This morning we had a run at East Coast. Qingru was there. He's being attached to my unit for 2 weeks for the last part of his course (and Melvin to 1SIR - haha!). I hope he goes to a better unit in the end (stayout!), though there *are* many worse places to be. Oh well, maybe I will be able to look forward to seeing more one face from old times in the future :)

I'm on excuse, so I was looking after the bags while most others went for a short but invigorating run.

I felt like a change, so I wore my JC shorts, only to get scolded by Patrick for being 'hao lian'. Bah. Anyway there was one other person I saw wearing RJ shorts, so I wasn't alone.

There was this VJ girl cycling, presumably to school. In her school uniform. It was quite an eye opener (and rather amusing too), seeing someone cycle in an A-line skirt. I never thought it possible. Later, there was this quite handsome guy rollerblading while topless and looking very happy. Except that he was balding, so.

Across the path from where me and some people were taking care of the bags, there was this circle of senior citizens engaging in some odd activities. They laughed while gesticulating every now and then, and then started clapping a rhythm regularly. The games reminded me of those that babies play. Me and those people with me were quite freaked out, really.


I was invited to today's commissioning, so I got to see the hundreds of officer cadets displaying their drill skills and listening to the MC, some lian woman who didn't speak very well and had an irritating voice, while enjoying the company of 2 of Yucheng's JC classmates, including "King" Zhuobin.

My favourite pioneer left even before the President had arrived. Gah.

Some girl behind us asked why the drill commands were in Malay when most Singaporeans didn't understand Malay. Her companion said it was corruption. Huh?

I found out what "Munnoru Valliea" (or however you spell it) means - it's about brave young men. I should've guessed. Surprisingly, the Officer Cadets in Training pronounced the words very accurately - they sounded like real Indians singing. However, musically, they still fall short - they kept rushing the National Anthem and mispronounced some parts.

It was amusing, and somewhat comforting, to see that even Officer Cadets don't have perfect drill :)

The contingent commander of one Navy contingent didn't buckle his scabbard on properly, and partway through the parade, we could see it dangling and dragging on the floor as he marched along. Oh, the horror. But it wasn't as funny as the navy cadets in white pants and white shoes, which has always made them look goofy.

The way they arranged the female cadets was rather funny. The backline of one contingent was arranged such: tall, short, tall, short, tall, short, tall, not-so-short (male and female alternately)

For some reason, the Armour Officers were special - instead of wearing the funny Number 1 Uniform's Hat, they wore their black berets. Meh.

At one point, they got the leaders of "the eight major religious faiths" to bless the Officer Cadets. I thought this was supposed to be a secular society. I wonder what the atheists think about this travesty. Also, the 8 "major" faiths included Zoroastrianism and Baha'i, but not the Jewish faith. Bah.

Eugene Ng got the Sword of Honour for his Weapons System Officer course - yeh.

Kadir thought that Auld Lang Syne was the National Anthem. Doh! The song Auld Lang Syne, oddly enough, was listed as "OCS Farewell - L. Laini/Beethoven" on the program.

Yucheng gave the three of us red packets, and admonished us not to open them till we had reached the bus stop. My red packet felt very substantial, so I was suspicious. When we'd opened and compared our hong baos, we found that all of us got FHM cutouts. Gah. I didn't expect any less from him, really.

Some newly commissioned cadets eating at the post-parade Indian buffet dinner, together with the 2nd class guests. Maybe they were blacklisted, or they didn't have any dates for the ball and that was their punishment.


There was this feature on News Radio 93.8 about Islam's adapting to modernity and they interviewed several prominent academics and their views. All of them opined that the current interpretation as practiced by many Muslims is mired in the 7th Century and doesn't take into context the era's socio-political-cultural context. It was all very interesting, but don't people get sick of this sort of thing? It's been more than a year since 9/11 and the "let's understand Muslims" drives began. I'd think that every Tom, Dick and Harry would be an expert by now. If even *I* am tiring of this issue, I don't see why others aren't :)

Yaodong told me that he reads Balderdash. Hello Yaodong! Shawn writes about you too. You can go and read his "beautiful thoughts" too. His latest entry features you! There's also the ICQ log you forgot about, the time they wanted to dedicate a song to you, tales about your SIT test exploits, and more besides.

Everyone loves talking and writing about you.