Just talked to David Thian, prompted by Screwed Up Girl's horrifying description. Of course, she was being overly dramatic (as usual).

I haven't talked to him since last year, actually. I don't talk to him all that much, but when I do, it's always for a long time.

I'm back from Pulau redang, Terengganu! Wuz Absowutewy Wunnerfoool!!

hurrying off to unpack, bathe, wash stuff, develop photos,
Andrew gan

The wedding I just came back from was a very Christian wedding. A very CHINESE Christian wedding. My medical officer married a pharmacist. How apt :) Though she's the daughter of a reverend - aren't they supposed to be celibate?

Everything was in Chinese, with nary an English word to be heard. Okay, that's not true, most parts except for the hymms and songs of praise, the vows and the slideshow of the couple's lives, were translated, albeit in halting English. But hearing so much Mandarin, and proper Mandarin to boot, not the half past six crap that I hear everyday in camp, was a real shock to my system. However, the background music played was totally in English, probably because no one sells CDs with songs of praise in Chinese!

Since all of us medics met up before going to the church - Sion Presbyterian Church, we were naturally late. And since the wedding started on time, a rarity I would assume, we arrived just as the processional was about to begin. So we were herded to the "cry room", a soundproof room on the second floor of the church, to witness the proceedings. What a sophisticated church.

There was a reading of scripture, Ephesians 5:22-33:

"Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband."

Together with the wedding vows, where the wife-to-be vowed to obey her husband and the citing of the sayings of Ancient Chinese Scholars about a woman's place, I thought that this was just a touch chauvinistic. But no one really follows them to the letter anyhow, just to the spirit which, of course, is infinitely more important. Then again, the groom pledged his worldly goods to his bride, so. :)

The choir sang a song in English, and it's enunciation was atrocious. The harmony was also off and they didn't blend very well. Oh well, I suppose they don't practice very often, being adults and all.

The priest related the story of this pretty girl who was pursued by 3 brothers. To prove their love, she asked them to run into and bang their heads on a wall. The first two refused and the second two, naturally, assented. In the end, the wall was made of paper, and the two got married. This story is supposed to be about the power of love, but I think, rather, that it is about the power of stupidity and erroneous definitions of courage as involving pointless, self-destructive acts. Bah.


On the way there, while on the MRT, I witnessed a public display of affection. Teenage love is so sweet. They way they looked at, talked to and lovingly touched each other brought a smile to my face. But the part when she put her hand on her hip would've scandalised many. Oh, did I mention that they were both girls? :) One was very clearly the dominant 'male' partner, while the other was obviously the more submissive 'female'. Lest anyone accuse of of mistaking best friends for lovers, it has to be known that their body language made their relationship very obvious, so.

On Bus 9 to the church, I saw this woman with a tudung and a Hard Rock Cafe baseball cap. Heh, cute!

My "China Bag" has now been decorated. I've pinned my RJ badge (note distinction. RJ vs RI badge. I've counted at least 10 differences between the two before) and my Raffles Voices choir badge on it. Now watch me get beaten up by Hokkien Pengs.

Ahh Blogger's finally recovered from it's ailment. Going to my MO's wedding later, or I'd have gone to collect my A Level Cert with FLCH.

Now, what is FLCH you may ask? I saw it written on the 3M noticeboard one day, in happier times (1998), and asked someone what it stood for. His reply: "Fucking Lanjiao Cheebye Head". Oh well, so many people don't like Francis :)


The thing about status.blogger.com is it only tells you AFTER problems are resolved. Gah.

Eh, why do you need a crossfade plugin post winamp 2.79? :) Nullsoft gives you one for free - and it works pretty well, too. No fancy features, but it does what it's supposed to do (crossfading) well. [Ed: Sqrsoft's plugin appears to be nice. Oh well, I'll let the audiophile advise! So please do. Get Sqrsoft Advanced Crossfading Output at www.sqrsoft.com.ar]

I rather like the pidjin mandarin in the army, it's fun mangling chinese/english/hokkien/teochew/cantonese/malay all in one sentence. Will learn to speak it better. The Coxford Advanced Dictionary *(for singlish)* is a big help. Try Talking Cock and take a look at it :)

I've been accused of having an attitude problem in my camp. Something about my strict/meticulous attitude towards the phrasing of english in the documents which I vet, which accuser calls "England". Will strive to be more meticulous/strict in the future. :D [Ed: Contribute stuff to "Improve Your English"!]

Bookout post:

Restored Post

Walking into camp, I saw that tanks have license plates. Ooo, how much should I bid for a tank COE? And I can just imagine a tank being pulled over for speeding.

After 2 real days in the Medical Centre, it is apaprent that when it is slack, it is very slack, but when it is busy it is very busy. On Thursday morning, we were so free that after 10am there was nothing to do and I could even talk to recruits (see below). But in the afternoon, some ADF people training in the area were suffering from physical exhaustion, brought on by trudging with an over-heavy load from 5:30am-1:30pm without any refilling of waterbottles, and their refusal to eat combat rations because they taste bad. Dave was one of the casualties - "Now you know how xiong my unit is". Oh, and I was called to IV one of them. Of course, I missed.

My thermometer is apparently very good. Someone else's is $12. Gah.

The canteen operators have a drawer in the filing cabinet for their medical dockets. Right.

Kumar in 40SAR gets a night off everyday unless there's night training. And the clerks wake up at 11 or 12. Oh well, the benefits of being in the Best Combat Unit.

I was walking to the Medical Centre when I saw some people gathered around this tube stuck into the soil. Apparently there was some rat in there and they'd killed it by pouring Printol in and were now trying to fish it out. Erk.

Seeing Staff Sergeant technicians, I was joking about Officer technicans. And one day I really saw one. Oh well.

I think I've found the reason why they're so ridiculously strict about many procedural matters - ISO. Stupid ISO.

We were having a Duty Medic 2i/c briefing when I chanced across the patient record board. And I saw, "S8311418E PTE Clarence Lun Yaodong. Unit: HQ/NDP Diagnosis: Asthma. Admit/Discharge: 030702 ATTN B 1 Day". Ahem. And there's some discrepancies with the log book - apparently he was admitted on the first, and was a private at Armour HQ, and had asthma and got 2 days ATTN C. 2 days later, he became a recruit (or was it the other day round?) at the School of Armour/STW. Julian heard a rumour that Yaodong went to DB for 2 years. Aww.

A batch of PSC LMS scholars, in their second year of indenture (apparently local scholars disrupt only in year 2), came for their Fit For Infantry, pending disruption. The SAF is so kind. They give you a checkup both before and after they enslave you.

We were waiting to knock off work on Wednesday, our first real day in camp, when an officer came up after jogging to ask why so many medics were sitting around. Then he got us to take his blood pressure.

I've finally seen one, and only one, cat.

A bought a black bag to sling by my side at E-mart, named, very succinctly, "China Bag". Very convenient for bringing stuff around, it is. And cheap too - $5.50, enthralling even non bargain seeking me. However it's very plain, so I should find some ways to personalise it.

The E-learning centre is fun. However, it seems that the only thing everyone learns is how to check their email!

There was a plump girl who came to report sick. This rather surprised me as I thought plump girls didn't have the desire to join the army. Maybe she joined the army to lose weight, as most females I told about my weight loss during BMT professed to want to!

I'm thinking of getting new nametags for my No 4 shirts. "S Q Seah" is just a touch impersonal. I'm looking for something with a bit more character. Maybe I'll even get one saying "Agagooga".

I was talking to some mono-intake recruits from AETC (Armour Engineers Training Centre). They all are of private diploma education level and lower. They're quite happy they weren't sent to Tekong, where they'd have to drink the bitter Tekong water and be bitten by the Commando mosquitoes there. Some of them may be lucky and become drivers after their BMT! Lucky.

The treatment room, from smelling of Printol, suddenly smelt like salted vegetables (kiam chye) on Thursday. Hmm.

I visited Somchaya's storeroom during lunchtime on Thursday. It's a veritable house of unknown pleasures! Ahh lucky storeman. The air-con is very cold and comfortable so he can read his book (at this moment, Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind)in comfort. On that visit I also found out what the first, second, third and fourth kind, a la "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". Apparently the first kind is when you see a bright light. The second is when you see a UFO. The third's when aliens come out and the fourth occurs when you are taken inside the UFO. Yet another eternal mystery solved!

The pidgin bastardised tongue that passes for Mandarin in the Army, and indeed much of Singapore, really irks me, much more so than proper Mandarin. The grammar is wrong and all words above Primary 4 difficulty level are not used and English is substituted for them instead, so that you have sentences like "Wo3 yao4 take responsibility" when the correct sentence would be "Wo3 yao4 fu4 ze2 ren4". So much for a populace that's effectively bilingual. I, at least, can say that I am effectively monolingual. Most of Singapore is effectively "non-lingual", for lack of a better word. My damning indictment might sound harsh, but I insist it is true.

Folie snapped the tourniquet trying to find my veins, so they used a glove as an improvised tourniquet. Smart.

Before booking out Thursday night, we had a barbeque. It was the first time I started a fire for one, and my second or third time using a lighter too. Oh well. The Camp Commandant's Officer (CCO) Senior Medic had prepared some crabs for us. How rare. But Seetoh tricked me into thinking that the crab crap was crab roe. Grr. Towards the end, I realised that all the other new medics in 42SAR had sidled off, so I cleared up a bit and left myself. Since a taxi was coming out of camp, I took it. And was shocked at the $15 taxi fare. Ugh.


Quotes:

"[On A Levels] You want to know what I got? ABFF... F is for econs... management... A is for absent... [The] B... [is] together"

Our CO's nice. He gave us half a day off. I'd have booked out earlier but I had a Medic's BBQ.

Weird requests:

"say.
got any pictures of chio people?"

And, on prom:

"I'd rather have gone around taking photos of people zao-gnging."

On Som's advice, I'm giving Sqrsoft Advanced Crossfading Output another try, since SB Live won't give me the "Wave device in use" error. That does have its bad points though, like irritating noises coming up when I'm listening to mp3s.

I found this excellent site containing sheet music for many, many Game Piano Collections soundtracks. It's a very nicely designed site, too. Pity I have no idea what the Doremi track thing is, but I'll figure it out.

Here's the site:
Squaresound

I am posting this from the Armour E-learning centre. Nice place. LCD monitors too. But apparently we can't use ICQ and IRC. Not that that stops Somchaya anyhow :) And the guy next to me is using ICQ2GO, so.

They've also somehow disabled Windows Media Player's video playback, so when you play videos only sound comes out. And they've Quicktime 4 here to tempt you, until you find out most modern movie trailers need Quicktime 5 to play - and the automatic updater's port is blocked.

Darn thing that wipes all changes made to the system on reboot!

Someone ate the names! My Name!!!

I hear the unofficial candidate for head prefect is Act Cute 2's sister. Eeeee.

Everyone is either in school or in camp, and Andrew's busy skewering sea turtles for his dinner barbeque. Damn.

You know you're bored when you start listening to Hebrew music: "Yom Seh Le - Yisrael".


Why does everybody like to link to my now-mutilated RGS Yearbooks page? Even if Tripod did cut my disk space allocation by 3/5 and I'm too busy to find a new webhost. I love referrer reports :)

And some vindication for my long neglected project:

"i don't know. my school annual 2001 has disappeared yet again. it's almost scary to think of what my brother can do to it now that he has torn out almost all the pages already. i actually treasure my possessions. but i... i can't tell him off for destroying something which i actually treasured. my school annual -- my sec 1 year -- i have no idea why my brother would do such a thing."

Oh dear. I still have my 1997-2000 yearbooks. 1996 disappeared when I moved. And 2001 is not out yet. Or something. Apparently our A level certs are out already. I must go and get them one day.

Today was SAF day. I hate SAF day. We arrived at 2+pm, and waited till 6+pm for the pre-parade segment to start. And it gets worse.

I was marinated in rainwater for 6 hours, as it rained non-stop, being a drizzle at the best of times. Mother Nature was showing her disdain of the SAF! In fact, she threw a lightning storm at us, but they didn't declare Cat 1 or even activate their wet weather plan! We were hapless, and expressed our frustration by moaning and shouting when the rain became heavier. I have a feeling that's going to be interpreted as "enthusiasm" in official accounts ie Pioneer Magazine. Some poor JC students had to attend the parade - their waterproof uniforms stood them in good stead!

For a time, we were also not permitted to go to the toilet, evidently because they feared we would abscond. And when they finally let us go, everyone started smoking in the toilet, so the air was thick with smog. And the smoke was even worse after the whole event, when even more people went to the toilet to relieve themselves, in more ways than one.

The MCs tried to get us to do a SAF wave, but on their first attempt, no one responded. In the end, the wave went a respectable three rounds around the stadium, complete with rubbish flying into the air as the wave crest moved through the stadium - I hope no one was hurt by the killer litter!

Quite a few items were stolen from NDP. During the recycled unarmed combat segment, one guy ran out late, so he was running way behind everyone, struggling to catch up. Aww.

They presented some soppy communalistic song by Tanya Chua. Except that she wasn't there - they just played a track from her CD. That was utterly cheapskate.

One member of the band passed out during the parade! Erk. It couldn't have been heatstroke, since it was raining all the way. Oh dear.

Malay is very weird - there is even a drill command to lower your head even. A funny sounding phrase was also shouted repeatedly - "punji punji". It made everyone amused and everytime it was shouted, people giggled or sniggered. A malay friend advises: "sheesh i was wondering what was so funny bout it. i think it refers to the flag bearers". Ahh.

They gave the President a Gore-Tex raincoat and a jockey cap to wear. Yeh. We, on the other hand, were issued with Vietnam-made, blue coloured condom-ponchos which tore easily and left us semi-dry at best. I think half the SAF is going to report sick tomorrow!

As expected, a September 11th reference was made in Tony Tan's speech. Maybe someone should have hijacked a plane and flown it into the National Stadiumm, killing the top brass of the Armed Forces. 9/11 is overused, especially to justify all manner of repressive policies. Also, much was made of the 'dedication' and 'commitment' of NSmen. More like our fear of going to jail.

The MC kept pronouncing 'provost' as 'provo'. Irritating.

All the items involving marching were too long and too draggy. They deadened our minds. Which is why I'm so uncharacteristically un-verbose in this paragraph.

After the whole thing, my sister and brother in law brought me a change of clothing, which is why I don't have footrot now. We had dinner nearby, at Wildfire's, and the waitress there was as tall as me and reminded me of Yunxin, with the similar bearing and slightly familiar features.


Something interesting I found out while trying to find out what the hell the Peoples' Defence Force does.

I wanted to upgrade my computer to WinXP with the CD that Tim burnt for me, but my sister came along after I'd barely started the Upgrade Advisor and demanded to use the computer, and she was using it till 1:46AM (I know the time because I checked the IE cache), by which time I'd fallen asleep.

I got my digital thermometer just now. Yes, we have to get our own for our work (I forgot to note this down in my last bookout post. Duly amended, in addition to something about dogs). Disgusting, isn't it? The one I got, from Bukit Timah Plaza Pharmacy, cost $29.80. Ouch. Apparently they're $15-17, so maybe I got cheated, but time is more valuable than money, especially bookout time, so I just forked out that hefty sum.

Maybe 1 1/2 of the 3 boxes (small cartons, in fact) of Flake that my sister bought in a fit of madness for me on the way back from one of her last holidays, to Malta, if I remember correctly, are still languishing in the fridge. And that's after she's given one box away. Oh well, she was really too enthusiastic.

My brother in law got 16 1L packets of Cyprina Grapefruit juice at Bukit Timah Plaza just now. Besides the fact that Grapefruit juice is disgusting in and of itself, the packets now come with Halal stickers! Ugh. I'm rather sickened and disgusted by the thought that anyone thought animal products might be put into fruit juice, and anyway nothing in the world is Halal due to the water cycle and the water table, so while waiting for my brother in law to drive the car over, I wrote "Haram" on as many packets I could find, excepting the sole pre-existing Haram packet (the one which didn't have one of the silly stickers). That said, Halal grapefruit juice can't beat Halal Ice (Tuck Lee Iceworks).

Had dinner with Tim The Great just now. I hadn't seen him since last year - over the Hari Raya weekend when I booked out!

He taught me how to program dotted notes in Nokia Composer. Ugh, I swear it's not in the manual (as is a lot of other stuff). He was surprised that I composed by ear, so he showed off his scores. How arrogrant (sic) :)

I finally compiled a playlist of all his songs for him. I wonder if he will bother to maintain it, though. You can view the list here.

4:37AM:

My upgrade attempt failed. Damn. Ah I can sleep during SAF Day.

Bookout post:

Restored Post

We have not enough beds and cupboards, so for now none of us have cupboards, and 4/6 of us sleep in the sick bay! It's quite comfortable, except for the walk to there and back.

On the job training is really mind boggling. There's lots of stuff to remember, and lots of paperwork to do. And we're all scared of forgetting to do certain things when registering patients and the like. Ugh. To make matters worse, we've to buy our own digital thermometers! Outrageous,

Yeh, I don't need to book out in collared shirts anymore.

The toilets at 42SAR are really nice. I thought it was only the toilets on the level of the offices, but when I used the toilet on the top floor where the Medical Platoon's bunk is, I was pleasantly shocked. BMT's facilities are supposed to be good already, but those in my unit are even better. The shower cubicles have doors! And the floors are tiled and there are flower designs on the tiles at chest level. Kind of like a 3 star hotel.

I've seen many dogs in camp. Yeh. And no cats. Double yeh.

My brother in law claimed that there was standby bed even in Units. Fortunately, this is not true. Goody.

Our post-NDP block leave with be from 12/8 to 17/8. This will leave me with 1/2 day left. I'm going to spend my next 14 days of leave, when it comes, as quickly as possible!

Zhongyong is stayout. Grr.

I found out what the two chevrons on the upper arm represent - it's the old corporal rank.

On nights off, Andrew Tan has to book in at 10+pm. Might's well not go out!

Our berets hadn't arrived yet, but the CCO Senior Medic wanted us to wear them by Monday, so we had to expend yet more credit at E-mart. I look horrible, like a French Painter at best, with mine on.

It's rather inane - there are specified times when one is allowed to use the arcade machines in camp. And there are, like 5 times throughout the day. 2 of them last half an hour and the other 3 last for 15 minutes! No one's gonna complete Metal Slug 3 (say) in half an hour. Though it does seem rather cheap - one of the machines costs 3 x 10 cents per credit. And it's quite up-to-date - I saw one KOF 2001 machine.

It's very funny. In one canteen there's a poster encouraging you to buy the (presumably more expensive) Singapore Red Bull, which has extra ingredients - including the most expensive of all of them, less sugar and is generally better, instead of the one meant for Indo-China. And then in the fridge of the drinks store, one sees only the Indo-Chinese Red Bull. Aww.

On Friday afternoon, we were mobilised for NDP cover. Or at least that's what we were told. When we arrived, we saw a lot of kiddies, and the MC announced, "Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls [Notice how for the older ones, it's ladies first, but it's vice versa for the kids], welcome to the opening ceremony of the Singapore Youth Festival 2002". And so I was sort-of involved in the SYF opening ceremony again, 6 years after my previous time.

The choir now sings more funky songs, with beats, stuttered rhythms and the like. But their costumes look as horrible as ever. Or worse. In 1996, the costume was a yellow shirt with a white collar and white bermudas with ridges running down them. This year, they have a white shirt and some dodgy-looking overtunic which looks like coloured fish scales glued together and stuck on soft leather. There's probably a name for that material, but it doesn't come to mind now. Their choreography is hilarious too. But then I usually find choreography hilarious. Anyhow, it involves swinging their white caps around, orange fans (yes, this is worse than the green ones I had) and some butt shaking and arm twirling.

They are still singing the stupid song, "We Share". In Sec 1, we in the choir had to sing it and I was wondering why the tune was so nice. When I became more versed in the ways of music, I realised that it was actually Holst's "I Vow To Thee My Country" with the nationalist lyrics replaced by communalistic ones written by Prof Edwin Thumboo. At least, the lyrics are not too cheesy, and they fit in with the cadence of the song. Now, they've added a descant part and some beats to the song. Ugh. Another of the songs they're still being made to perform is Pesta Belia. I was surprised that I still remembered the tune! Though I'd forgotten all the malay lyrics.

The parade commander is some RJ girl. Yeh.

Apparently some people, after passing out from SISPEC/OCS, get posted to... the NCC. Wow.

I find marching with a skirt amusing. As I do girls' lifting of their legs to bang - apparently the angle of lift's supposed to be between 45 and 80 degrees, but it seems they are lazy and always raise their legs as low as they can get away with. The sight of the Chinese High boys marching in shorts also caused me a moment of mirth. I think I get amused too easily.

And of all the things that happened during the SYF Opening Rehearsal, the one that left me most flabbergasted was seeing some people. 2 people, specifically. It was disgusting, but yet again, I ran into Huijun and Huimei! Everywhere I go, no matter what I do, they will show up. Anyhow they were volunteering with the Red Cross Ambulance Service, and started one week ago. So all the kiddies were in safe hands with our favourite, valiant twins.

*** [Ed: Name removed by request, due to person's vanity], doing his signal duties, looks hilarious. He wears his unit singlet, making him look a bit less professional. He has all manner of equipment strapped to his body, and antennas stick out all over, making him look like a suicide bomber. And he has not one, but two headsets on his head, attached by a headband that makes him look like a jungle boy, and frazzles his hair.

There's the usual marching band competition, and as always, TKSS and Bowen are among the finalists. The bands seem to be made up of mostly females, which is somewhat odd - I didn't think bands have the stigma that choirs have for males. The antics of drum majors never fail to amuse me, especially their antics with the oversized toothpicks. And their throwing them in the air and (sometimes) failing to catch them. I wonder if anyone has gotten injured before - Newspaper headline: "Drum major maimed by his own staff". The TKSS marching band wears black-and-white striped shirts. They look like prisoners.

We had a frugal serving of Pizza Hut food for dinner on Friday. Ugh.

After the SYF rehearsal was a NDP technical rehearsal. Which meant we just sat there and stoned. And the older medics were bored, so the senior medic decided to test us on POCM! My phone rang when I was the casualty, and the MO recognised my ringtone. So far the only other person who has is the doctor at the clinic I usually go to. Maybe there's something with doctors and classical music.

The rehearsal ended late, and we ended up leaving at about 11:15pm, sleeping only at about 12:40am. As we had to wake up at 6:10am, we were very tired on Saturday.

On Sunday, we finally covered an actual rehearsal. Except that we spent the time before and after lunch being casualties for the medical teams to practice on. The casualty cards we got were horrendously misspelt - "diddy, cannot hear" (giddy), "deep painting" (panting) and "knock on conrete" (concrete) were just some of the misspellings on them. I was talking to a medic from 5SIR. He was malay, as were most of his fellow 5SIR medics (so much for racial equity). He said that being a platoon medic wasn't actually that tough - he always waits until the fighting has stopped until he goes in to treat the wounded, and he gets riflemen to do all the work - even neck and pistol dragging.

We had some Bandung which 6SIR had concocted, and as we were tasting it I was commenting that it tasted a bit sour and we'd get diarrhea later. Sure enough, I had mild diarrhea Saturday night. Gah.

As we rode in on the tonner, I saw movement in the Kallang Netball Centre. It was the Raffles Guys School Upper Secondary Netball Carnival. Yeh.

I theorise that the purpose of SAF personnel learning unarmed combat is so that they can put up items for National Day (the SAF already provides much of the parade contingent, the odd jobs force, medical cover, comms support and god knows what else - free labour!)! In a real fight you'd just use any style that came to hand, so to speak, to attack your opponent.

They have this stupid idea of "NDP radio" where they pretend that they are tuning into radio stations, which then play 4 songs in each of the 4 national languages (naturally). They brought in dancers from the Lindy Hop Ensemble, ACJC and CHIJ Katong (almost definitely from their Flesh Parades), Sriwana and some Indians who had no shirts identifying which organisation they belonged to (if any). to dance inanely, and probably the worst choreography was that for the most irritating Malay song of all time - Burung Kakatua (lyrics will NOT be found below for this), sung in a most ear grinding arrangement by a most annoying Malay woman. Gah.

Some items in NDP were reused from the SYF opening ceremony - how cheapskate. So we saw the kiddies from Temasek Secondary and CHIJ Toa Payoh and St Theresa's Convent running around again. And these are really kiddies - most of them were tiny, Sec 1s or Sec 2s at most. Someone was commenting that he came to our location because he wanted to see zha bor, but in the end it was "xiao3 mei4 mei4" (little sisters). Aww.

They announced that the choir was going to sing a song - "Semoga Bahagia", composed by some Mohammad guy (aren't they all). I was very happy that it wasn't by Iskandar Ismail, he-who-composes-all-national-songs, and the song played along until a familiar part came. Then, I realised, to my horror, that it was actually the Children's Day song that we were forced to sing every Children's Day in Nanyang (how ironic, a malay song in a cheena school!), and I'd last sung in Secondary 2 or 3 when Mr Johari got us a cake for Children's Day but wanted us to sing the song. They'd arranged it, added beats and added new bits (not least the words "Semoga Bahagia", which I believe didn't appear in the original song), which was why I didn't recognise it at first. Lyrics can be found at the end of this post!

There was one part where they released many balloons into the air. I don't know how many seagulls and sea otters are going to choke on them and die just for this silly spectacle. NDP is just silly pageantry. Well, you know what they say about the proletariat and Bread and Circuses.

It seems the marshallers' jobs are very sad. They are like sheepdogs, running alongside and behind the kiddies as they rush onto the tarpaulin-covered field.

During the item involving Temasek Secondary, one little girl's giant white balloon popped. Aww.

We had anemic servings of Pizza Hut (Yes, again. I wonder how those taking part in every rehearsal can stand eating the same thing every time) and KFC respectively for lunch and dinner on Saturday. They're so stingy.

If you want to read the official line on NDP 2002, you can visit the hilarious website.

On the way home I crossed an overhead bridge when I shouldn't have so I ended up traversing the length of the Nicoll Highway. Oh well.


Quotes:

"[On NDP cover] Nu3 de4 yong4 [For females, perform] CPR. Nan2 de4 yong4 [For males, perform] IV. For all types of illness."

"[Me on Jaime Teo: What's her claim to fame? What's her claim to fame?] Boobs. Brainless boobs... Ms University-Singapore (Universe)"


I need new shoes. My black dress shoes went missing and my 2 pairs of track shoes are rather battered. And I lack casual shoes.

My thursday night can be described here, but I would like to make some points.

- I've quarelled with Screwed Up Girl before
- I said it was going to be a REAL PJ girl. And she doesn't know PJ girl anyway.
- The RV alumni didn't want me
- It's not nice to invite the whole world along when you yourself are being invited, and not organising the thing
- Your boyfriend is not a leech. And it *is* okay to go do things on your own. Not doing something with him does not mean that you are abandoning him, or choosing someone else over him
- Marcia. Not "Marsha" :)
- Crying all the time, at matters of little import, is not a good practice

This does sound rather mean, but I'm actually not angry anymore, am in a rather good mood, albeit tired after NDP cover.

And a misc point:

- The ice machine was right behind me and Andrew. Self service!


Semoga Bahagia

Sama sama, maju ka hadapan
Pandai chari, pelajaran
Jaga diri, dalam keshatan
Serta sopan santun, dengan kawan kawan
Dengan hati, bersih serta suchi
Sama sama, hormat dan berbudi
Jaga tingka, pemuda pemudi,
Adat dan budata
Jun jong tinggi,
chapai-la lekas chita chita
Pemudi pemuda
Supaya kita ada harga dimata dunia.

NDP cover is very tiring.

And it appears that Tim's Cat High teachers have found his page! My cover is now blown.

I'm leaving tonite for trengganu!!
Bye bye everyone... till later. Supposed to be back in singapore on 7 july.

And she got her sweet revenge (*wince*)!!!

Andrew gan

Yes indeed. A Pes E soldier getting posted to a camp in Khatib when he's actually living on the other side of the island isn't exactly what I'd call a carefully planned posting. Heh. That said, I actually quite like my posting. Other people say they like my posting too, but I wouldn't know about that.

At least you don't get your food prayed over in a SAR unit :) Heh. That, at least, addresses one of your pet peeves, does it not?

I must thank Bioware for producing yet another soul-sucking, social life destroying, GEM of a game. Must... play... more... not blog now.

A grammar mistake that I was irked by, but forgot the name of - Dangling Modifiers.

Restored Post

Had my Life run at East Coast this morning. The pace wasn't too fast, which was why I was able to complete the run without collapsing, albeit finishing almost last. It ended at about 9:30, and then I had the rest of the day off. Oops. I was -forced- to take leave for the rest of the day. Sigh. Apparently we can adamantly refuse to take leave, but I think it'll cause trouble.

Everyone but us was wearing the unit singlet, in dark green and emblazoned with "The Cutting Edge" on the back. However badly designed it might be, at least it beats the stupid default Army singlet with a dull "ARMY" printed on the back. And there's some weird tradition where everyone will gather, touch each other and shout suddenly. What an exotic culture my unit has.

They indented breakfast for us, but didn't provide cutlery. So we broke bits off the styrofoam box the noodles came in. Actually I suspect that breaking the styrofoam releases carcinogens. Oh well.

They're thinking of holding Life runs every Thursday, as the schedule permits, and then giving us half a day off. Doesn't sound too bad to me if every time is like today's.

I don't look forward to my 3 week stint in Australia with my batallion. Ugh. Maybe I'll see Andrew Tan and all my friends in Armour units there. And we can kill Kangaroos, Dingos and Koalas and roast them together. Right.

Rather tired now after the run. But I had lunch with my father at Copthorne Grand (He's bought the gourmet card so there're discounts at restaurants owned by the Copthorne group) - Antipasti, Scampi Risotto and a most excellent Plum Pie with Lime Sherbert. And I'm going to meet Kairen, Andrew and Screwed Up Girl later for dinner. And a real PJ girl. Gee, imagine that. [NB: I debated the relative merits of using "Gee" and "Wow", and I think "Gee" gives that subtle shade of meaning, so. Kind of like that stupid Chinese poet who thought about whether to use "tui1" or "qiao1" in some poem about a monk banging on a door in the middle of the night. Or something. And look what other stuff "PJ girl" brings up.]

Bookout Post:

After a day, I'm back home again.

Restored Post

Reviewing everyone's posting again today, many of us have come to the conclusion that posting is haphazard. Or maybe, in fact, done to spite us. People are posted far from their homes, when other people are posted near their houses. And PES A people who can clear their SOCs and IPPTs get Airbase jobs while PES B people who can't go to 2SIR and Armour Regiments.

42SAR only picked us up at about 2pm, when few of us were left. After a long ride, we ended up in the middle of nowhere - Sungei Gedong camp. Of the camps in the area, it is the most remote and the most far in. It's about 50 minutes at most from Chua Chu Kang MRT on the 175 (!), which means a safe timing from my home to there is 1 hour 40 minutes. I think I can forget about going home during nights off already, and can become a Lot 1 kid like Andrew Tan. The place is somewhat new and beats SMM. But then almost everywhere does, so.

Again, our so-called leave is being burnt - half a day tomorrow and 1 day on Tuesday, and some more after the National Day Parade because, just arriving, we have no "off" days to use up. So much for 14 days' annual leave.

I tend to be depressed the first few days of my posting to a new unit. BMT, SMM, and now 42SAR. I hope it passes. Since I'll probably be there for the next 103 weeks (thereabouts).

The requirements for my unit: IPPT Silver and SOC timing of 10 minutes (for those who've been there for 1 year or less) and Marksman at range. Remedial training (RT), here I come! Or some form of injury, which is likely. I just hope I don't get scheduled for weekend RTs. On the other hand, the requirements are IPPT Gold and SOC <9:30 at Andrew Tan's 41SAR, so.

To make things worse, most of us will probably become platoon medics, which we are told means that we will be armoured infantrymen, running, or at least walking, alongside the tanks. Oh well. And apparently my senior Edmund's wrong - platoon medics aren't attached to the medical centre when not on exercise.

There seem to be no Malays in camp. Ah, it's been long since I had pork in an SAF camp!

Being a regiment, the place is supposedly quite regimental, so it's easy to sign extra duties. Oh well. At least we don't need to salute officers. And we are supposed to get a long weekend a month.

Interestingly, the bunk of the medics attached to the HQ have numerous printouts of Japanese-looking Asian women in bikinis. No Caucasians. Interesting - both the choice of pinups and the printing out - usually people choose Caucasians and put up posters as opposed to computer printouts.

I saw some book reviews on the table. Apparently the CO asked them to do a book review each recently. Eheh.

One of the medic has a Palm M10x, though he has no license. Ahh.

One of the medics who helped orient us took the train back with me. He was from JJC, and he says about 20% of the people there are A level students. It seems the rest are the mono intake. I wonder if I'll mix well. And apparently a BMI of 32 can get one downgraded! Ooh.


Bryan Ang has just sold his soul to the Army till he reaches the age of 38. It's been nice knowing you :)

Due to NDP, I probably won't be able to go for KMUN (Raffles Model United Nations Conference). Argh.

Went with Andrew Gan to eat dinner today. After much vacillating we decided on Nooch - we might've gone to Black Angus but it'd have busted our budgets. And after that we spent a while walking up and down Orchard Road and talking.

We saw Megan and her friend at Orchard MRT, after their late night studying session. She now has very pullable earrings and she's grown her hair longer.

"I think Grace would make a sweet wife" - Andrew Gan

I saw an SAJC girl on the bus from SMM. She was wearing a half zippered windbreaker. And no tie! Gasp.

POP post:

Restored Post

POP loh! Yes, I've passed out yet again, and I got my Medic Brassard (Armband) today.

I've been posted, along with Folie and Seetoh, to the 42nd Singapore Armour Regiment. Some say it is rather tough, while others say it is slack. According to Andrew Tan, in another armour unit, we only work when someone gets injured. But then my unit might be different. I hope we just get to sit in APCs. According to a guy 5 years older than me who fortuitously messaged me on ICQ today, the only things I have to worry about are SOC, Unarmed Combat and Overseas Exercises. Well. But then it is in Lim Chu Kang, in the middle of nowhere. Zhongyong and Somchaya, whose camps are in the vicinity, say that it takes 45 minutes, and 1 hour tops to get to Chua Chu Kang MRT station from the inner camps, though, so it is not *quite* that bad. Guan Hong suggests I buy a bike to ride there and back :)

The way they post us does seem rather random - some PES A people got cushy jobs. Yew Yew is off to Paya Lebar Airbase, with Simon, Jeremy gets to go to Tengah Airbase and Zahrenn, HQAMS. Argh. My buddy is staying at SMM to become an instructor, but he doesn't like the place. Aww.

Our Parade Commander, who is also our course commander, turns very funnily. He does a half jump, and it is very amusing.

Monday wasn't stay out after all - we were conned. And we didn't even get a night off either because the sergeants screwed up our parade rehearsal so much, they needed another one to prepare themselves (though admittedly they had more things to take care of than us). At least Tuesday's stayout so I've a night at home before I go to unknown perils in my unit!

We had a blood donation drive on Monday. Apparently in the past, it was compulsory to donate blood but nowadays, they've made it optional. And they give anaesthetic. Woo.

The cookhouse has sunk to new depths. They used Maggi Chicken Flavour Instant Noodle Soup Powder as a base for their "Egg Flower Soup" - you could see the spring onion bits floating in the soup!

Being very bored, people started attacking each other on the last night. Or at least those on the lower bunks of each bunk bed. At almost 12 midnight, I woke to the feeling of toothpaste on my forehead. Some had it worse, though. Kumar had toothpaste on his forehead and his bed was soaked with Hartman's Solution. And Steven's bed was strewn with combat rations!

I think most of the SCDF people are quite chubby. Though many of the male personnel are quite cute!

They were taupoking (they call it 'kerepok' here) people again. And someone jumped from the top level of the bunk bed. Today, we did it to our section instructor, and he was rather dramatic, going "Ahh!" and "Help!" all the time. Ouch. And there were pillow fights too. Many of us (including me) got hit, and it was rather traumatic. Adding some festive atmosphere, Folie threw a packet of powder in, making the air turn white. And our Platoon Best Trainee, Dave, get angry because the powder fell all over his uniform. After my turn at being whacked, I couldn't stand for a while. Even though the instruments of offence are pillows, it still hurts somewhat.

One of Justin's socks has such a big hole, his whole heel sticks out through it. I offered to sponsor him a new pair!

Zhang has a good figure, which is especially evident because he straps the velcro of his Smart 4 all the way. I think that now that his wife has given birth, his figure is better than hers!


Quotes:

"For many, this brings bad memories of the past 11 weeks (back)"

"[On both of us going to 42SAR] Just now I shook hands with you because I thought I'd never see you again... You better not become my buddy. Nevermind, you become my buddy good, got a lot of food to eat... If we go Australia I buy you another polar bear. (if you, it will be good because I will have, go to, will buy)"

Yes, folks, knowing how lazy Screwed Up Girl is, I called Wang Yi up himself. And he's not in jail. He's in the Air Force, doing Air Defence Artillery! He's just passed out of Suffer In Silence blah blah and finished his 1 week Air Force Orientation. So that's settled.

In other news of lazy people, I called up my sister's mother in law yesterday to ask her to buy fewer apples. Not seeing her son very often, she resorts to buying apples to show her love in some way. The apples are very juicy and sweet. Except that we get so many, we can't finish them, and have to use them in cooking. We were all getting sick of apples, and my brother in law didn't have the guts to call up his mother and ask her not to give him so many apples in the future, so I had to do it. And I was asked about my life and whether it was laxer than before :)

I am heavier than Nelson Kwei. Oh dear. Maybe I *should* lose weight :)

My mother just made my sister get upset and cry again. Sigh. This is pointless, and I wonder why she keeps doing it. Not like it makes her happy or anything.


I was sorely disappointed when I turned on the TV at about 6:40, to see some Mediabots show on Channel i. But on checking the listings, I see that a show called "Power Rangers Light Year" (bah) is on next Tuesday. Yeh. Maybe this is some cheapskate ripoff of Lightspeed Rescue.

If there's one thing I dislike more than football, it's movies about football! Just watched "Bend It Like Beckham". Twas okay, except for my principled (slight) dislike of football movies :) Except that it also had another overused theme - East Meets West in Britain, where East is Indian. Though Sheila claims this is only the second one so far. Well.


Yeh, we're stayout tonight and tomorrow night!

Audiogalaxy has been dead for some days. Oh well.

My stats (since May 2001): sent: 106,588.10 MB / recv: 5,344.72 MB.

I hope I made a lot of people happy :)

Bookout post:

Restored Post

As expected, many of those who'd done guard duty on Saturday got an MC for Sunday and Monday. 5 of the 13 of us, in fact. And 3 reported sick on monday morning. Though the Duty Officer kept his promise and gave the 4 who stayed back 2 hours more (till 11+) an off pass from about 12pm to 10pm.

The paos (buns) that we get for breakfast are provided by As-Sufi Islamic Food Industries. They often give us all sorts of disgusting and foul tasting paos, like sardine and sambal paos. To say nothing of the fact that our food is "islamic".

Sometimes, I feel like writing quite a bit, but often I just feel so weary, both physically and mentally, and apathetic, as a malaise comes on me. Especially when people are being asses and antagonising others to no visible end. Perhaps they are sadistic, bored, or trying to kill time, or they don't see it as antagonising others, merely as following their acerbic tendencies. Anyhow it is often easiest just to ignore them.

1/5 of my indenture is over! Yeh.

Tutty (Fruitti) keeps lots of goodies in her webbing pouches! Sweets, Oreos and who knows what else.

Quanxing and Xiankun are among the latest batch of people posted to SMM for the Combat Medic Course. They've been sweeping leaves the whole week (aww), and sleeping too. When I visited them Friday morn, the former was sleeping on the floor and the latter, playing Magic. Their course starts July 8th. Meanwhile, Chin Xiang's MP course starts in October. Gah.

We had an IV session on Monday, and I missed both Yew Yew and Zhang, 2 very easy to hit people! I put it all down to my (previously mentioned) sore eyes, of course. At least I didn't get poked at all that day due to my being in a threesome with Yew Yew and Chris.

Last week, my G2 Pilot pen disappeared when I lent it for the bookin/bookout book. Gah.

We had BCS practice on monday, and I was chosen to be a casualty. Poor riflemen.

Zhang is our Song i/c, but people don't like the creative songs that he comes up with, so he doesn't lead us in marching songs nowdays. Aww.

Inspired by Jeremy's putting a picture of him and his girlfriend on his cupboard door, I put a pic of Blue Bear on mine :)

Mr Ass Man came into our bunk at about 10pm on Monday to declare Lights Off. On the protestations of the rest, as they hadn't finished packing, he said "This is part of your night training". 15 mins later, everyone was spooked as his voice echoed down the bunk, but it turned out to be Jeremy doing a mean (as in good) impersonation of Mr Ass Man!

I finally found out why the MOCC always has 2 people marching at the side - one is the cadet platoon sergeant and the other the cadet platoon commander. Mmm.

As mentioned earlier, due to my fortuitous infection of sore eyes, I missed the field camp. And boy was I lucky. Though the first day was very slack - there was an opening address for some reason, and from 5pm-10pm, it was admin time, the other days were very taxing, mostly because it was very hot, and they failed to follow safety guidelines and have sufficient water parades - almost 10% of the trainees had heat exhuastion and concussed (and most were subsequently sent back to camp, with the more serious cases sent to hospital). At least they ate better than before - there are now 5 menus for field rations, and they've gotten rid of the most vile of the choices, like Pineapple Rice with Chicken and Chestnut Rice with Chicken. Every day now has one pasta dish, too.

I on the other hand had lots of fun :) Though I was the only one in quarantine, making it quite lonely, I did talk a bit with Yong Gen, Jason Lau and some of the medics. I caught up on sleep in the air-conditioned sick bay (until I got a headache), and also on some reading, finishing 1 1/3 issues of the Economist, and a good portion of Magii of Cyador. I also got to practice chortling to myself, thinking of the fun the rest were having at field camp. Oh yes and there was the terminal with Internet access which I used after office hours, when everyone'd gone home, and only the duty ambulance driver, duty medic and me were left.

There was also a small TV in the sick bay, which the duty medic carted outside to watch football on at night. I watched a bit on the first day, mostly Who Dares Wins (which now comes with a "kids, don't try this at home" warning). It was rather blurry, and after Who Dares Wins was America's Funniest Home Videos, which consists mostly of either animal antics or people falling down. Yeech. I didn't feel like further viewing, so I availed myself of the radio that had been left in the sick bay the first night and listened to 92.4 and the BBC.

My weight now is somewhere between 92.5kg (electronic weighing scale in the Basic Training Wing store) and 95kg (analog weighing scale in Maju Camp). Yeh.

Yong Gen claims that the SMM food is better than that found in BMTC2 cookhouse. I find that hard to believe. They forgot to indent my food for tuesday's lunch and thursday's breakfast, so I had to pay for canteen food (someone helped me buy fried rice for the former case and I was allowed to buy beehoon in the latter). Gah. Though they did provide Maju food for Wednesday's dinner and Thursday's lunch, and indeed it is substantially better than SMM's :)

I got tetracycline cream for my sore eyes, and it was very powerful! But then I'd already seen how powerful it was, having it seen its effects on the face of a certain someone who used it to clear up pimples :)

The driver who drove me back to SMM on Thursday (in one of the dinky station wagons) made a pit stop at the Maju mess to buy 4 Cornettos (they were on buy 1 get 1 free) for his driver friends. He was actually going to stop at Caltex, but the mess sold Cornetto :)

Most of the regimental police (RPs) in Maju are reservist! Their reservist duty is just to come back and sit inside the guard room, or stand around with a rifle. How fortunate! Apparently what my sergeant in BMT told me isn't true, that those in service vocations would become riflemen in reservist. For the drivers, only those who meet certain criteria can serve their reservist obligation as drivers, so the driver driving me told me.

My buddy tells me that during field camp, he smoked some. Sigh.


Quotes:

"Very funny - Gabriel. Every once in a while he will take out his notebook and write something down."

"[On kit replacement] You want [a] helmet, just go [to] HQ block and steal. There's a dummy of a medic with [a] helmet"

"[Sign] Nothing we do in peacetime warrants unnecessary risk of life (So what you do in war can warrant unnecessary risk of life?)"

"[Medical Officer on Quarantine] Don't you find it very enjoyable here? [Me: A bit lonely, better than field camp though] Yeah, I'd agree."

"[Medical Officer on Quarantine] Good life. Whole day, lie there, read book. I haven't had a day like that in many many years. [Me: Get sore eyes lah] You know what they'll do if I get sore eyes? They'll make me carry on working. [Medic: Wear sunglasses]"

"[Medic on Maju] All the medics here are quite plump"

"We went to Richard's funeral (grandmother's wake)"


After I booked out, Andrew asked me over to his place. He played with my polar bear and we had some fried popiah his mother made. I also gave him 24hrs worth of field rations (Menu 1), for him to give anorexic girls - one taste and they'll not want to eat anymore :)

Side-splitting SMS of the week: "Oh would you ever host me on your page ;) as a kiddie i fantasized abt gettin to live near yuchen and timothy."

Xiankun tells me they've skipped the silly idea of the 10 (effectively 13 because of the SIT Test) day field camp. Mmm.

My sister ate most of the Kettle Honey Roast Ham chips that Andrew Gan got for me! Gah.

Tim found something really quirky and funny:

The Mystery of Britney Spears' Breasts

I feel like cringing and vomiting :)

Ahem.

Projected schedule for next few days:
Friday afternoon- brazil vs. england. Then down to orchard, then evening going to kai's place to watch Germany vs. USA.
If england wins i'll sport a mohawk!!!

Saturday: Afternoon- spain vs. korea (go korea!!!). Then prepare for class dinner (my parents are having some family friends over for dinner at the same time)- help with cooking and stuff. Confirm with ns guys. Class party!!! Watch the senegal match.

Sunday- Church in morning. No other plans.

Hi. Don't know if i'll get to blog in this weekend, so here goes....

Touched down on tuesday. Arthur came to pick tiffany up- he looks cute!! And my parents drove out to buy some hawker food- kway teow and things- for me to eat.
Wednesday... woke up early, went for a run that slowed to a jog and slowed even further to a walk. Went to buy snorkelling equipment from Lucky Plaza- this good shop called Paris Departmental Store (sells snorkelling/diving equipment) It's at B1-116, Lucky plaza, tel: 67373628. Open Mon to Sat 10am to 7.30pm; closed on Sundays. They're helpful and will give advice and als give student discounts. Just walk through the main entrance of lucky plaza and look around- it's to your right.

Thursday- mum brought me for a haircut in the morning, (It's short n' spiky again!) i made my way home while she was perming her hair. Later she brought me to oriental hotel high tea where i ate and ate (yummy fruit sherbets!!!) and went to pick up daddy and drove down to a relative's house to visit. Since we were already at east coast we had dinner at Red House seafood- yummy!!

Later that nite i weighed myself- 75kg!! (buries face in hands) Will not eat any more food for the next fortnight!! Sub-70!

Am burning up my mum's SMS quota. Es-em-essed my class about class dinner on saturday at my place, inc. of watching the senegal vs. turkey match.

Friday- woke up at 8-ish for a jog, crossed the overhead bridge to wave at gabriel sitting at the stone table outside block 12 (Ooh! I saw which block is the cookhouse!! )... on my way back i walked thru rjc. But no teachers were around save the physics duo Sze and Wong.
Made more phone calls abt class dinner (i kept on forgetting about the prefix "6"!)

Welcome back to the little tiny red spot on the map, Andrew ~~~. We never really did miss your presence on the blog :)

I am bushed. After watching One Piece until 1 in the morning (it's good. Average artwork, but the fun characters, exaggerated fight scenes, and fun (and mostly positive - no angst!) story overall keeps me glued to the series.) I woke up at 0600hrs, booked in at 0730, repainted 3 rooms(oh the meaningful things we do in the army), and after that ran for 2.4km, followed by about 45 minutes in the gym. This means I am VERY tired. Yes indeed. This also means my mind isn't working very well, although this is difficult to tell apart from the 'usual' state my mind is in when I'm in "booked-in" mode.

Read through the ideal guy list. If I ever made an "ideal girl" list, I think i'd probably come up with something similar too, although the words "video-games" will probably be liberally distributed through the list, like so for example:
9. nice hands. no constantly bleeding cuticles or ragged nails, especially when playing with arcade sticks for video-games..

Also, no smoking, at all. And replace male chauvinist with "shy/demure" :) Hey, it's my list.

Last thing: I preordered Neverwinter Nights. It's coming tomorrow. I can't wait. I have no life, and will probably have less of one very soon.

I'm Baaaaaaaack!!!!!!

Oh. Hmm.

http://eatmejusteatme.50g.com/fifth.htm

"Wille: "I bet Sergeant Ong would be proud of us."
Me: "Mr Ong? There's no way he's a sergeant."
Ben: "Yes he is, he told all of us."
Me: "Yeah, maybe he's like an admin sergeant or something."
Ben: "No, he's infantry!"
Me: "Look, there's no way he's infantry."
Wille: "Come on, he's the queen of the battlefield."

Bad infantry jokes"


In what may result in (yet again), the author visiting and visiting hell on earth on me (I beg sufferance):

Another list of someone's "ideal guy" list which is yet another example of entry 44. "Drawing up elaborate lists detailing their "ideal" man and exchanging them with other similarly emotionally disturbed girls.". Though I'm not sure about the exchanging bit.

I'm not all -that- surprised when guys in my batch start smoking, they being exposed to the pernicious influence of Slavery and everything, but the girls too? Not that I have anything against females smoking (not more than I have against *anyone* smoking anyway).

I have to say, if I ever made such a list, I'd never put it up on the web. :) But then again, I've put up so much stuff, what's one more list?

Does everyone but me watch football?

Screwed Up Girl tells me that there's a rumour that the Conqueror of The School With The Most Indecent Uniform In Singapore Bar None (Wang Yi) is in jail. Can this be true?

I seem to have made amazing progress in my road to recovery. Mayhap my ailment was psycho-somatic in nature ;)


Ah, the perils of infamy:

Page title: Gossip- Hahahaha! I'm being naughty here.

"Evil Gossip! Enjoy yourself and indulge

@ "Nanyang Girls High is a smelly school, where girls wear watches with faces smaller than a 20 cent coin. It is the school with the most indecent uniform (bar one) in Singapore."

Evidence: *This quote is by Seah Shuqi Gabriel , an RJC year 2 student in 2001, and alumnus of NYPS and RI GEP.

1) When Gabriel was in NYPS, NYGH was at its old campus and they were next to each other.
2) Untrue at the moment, NYGH girls do where Baby-Gs
3) Considering that the NYGH uniform is white, sleeveless and pretty much low-cut, I agree. It is indecent, but bar one? Which school's is worse?

Counter:
1) NYPS and NYGH are now pretty far apart, no smell can be picked up. (NYGH has no smell in my view)
2) Baby-G wearers were spotted outside of term time and hence, school rules not in full force.
3) SCGS' uniform is similar to NYGH's, but sleeves are shorter, waist band and pleats present.

Verdict: NYGH has moved so his first point is not valid. Most NYGH girls I see wear small "20 cent sized" watches. SCGS has the more sexy uniform though not necessarily more indecent. This is due to the waist band for better defined hips and the shorter sleeves."

Well I never said the first sentence. Not exactly that way anyway. He paraphrased me so it isn't a quote.

Also seen on the site:

"Of course, I do have a soft spot for Raffles Girls School(Sec), but that is nothing of any real note. I do enjoy the gathering of
GEPpers(especially looking at people from a certain independent girls school which name starts with 'r')."

And his favourite yearbook is the much-desired, much-delayed RGS 2001 one. Some VS guy born in 1988 :)

Trala.

I have sore eyes. Trala. I'm in quarantine in Maju Medical Centre, trala. Our field camp starts today, trala. I'll be in quarantine till thursday probably, lala. There's a terminal with internet access, lala.

I'm flying back tomorrow on tuesday!!! Yaaaaay!!!!

Was out the whole day ... again.
Friday- paper in the morning finished at 11.50am, dallied (waited for everyone to decide on lunch/dinner plans), ended up going to eat at Nam Loong's (cheap chinese restaurant in chinatown) with see seong, jer fuu, weiming, jiaming, chenyi, sarah, albert. See seong and jer fuu and I all ended up buying the same thing- san1 bao3 fan4. Then albert and i went for exuberant post-exam shopping!!!- hopped down to south melbourne market, shopping (and gawking at things including the aforementioned pigs' ears) It's quite cool! but incomparable to the luxuriously tangible atmosphere of notting hill market and camden market in london (and petticoat lane!) ....

Next destination was brunswick (we bypassed queen vic market, thinking there was no time left, which was a mistake on hindsight) heading for the nut factory. Honey coated Macadamia nuts at cheeeep prices!! But we came 20 minutes after they closed (grumble grumble grumble, not like they couldn't just open the till and let us buy a few bags, they were just lingering around the shop anyways)
Dinner at ormond, and headed down to OCF in union house. After that the bunch of them were going to watch the Korea-Portugal match in town- i headed back to catch up on much-needed sleep in the face of brooding headaches.

Saturday was ... woke up at eight to go marketing with sarah in queen vic. Came back laden with boxes for packing- was thinking of doing some shopping, but with my arms full that was a little inconvenient. It didn't help that it was drizzling. Then chadstone shopping- we finally left city at 12 something, ate at a jap restaurant in chadstone (where this bitchy waitress just *had* to make spiteful comments everytime she walked by- and it was a pretty small place so she walked by quite often) and headed back only at 5+.... Skipped dinner at jiaming's house and the fabulous (or so i heard) england-denmark match thereafter- because i had student service in the kitchen.

When i woke up on sunday i was thinking of giving sarah a call, to find out where their baseball match was so i could go down and watch. Then ... it must have slipped my mind. Or something. Lazed around in ormond (sunday brunch just makes meals such a ... draggy place- in a positive sense- everyone just chats away and talks- whiling away almost 2 hours in the dining hall) Was all dressed up n' ready to go shopping, when it occurred to me that i should call chaowan. He wasn't in. I went down intending to give him another call downstairs-ran into him in the corridor.

We sauntered to queen vic for further shopping (i spotted a cool orange jacket albert would love!! must tell him about it!!), then down to the city, taking the city circle tram. Also hopped over to HMV- i couldn't find the cd my brother wanted me to help him get (it's a bartok piano concerto no. 3, played by some specific pianist he likes)- but i did get 3 classicals for $20- a "juvenile tastes collection" of Peter and the Wolf, Young person's guide to the orchestra and Carnival of Animals (played by philadelphia orchestra- i don't think they're particularly good, victor might sneer at them); a Shostakovich string concertos 7,8,9 (shostakovich!!! my musical obsession!!); and another shostakovich piano concertos and sonata (ditto).

Walked around treasury gardens- it was beautiful. Just as we got into city, this fog started rolling in (yes, rolling in) right around us. Was chilly but worth it to see- or rather- not see- the tops of buildings next to us (and melbourne CBD buildings are pretty short for an urban district).

And attended a catholic student mass in St. Francis' church in the evening. This must be the first catholic service i've attended. It lasted exactly 1 hour and parts of the service were in bahasa indonesia, in deference to the large no. of indonesian students attending that service (hordes of them!!). And i explained to chaowan that people from Philippines don't speak bahasa (as he had assumed native people in south-east asia speak); they speak *pilipino*- most speak fluent Tagalog. Tagalog doesn't even sound like malay.

And had dinner at rose garden- it sells rice plus meat plus veg (optional), or soup noodles, for $5.50 to $6.80. Chaowan referred to the restaurant as "middle-class"- hanging at an intermediate standard, between singapore hawker centres and coffee houses. This is in terms of price/charges and quality of food.

Went to watch waking life on emily's free double pass (thanks emily!!!) with chaowan. I warned him it was an artsy film (asked lots of pple if they wanted to watch, they were either busy with exams or not interested. Arrrrgggghhh i forgot abt asking jiaming and chenyi!!) - he didn't really like it; i was enchanted by it!! Our tastes are ... different. He's looking v. much forward to watching the Mandy Moore vehicle "A time to remember".

Then we went around peeking into other theatres- caught the last 4 minutes of "Italian for beginners" and the last 20 minutes of "The last Kiss", both of which are international films and look Good. And i *happened to procure* a "The importance of being earnest" poster for myself. YaaaayyYy!!!!!!!

William ho recommended i read harold pintler. Or something. He got a knight ship i think. Harold i mean. Not william.

Bookout Post:

Restored Post

We did 3 sets of 6 pullups on Monday (I did 5 assisted ones in the first set and maybe 2 or 3 in the second, and was unable to continue) and my arms hurt till wednesday night and my shoulders started hurting on thursday. Gah.

A new lifeform has been spotted in camp. While marching, we saw a monkey running across the road. It's a zoo in there!

I've found another person in the platoon who doesn't shave. At the same time, I've also found out that one who apparently didn't, does, albeit rarely - 3 days after shaving, no stubble is visible. So that's 3 non-shavers and 1 occasional shaver.

I've a theory about why people don't tire of scolding the same old vulgarities - "fuck" and "chee bye" - over and over again. It's because those are the things they're always thinking about!

Now if we report sick outside camp, we must go to the A&E Departments of public hospitals. And contribute to the queue clogging them and reducing the hospitals' ability to cater to the needs of more seriously ill patients. And the MOs at Maju Medical Centre are very stingy (Steven got 1 day MC for a fever, barely enough to rest at home for a few hours). The life of a trainee is hard indeed.

I thought I'd seen Aravind around camp now and then and indeed I was right - I saw him at Cold Storage Holland V Tuesday night. Only his nametag said "Ganesh", so I wasn't sure it was him, so it was he who approached me. Apparently he's becoming a driver. Lucky guy!

2 consecutive days of night training really sapped me - on my Tuesday night off I was really drained. I hate night training! I'm going to hate field camp.

So many people are interested in going to the Guards to be medics. They must be masochistic. And they are disproportionately Malay (as other people have pointed out), I do wonder why. Maybe they like soldiery more!

I saw one fellow trainee with a Palm IIIxe. On further enquiry, I found that he had a license to use a palmtop in SAF camps, and he got it in OCS as an officer cadet (and not for official purposes too apparently). Maybe when OS5 models come out...

Ever since Khairuldin chided me for saying "Durong Senjata" (Eggplant Rifle. cf "Duron"), I've decided that I'm frustrated with drill commands being in Malay and one day I gave them in English. I've yet to figure out a nice sounding way to command "Halt".

From an angle, one of our female instructors looks a bit like someone Someone Else calls 'Boy Crazy'.

Yew Jin's a bit blur as an i/c - one day, he gave the halt command ('berhenti') when he meant attention. On 3 occasions throughout the day.

Most of the SCDF personnel look quite chubby. Maybe it's the uniform. Or the fact that they only ever go to the cookhouse, the canteen or stay in their room pretending to do work :)

Steven finds a way to link sex to everything. Seeing the BCS tentage, he remarked that you could have a gangbang in there. This is why I am sorely disappointed by the male gender.

Since I bounce so much when I march, they have dedicated part of a song to me - the Gummi Bears' chorus. Unfortunately they only know one part:

"Gummi Bears,
Bouncing here and there and everywhere"

Full lyrics available here.

I cannot say that I've seen this, but I have it on good authority (an eyewitness) that Khairul ate a few large green grasshoppers live. And his tongue was stained green after that. Yeech.

We had nothing to do one day and were waiting in the training shed, and the group I was with started talking about, first pornography and then prostitutes. Since it was the only conversation that was going on in English and I wasn't in the mood to take a catnap, I listened for a while. All of them seemed to be very into the two, why, especially the latter, I know not, most especially because of the lack of emotional gratification. But they seem to like it.

Seetoh observed that "All the bugs here are mutated". Indeed. We have giant ants with white stripes, giant spiders, centipedes that have the texture of Yuppi snacks, miniature scorpions with wings and many many more. Perhaps they have been mutated by something.

The ever efficient SAF outdid itself again by forgetting to indent dinner on Friday (as frequent visitors to this humble weblog will no doubt know), which brought joy to our hearts as we got a night off. However, it outdid itself by not indenting breakfast and lunch on Saturday, which made us trainees very happy again as we got to slumber for an additional 45mins in the morning, and non-guard duty personnel (ie not me) booked out that much earlier.

On Friday, while we were waiting for them to resolve our dinner problem, we were restless in the training shed, when I decided to go sit on a bench inside the "Trainees Mess". Now, SMM is such a wretched place that Officers and Warrant Officers have to share their mess with Specialists. So how could trainees have their own mess? Our little used mess it this small room by the side of Platoon 3's training shed. It's walls reach almost to the rood of the training shed, and there are no windows, making it rather stuffy. It is furnished with 2 benches (with lots of lizard shit on them), a small ceiling light and has plenty of rubbish strewn on the floor (there used to be more before I, in a fit of dilligence, cleaned the place a touch during area cleaning), and on the door is pasted a piece of paper with the words "Trainees Mess!" written on in black marker pen. Well, so I entered the "Mess", closed the door and sat down. After a while, I heard "Fall in" and so opened the door. Or tried to at any rate - a bench had been placed across it by my mischievous platoon mates. After they'd removed the bench, letting me come out, Sergeant Kan, our commando, went in to take a look, and they tried the same trick on him. Only, as Roe had just finished sliding the bench across the door, he came climbing down the wall, having used the bench to jump onto the top of the walls of the room.

The chicken backsides we are served at the cookhouse have become bigger nowadays. Though they are still chicken backsides. I do wonder where they get all these weird chicken parts (collectively brought under the label of 'chicken backsides') from. Probably the same place Monty's (RI canteen vendor company from 1996 to 1999) got them!

We got ice cream for the third time since our course started. Only the second, they'd run out (allegedly because some people took 2 or 3 servings). I wonder how much less SFI is paid for SMM food than BMT food (or indeed SISPEC).

Steven has one of the smallest cordless phones in the world. He brings it to camp and talks merrily away on it. It must also be very powerful, for I cannot see where the base station is. Of course, he gets very upset, for he believes that it is a mobile phone, but I believe he got cheated by the salesman :)

One of the Bruneians, Fazidah wears a rather strong perfume whenever she goes for training. On my enquiry on why she does so, she tried to stab me with her bayonet. "Perfume is half my life". Presumably she meant that she's been wearing perfume half her life.

They found a novel use for the orange tank top they got for Folie for his Miss SMM role on CMC night - they cut it into half and used it as an orange cloth for cleaning rifles. Mmm.

Camo Cream's now a credit item at E-mart, like jacknifes (however you spell it). Yeh. The jackknifes don't say "SAF" on them, so theoretically I could buy 40 a year with my credit and resell them! They're not bad quality too - the blade's very sharp.

We had a Light BCS mode practice, and I was detailed as a Combat Stress Reaction (CSR) casualty. It was fun yelping, screaming and running all over the place! And sort of fun being sat on, restrained and tied with toggle rope.


Guard duty:

I was actually supposed to be on the "Fire Piquet" detail - 4 people who book in on weekends to sleep. However, Nicholas claimed that his knee hurt, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and applied the logical extension of the Golden Rule - Do unto others what you would want others to do unto you - I still remember, during BMT when my feet hurt but Ah Seng refused to let me be a sentry. So he became one of the fire piquet personnel (though this later came back to haunt him - more later).

Our guard commander was very nice, and the 2i/c, 3i/c and Duty Officer are all very relaxed, and our Camp Orderly Specialist, who's 'wayangs' a bit sometimes was nowhere to be seen, so guard duty was quite peaceful. We didn't even have a turnout, even though the guard commander said we'd have one just for practice. Of course, that might be due to the fact that we plied the guardroom sergeants with Pizza! Yes, we ordered Pizza. 2 stuffed crust ones from Pizza Hut (with Garlic Bread and Pepsi, coming to ~$50) and 2 from Malay 2 for 1 (coming to ~$36). Conclusion? Malay 2 for 1 provides very good value! Even if it is a little smaller and less tasty. Of the 4 pizzas ordered, 2 had beef so I took only 2 slices, but Jeremy handed me another slice of Malay 2 for 1 Hawaiian (though they'd sprinkled crushed red pepper on it, which was very hot {I swear, it's is not just crushed red pepper, it's too hot to be just that}, so I tried to brush some of it away). So I sort of got my $8 worth. They actually ordered KFC chicken and yet more pizza, but I was full already.

This time I got to prowl with Daniel [Subagio].

While prowling I heard a hollow, sonorous sound. It turned out to be a squirrel. So now I know what they sound like!

All the cars with MID license plates are horrible looking, run down, dreary coloured station wagons. I wonder why anyone would want to drive one, even if it is probably cheap.

In some areas I am remarkably (even ridiculously) observant, seeing all sorts of trivial details, but in others I seem to be blind. Specifically those concerning observations of people, of their characters, actions and appraising them. People always notice things I don't. Maybe it's because I am less critical, and more tolerant of perceived faults. Or my skill's simply not there :)

When it came to dismounting time, we found to our horror that of the 13 guard and fire piquet personnel supposed to be taking over us, 5 had taken MCs outside and only 1 standby had arrived. So after some hand wringing, the 4 fire piquet personnel stayed back to fill out the numbers while the 9 of us guards went home. Though they did leave only 2 hours later than us (11+am, versus our 9+am, though we're actually supposed to get out of camp by 8am!). But the duty officer did promise them compensation - off passes from camp on Monday, stretching as long as after lunch to 10pm.

After 4 guard duties in SMM, I conclude that, especially in SMM, guard duty serves no purpose but providing a way to punish erring (whether in reality or the perception of superiors) trainees and permstaff.


Quotes:

"Sergeant, I want to become a lifeguard but I cannot swim"

"A very good afternoon, gentlemen. [Trainees: Good afternoon Master] It's 'Good Morning'. I wanted to see how blur you all are. Indeed you all are very blur."

"[On a rainy day, in the training shed] Okay, no questions? Then just sit here and enjoy the rain."

"I want to become a lifeguard, it's fucking lobo. First, it's eight to five. Second, you sit in the chair and sleep all day. Wait for the kids to come and swim. Thirdly, you get to play with the speedboat."

"A man should be obsessed by sex (with)"

"All the gifted people have some problem"

"[On me] You have a photogenic memory (photographic)

"[Me: What's so good about prostitutes?] I think you need to see a doctor."

"[On SMM] All the bugs here are mutated."

"[Sign] Do you know that Logisticians embrace the SAF Core Values in their work..."


When I took a taxi back on Friday, the taxi driver charged me only $8 instead of $8.40 because he felt bad about taking a longer route. Nice guy.

Yong Chin pointed out the difference between a "night off" and a "night out" - you get to stay home overnight for the former. Oh well.

My brother-in-law, Mr Intelligent, has done it again. He's entered (or tried to - he was cussing so I wasn't clear on the details) a cashcard-only carpark.

While chatting with him,

Melvin_T: no i'm a non-sexual person... really.

I just went shopping! Spent morning in queen vic market with sarah, she was showing me all the good bargains and where to go marketing next time. Went to chadstone shopping centre!! But it would have been more enjoyable, if certain 2 people had been on *talking terms*. Miffed. Sigh.

I bought a nice yellow fleece jacket (by icebox) ! "So bright!" "So nice!!!" "So andrew!" I love it i love it i love it!!!

Bunny Killer:

"i was thinking of buying these pig ears for you (for yr inordinate love of pork and its haram qualities)... but i figured they wouldn't keep well. "

Aww.

And more ringing endorsements:

"i just read this phrase on someone whom i know's friend's friend's website and thought it was amusing.
'raffles guys' school'

woah. i just read gabriel's biography on his site, and he must be an extremely brave person, because if i'd led a life like that, i wouldn't paste it on the internet. "

Yeh maybe I'm an exhibitionist.

First choice [too much attitude?]:

What kind of clothes should I be wearing? by Evelyn

On re-taking... (*squeal* my favourite ! Although as i understand The Gap is Despised in US/UK where it is widely available)

What kind of clothes should I be wearing? by Evelyn

The wonderful SAF forgot to indent dinner for us, so they let us off on a night off even though we had night training (which was wrapped up very quickly) :)

And I present the story of the RMUN logo, being bo liao (and very sad) in the extreme!

"I was heading the Administration Department of the Raffles Model United Nations Conference in 2001 and took it upon myself to make a new logo, because the old was very sucky. As was usual, I had very little time to do everything.



Original, terrible RMUN logo, used in 2000, 1999 and probably a few years before.



Logo I stole from the UN website



The world has been professionally deleted and the background filled with blue



I stole this from the RJ homepage.



And wallah, nice logo!

Yaaaaay! I can't wait till tomorroww. "Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow/ You're only a day away"

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0278500
Rupert Everett Colin Firth Judi Dench Frances O'Connor Reese Witherspoon hyperventilate hyperventilate hyperventilate hyperventilate hyperventilate Hollywood should just stop producing 19/early 20th century remakes of novels/dramas with stars, just drives me mad everytime one comes out.

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0243017
And I'm gonna watch Waking Life, with or without company. It sounds like too fabulous a movie to miss.

(squeal)

@_@

Straight from Inforgrames:
The PC version of Neverwinter Nights will ship to retailers before the end of June.

I'm still in shock. There goes most of my life. What's left of it anyway. Again.

I'd make a To-Read list but it'd grow out of control and I'd never get down to reading 10% of the books even.

Damn, Problem Oriented Casualty Management takes a helluva lot of energy outta you. I feel very drained.

Now in addition to my workload and post-exam shopping i have 8 books competing for my attention-
a) The Dune encyclopedia
b) Rincewind trilogy- Sourcery, Eric and Interesting Times, Terry Pratchett (I borrowed it to read Eric)
c) Garden of Rama, Arthur C Clarke
d) Magic, Neil Gaiman (Comic. Not *graphic novel*)
e) Lady of Avalon
f) The Illustrated Man, Ray Bradbury
g) Australian First Aid, Volume 1
h) Australian First Aid, Volume 2

Oh darn. Was supposed to get in touch with albert/jer fuu/chris abt discussing pbl here before tomorrow. Darn darn darn.

"i want to be broadened not narrowed by habit and tradition, i don't want to segregate my emotions into one box and medical interactions into another"-
Jennifer, topclass.
-- I hope jennifer doesn't mind --

Just finished my Health Practice paper. It's the sociology subject plus psychology subject with a leaning towards health related topics. And it's the essay paper. And it's over!! 2 more to go!

I have a craving for peaches! peaches! I'm in a peachy mood!

Going shopping after exams!!

I've been having nightmares. Pretty mundane ones- the ones I had before O's/A's were me failing O's/A's respectively (ny A's nightmares involved me attending physics remedial conducted by Mr. Raufie, which is, like, *so likely*). Anyway. Last last nite's one was that after i found out about ralph's condition, ian and bryan promptly went Missing in Action in ns. Or dead. Or something. And i had to hunt around the RJ staffroom (only it was renovated and very big/corporate chic/cool/stylish- white and blue hues, wide corridors, no cubicles/partitions, spiral staircases in the middle; not dingy/cramped) to get their contact numbers from teachers' desks, only dr. chan kept on bugging me about why i was suspiciously hanging around the staff room. I woke up terrified- about ian and bryan i mean, not about dr. chan.

Last nite's one was that i auditioned for RJC chorale- and got rejected! I became very angry with ken anderson (nb. no current association between chorale and toh ban sheng) and immediately started complaining to all the chorale members starting with waiyi! And i got so mad about it.
When i woke up i suddenly remembered that one year and a few months ago waiyi was pressing me to re-join chorale because they were short of guys and it was an syf year.

I don't want to be a pair of Doc martens. (Actually I don't mind.) I Want a pair of Doc Martens.

What are you? Visit survey.JUNKIE!

(oh yeah. Forgot about Dunman "the uniform with the buttons" high )

I'm disturbed too! Not right to call 13-yr-olds adults or even "new independent women".
Methinks geps already tend to be socially inept to some degree ... but then again there's the tendency for the top 10 schools to be single sex (rvhs is the exception is it?)
Lack of influence of seniors? why? Seniors would rarely converse with juniors about *latent tendencies* (winces and washes his hands after typing)

Rodin's here!!
http://www.singaporeartsfest.com/special_events/visual_arts/rodin.html

Circus!
http://www.singaporeartsfest.com/events2000/theatre/les.html

Is this good? (I know it's local- i mean Despite that) Any ideas anyone?
http://www.singaporeartsfest.com/events2000/theatre/action.html

Tim and I were looking at some journals and we came away rather disturbed, him a bit more than me.

Perhaps the "public expression of the New Independent Woman" is not what were were used to. Or rather, we don't think we were that, worldly, at that tender age (13-14).

From the same person who came up with the New Independent Woman thing: "my hypothesis is that putting people in single sex schools for an extended period of time turns them nuts. ". I concur, especially for GEPs. :)

Perhaps it's just internet literate, vocal geps? Maybe the internet lets them talk with like-minded people, which intensifies latent tendencies. And add to that the influence of their seniors. So each generation builds upon the last and becomes more and more angsty (It's more than that, but I lack a better word).

Tim thinks that it's going to collapse soon, and gives it a year and a half, but I'm not sure it will be that soon.

At least one of them was not in a dark brooding colour scheme!

Maybe my junior's insight sums it up best - "erm her blog is completely sex crazed

erm how did u get to know her?? she's nuts!" HAHA. [Disclaimer: I do not know this person]

Or, better yet, "pple are just reaching puberty earlier that's all... sec2 there were some of us who were kinda lidat liao wat"


Let's see who comes away offended :) Seeing as I did not refer to anyone in particular (then again, I don't even know them). Hmm.

On a lighter note,

"hahahaa... she looks pretty good for a gep u noe

i saw 2 fotos... both of the girls were pretty gd-looking wat..... so sad they're darn vulgar n polluted :p"

Extract:

"anyway i just noticed the "clever" little bit of graphic editing on the rmun handbook. they put their hideous rj badge (which is, revolting as it is, the same motif used for ri - which i take in my foul mood as another sign of chauvinism) between the twin olive(?) leaf thingies that's usually around the globe that makes up the UN symbol. it wasn't even particularly well done. the rj badge is far more grainy than the leaves. hah! lousy HISSOC. "

Hey, I think I -did- that logo! *Grin* Well my graphics skills are not up to par, and my source material wasn't very high quality.

Ahh.... question on coagulative necrosis:

Coagulative necrosis is associated with:

A. digestion of the cell nucleus (karyolysis) following the release of of lysosomal enzymes.
B. degradation of intracellular membranes following activation of phospholipases
C. an acute inflammatory response in the surrounding tissues.
D. altered staining characteristics of the necrotic cells, with increased eosinophilia.

Answer:
1. Only A,B,C are correct
2. Only A and C are correct
3. Only B and D are correct
4. Only D is correct
5. All are correct

Meet up okay jane/sheila/crys/kai/gabriel? I hope i didn't miss anyone out. When are you all free?

And my pronunciation got corrected (twice; once i was wrong, once They were wrong)
First time-
Andrew: ... am i still an a-DO-lescent?
someone else: it's A-dolescent.

Second time-
Andrew : ...incidence of these would be quite scarce.
Tutor: What?
Andrew: .... Scarce. (rhymes with farce)
Tutor: Could you repeat yourself?
(someone else from the back): Sc�rce (rhyming with care)
Tutor: Oh....
(andrew fumes)

btw, i got "bard" too for the FF job class quiz

Btw about the muppet quiz, I'm Kermit. But I refuse to post the code thingie :)

I went for my platoon chalet just now!

On the way there, I discovered to my horror that some guy in the MRT had as his ring tone Singapore's National Anthem.

At the chalet itself, it was a touch boring, but there were more interesting bits. A large proportion of people were topless, supposedly because it was very hot. Attendence seemed dismal, but in the end most turned up, just that they all came very late. And 4 people brought their girlfriends. Or, as someone speculated, they brought people and claimed that they were their girlfriends. Though most of them looked very lian (and maybe got their clothing from This "Lian" Fashion).

2 units away, first a woman and then her daughter were using some hair dryer like contraption to try to start their fire. Willie made some remark about little girls nowadays being too spoilt, haha.

Since we have quite a few smokers in our platoon, they were smoking all over the chalet. And cigarette ash got onto the food. Coupled with the overcooking... I don't want to know how carcinogenic that was. Maybe that was why my stomach felt funny after a while.

Me on Tiger Beer: It tastes like shit.
Jeremy: Fuck you lah.

Yes, I did imbibe alcohol, albeit only a few drops of Tiger Beer, Red Wine, Vodka and Martell each, if only to see if alcohol was really as disgusting as I remembered. The first 2 still suck, as I recall. And the last 2 are more horrible than I could have ever imagined. The vodka feels cold on the lips

They played the game that Kairen told me about from his days in 1SIR, the one where you take a cup of beer, place a piece of tissue over the rim, put a 10 cent coin in the middle and take turns to burn holes in the tissue with a lighted cigarette. And the one who makes the coin fall in gets to drink the mixture.

We got to taupok the sergeants on the chalet beds. Yeh. Rare opportunity.

Roy gave me, Khairuldin and Daniel a lift to Orchard. There was a sad episode where they 'checked out' this girl walking by the side of the road, when Roy slowed the car down and all but me craned their heads to look at the girl. So now I know how sad people in cars check girls out. Daniel rolled down the window and spat, and the spit landed on the back window. Yeech. Conversation along the way was, sadly, about things like their experiences in visiting high class prostitutes, where you have to pay for alcohol, and where one person spent $500 for some Vietnamese girl. Or something. And I learnt about 'Bapoks' (Transvestites), about their relative merits (they "give head" "better and faster" and let you fulfill Greek pederastic fantasies) and demerits (they are expensive and sometimes will lapse into their male voices). I'm just happy that I don't live a life where I come into regular, nay, any contact with this sort of stuff. I don't want to live in that world.


I don't see the big deal about driving lessons, and why everybody is taking them. Probably peer pressure.

I keep old movie ticket stubs, partly out of laziness to throw them away, but Tze Li does something better - he writes the names of the people he watched the movie with on the back. Now, why didn't I think of that?

Even after I've checked up the pronunciation, my sister and brother in law still are obstinate and insist that one of the correct pronunciations is wrong. How annoying. Grr.

I keep tripping over the wire charging my phone and it keeps flying onto the floor. I hope it doesn't get damaged. But then again, a Nokia phone -has- survived the 11 storey drop from my sister's window :)

More accolades: "Gabriel's Homepage damn farni. go visit. big big site. so what if he's not interested in cheem web design.. go for the content. he writes really well too, has a blog. i suggest you start with the homepage, and don't forget his apt RJC review. " Though I don't think I deserve the praise :)

Of all the disgusting things. Now we have a weblog with a layout based on. Sanitary Napkins. Please excuse me while I hit my forehead.


Something I forgot to put in my bookout post just now:

Just before booking out after guard duty, someone peed in the water bottle of someone whom most of the platoon dislikes. I feel quite bad, but I think I couldn't have done anything anyhow.


�C�est magnifique, mais ce n�est pas la guerre.� Admirable, but not according to rule. The comment of Marshal Canrobert on the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava.