It seems that a good portion of my fellow medics go through a vegetarian phase. First Andrew, then Sinsiang, then Yiliang, then Jason for a short while and now Ban Xiong, who seems to have held out the longest. Perhaps this is because the normal cookhouse food sucks. Or perhaps they all have this masochistic streak which can only be satisfied by eating food which is even more lacking in variety than normal cookhouse food. In any case, they are all fair weather vegetarians, never eating the vegetarian breakfast. Hmmph.

Thinking of more unsavoury names for people who call me 'Jiabao', I came up with 'Booger' (For the unenlightened, a booger is the thing which comes out when you dig your nose). Unfortunately, I don't have anyone to call that yet, so I'll just have to wait. Maybe if Sinsiang becomes obnoxious enough, he can dump the 'Bob' and become 'Booger'! On a related note, Ban Xiong suggests 'Tom', 'Dick' and 'Harry' as additional names. Hehe.

I've gotten a Number 3 nametag that says 'AGAGOOGA', and it now takes pride of place on my black camp sling bag above the RJ and RV badges. Yeh! A fringe benefit of getting it is hearing people attempting to pronounce it, and mangling its pronunciation - aww. Some reactions: "what does agagooga mean anyway? sounds like a tribal orgasm", "omg you actually paid for such bo liao crap? You've spent far too long in the army I fear".

Piqued by the rats scuttling around the Medical Centre, I decided to set up an improvised rat trap. I remove the cover from a dustbin, put it beside a water cooler and placed a packet of the 'Black Meal' (where most of the dishes are black and unappealing) at the bottom. The next day, I found 3 small rats at the bottom of the dustbin. I was going to kill them, but had to go out on detail, and by the time I returned, someone else - Max, I'm told - had killed them by pouring Sudol in. I am rather delighted by my success, but Dennis tells me that he caught 6 rats this way before - and without baiting them with food too. More pertinently, the 2 giant rats are strong enough to leap out of the dustbin, so I will have to come up with a scheme to trap them.

For not a short while, I have been doing what few stay-in personnel do - washing my uniforms. I was going to resolve to wash them more often, so that I could wear a new set everyday, due to the curse that has been laid on me which makes me unable to be like others, who use 2 sets of uniforms a week, but I am demoralised, for apparently washing them in-camp does not get rid of the foul odour. Verily, I am vexed.

Our spanking new VCD player is being used to watch Initial D. So far it looks rather brainless, at least when the characters are driving, with beads of sweat running down their faces. I think I have come to a conclusion - Anime is either brainless or inexplicable! Argh. I wonder if I will ever get to use my fair share of it. Probably not, seeing as the TV is always in use when I am in the bunk. No matter, I will take it as my sacrifice for the sake of communal harmony.

Another disadvantage of senseless, overly-rigid and unthinking regimentation: It gets in the way of essential work, all in the pursuit of vague, undefined and unlikely rewards. Methinks it might even lead to degraded combat performance.

We now have to wash the toilet twice a day, at 1:00pm in addition to the morning's area cleaning. Not only is this unfair, it is unnecessary!


It's not fair. Females get all sorts of funky names. Apart from the traditional types of names (eg Agatha, Bernadette), they can be named after months (April, May), precious stones (eg Crystal, Ruby. Though I've yet to see a Lapis Lazuli), virtues or emotions (Joy, Faith, Love... Though oddly no one is called 'Chastity') and god knows what else. How come males get stuck with boring names? 'Frank' is perhaps the only acceptable male attribute-name, though I suspect that Franks are named after the Franks, and not the quality of frankness. I've yet to see a 'Justice' or 'Wisdom" (though we all know and love 'Just Wong'), and the odd exceptions like 'Noodle' are confined to Hong Kong. Perhaps the closest we can get is 'Sunny' - not very impressive next to the stable of girls' names.

More silliness: Project Islamic HOPE claims X-Men 2 is anti-Muslim, for William Stryker is shown wearing a ring with 'Allah' inscribed on it. "'It�s a major slap in the face to Muslims worldwide that this portrayal be made when the X-men in the comics and movies have always fought against prejudice in society', said the group�s director Najee Ali. 'It was done intentionally,' he said. 'It�s another case of Islamic phobia in Hollywood which has always demonized Arabs and Muslims, but after 9/11 we thought that American Jews and Muslims would work together for peace.'" Surely the ring said 'Allah'. How could it not, when the name of Allah occurs naturally in so many places? Why stop at this anyway? William Stryker has a beard and moustache - is Brian Singer trying to say that men with Vietnam Veterans with facial hair are evil, crazed xenophobes and plot for world domination? Also, Magneto is Jewish. Tada - irrefutable proof of anti-Semitism! Xavier is bald and disabled - surely a slap in the face for bald men and advocates for the handicapped. Hell, Nightcrawler and Beast are blue, so for people with rare mutations resulting in blue skin, this is eminently insulting.

I've been playing Little Fighter 2, but somehow I can't attain the proficiency level that others can. Argh.


My mother's idea of a good book seems to differ greatly from mine. Among other things, she likes inspirational titles (like a zillionth helping of Chicken Soup for the Castrated African Hermaphrodite's Soul) and biographies. Perhaps, too, when one ages, one favours books that evoke nostalgia and remind one of one's younger days. Recently, she highly recommended 'Frog Under A Coconut Shell' to me, a book of memoirs by Josephine Chia, a Peranakan (Nonya, to be specific). Now, as faithful readers might know, I am not a fan of local writing as much of it sucks. This is probably true of most types of writing, but somehow it seems to be more noticeable in local works, which all seem to be edited poorly - if at all.

Personally, I found the book immensely irritating. It is perhaps the most indulgent book I have ever read, surpassing, by far, the most horrific of my output. It is basically an extended, cringe-inducing soliloquy. The narrative is often broken for many paragraphs, while the author speculates, comments, reminisces, moralises and pontificates about something only peripherally related to what she was talking about previously. When that doesn't happen, the author jumps from topic to topic and thread to thread haphazardly, through not just time, but space also, with only the slightest amount of cohesion. The undisciplined ranting puts me in mind of Kenneth Tan at his worst.

Perhaps an extract will illustrate my points. Page 22: "As if it was a legacy she had handed me, I too hated the sight of the slaughtered chickens writhing on the ground or running around in a frenzy until they realised that they were supposed to be dead. The vision bothered me so much that I eventually gave up eating chicken or anything that had legs to run around with. Has this something to do with my mother or was this my own uninfluenced choice? Sometimes, I wonder where the Me who is my mother's daughter ends and the Me who is entirely myself begins." This theme is cringe-worthy enough the first time, but when it is repeated several times, it really becomes intolerable. I suspect that the repetition of this, among other themes, is the author's attempt to vindicate herself and assuage her guilt.

The author professes that this book is her mother's story, but bits of her life keep slipping past her guard and into her book, and she even half-apologises with the platitude, "but that is another story". Perhaps a lapse could be tolerated occasionally, but they occur with disturbing frequency and so are unforgivable.

Some parts are unconsciously ironic. Take, for example, this classic line: "He told me that my capacity to learn Arithmetic was minimal, which was true, and that I get all the English tenses mixed up, which was also true". A Freudian slip, perchance?


Quotes:

Have you paid for the VCD player? [Me: Yes!] Well it doesn't look as if you'll be able to use it.

Gabriel! Check it out. [Me: S.C. !] Suck Cock. My name is 'Suck Cock'

[To me] Don't roll up your sleeves, you look like an RGS girl.

All my medics don't have girlfriends. All gay, is it?

I'm setting up a business next time. Lak Sat Bar.