Grr. I got another mystery call. And I'm not sure if he's the same mystery caller of Thursday.

Clues:
- He knows (of) Kairen
- He knows (of) Andrew Tan
- He knows (of) Andrew Gan
- He's ORDed.

Hmm.


*Sputter* Someone is very mean.

"gabriel has just introduced me to sggirls.com, no doubt his favourite site or something... still feel rather nauseous at the thought of army guys pouring (sic) over the photos and making lewd remarks on the message boards though"

I shall punish the aforementioned by showing her THIS.


I've been emailed by no less than Sarinee - webmaster of The Underdogs, the premier Abandonware site, regarding scanning Blood Sword!

Heh.


Hmm. Who's Human Bear?

Looks like the work of some J4s :)


I know I normally diss this sort of thing, but this is a rather interesting type of test :) And it doesn't have the most irritating aspects of those dime-a-dozen quizzes, namely:

- Cut and Paste HTML code
- An irritating graphic in a table cell
- An admonition to everyone to "find out what type of Feces you are"

Your Results:
The top score on the list below represents the faith that Belief-O-Matic, in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matches your beliefs. However, even a score of 100% does not mean that your views are all shared by this faith, or vice versa.

Belief-O-Matic then lists another 26 faiths in order of how much they have in common with your professed beliefs. The higher a faith appears on this list, the more closely it aligns with your thinking.


1. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (100%)
2. Liberal Quakers (92%)
3. Reform Judaism (86%)
4. Orthodox Quaker (83%)
5. Unitarian Universalism (81%)
6. Neo-Pagan (69%)
7. Bah�'� Faith (67%)
8. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (65%)
9. New Age (63%)
10. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (63%)
11. Islam (61%)
12. Orthodox Judaism (61%)
13. Secular Humanism (59%)
14. Mahayana Buddhism (55%)
15. Sikhism (54%)
16. Theravada Buddhism (54%)
17. Seventh Day Adventist (50%)
18. Eastern Orthodox (49%)
19. Roman Catholic (49%)
20. Jehovah's Witness (48%)
21. New Thought (47%)
22. Taoism (45%)
23. Scientology (44%)
24. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (44%)
25. Jainism (37%)
26. Nontheist (31%)
27. Hinduism (24%)

*bleep*


They're lowering the minimum age of marriage to 14 in Russia. Ooh - Chinese traditionalists and Muslim men rejoice!

Wednesday's forum:

"Socio-religious groups are notorious for being selective in what they take literally from their scriptures whenever it suits them.... It is time for all religions to scrutinise their doctrines and use common sense to recognise the spirit and the circumstance to which the 'laws' related to when they were scribed." Truly.

Rereading my past GP essays, I'm surprised at just how indulgent I was, and how irrelevant some paths I meandered down on were. And how much needless cynicism I injected (all for the sake of good, clean fun of course). Haha. And I've also been perusing old (and new) GP bulletins - some of the essays in them -are- indulgent at times too, but I think I took it a touch far. And some in this year's issues are actually rather limp, making me wonder how they made it into them. Jarring phrase seen in one essay: "Resplendant splendour". Grr.

There's this spastic radio ad that keeps playing on RCS stations nowadays. It is a dialogue between a Texan accented guy and someone with a REALLY strong Malay accent, about the former physically torturing the latter because he's eloping with his daughter to Singapore, and he's worried about her not being able to eat good Western food. So the Malay assures him that he'll 'take care of her' and bring her to Warner Ria Cafe at Causeway Point in Singapore where they serve "Western Food" like Buffalo wings, juicy steaks and baked potatos. Hope he doesn't make her wear a tudung!

Continuing in my "proud tradition", Julian got a day off for writing an essay about how "Who Moved My Cheese" is a waste of $19.90. And got a day off! Woo hoo! Haha.

There's this funny ad on Channel 8 for Way-Way detergent. At first, I saw loads of housewives clustered around a man and a washing machine, and a neon sign saying 'Sexist' lit up in my head. However, a few seconds later, a whole line of men appeared onscreen in white long sleeved shirts and black pants, doing a 'Las Vegas' (locked together shoulder to shoulder, while swinging their legs up in unison). Talk about post-modernism.

I got a mystery caller on my cellular line on Thursday night, but he refused to tell me who he was. And caller id didn't tell me his number too. Gah.


Quotes:

ouch. say no more. I think I just had my dose of exercise for the week (SMS on my partial listing of SOC obstacles)

He's a black horse (sheep) --- (Me)

[On Yaodong] Put his photo - SAFTI range. Pahm [Mimes shooting rifle]

There are a lot of bengalis who like to look like terrorists. I also don't know why.

That's just sick. You have a festering, diseased mind. (SMS on an, erm, suggestion of mine)

I was musing on why pool's so popular - half the people at e-learning're playing it.


kimberly: why's pool so popular?

someone: i think .. cause people look cool playing it

kimberly: it's so poser

someone: but you will play it, wont you, if your friends ask you to?

kimberly: erm. I've been asked
maybe at knifepoint :)

someone: get good at it
it's very rewarding

kimberly: why? how?

someone: 1. peer esteem
2. babe appeal

kimberly: riiiiiiiiiiight

does *** like pool?

someone: she's bad at it
but most girls are

Big post on Agagooga's part. Not that I mind, see, because I'm in camp, have nothing to do, am trying to avoid getting shot with "arrows" (this is an army term referring to the act of "delegating responsibility"), and have access to the internet PC in my office.

Agagooga hasn't mentioned it yet, so I thought it'd be a good idea to say that to "avoid breathing in the foul miasma", as he put it, I've been translating songs from Japanese to English as a distraction.

I can tell you, one doesn't appreciate how hard it is to translate songs from an Asian Language to English until you try it for yourself :) Although that still isn't an excuse for some of the really poor translations (In my opinion) found floating around out there on the internet. See here:
Geki! Teikoku Kagekidan

and here: Ai wa daiya

-_-;

Another nice distraction is playing "Sakura Wars 3: Is Paris Burning?" I'm nearly through with it (after about 40 hours...) It's an excellent addition to the series - I like it a lot. One of the reasons why, i think, is because the battles are a lot shorter and less tedious compared to the first two games in the series - just enough to provide a pleasant change from the unfolding of the story through the series' "interactive book" approach, and yet not coming across as being a barrier to the story's progression, or character development (one of the main draws of the series). The game itself also highly refreshing because it features a whole new cast (with the exception of Oogami) - the Paris Kagekidan. My favourite character's Erica Fontaine. (Why do I tell you this? because once, a wise person said that "You can discern the personality of a person from his favourite character in a Sakura Taisen game". Well... maybe not.)

Although, admittedly, if I weren't looking up every single word / phrase I didn't understand and writing it all down, it'd be a much shorter game (i'd estimate around 20 hours or so).

I've made plans for distractions after completing Sakura Taisen 3, too - going to try to make a webpage to put up my translations on. Tentatively going to try to make it run a CGI script so people can post comments and stuff on the translations themselves. Coranto seems to be a good candidate.

Gotta keep finding distractions for myself, or I think I'll go insane in the army.

In this week's episode of "Tales From Malaysia": Some Wanita Umno (Yet another of the uncountable branches of UMNO) member called Ummi Hafilda is alleging that her rival, the pro-tem Puteri Umno head, Azalina Othman is a lesbian and thus disqualified from holding that position. For good measure, she's also labelled her a "rotten fish head".

I love Malaysia. Malaysia Boleh!


In another part of the world...

The Evil One's daughter is called Shanae. Wah.


Yaodong got first place at a swimming competition at HQ Armour's Games Day. No one clapped. On prompting from the MC, polite scattered applause was offered. Then 30 mins later, he got 'asthma' again. Maybe he shouldn't swim so hard next time.

Someone: it's xxx's birthday today!

Me: so what did you get

Someone: not telling you

Me: wth
why not

Me: because there are a lot of things i don't feel comfortable sharing about with you.

Me: even such a minor thing?
sigh
nevermind then

Someone: that says something, doesn't it.


After 6 years, has it really come to that?

Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes.

Sigh.

i know this sounds really *off*, and i'm not transsexual or anything, but after what i've learnt so far in medical school, i'd like to know for myself what it's like to have periods, and go through PMS and cramps and all that jazz- so I know what half of my future patients (or in the unlikely chance that I specialise in OB-GYN) have to put up with for most of their lives.

An emotion stirs in my breast.

Something touches my brow, ever so lightly, for the first time in a few weeks.

My brows furrow in consternation, and my heart constricts.

Yes, I feel sian again.

[Now, was that not as effective as poetry?]


It's nice to know that I'm hardly in the minority. Either that or all my friends are weird :)

And not a small relief too. Though it doesn't help end the malaise, not really :)

Discussion with others is making me more confused, but a tad less sian. Is that good? :)

I now have a plethora of comments, but am none the wiser for it. Time to meditate.

Aum.


It seems everyone feels such at various points of time, and solutions to that seem to vary.

I am tempted to indulge myself and despair that I am deeper in the quicksand than the rest, but I shall not allow myself this luxury.

Some suggest distractions. And indeed, when I'm busy, I never inhale the foul miasma. Especially in camp, when my short term aim is to book out. But is immersion in short term distractions really a suitable solution?

As I was musing to Xephyris, it probably boils down to me having no direction in life, no aim, no purpose and no goals ; That my life is empty, and I feel adrift. And drifting from some friends too.

Now doesn't this sound familiar? It's a rarely seen but regular feature here, I think.

Restored Post

The system admins in the e-learning centre are evil. Instead of going around saying "guan1 dian4 le4" (We're closing shop), they have thought up a nefarious way of chasing us out without much effort on their part. After posting on Friday I was merrily twiddling my thumbs, when an ominous dialog box came up, saying "Self destruct sequence has been initiated. 5... 4..." Oops. Wrong message. The one I actually saw went something like, "Automated shutdown has been initiated. You've 30 seconds to save your work". !@#$%^&*()

Mr Au-Yong (Kelvin) thinks that he can get away with not displaying his Corporal rank. I hope someone catches him before his ORD date (in 8 months time!)

Deployment at the SAF Ferry Terminal was very boring. I got to catch up on my reading (after sifting through the current affairs magazines available, and reading Ger's GP stuff, I had no stomach for Donald Kagan's "On The Origins Of War And The Preservation Of Peace", though, so I fell back on the reliable salve of 'Mistress of the Empire') and got enough beauty sleep for a week :) Luckily it's going to be for only 3, or at most 4 days at a time. The poor platoon commander and platoon sergeant will be there for the whole 2 weeks though :) I hear they're bringing in a TV too, though I predict it'll be tuned to Channel U most of the time.

I hate Malay food, and not only because of the chili and no pork (though I brought along some bak kwa for solace). The food that I had to eat while at SFT was all from the Malay cookhouse on the Island of Doom. Of the 6 lunch/dinner meals, apart from 1 pseudo-Western meal of Fish and Chips (with much more rice than chips, of course, and with smelly fish to boot), each looked the same and all included a Chicken Wing. From this I conclude that Malays have a love affair with the humble chicken wing. Which explains why all Malay food stalls sell chicken wings. In addition, we got black sauce mutton 3 times. Maybe they cook one huge vat every month and give it out every other day. Suspiciously, for 2 consecutive meals we had sotong balls. Must've cooked too much the first time. Lastly, every meal was drenched in coconut milk. So now we know why, in BMT, the people eating Muslim food lost less weight than those eating non-Muslim food :)

At least we got the more varied selection of drinks that NTUC Foodfare provides.

Luckily, the monotony was broken on Saturday night, when some of us ordered Malay 2 for 1 Pizza (Intensely misleading in its advertising, for a pizza from them costs nearly twice as much as one from another company, so). Naturally, both the person answering the phone and the person delivering the pizza were Malays. I swear I've only seen 1 Chinese employee - the guy delivering it to the RV Alumni chalet in a private car. Oh wait, maybe that's the boss.

We also had some visits from Angels of Mercy - S3 showed up on Saturday with 24 cans of Coke and some magazines. Later that day, S2 came with BBQ Chicken Wings (which those of us who had eaten Malay 2 for 1 Pizza had no stomach for), and the next day with Durian Puffs and on yet another occasion, curry puffs and sausage rolls. Hehe.

Singtel is very evil. They have a micro station on the Island of Doom. No wonder reception there is so good!

I was reading SAF hair regulations. Apparently dyed or bleached hair is illegal, and females have to tie their hair up - and with black hair accessories too. Sounds like Raffles Guys ;) Beards are illegal too. Too bad for (Warning: Trite and hackneyed reference coming up) Osama.

On Monday, someone left a walkie-talkie in the Ops Room, so all throughout the day we were treated to Mat Radio - 9 hours of music sung by Malays, non-stop chatter and commentary. Among the topics covered were: How to find child porn on Kazaa (You must use version 2.0 and you must search 'underage', not 'lolita'), the relative merits of females walking by and the necessity of getting the police to arrest some schoolboys walking by at about 12pm for truancy. We were also treated to the latest chart toppers in Malay and English both. The 'DJs' also whispered disturbing things, like "Come and play with me... Let your body take control... Come and play with me", and entertained their (small) audience with quips such as, "For 5 dollars an hour, for 5 dollars an hour, I will give up my life for this place! This pathetic place". I wonder how they can keep it up. Now I know how RPs can stand the boredom, and why most of them are Malays, the race being of the gregarious sort and more able to entertain themselves such.

1 possible reason why my Unit has no Muslims - they don't want to take the chance of placing Muslims into "Kaffir" Company ('Kaffir' means 'unbelievers' in Arabic)

As a 'parting' gift for me before I booked out, I got a bout of SOC training - running in Standard Battle Order with dummy rifle, 9 dummy loaded magazines (including the one on the rifle) and 3 water bottles. It was so siong, my webbing straps fell out. And my shoulders still hurt to the high heavens.

Yaoi Girl and Jiamin are trying to convert Geraldine to Yaoi. On hearing that, I let forth a torrent of giggles comparable only to that belted out when I see the Asian Prince website.

Had dinner with Tim at Sizzler (which has rock melon, which is surprisingly good too) on Tuesday. The idiot peeked at my ATM pin and had to repeat it, for which he got a kick.

Just what is Boysenberry Swirl swirled with? I can't taste what's in the white base in which the berry flavour is swirled.


Quotes:

You're in NS, of course you're sex deprived

I'm not 154[cm], I'm 155[cm]

[On why I don't want her to join "Yourself?"] You're just afraid I'll tell everyone about your gay tendencies

[On deployment at the SAF ferry terminal] Why, Gabriel, afraid to see me? [Me: No, Sir] Don't worry. I won't make you run here.

I'm sick and tired of chinese schools. Loads or [Ed: sic] rubbish they are (sms)

I think [John] Cage should be shot.

[On the MGS motto] To Master boys and Serve yourself

Saturday, obese recruits... 'Armour good what, wash tanks'. Fuck you lah, wash tanks.

[On Mat Radio] Now I know why RP can survive. Because they love to talk cock. (how RPs)

[Opinions of the RSM] Face like Super Mario... Everytime walk like that... It took me a month to understand what he was saying [NB: Battalion, Watch Your Front. Battalion - Keep Still There]

Gabriel, I always see you smile

[On people trying to convert her to Yaoi reading] I'd rather read Hentai than Yaoi, but don't tell them that

[Me: My friend was trying to play with me] Play with you? [Me: He has a rifle with 30 rounds] Oh. I thought you meant... [Me: No]

[On why Geraldine is a good match for Yechao] You're both short, you're both scrawny and you both have a bad sense of humour

[A damning indictment of CAP] It's just a little club where people pretend that they're the only ones in the world with inspiration and humour in them

[On 'Krusty the Klown'] Is his hair really green? (No, but he laughs like him, makes bad jokes and laughs at them, has a paunch and stubble aplenty, so.)


Newsweek had an interview with Abu Bakar Bashir, and I was astounded by the depth of his ignorance and the level of his sheer bull headedness. He lives in his own world, really. And besides, he used circular logic, so that's another strike against him. It's a wonder anyone believes the rubbish he's spewing.

"What is your opinion of Megawati Sukarnoputri�s performance as president of Indonesia?

Megawati is a Muslim woman who doesn�t really defend Islam. Her leadership will not be successful because, according to the Prophet Mohammed, a nation led by a woman�nothing personal against women�will not succeed. In Islam, women have their own place. They can lead, but in these places only. Not at the top. "

Bah. How come everyone gets to quote Mohammed? I should quote him too.

I'm accused of being fond of making "puerile anti-islamic tudung snipes". I meditated some upon this and I think that the reason why tudung related matters have become a pet topic of mine recently, leading many to accuse me of being mildly anti-Islamic, is that I share some of the late and lamented Pim Fortuyn's views on Islam and libertarianism.

Quoth I: "In Holland, homosexuality is treated the same way as heterosexuality. In what Islamic country does that happen?... Christianity and Judaism have gone through the laundromat of humanism and enlightenment, but that is not the case with Islam. Modern society places an emphasis on individual responsibility, whereas Islam places an emphasis on collective responsibility and the family. We have a separation of state and church. The laws of the country are not subject to the Koran. We have equality of men and women in western society, whereas in Islamic culture women are inferior to men" - Pin Fortuyn

Though, unlike him, I do not "see Islam as an extraordinary threat, as a hostile society", I do think that the dictates of demographics will lead to it becoming the dominant religion in a few decades.

"I don't hate Islam. I consider it a backwards culture. I have travelled much in the world. And wherever Islam rules, it's terrible. All the hypocrisy. It's a bit like those old Reformed Protestants. The Reformed lie all the time. And why is that? Because they have norms and values that are so high that you can't humanly maintain them. You also see that in Muslim culture. Look at the Netherlands. In what land could a leader of such a large movement as mine be openly homosexual? It's fantastic that that's possible. That's something that we can be proud of. And I want to keep it that way." - Pim Fortuyn

Not having travelled as much as he had, I am not in as unassailable a position to comment.

Oh, and I'd like to state categorically that I support immigration.


I realise that, if I wanted to make my entries a lot more tidy and disciplined, I should use the invention known as "Footnotes". Too much trouble though.

Woo!

Power Rangers X: Tenth Anniversary adventure

Episode Summary


Low Self Esteem Teen Magazine!

Ah hell I'm too lazy to format this time. Especially after I've been tired out by the SOC training yesterday.

I'm worried about my RAM chip though. Copying any files greater than 12MB in size each across my hard drives causes a blue screen, but it seems to work in DOS. And disabling fast boot, letting the BIOS check the RAM, didn't result in any RAM flaws detected.

Maybe it's my messed up system (that's what comes from installing too much rubbish) or my HDDs, or the connections.

*shrug*

On to the book out post.


A few thoughts on the Chechen hostage taking furore:

At least they didn't cite as their motives the trite issues of the Israeli-Palestinian tussle, or an attack on Islam by malicious foreign powers with nothing better to do. They did, of course, proclaim their eagerness to be martyrs and how they would go to the Islamic heaven where every man gets 40 virgins to bed every night, who miraculously have their flowerheads restored the next day for another night of wild debauchery, but primarily, their motives were nationalist.

The repression and outrages perpetuated in Chechnya are really much worse than those in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Somehow, all the Muslims are fixated on how Arafat and friends have their sheds smashed to bits, but no one cares about the 100,000 or so civilians that have died in Chechnya due to Russian oppression which is arguably much more unwarranted that what the IDF is doing to the families of the suicide bombers. Perhaps no one cares about you if you're not Arabic, unable to rally pan-Arabic nationalism, and not in the Middle East. And of course, they forget how the "Anti-Islamic" West saved Muslims in Kosovo and Bosnia, but that's another story altogether.


Warning: something on a topic which I've become enamored of recently:

Here's an article by a Dr Maznah Mohamad to counter the claim by some MUIS official who wrote the the Straits Times claiming that Muslim scholars agree that the tudung is compulsory as the Prophet said that "when a woman reaches puberty, the only parts of her body visible should be these, and pointed to his face and hands". Apparently the verse above came from one of the Appendixes to the Koran, which means that they codify not the word of Allah, but just lay down traditions practiced at the time.

The verse from the holy Qur�an from which this edict is derived, reads, "And tell the believing women to lower their gaze and to be modest, and to display of their adornment only that which is apparent, and to draw their veils over their bosoms, and not to reveal their adornment save to their own husbands or fathers or husband's fathers �...And let them not stamp their feet so as to reveal what they hide of their adornment." (Surah An Nuur, verse 31, from Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, 'An English Translation of the Glorious Qur�an').

And a little research on this issue reveals an article Alfian Sa-at wrote for the BBC, one line of which says, "There is a Quranic line that reads, 'There is no compulsion in religion'." Well, so much for the Saudis lopping off your head with a sword if you're an apostate.

Manga and Anime haters speak:


you know, there was a time when i didn't know manga and hentai were different.

--- Sister of the one formerly with orange hair


fanfic allows one to exercise omnipotence, to explore ertain aspects of the given story which the author hasn't. that said, i don't particularly admire fanfic or manga. but there're too many fans around for me to voice that without suffering bodily harm!

--- The one with the oh-so-slight accent


there was a time when i didn't know what manga -or- hentai was. i look back at it nostalgically.

--- The one with brown hair


really? the ones around me tend to accept the fact that i won't be converted to seeing odd people with oversized eyes and indeterminate sex do suggestive things with one another on tree pulp. on hte other hand, maybe it's my method of going "oh. that's a boy?"


--- The one with brown hair


Cool product from Mike's List:

A 'Stunning' Cell Phone

Controversy rages over whether cell phones are dangerous. But If you're worried about radiation-induced brain damage from your cell phone, don't buy this product. It's a $99 stun gun that looks like a cell phone. That's right. The antenna and a metal knob on the top deliver 180,000 volts of debilitating electricity to attackers. When muggers ignore your requests that they don't steal your wallet: Zzzzzzaaaaap! "Can you hear me now?" A button on the keypad activates a panic alarm. I'd like to see a remote control -- in case someone steals the "cell phone" itself!



Help Bucky eat steaks - this uses real video, not animation.


I haven't been checking my guestbook, because I thought they'd email me when I got new entries. Apparently you have to pay for that now.

Seen there:

"Great Site You Have Here, My Hats Off To The Person That Wrote How Women Waste Time This Isw Sooo True! See You On The Net!"

"i think u n gabriel suck!!!! u ppl look like freaks and u diss mgs and scgs gurls! hav u got a probolem????u look soooo like freaks in the first place!!!!!!!!!!!"

Ever since we moved in and I started cooking, my housemate has declined every offer of food I cook. I don't know whether to be offended or not- but it's ... weird when my coursemates have eaten more things I've cooked than my own housemate. To date, the only thing he's tried is a small piece of my carrot cake (and that was under great pressure- and when someone else was offering it some more). And I really think it's very far-nee he's refusing all of it... today i decided i just couldn't take it anymore and ate out.

I wish he wouldn't.