon stewart manage to crystallize so well is that what we can control is only our intentions, what people take away from it, their perception of it, is entirely out of his (jon) control and to think or more precisely overthink them would only prove to be pointless and personally, too overwhelming for your mind.

shtuff i would do in america

2010-11-14T11:34:00.006+08:00

this list will be constantly updated, because i can only think of so many things to do

anyway, me and edmund are planning to go to america to backpack around the states
tentatively, which means, maybe probably possibly prosibly

so i figured i keep some reminders of things i would want to do there because i cannot think of anything right now

also if anyone would like to join us you are very welcome, particularly girls, because 2 dudes in a prolonged period of time in a foreign land would most likely end up wasted and or STDed

also to note down here is that the university vacation days are as follows
SMU
30nov to 3 jan for term 1
19 april to 15 aug for term 2

NUS
5 dec to 9 jan term 1
8 may to 1 august term 2

NTU
27 dec to 21 jan term 1
23 may to 29 jul term 2

so the list as of now is:

eat a new york pizza
visit times square
visit san francisco bay bridge
visit white house (meet president)

271110
see ground zero
see empire state building

121210

Packlist stuff

Camera

video camera

shades

jacket/windbreaker

weather appropriate clothes

credit card

money belt

map

plug adaptors

to do list

transportation: check out transport between states and also within states, bus, train, etc

Currency: find out if travellors' checks still useful, findout how much to bring on person

Comms: access to internet, how to communicate back to singapore, Phone, etc? sim card usability in other countries

buying stuff from usa, delivery costs?

Empty your brain tank

2010-10-24T18:09:00.004+08:00

it is much easier to listen then to say.

and i'm not the only one to think so.

and if I really think about he is probably the best listener I know, and I would be a close second.

but then again i doubt many people trust me enough to tell me things, much less believe that i'm a good listener.

because we all have our own insecurities that when we say the things that make us the most vulnerable, no one would stop to listen, or even worse, no one would care.

many things were said that night. and it's remarkable really, that it only took us what 7 or 8 years before I really emptied my brains out to someone, i hope the next person doesn't take that long.

and he was the one who wondered out loud, "wha, wo ren si ni ze me jiu, xian zao cai dong ze xie dong si" i'll get that translated to chinese soon.

it feels good though to empty your brains out.

he also said, you look like you like to say this kind of things one meh, a bit also don't look like.

there had to be some sort of truth to that, i mean not a lot of people ask what i was thinking when it came to personal things

but it felt good, it really did

has it been that long

2010-10-16T19:19:00.003+08:00

its been more than a month
and i couldn't even tell hahas

quite a few things happened this past month
for 1 thing
i participated in this little widdle third sergeantning parade thing that was just no big deal at all, not one tinsy bit

and i've also been screwing around with my iphone
apparently the ios4 does not support winterboard for per-page wallpapers
theres probably 9 of you out there going huh

but its quite hard to really explain what i've been doing exactly

but it is easy to tell you what i've been doing in camp though.
apparently being a commander means that as long as you're not wanted you can disappear to wherever you want
and by disappear to wherever you want i meant, sleep in bunk for 8 hours straight, after waking up for breakfast

also i became a detachment 2ic. im not sure if any of my non army friends know this, but that's what i've been trying not to be among the my peers, because that essentially means that i am among the bottom 5 specialists in my team of 13.

which is not really a good distinction to have

i would have actually been quite pissed or emo about it. i really would have just crashed in my bed in my army bunk if not for that fateful weekend

that very fateful weekend when i realized 1 very important thing

that i do not have a girlfriend or ever had.

i know it's difficult to jump from one conclusion about army to something about having a girlfriend
so i'm going to need to explain myself a little

so basically that weekend, i was surfing on facebook, wallowng in self-pity as usual. that usually happens when i see people talking to each other on the wall and having each others' photos up together and i get sad, that is all. and the entire morning or afternoon i was totally preoccupied with the fact that the probability of me becoming a detachment commander (basically the other appointment) was incredibly slim given that i either screwed up or people weren't watching when i did something right. so as i surf and surf through facebook. i began to notice a trend, everyone i knew were getting on with their lives, they were to Uni, getting to work learning to drive, celebrating birthdays, partying clubbing. and i'm here at home watching them on the internet. and i thought to myself, why the fuck am i still stuck in social limbo, that time between finishing A levels and enlistment where virtually no one called me out until the last 3 days.

so i started to think and obviously continue surfing, and it became obvious to me that i'm "stuck" in army, socially and emotionally, not physically, because i don't have someone outside waiting for me. i don't have a girl can or at least wants to meet me every time i get to book out of camp. i also didn't have like this bunch of friends who always had their friday and saturday nights free and lived for the nightlife and partied every chance they had, and they had each other.

now i'm not saying i don't have anything. i'm saying that i have a "few" groups of friends where 1 group is often unfortunately too busy for me, because they are busy with their own life and another where i could always hang out with for pool at hougang plaza in the afternoon but nothing much because we always seem to meet on sunday and i always have to book in at 10 which cuts short a lot of activities since its in boon lay or choa chu kang.

i mean i have to respect that my friends (and this time i'm not saying i don't have any, so don't accuse me of that) have or are living more important lives than mine and as much as i had to admit it, the only way i could get them to want to hang out with me as much as i want to hang out with them, is if there were as bored as i am, and that is not something i would want to wish on anyone.

so i figured. if i had a girlfriend or at least a girl who liked me, i knew i could look forward to booking out every time, because i knew i would be wanted at least by someone to have my company around, you know rather than just booking out so i could sleep at home at night.

and thats' how i got my mind off being the worst 5 among the sergeants. and maybe now when i tell the story like that it won't seem like a big deal. but it definitely felt like it the past 3 weeks before getting appointed.

and it sucked.

now at least the sucks part about my outside life is outweighing the sucks part about my army life.

blessings

2010-09-10T22:41:00.003+08:00

my birthday was last week

so i decided to do something that i don't do since ... well i never really did it before

so i decided to count my blessings

i have a very happy home with people inside it who are related by blood

i have four walls to surround me in case i get cold

i have a constantly stocked fridge

i have friends i can count on

electricity is not a foreign thing to me

i have enough blood to give to other people

my shoes have only one hole in them

im not allergic to sunlight and sergeant majors

i can perceive all colour and thus the beauty it provides

my limbs are all in working order

sees beauty in people without makeup

has a closet full of clothes that are very comfortable for sleeping but not so much for being looked at

and most importantly, has you as my dear reader

i just realized

2010-08-14T15:00:00.002+08:00

i haven't felt happy in a really long time.

i mean i have laughed on many different occasions throughout this period of time, but i haven't felt like walking around my house like i used to and just be satisfied with everything as it is, like i used to. and that level of happy isn't even the highest level of happy that exists. that's like just a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10. and even that i haven't felt in a long time.

maybe its' because i haven't felt like i'm doing anything positive in the world, or i'm not making any progress or something. everything just feels like a blur with the past being over too fast and the future being to slow to reach me.

or maybe its' just this perpetual level of shagness i keep feeling. there is just this tendency to sigh at everything. sigh at the computer, sigh at the dog, sigh at the clock, sigh at everything.

i wonder what drives people to smoke or drink or go on one night stands. i mean most people do it because it has become a habit to them. they are just used to lighting a cigarette everytime they are not doing anything or going to a club to grind every midnight. but its more interesting to see how they start. i mean people don't do things for no reasons. there has to be this compelling reason for them to do such a thing that they have never done before as well as a trigger, a strong push when you're already near the edge. so the interesting thing is under what circumstances do they get that, both the nearing of the edge and the big push. i think 90% of people already have something they hate in their lives, no matter how insignificant it may seem to you. a person could be worrying about his test scores while another just had his breakup, its' all pretty compelling reason to feel sad about your life, but depending on who you are it may not affect you just as severely. but more interestingly, where do they get that big push? is it when they are surrounded by friends who are just as intoxicated, or when they just feel so overwhelmed by all that emotion they just pick up the nearest stress reliever (or so they think) and do it.

i don't know

i just realised the last time i felt happy was when i was in tekong. when everyone else around me was sad. maybe i'm a sadist that way. but i felt happy waking up in the morning and knowing that i am going to train to become a better person and a better soldier. and i felt even happier during my parade when i finally "graduated" and my parents were there to see me.

and then after that, everything became pretty much meaningless. i haven't consoled in a friend in so long, it just feels so difficult. there never feels like there is a right time for this kind of thing, but yet you still know that there are things you have to get off your chest even if you can't phrase them in words and sentences. so many times of the day, i feel like my friends are all moving off without me, and it feels lonely, even though they are just standing there beside me. isn't it strange to feel lonely in a crowd of friends? and for the record, i think my friends are the greatest in the world, i just don't know how to reciprocate them.

maybe this feeling isn't sadness, maybe its' loneliness.

some things

2010-08-08T11:17:00.004+08:00

i wish i had a baseball bat

----

Joy is watching your friend smile because he earned something and he knows it
Sorrow is watching your father not being able to compose himself everytime he thinks about his mother
Envy is watching your friends become a couple and wishing you could have the same
Pride is watching your students get something he worked hard for
Regret is watching your father tell you about the stories you wish your knew earlier
Happiness is looking at your family and knowing that there can never be a substitute
Contentment is not caring who is looking

I wished I watched less and did more.

----

Emma Watson cut her hair a few days ago. it takes some time to get used to. the weird thing is that every time i see her i get used to this demure, high class, elegant girl and woman because everything she does feels like things have been thought over, and also its always very comfortable to see her do certain things like speaking in a certain way that makes her feel girlish and just very cute and yet when you see her cut such a short pixie cut, immediate things come to mind like the singer pink and other punk-like girls out there. so its kind of weird to see her personality come off in such a drastically different look. but i doubt she will change much, or at least sincerely hope she doesn't change her tune and voice and personality and everything that i love about her. also, i have been given pink a lot less credit than she deserves, seeing as she does many not only humanitarian things but also does not "rebel" for the sake of doing so, much like most "rebels" nowadays.

----

i have been doing a lot of thinking lately since my grandmother's death. thinking about my own funeral in the hopefully distant future. thinking about how i would react if the people closest to me would go one day. thinking about the idea of forever. during her funeral, there was a part where we had to throw coins into a small bucket of water and try and get her to "cross the bridge". after we did that, the priest/ religious person would go up on the small stand and chant certain hymns.as he reached a certain part in the hymn, suddenly a lot of people would start crying and i didn't understand at first because he was speaking in dialect. later i found out that the "hymn" or so i thought was actually the priest addressing the mourners, telling us to live our lives to the fullest and do more charity work and stay healthy for the sake of each other and that would have been what she would have wanted. the part where people cried the hardest was actually about him saying that she is gone from our lives forever and we will never see her again until it was our turn. my aunt was so shook up by this she started muttering to herself in the middle of the night when we were doing work for the next day.

so i started thinking about the idea of forever, the fact that from now on when we go to her house , we will never shout Ah Ma from outside the door like we've been doing the past 19 years, the fact that my father and my aunts and all their siblings will no longer have their parents around to talk to them, the fact that my cousins will never hear from her to go study ever again. and it pains me so much. i felt like i never fully coped with her death and even more scarily that i am already so shook up when i never even fully appreciated her when she was around , how would i react when the ones closest to me go.

My cousin also said something to me that shook me up throughout the whole funeral. he was buring the incense paper when he started to talk to himself. he said :"i just realized that i never told her i love her" and that is going to be a regret that he has to live with for the rest of his life.

i don't ever want to have a regret like that.

----

i also have been thinking about what i would want my funeral to be like. i've actually been thinking about since i was in secondary school but i never got it penned down. firstly, money issues, a quarter will go to my parents, a quarter will go to my god grandparents. a quarter will go to my brother along with any worldly possessions that i may still have. 10% will go to charity, either an orphanage or the international red cross or the salvation army, that is for any of my surviving relatives to decide. 10% will go to my school, SRJC and HIHS, generally with more going to the jc. the last 5% will be given or donated to whomever needs it the most, as deemed by my surviving relatives. should any of my relatives pass before me, the money will go in this order, my brother, my parents, my god grandparents and their family.

as for the funeral itself, nothing overly religious, just maybe a small joss stick bin and some incense paper for the more conservative minded who still wish to pray for me. other than that, i want joyous band music to be played around the place and also framed pictures of words from famous people put up on the walls. either quotes from famous people, or things i said myself. i also want people to have paper to write what they would have wanted to say to me which will be put together with me and cremated. i also believe in no loose ends, so if anything is not finished by the time of my death or any issues or remarks not said, hopefully this will be the channel to do so.

----

change is getting more and more burdensome

2010-07-16T00:17:00.002+08:00

To the family of the grieving, today is the day a beloved mother and grandmother passed away

To everyone else, it's just another thursday.

sometimes you don't really know a person until you've heard her stories
i never got the chance until today
she left and i never knew what kind of person she was
the only thing i knew was that i didn't like her and i didn't know why
"when you die, everybody loves you"
today i found out what kind of person she was
and i realise that's the kind of person i have been trying to be all this while
and to think i wouldn't have known that had she not passed away
i don't know what to think of myself
and i don't know what to think anymore

2010-06-27T14:46:00.001+08:00

I am a Specialist of the Singapore Armed Forces

With Pride, I Lead

Got Food, I Eat

Got Time, I Sleep

Got Mission, I Report Sick

----

Shag Cannot Think.

this bag

2010-06-08T17:50:00.002+08:00

This bag holds a laptop and a gun

you're welcome

pool table

2010-06-05T13:24:00.003+08:00

ive been thinking about buying a pool table since i was in sec 4

i still want to

unfortunately, my house, despite its sheer size, is still considered too small for a pool table, which is disappointing

i checked on some guides online and the recommended size for a room is as follows

for a 9ft table (tournament size, and my preferred choice), 18ft 4 by 14ft 2
for a 8ft table, 17ft 4 by 13ft 8

for those of you like myself who can't convert imperial to metric units, here's a pretty handy guide.

Here's my living room from another view

another quick conversion guide from my measuring tape is that 16 ft is about 4-6 cm shorter than 5m

for those of you observant enough, may notice that my living room has a rather perculiar pillar/wall/support structure rising out from the left corner of it. yeah, that's the part that's screwing up my calculations.

so technically, my living room can be extended significantly lengthwise, but not widthwise, also my tv and sofa is going to be there so there has to be enough room to put the sofa there to watch the tv.

anyway, i'm predicting that there will be a high likely hood that i may have to stand on my sofa to hit the white ball when it's near the corner, which to me is quite ok and more fun actually, since i'm usually the one laughing the loudest at any pool hall, but my guests may think otherwise.

there's a particularly cool pool table that i have my eye set on

it's the Fusion table by Aramith. Looks very classy and elegant and doubles as a dining table complete with matching chairs

unfortunately, it's priced at 6500 per unit and is only a 7ft table.

my living room is 15ft by 13ft 9 inches from before the pillar, which means, the length can be extended but the width will have to be sacrificed.

my dining room is 13ft by 11-12 ft, which at first i thought would be enough for my table.

so, the only thing i can do now is to wait til i get my own bachelor pad before i can get my own pool table. hopefully, when and if i stay overseas for a long enough period, land and pool table prices will drop

Autopilot

2010-05-30T10:18:00.004+08:00

you will never know what it's like to wake up at 4.30 am and sleep at 5 the next morning, only to wake up at 6 am, to change out of your uniform and prepare to carry your bags outside the gate.

and you will also never know how it feels to wake up on a friday, thinking it was a sunday, only to realize minutes later that you still have 2 more days to relax before doing everything all over again.

_____

everytime i get to hold a gun, i get a rude reminder that life is not like the movies, that i can't run into a building full of bad guys with nothing but a trusted gun and a badass attitude.

you know how the universe likes to remind me, by making me wear my LBV and doing basically anything, including being on high alert, where you must, MUST bend your back forward like some cripple trying to speak to someone much taller.

i read somewhere in an article about driving that, people actually go into autopilot mode when they drive after some time, because they think they are already above average drivers. you only truly understand how dangerous that is the next time you try to slice a tomato in autopilot mode, essentially your whole mind zones out and you go into your own little world while your body carries on doing the same action over and over again. Autopilot in itself is not dangerous, when you're maybe doing homework or running from one place to another, but when you put the lives of other people into that equation, a reaction that is just simply one second slower can cause numerous losses of lives.

and why am i talking about autopilot mode, scientists say that people slip into this is because human beings weren't designed to do mundane tasks. everytime you do something new, your brain absorbs all the new information and as a result become sharper and more alert. on the other hand, doing something repetitive creates boredom and causes your brain to focus on other non-old things, turning your attention away from what needs your attention most, the old lady crossing the street.

so i talk about this autopilot mode because i want to illustrate the sheer redundancy of certain military activities. while i'm glad we no longer need to clean our own plates after meals because that has already been outsourced, there are still so many activities that remain pointless and redundant and often, the excuse of "maintain discipline" and "conditioning" is often used.

actually i'm just pissed the haven't invented a car-wash-like machine to clean our rifles.

i hate cleaning rifes.

___

also, people other than sam have not yet responded to my idea, i needed to call al, before she "approved" anything. so yeah there's that, nobody else seems to remotely use their emails.

2010-05-23T19:35:00.000+08:00

last bookout felt like labour day, so everytime i see my watch and see that its already 20 something of may, i get shocked. repeatedly.

little time

2010-05-23T13:27:00.003+08:00

within this short span of 12-ish hours. i must

pay off sleep debt for the past 25-ish hours of waiting for live firing with micro naps in between

try and get as healthy as possible after being out in the rain for 1.5 hours and before tekong field camp

choose what to appeal for and what to accept for uni

prepare my clothes and make sure they are dry and relatively clean, which is dirty by most civilian standards

and have a good enough lunch and dinner so i wont crave anything during 4 days outfield, even though i still will.

---

anyway, planning to accept architecture from NUS and trying to appeal for either aerospace eng or psychology. haven't really decided which yet. probably going to put aerospace this year and if i fail, go for it again nxt year with psych as 2nd choice.

also, the srjc sc investiture is on july 20th, so if any past councillors read this, try and make it there, anyway, we should try and keep a close connection with the school and our old teachers who helped us out so much, it would only be unreasonable to forget them once we leave school.

i'm trying to write an email (just like old times) to convince as many people to go as possible and if even better, go there a few days earlier to give them some tips and advice on what their next 2 years will be like. something like a presentation and open table kind of thing. i don't think mrs tay would have any objections so i think the hardest thing to do is to convince ex-councilors can make it

anyway, unusally optimistic about helping out others. the lack of sleep must be doing something to me.

so umm yeah

2010-05-16T18:13:00.005+08:00

(btw i can't rotate them properly)

so umm i kind of got into architecture. i got the letter on 12th while i was away for field camp, my dad sent me the sms.

some of you guys may know that i wasn't selected for the interview. i actually thought i sucked too hard at the aptitude test itself. because i did suck. all i did was take the cardboard, fold into 3 parts and then fold up into a pyramid prism thing. so yeah, i did what a kindergartener would have done, and i got in WITHOUT an interview. seriously wtf school of architecture. oh yeah i cut a hole at the top so i guess that separates me from the rest, i guess????

if u were there at the exam hall, you would see throughout the entire hall was filled with much better peices of work than mine, i was just like, better start preparing for the next choice.

oh and i also got the letter from ntu, which accepted me into mechanical engineering, which honestly sounds like a better choice for me now. i don't know.

my priorty now is still to become an air force officer first and foremost, if that can be done, i wouldn't need to get into architecture.

also, at the college day thing, i told some of my teachers how i flunked my test in architecture. so they proceeded to tell me bad stuff about architecture like its going to take quite a long time of studying before you can become an architect and stuff like that, which was ironically left out when i asked them for advice. this goes to show, people like to tell you what they think you like to hear. so if you want to know what they really feel, tell them the opposite, like if you're marrying this particular girl, tell them you're breaking up so they will give you their honest feedback.

also, just came back from field camp with possibly throat infection because my throats going out and i have coughing

yesterday

2010-04-25T10:51:00.003+08:00

finally booked out of sispec, or as it is now called scs. damn bloody far, at least can book in at night nt so bad.

so far, everybody is fitter than me, so crossing over is going to be harder than i thought.

yesterday, went to school to get some prize. in SR, it's a pretty big honor to be invited back on college day to receive a prize. in my bunk, it's a prize half of those who did A levels would get.

it's ironic, because when you're in the school, people getting one or 2 or 3 As would be screaming their heads off and getting congratulated left right center. but when you go out into the working world, you'll be competing with people who upon receiving scores like you would break down on the spot. just look at the Uni application crowd, one look across the board, in this case using my bunk as a representative of the A levels students, and you know that the score you're getting, however happy you may be to get it, is only average. so in SR, peope get overwhelmingly excited to get what is only an average mark outside.

i'm not bashing SR, the school that has given me so much and yet i keep forgetting to donate to the endowment fund every time i go. i actually drew extra money from the atm before i went so i could donate, but bloody hell, forgot again.

many times i think i have taken too much from the school and given back too little. sometimes, i think about going back to help them out before A levels, but always gt NS. often, i think about going about and giving a speech about how to prepare better for A levels. occasionally, i think about speaking to the next batch of councilors because we didn't get much face time with the ones directly taking over from us.

what i'm trying to say is that, i'm proud to have been from SRJC, because when i go to serve my nation, i see a lot of scholar retards, a lot of those got brain dunno how to use, and then i really appreciate the opportunities that my school, both SRJC and HIHS NPCC, gave me to lead, then i really understand what it's like to talk to people who don't really listen.

i'm proud to say that we were the batch who pushed the PW As from 7% to almost 70%, that we were the ones who pushed mean A levels from 65 to 70 points. But above all, i'm most proud to say that although we won during the Nike Human Race, we were the only ones who stayed back to pick up rubbish, because this is the kind of thing that you don't learn in the classroom, this is the kind of thing you pick up from the atmosphere, the culture, the seniors and the teachers around you, and this is the kind of thing that makes you stand out from the Raffles, Hwa Chong, Saint Andrews crowd in the world.

Al was the valedictorian for our batch, which was unsurprising. her speech was long but it was still interesting. it's quite surprising that she got such a low score for her psle, but it's just like her to work so hard to become valedictorian. she should become a teacher, totally.

i've been on this computer writing this post on and off for the past few hours, checking out youtube and facebook in the meantime, so i can't really remember what i wanted to say at first. so that's it for now.

and about the things i said at the start. i'm still really proud of Srjc, and if you're from there, don't be offended, and if you're not, don't get the wrong idea, it's still easily the best school with the best teachers and the best culture. easily the best teachers

POP LO!

2010-04-09T19:00:00.002+08:00

POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP LO

last week

2010-04-02T20:56:00.004+08:00

last week i went to dental

got 2 fillings for my 2 front teeth, which hurt like hell cuz she (the dentist) needed drill so everytime i had to gargle, i could feel with my tongue, a hole in my 2 front teeth, like an apple after you take a bite out of it.

went to find hihs teachers, but they had stupid sports day so most of the teachers were gone according to the security guard, and it started to drizzle so i needed to get out of there fast, so i ran to the bus stop, and went to srjc. talked to a few friends who were still there and also some teachers. most complimented how much i slimmed down, which felt good. it really did. i'm not a vain person, no really i'm not, but it feels good for other people to compliment you.

anyway, talked to a few past teachers, most of them were rushing around to do their stuff and pack up and i just followed some of them around and talked as they walked. i talked to Mrs jerene tay about my appraisal and also some council stuff, went to see the 22nd council do teach the 23rd elects, which is really interesting, because they sounded quite like how sam and the others sounded last year. also saw some of the elects practice, i would have said something, but mrs tay talked about some girl "invading" the orientation and i decided to shut up to not embarass myself.

also talked to ms ni. went to her office to talk about stuff, generally stuff about school, also asked her about me, improvements and stuff. quite interesting to hear teachers talk about students when they're in the office. can't really say much of it here. but we did talk about my GP, even though i don't really ever need to use GP specific skills again.

that saturday i went out with hao xiang. it's been a long time since i saw one of those i used to call brothers. 3 years. too long. still had a great time after so long. still had a lot of laughs. didn't really do anything much. spent a lot of time walking around and queueing up, but it was still really fun. we waited for half hour before eating at suki sushi buffet. we tried to compete with each other to see who can eat the most. by plate number 14, i couldn't take it anymore, and he forced down one more plate just to beat me. we ended up laughing at each other and causing our stomach to hurt like hell because we laughed too hard. it was damn funny. we also played pool, which was fun. i miss pool.

it was a great weekend last week, i doubt this week would be as fun. heck, i doubt my whole block leave would be as fun as that weekend

i is sad today

2010-04-02T20:04:00.004+08:00

typically i get sad for a bunch of reasons. usually they're kind of obvious, like House not having a new episode this week, or FF13 not coming out in english in singapore.

but today is different, for some reason. i can't exactly pinpoint where and why i am so sad, or rather why i'm so not happy.

but i can tell you how this sad day started. it didn't even start today. yesterday at 2345 some person called me on a landline, i.e not a handphone, a 6xxxxxxx number. then the woman on the other line told me that she was from the air force recruitment and that i was no longer eligible for UAV and Air warfare officer, 2 out of 4 vocations which i applied for. first things first, i was 90% asleep during the phone call so i couldn't really make out much of it, just that i needn't go to some talk on saturday at cmpb which is difficult as hell to go.

then comes 2 problems. first thing it was april fools' day and it was close to midnight. no government agency calls near midnight, ever, or we would have the most efficient public service sector, so i thought to myself hey maybe it was a joke. second is that. since those 2 are actually the easier of the 2 vocations i'm applying for, then what about my other vocations, which is pilot and weapons officer, both of which are significantly harder to get into because they actually require flying. if i'm not even eligible for the easier ones, what chance do i have with the harder ones.

so i decide to call the hotline in the morning, i tried calling from 830 all the way to 10 before remembering it was good friday and no government agency would be working. fuck.

then my grandparents came to do some praying and burning incense paper. they do this every year because good friday is near the sao mu festival and my grandfather's ashes or something are in my house, for some reason, since my father is not the eldest son.

and my sore throat is still there since i caught "something" from my father. he has since healed but i still ave cough and sore throat for 3 weeks now. with the occasional headache and flu on and off throughout this period, i think it's pressure building up in my sinuses, but i don't know what causes it. i actually went to the MO in tekong about this and he made me wait 4 hours in the friggin waiting room for both my x ray and his diagnosis, only to tell me that its' better for me to see an outside doctor. WTF. on bookout day no less.

anyway, that 4 hours got me "kicked" out of drills squad. i was put on reserve team for missing the one session that i couldn't attend, the same day they needed to get "volunteers" who actually don't want to be in at all. nice

and then back to today, i got so tired after my lunch/breakfast of 2 paos, i fell asleep on 2 wheely chairs in front of the computer after i lost my connection, and i slept from 130 to 5 or 6. and waking up didn't feel as good as it should be.

during my internet time, i tried to find out more about the air force pilot selection process. and what i found was just a load of absolutely not helpful at all things. worst of which is that i need to get into OCS first before i can get into the air force, contradicting what the guys who brought us to the compass test and aeromedical centre told us, which was that we would be put into flying experience program before we went to australia for air grading.

i had to think about OCS. because i really really want to go, but i don't think i had done enough in the commanders' or even my own section mates' eyes to deserve a place there. so with that considered, i'm quite sad. someone told me that a PC said only about 70 per company would be going to command school, meaning roughly 25 to OCS and 50 to sispec. i have to be in the top 25 in my coy to get in the first place, and my ippt is just a pass and my soc is chui like hell.

I'm just really tired

also sick, feel my sinus building pressure again

How to Overcomplicate your life

2010-03-20T14:28:00.002+08:00

Step 1: Have x number of choices where x is a positive integer and 0 < x < 2

why not having only ONE choice is bad: basically out of every single course in every single university, i have managed to isolate my preferred choices down to 3, Architecture, Engineering, Psychology (in FASS). This doesn't look complicated until you add in Step 2

Step 2: Get External Opinion

Why other people's opinion is bad: when you think about it, getting advice and suggestions from others should be a good thing, that way you get different points of views and a broader perspective. isn't that how democracy was born (Note: it probably isn't) It does sound good, until these points of view clash with one another or even your own.

All my life i've been thinking i was a science person. that's the way my brain functions, when i look at a situation, i figure out how it came to be at this state, how something may or may not happen due to the current "forces" at work, not how people should have been more tactful so as to not hurt his feelings.

den my results come out as my science subjects being the worst, which is actually pretty normal considering most of my other papers. den i ask for advice from other people, teachers friends seniors etc, and they say i'm more of a language and arts person, den immediately and i say immediately because i actually saw this in the middle of the jungle under a basha (tent) and said WTF out loud. i asked even more people and they gave me the same response, so now i'm screwed because on one hand i don't doubt that they may be right, and yet i also cannot let go of the fact that i'm really not much of a science person.

but of course all this is nothing compared to if you did Step 3

Step 3: Future Prospects

future prospects adds in 2 elements of chaos that would drive any manger insane, the unguaranteed possibility of a great "payout", in the form of a secure job or paid fees via scholarships, as well as the fact that getting one is going to screw up something else that you've already been working for.

In Tekong, I expressed interest in signing on in the airforce as either a pilot or an officer who controls big guns. Don't sound off any alarms yet, it's just interest, i haven't signed any contract or any thing yet, they need to evaluate my capabilities before they make the decision. and besides there's a 90% chance that i will not become a pilot, not because i suck that hard, it's just the "rejection" rate of applicants.

the good thing about signing on is that it fulfills one of my 2 criteria for a job, it cannot be an office job. the other thing is that i can apply for the saf scholarships which would lift a huge burden off my parents.

unfortunately, that also means that i can only take either engineering or psychology degrees. which would be bad if i already accepted to architecture course by then.

that also means i have a hard time applying for scholarships that apply to architecture or even other courses should i be accepted to the university itself

and that's not even considering overseas universities.

headache.

According To My Mother

2010-03-07T19:53:00.003+08:00

My studying habits haven't changed since I was in primary school.

in fact she was prepared to guilt trip me and "talk" about my habits, or in her words' "let me bang my head on the wall so i know how it feels."

more essentially, she has been doing that since i was doing my psle.

thats friggin 6 years ago. and she's been preparing after every major exam

woah. i think i just used up all my luck juice for the next 10 years

post a level/field camp celebration

2010-03-06T10:23:00.002+08:00

some of the platoon mates got together 10 plus people to go to supperclub, which surprisingly, isn't for supper.

met about 4 of them at 9.30 at city hall more of them stream in. got in at around 11 plus, they bought 2 vodkas and 1 johnny walker whiskey.

it cost 1 person roughly $50 to get in and drink that shit, and most people only got 6 cups, which is the suck.

so the first real drink i get, they got me to down vodka half full cup with some mixers.

by the 4th, i felt warm out of breath and still i didn't feel high. clearly something was wrong

my last cup was the whiskey, and still i didn't feel high yet. the dancefloor started filling up, and our pc shravan came at that time so we started to dance, it started to get crowded and got a weird ah quai started to dance near us and moving around.

i only managed to dance for around 1 hour before i had to bail. took a cab home and ended vomitting on his cab, my pants, shoes and my wallet, and only 5 minutes from my house. i ended up giving the cabbie all the money i had, which is like $19 and a us 5 dollar bill.

so to sum it all up, i drank vodka for my first night, which is a bad idea according to my mother, i didn't get high, and i vomitted.

so for anyone who wants to do me a favor, do not invite me to a club

i am not a club person

i just did it for the experience.

Hello, Happy New Year

2010-03-06T09:04:00.004+08:00

This is what i said to every teacher i met yesterday, along with merry christmas and gong xi fa cai

Got back A level Results today, like everybody i was scared, but bo bian, cuz i want to act man, so cannot act out. so the principal started giving his talk about how some subjects have a certain percentages of passes and A+Bs, which for some reason everybody cheered, even though it had no meaning per se, i.e comparing with last year's results or predicted MSG.

but the one thing that was very impressive was the fact that people with a minimum 3 H2, GP and H1 Content Subject Passes, increased by 10% from 63% to 73%, which is incredibly amazing considering the kind of people that come here and what he's has done with the school and students themselves during a short span of 2 years.

another thing impressive was that 2s10 is in the top classes with an average msg of 76 or 79, i can't really remember, 76 is the more likelier choice. this is the only point i started cheering

so the principal started going through names of 80 pointers and above. Edmund's name was on the second page, but his score was easily predicted, since he tops the school regularly. Then came a few people i knew but didn't really care about, then came Tricia's name, which also wasn't a big surprise, cuz her L1R5 meant she should have been in a different school. then as soon as the next page came theodora's name, where everbody was just as stunned as her to see her name, but still congratulations on job well done. Xiying's name also came up on the screen and i was quite stunned she did better than edmund

for the next part it may be a little difficult to explain on paper, on the 7th-ish page was wei hin's name which was the second from the bottom, so i lagged a bit cuz him and i were sitting beside each other and sitting down at a corner, with a bad angle at the screen. so i saw everybody started turning around to cheer and congratulate wei hin, i just looked up and scanned the page for his name and score and i also turned around and did the same. but then i glanced something familiar at the screen below his name, i saw sim, then i open my eyes big big, i saw bing then i open my eyes even bigger i saw han, so i sit up very straight to find my english name glennard, i wanted to throw my hands up in the air at that moment, but i made sure it was me first, so i looked at the cca and it was the student council. i did a fist pump and let my back slowly return back to the floor before putting my hand on my heart and trying to slow it down. along the way i can hear people congratulating me, including wen hui turning around and saying wah lau. then after me came people like wen jie who cried like crazy and Al who got the top among the council, and samuel and sam for getting special mentions, both for different reasons.

later went to the concourse to actually get the paper, waited for a few people to get their paper, when my turn came, ms Guo said this to me: "you really surprised a lot of people with your results." Awesomesauce. my results breakdown is GP A, H2 Math and Econs A and H2 Physics and H1 Chem C. so i got ACAAC, pronounced A-kak.

saw a few of my friends, they both did relatively well, enough to get into local university. when to find some teachers to thank them, like Ms Ni and Ms R and Ms Guo and Mrs Lim. Mrs Lim in particular told me how you get A 1 ar, damn surprising you know. i wanted to find my council teachers but i couldn't find them and i was running out of time cuz my dad was waiting at the gate. so i have to go next time.

this is the more in depth breakdown of my grades. i have both of my sciences getting C while my Econs and GP got A, which is going to be a problem if i apply to engineering, but considering the type of people they allow in, i shouldn't have too much competition, except for maybe aerospace engineering. surprisingly, my grades are actually quite suited for FASS, but my father is incredibly against it because it doesn't have much of a future in singapore. but if i were to somehow get into fass, the only thing that appeals to me both intellectually and job wise, would be psychology, which by my father's definition means talking to siao nang everyday. Ms Ni says i'm suited for sociology for some reason. i dunno why.

7 things you need to know about field camp

2010-02-28T09:52:00.003+08:00

SHORT WALK

DIG HARD

HOT CHOW

GOOD FIGHT

LONG NIGHT

SLEEP TIGHT

and that the Red Army Leader Is very good at mindfucking

IFC : Camo On, Camo Off

2010-02-21T10:59:00.002+08:00

for the uninformed, ifc means individual field craft, which sounds really complicated, but its' just things you need to know how to do when you're in the jungle during an operation.

and what we learnt is seriously just the basicest of the basic, and it is still complicated as hell.

it's not that it's physically demanding or anything, it's just because of the fact that you're in BASIC military training, everything you do needs to be in a certain particular order, meaning in order to execute a simple movement, you need to bring your left hand to your side and hold your gun and then use your right hand and then blah blah blah. the deliberate decision to place everything such that you need absolutely precise control of all 4 limbs simultaneously means that people who are clumsy and/or slow get stressed out pretty fast, and the easily stressed out get clumsy and slow.

also, here's some food for thought, imagine you're about to run over a low wall, roughly your waist level. it's too high for you to just raise your legs to jump over but low enough for you to put your hands on the wall and push yourself over it, the way you would sit on those metal railings in bus stops (i wonder where they went). this in itself is an incredibly simple movement, something that primary school kids have been doing since metal railings existed in bus stops.

now add a rifle and it becomes 10 times more complicated. for some reason adding a rifle to your hand is somehow going to screw up pretty much every movement. here's why, when you have your rifle, it means that you are more or less in hostile territory, in other words, be prepared to shoot in less than one second. in even more words, that means you need to be holding on to the grip (where your finger is 3 cm away from the trigger) at almost all times, essentially eliminating the use of any of all those 5 fingers you found yourself so attached to. now think about that simple movement of jumping over a wall again. now you have 1 free hand, 2 legs and 1 extremely elongated metal arm thing that's going to get in the way of pretty much any confined space. so imagine going over the wall, the first instinct would be to do exactly the same thing, but then you'd realise that if you did the same movement of putting both hands on the wall and vaulting over, the hand holding the rifle would have crushed fingers thanks to the rifle plus your weight. if you try to let go of the rifle and place it flat on the wall, your sergeant would f you upside down for letting go of your rifle and letting the enemy shoot at you. if you try to use one hand and vault yourself over, 2 things you need to think about, 1) does that one hand have enough strength, 2) how are you going to place your other hand so that you can still shoot forward while not making yourself off balance.

now imagine all those considerations when you have probably a hundred more different maneuvers you need to do like proneing and leopard crawling and hiding behind cover and high kneeling and lots of stuff.

but its' not all bad, its' actually quite "fun" not in the traditional laughing giggling fun but the satisfying feeling you get when you do the whole procedure right, after screwing it a thousand times, kind of like A Math. in fact i'm going to name this the A Math Joy.

but camo sucks. camo definitely sucks

I've Been Thinking

2010-02-12T20:56:00.002+08:00

For the past week i haven't had any access to the internet, so obviously i didn't know what was going on on the blogosphere of me.

so i came back and what i saw was, well people trying to stop me from doing something stupid, which being my friends, they know 2 things. 1) They have the best of intentions at heart. 2) They know how bad i am going to fuck up if don't say anything. And for all intents and purposes, they are really great friends and they are just doing what is, under the moral etiquette of friendship, the right thing to do.

and then i realized,

i spent too much time trying to change other people's mindset on this blog.

and this blog is by far the worst way to do so.

hell, playing my message in the form of a catchy song with a guitar in Somerset MRT would be a better way

so i have been thinking that i have been doing it all wrong all these time.

writing my stuff any funnier, more interesting, more charming will not attract more people to read my words. with 33 viewers every week, many of which just the same one person, what i'm going to say is not going to have a lot of impact on how the world revolves.

so far the only way i have been able to garner any response of any kind has been through either being incredibly emo or doing something incredibly offensive. by being emo, i trigger the natural reaction in most people to return me to equilibrium, a state of non-emoness. while being offensive generates hate from all corners of the world.

as unpleasant as these 2 methods are, they are the only way i know that there are still people reading my blog. it's pathetic, i know. but it's the same reason why people who can afford it, steal small things from places like 7-11. or like why rich and powerful people feel that they need to go through prostitutes to feel any form of human contact, however meaningless.

when you stand away and watch from the side, your brain is still functioning rationally, and you tell yourself, these people are retarded. even i know i'm retarded. but yet, for some unknown reason, it just always seems to keep happening. and most of the time i only figure it out after i do something stupid. like the guy stand 2 blocks away from the 7-11 he just stole from and looking at his hands, filled with a pack of tampons. he just doesn't need to do it and yet he does it for no apparent reason.

so i thought, why try so hard, why put all these dumb pictures and get so much flak for it. i started this blog with the intention of acting as my surrogate memory. i type away at my keyboard so that future me can remember all the lessons i already learnt.

and about all the offensiveness.

my principles tell me that i shouldn't need to apologize for something i believe in.
just because nobody agrees
that i needn't hide behind the mindset of the majority when i want to express my thoughts.
that i shouldn't be afraid
that if i truly believe that what i say is true then there shouldn't be a reason that i fear consequences.

yet i apologize

because i should.

because our friendship is more important than that
because we should be able to talk with different mindsets
because we needn't trade our shoes and walk a thousand miles
Because we're already friends
and i should have known better

if it was any other group of people, i would have stood by what i believe in.
most people call that being stubborn
most people would be correct
but our friendship is not worth that
it's not worth throwing away all that.

so i'm sorry

and who's up for some mahjong