YES THERE IS MORE THAN ONE TYPE OF METAL

For some reason, I decided on a whim yesterday that I'll start listening to more non-prog metal. That meant stuff other than Protest the Hero, The Human Abstract, Last Chance to Reason and Cormorant, which eliminates a pretty big chunk of my top 25 most played on my iTunes. Thankfully, I stumbled upon this band called Machine Head :)



I know what y'all real metalheads are thinking: this kid knows about obscure bands like LCTR and Cormorant, but he's only JUST DISCOVERED Machine Head? Well, I'm not your usual metal lover I guess.

Parting words for 2011

It barely registered in me that today's already the last day of 2011. Just as well; 2011 hasn't exactly been my best year (I know I've only had 19 of them, but still) and I'd like to be over and done with it and move on to 2012 as soon as possible. Still, I think 2011 still warrants a retrospective, if only to reflect upon my mistakes.

Things actually got off to quite a good start. Got into NS and went through the standard 9 weeks in a not-too-bad company. Not getting into command school was initially a downer, but my eventual path from SI to 23 Signals turned out to be pretty good as well. Got back 'A' level results and all was good except for econs, but that thankfully didn't scare DSO from letting me have their scholarship. And I could literally pinpoint with a GPS that THAT was exactly when things starting breaking down.

Back in 2010 when people of greater foresight were taking SATs, my thought process was basically "I don't have the money to go to the US, and I don't have a fancy scholarship either, so I'm not doing this." And that was true at the time, because I had yet to apply for the DSO scholarship. After I applied for the scholarship, I thought that I shouldn't be taking the SATs if I couldn't even confirm my scholarship, so I left that alone again... All the way till about May this year, if I remember, when I finally got a confirmation letter. And that was possibly the worst time ever I could get started on the SATs: the 2 years' worth of knowledge on 4 different subjects that I had memorised literally half a year ago had become but a distant blur in my memory. Now I not only have to familiarise myself with an entirely new syllabus, but also pick out the relevant information I learned during J2 from the deepest recesses of my mind to apply here. Predictably, especially for a self-confessed serial procrastinator like myself, I passed SAT deadline after deadline after deadline. Now, on the last day of the year, I have an overseas scholarship and nothing to show for it but a placing in NUS. I know that I might sound a tad snobbish right now but that's not the point; the point is that I had a golden opportunity and now I've all but thrown it out the window. I'm not lamenting my ill fate or cursing the heavens for toying with me; I'm berating myself for such an incredibly poor management of my own life this year.

OK, berating's over.

I am NOT going to sit around and feel sorry for myself the way I've been doing ever since I came back from Wallaby. I am NOT going to crumple in a corner and cry as I watch this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity slip through my fingers because I was too lazy to cup my hands. The new year may be a traditional time for resolutions, but it is not for such a trivial and arbitrary reason that I am writing this down today. As the new year arrives, SAT dates will renew and application windows will reopen. I might have some explaining to do with DSO about why I can only confirm my university placing in Q1 2013, but I'd much rather do that than lose this chance altogether.

I read somewhere that a New Year's resolution needs to be attainable, measurable and precisely defined to be effective, so I'm now going to pen down my first set of serious resolutions ever:

• I will study for and take SAT I and have a clear deadline for SAT II by 2 June
• I will find out what kind of testimonials and essays I need prepared for university application and procure them by August (don't ask me where I got that date from)
• Since DSO no longer allows scholars to go to ICL, the only options for UK universities are Oxbridge, so in light of that development, I will submit an application to Cambridge (I can't believe I just made myself promise that)

For the past 19 years I've been a vagrant in my own shoes, drifting about with no clear goal. Perhaps it was more than mere coincidence that I got a daily planner from the class gift exchange.

Since I know that I'll be doing the countdown with the 28 guys tonight and tomorrow, here's wishing you a Happy New Year's Day in advance, and if I had any good parting words for 2011, I'd have to shamelessly quote myself comparing 'A' levels to running: "If you stumble, just focus ahead. If you try to look back, you'll just trip over the next roadblock."

Crocodile King

Two days ago it was the day itself, Christmas day. My family hosted a Christmas BBQ/gift exchange for the extended paternal family, which went pretty well (except the beef satay; holy shit so much beef satay). One part that left a deep impression in me was the gift exchange. Cousin X received a skincare package including soap, moisturiser and lotion, but being a 13-year-old boy he didn't quite appreciate the value of it. He started complaining about how he got such a crappy present, most likely within earshot of the mystery person who gave it to him, and somehow he was given another chance to choose a present. This time, he got, surprise surprise, a skincare package. While it was pretty unfortunate for him to get two very similar presents which he didn't like, his response propelled him, in my eyes, to face-pulverising levels of brattiness. He began complaining even more loudly about his "crappy present", and demanded to know who had the audacity to prepare such a crappy gift as skincare products for a gift exchange. Remember that the people who prepared those presents almost certainly heard every word of his tirade. Even after his father dragged him aside and gave him a stern warning to shut up (which I felt was very merciful of him because, like I said, face-pulverising), he persisted in letting the world know about his oh-so-horrible Christmas present. He wouldn't shut up until one of my aunts very graciously gave him her present, a waterproof film camera.

Him being thirteen doesn't excuse him from anything. Thirteen is old enough to understand that sometimes you don't get what you want but you have to remain calm anyway and thank the person for giving you anything at all. He single-handedly made me lose even more faith in the Christmas spirit, making me even more disillusioned then I was before (I didn't even know it was possible until it happened).

Boxing Day brought with it the stirrings of old demons I thought I had interred. Inadequacy was the order of the day, mixed with a generous dose of uncertainty and helplessness. I suddenly recalled a personality test I once took as part of a PSC scholarship profiling study for potential applicants. Though I can't find the exact document (what with the house-moving and all), certain key phrases bubbled to the surface: phrases like "indecisive", "unmotivated" and "unambitious" (perhaps unsurprisingly, I ended up not even trying for the scholarship at all). These echoes from the past now ring truer than ever, and they sting more than ever too. Of course, the test was quick to point out that the results are meant to point out our flaws so that we can change for the better, but in hindsight did they really expect the guy they repeatedly called unmotivated and indecisive to spontaneously pick himself up and experience an epiphany?

Then again, who do I have to blame but myself? That's why I do blame myself. I hate myself for it. I hate myself for not doing anything to relieve that hatred.

I'm suddenly reminded of a quote from a game I once played in primary school, Dungeon Siege. In it, there was a humanoid crocodile who ruled as the king of his kind by virtue of his intellect, which was amazing by crocodile standards but still beneath humans. In the hero's final encounter with him, he describes how he slowly gained consciousness but could never break the glass ceiling to achieve human intelligence.

"I was intelligent enough to recognise my own flaws, but never intelligent enough to solve them."

The name is Scrooge

I was travelling home from camp this afternoon when it just hit me: I have absolutely no vested interest in celebrating Christmas at all. I'm glad to have a public holiday and all, but honestly I feel that Christmas has no relation to me whatsoever. Of course, some of you might retort with the whole "season of giving" and "a time to get together" routine, but to me Christmas is just a husk standing where a man once stood. Take a look around you: be it in shopping centres, on TV screens or even at home, charity is the last thing on the layman's mind. No, the modern Christmas is simply a hollow excuse for businesses to sell and consumers to buy. Perhaps there are still some people who truly make an effort to be extra nice during this time of year, and I applaud them for their unwavering faith in the Christmas spirit, but their angelic voices of hope are being drowned out by a chorus of cacophony courtesy of every advertisement plugging their last-minute yuletide sale and every bratty kid who refuses to settle for his/her iPod if it's not in the right colour.

It's the end of the year, but my troubles have only just begun.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder?

The rest of the family have gone on vacation to Thailand, leaving me alone to deal with an ATP that I will most likely not get marksman for. Oh well. For now, I'm staying at my grandmother's house over the weekend since nobody else is at home. Somehow, I find it nostalgic and heartwarming to be back in the Bishan area again, even though it's only been about 6 months since I left.

Yesterday was the 09SH27 Ultimate Christmas Steamboat Feast 2011, which actually went much better than I had initially expected. The guys were of course as awesome as ever, and I finally managed to get hold of Jacob (minus hair) and Rayson (minus specs). Not only that, the girls were also surprisingly not congealed into their usual clique and there was some earnest, if not overdue, class bonding (at least from my point of view). There was steamboat; there was gift exchange; there was Jeremy getting scalded repeatedly; there was SSBB and Band Hero; there was "(VERB) ALL THE (NOUNS)" and "like a nice". Overall, it was a genuinely fun class reunion, and for that there are a few people I need to thank: 09SH27, for being great company to have; Edmund, for the super classy 2012 daily planner which I swear to put to good use next year (and on a related note, I guess boo to Yicen for calling my awesome potion tumbler "ok lah" instead of "the totally awesome light which shall henceforth guide the rest of my life"); and I think most importantly, thanks to Tzumi for being such a great hostess and for letting us more or less trash her house for the sake of this gathering. Perhaps we really should have a CNY gathering :)

At this point, it's a matter of me panicking because there's not enough time, and there being not enough time because I spend it all panicking.

井底之蛙

There's so much wrong with the way I'm running my life that I don't know where to begin. I miss the days when someone else did it for me. Whether it was parents or the school or even the education system in general, there was always some indication of where to go and what to do next. Of course, the indicated course might not always be the right one, but at least it gave me somewhere to start, a point from which I could slowly fine-tune my final destination and route. And, in the worst-case scenario, if they gave me instructions that were completely off the mark, at least I had an external target at which I could project my frustration and anger. Now that the wheel of the ship has been handed over to me, two things have become immediately noticeable: that there is a whole lot of open ocean, and that there is a whole lot of water beneath the surface. Unlike in the past when I went along a road with a pre-determined path and at most a few branches, now I've been given the option to choose exactly which direction to go towards, and I've become paralyzed with options. And while an accident back in the old days only meant getting up and brushing the dirt off my knees, now it could mean sinking below the surface and never finding my way back again.

I'm the frog that got pulled out of the well and can't get back in.

Not your fault

Sometimes, stuff happens in life which is not your fault, but you still have to pay the consequences anyway. As NSFs this actually happens pretty often, when orders from the higher-ups trickle down until only the most menial and mundane tasks reach us. Outside of army life, things are still the same. It may come as a surprise for you to learn that until now my family is still not done with house-moving, but that's the unfortunate truth.When I went off to Australia about two months ago, they were already in the midst of moving. I had already helped out as much as I could in the days leading up to my departure, and they said that I would most likely be returning home to our new unit. Two months later, I returned to our overcrowded temporary lodging, and our new unit was still covered in dust and unassembled furniture. I thought that all I had to do was reschedule my outings with friends, but apparently that's not good enough because the days on which my father requires my help jump around so much that it's impossible to plan anything around the house-moving, and I end up cancelling everything just to play along with his bipolar schedule.

I have two options. Firstly, I could cry foul and point out how the very least he could do after messing up his deadline and dragging me along to help him was to at least make up his mind over when he wants me to show up. Of course, this ignores how logic is trumped by "I'm you father" any day, and there's no higher authority above him whom I can turn to (my mom has long ago grown fed up with the whole situation and washed her hands from the whole thing). Or secondly, I could just take it in my stride and go through with the whole thing with a positive attitude. Suck up a bit of injustice, and the whole process will roll more smoothly. A fair trade i guess.

My one week of leave seems to be ending too soon. I don't want to go back to camp :(

Not metal

Recently I find that my music taste has mellowed a little, going from metal to more altern-rock or maybe just altern in general.

First up, there's Muse, which I'm beginning to appreciate more and more. The Resistance was a bit of a disappointment though. I'd say my favourite album would be a toss-up between Absolution and Black Holes and Revelations. In any case, here's Map of the Problematique from BH&R:



So now going into the more altern stuff, here's a pretty good song I discovered from a band called MGMT called Kids. I honestly don't know what genre you'd call this:



And finally, here's an altern-hip-hop interpretation of the previous song by Chiddy Bang, rather unimaginatively titled Opposite of Adults (but the song is still good :) ):



Also, while I'm on the subject of embedding stuff, here's a funny webcomic:

Oh, and remember what I said about my music taste mellowing? Yeah, that's probably not true, because I'm totally looking forward to some sweet sweet melodic death metal from Cormorant on 6 December \m/

Watching others tread the same path

There are so many aspects of my life that I could be and should be taking control of right now, but instead leave to one side. My subconscious has not yet fully adjusted to the fact that I am now, sans voting rights, a full-fledged adult with complete responsibilities for my actions and inactions. Am I too used to taking cues from authoritative superiors, or too afraid to set my own directions? Like any good GP essay, the answer is probably between the two extremes.

Speaking of which, this year's 'A' levels started a few days ago, and it's quite nostalgic to see the same panic and anxiety we experienced last year being played out in front of us again by our juniors. I'd like to give them the old "been there, done that" talk about how they really don't have to be as fearful of this exam as they are now, but prior experience tells me that they won't be receptive to talk like that right now. In any case, we all deserve to feel self-pitiful once in a while; to feel like the world is being unfair to us and everyone owes us simply because they're not suffering as much. It's nearly as indulgent as it is saddening.

Post-Wallaby

Yep, I know I've been procrastinating on this post a bit so here it is. I've been back in sunny Singapore for 5 days now, and man does it feel good :)

The last few days of my stay got a bit hectic as everyone was sending in stores and trying to finish backlog while the entire camp itself was scheduled for tearing down. However, the actual tearing down of the telephone wires was actually much easier than expected; all our knots and joints were chosen with fuss-free dismantling in mind, so it's good to see all the skills we learned in SI pay off.

R&R was... OK, honestly, it wasn't all that good. There just simply isn't a whole lot to see or do in Rockhampton. It was a 2D1N affair: the first day was the day we left camp, and the second day was the day we went to the airport. Also, the arranged tourist attraction was a cave. 'Nuff said. Still, my ever-resourceful C4 OIC managed to find some stuff for us to do. We visited a diner that had bull-riding shows on Wednesdays and Fridays (luckily for us it was a Wednesday :D ) and watched in awe as 5-year-old boys rode boisterous little calves and grown men rode tanks with conveniently positioned horns bulls. After that, we went to a little place called Zodiac...

The off system during Wallaby was such that we had to return to camp by 6pm for dinner. As such, we couldn't visit any place after that time. For the most part that wasn't much of a problem since most shops in Australia were closed by 5pm anyway (it's an Australian thing), but one place in particular only opened from 8pm onward, and was the forbidden fruit that everyone talked about. That forbidden fruit was Zodiac, and in short it was a burlesque. And honestly speaking, I think if you ever get a chance to step in there you shouldn't keep your hopes up. The lighting is bad, the music thumps your brain, and lets just say that the women with the necessary muscle mass to twirl around a pole aren't exactly svelte figures...

After touching down in Singapore, I wasted no time in getting in touch with family and friends. Immediately after touching Singaporean soil, I went for a birthday dinner with my family. My birthday present was, of course, coming back to Singapore, but they also surprised me with a HTC smartphone :D You know, that same HTC phone with the trackball that every other NSF is using. Don't have a data plan yet though, so I'll be looking around. Next day we had a 09SH27 outing with 10 people, which is pretty good given previous turnouts. It was a kite-flying/potluck picnic at Marina Barrage, which does sound like a disaster on paper, but it actually turned out pretty well, except that our lunch consisted of biscuits, potato chips, snack buns and biscuits. Dinner was at Marina Square BK, and the rest went off to watch 23:59 while I went home to rest (I came back from Australia with, among other things, a cold). The next day I went to Plaza Singapura Carl's Junior for a belated birthday celebration with the 28 guys (after all, eating at PS Carl's Junior on my birthday has become a sort of tradition), followed by LAN (finally not last place in a game of DotA :D ) and watching the Istana change-of-guard parade, just because it happened to be on.

I've got a week of off till next week, so for now I'll just be chilling :)

Beast Within

As sentient, rational beings, we tend to take pride in having conscious control of our decisions. The hard truth that we sometimes find very difficult to acknowledge is that we are running on very biological, very fallible hardware. No matter how high above the rest of the animals we like to imagine ourselves, we are actually crawling around on all fours together with the rest of them, clawing ourselves from place to place to satisfy our primitive, primeval cravings. To beat this irrational hunger, to seperate oneself from this corporeal husk, would that not be ultimate triumph of Man over beast? Unfortunately, flesh is just as much a part of us as soul; the incoherent whims of the body jostle with emotional and logical thoughts for room within our minds.

Rivers

You're swimming along a fast-moving river. every once in a while, it branches into a few streams. If you react fast enough, you can direct yourself into the stream that you want to go into, and feel good about yourself. That is, until the next junction looms. If you didn't manage to go down the path you wanted, you could try to swim against the current, and eventually tire yourself to the point of drowning. Or, you could just keep on going forward, and make sure that you succeed at the next junction. So the river flows, and so you flow along with it.

Complacency and regret are the two most dangerous things in life.

There's dust on everything

Hello, I'm typing this from a little place called Australia.

Although such a long time has passed, I don't really have a lot to update on, which goes to show just how little actually happens around here. The first week was pre-insertion so basically we just hung around, "acclimatising to the weather", which in case you were wondering was pretty cold, with temperatures peaking at 26 degrees C and going down as low as 7 degrees C.

When we finally entered the training area, we were greeted by a huge patch of dust, rocks and dust. Seriously, you cannot go above 20kph without kicking up a sandstorm behind your vehicle, and anything you leave on your table will receive a fine coat of powder after a few hours. The most taxing period was the first 5 days in the training area, where our line-laying training was put to the ultimate test to lay close to a hundred telephone lines to various parts of the camp, nearly completely suspended overhead. It was challenging of course, but the feeling of calling home after a week using IDD lines that you set up yourself is a satisfaction that other vocations will never experience :D

And then there's the rebro duty. Occasionally, we will be sent up to this secluded hill in pairs to man a rebro station, and basically left to our own devices for 6 days. When I went up there for the first time as the first detachment, there was literally nothing up there and we had to set up tents and radios. It's basically windier, dustier and colder than anywhere at sea level, which is kind of sucky, but still I survived so I'm not complaining. My second duty is coming soon, but now we have lots of awesome stuff like electricity set up so all's good.

It feel's like just a few weeks ago when it was my friends and I hanging around after school, studying and trying hard not to get distracted, playing Monopoly Deal, playing with boomerangs, eating at the caifan stall and the chicken rice stall, and realising that we had failed at not getting distracted. Now the next batch of NJCians steps up to take the challenge, so I'd just like to wish all of you good luck :) (that is if any of you even come here).

I realise that all I want for my birthday is to be able to celebrate it with family and friends. Luckily, that's a present I'm confident of receiving.

Wallaby

Tomorrow's the big day. Tomorrow, at this time, I'll be high up in the sky on my way to Australia. I already feel the dread beginning to well up in my gut. Or maybe that's the cold I've been having the past few days. It's probably a mixture of both. Oh well, at least the cold's mostly gone, except the blocked nose. But then again, the last time I boarded a flight with a blocked nose I had massive head/earaches from the pressure changes. Yet one more reason not to look forward to tomorrow -.-

Oh well, I'll just keep thinking about all the things I have to look forward to: the ton of new music and DS games I've prepared for the trip, the R&R waiting for me after it's over, touching down in Changi just in time for my birthday...

Speaking of which, if you're planning on getting me a birthday gift (hint hint), I actually wouldn't know what to say to you. In recent times I seem to have lost interest in material desires beyond what I already have. There's no new thingamajig out there that strikes my fancy. My father actually still owes me a "treat" for my 'A' level results, but I've yet to claim it from him precisely because I don't know what I want. Maybe it's a sign of maturity. Or ennui. Or insanity. Or something.

So I guess that this is goodbye for now; see y'all in 7 weeks :)

WubwubwubBOOMBOOM

I have recently become very VERY addicted to dubstep. Come on man: killer bass drops, pounding beat, changing rhythm patterns, dubstep is to electronic music what metal is to rock \m/ (and if it's not then sorry for only being able to come up with this comparison)

Viridian Forest (Pokestep) by TeoAcosta
(pogeymanz hehehe)



On a side note, I'd highly recommend anyone who's interested in electronic music in general to go look up Monstercat Media on Facebook or Youtube for an awesome music feed :D

Cool stuff

see more Failbook

Hehehe.

Also, I really REALLY want to try this. Probably during Wallaby, since it will be either that or counting the grains of sand in the outback:

Calm before the sandstorm

All the major preparations for Exercise Wallaby have been done, so for now there's not much left to do except sit around and wait. Or so it originally seemed. The past few days have been super hectic -.-

Wouldn't you know, there's yet another radio that we have to learn, and of course the guys who attended the last radio course have to go for this one too. So off I went together with the other lucky winners to Murai camp for our crash course, and we were taught by none other than our SI platoon mates. Lots of catching up here and other, and we left feeling consoled that the course wasn't that bad after all. And that was when we found out that we have to go back to camp on Monday for a proficiency test, while everyone else is outside celebrating the arrival of our newly-elected president. This is the first of two bullet wounds in my precious long weekend, the other one of course being guard duty on Friday.

And what a guard duty it was. I was lucky sentry 1, who has to do an extra shift, and on top of that the handover was late so I had an extra 45min of duty. Yet, that was not what pissed me off the most. The worst part was that after that, the armskote man was missing and we took and entire our just to track him down while being stranded outside the armskote room. Army is awesome like that.

My mom offered to fetch me home after guard duty, and on the way back she said that the house would be "a bit messy". Apparently, my aunt has found new tenants for next month so we have to move out by Thursday. Not only that, the house painters decided to start their work right that instant, so I returned home to find the house smelling like paint and looking like a hurricane casualty. So I slept as well as I could for 3 hours, then spent the rest of the weekend helping with the move.

Still, not being bitter or anything, just recounting an interesting snippet of army life for anyone interested. In such a depressing situation like NS or moving house, optimism is a necessity of the highest order.

And Wallaby is in 19 days -.- I wanna catch up with the Starlight guys before I move off.

On a random note, in order to not be pigeonholed as a metalhead, I decided to listen to some non-metal, and by that I meant "as much of Muse's discography as I could squeeze in one weekend", and I was not disappointed. I have to say that they're the only non-metal or hard rock band that I "like" to the same degree that I like other awesome metal bands like The Human Abstract or Protest The Hero.







:D

It's not a typo if it's foreshadowing

Just because I haven't done this in so very long...

AN ENTIRE POST DEDICATED TO VIDEOS!!! :D


I know what you're thinking: you're thinking that you have better things to Do than to watch thrEe And a half minuTes of a cHildren's television programme. Well, you can just watch the whole thing first and reserve your condescending remarks till then.





New band w00t!!! Anyways, Cormorant are supposedly a melodic death metal band, but I don't really care what genre they are outside of "awesome". Oh, and when people ask me about my music taste I can no longer reply "Relax man, it's not like I listen to anything too crazy like death metal." In any case, this is Uneasy Lies the Head.


And finally we reach the star of this post... JON LAJOIE!!! This Youtuber is the absolute funniest comedy song writer/singer I've ever had the pleasure of knowing, even more so than The Lonely Island if I do say so myself (please understand that this is purely a personal preference). First, watch this video which was what caught my attention in the first place:

The part that really won me over? "I don't give a chainsawwwwwww"

Here's another great song. In fact, it's The Best Song:


Lastly, I just have to mention his two WTF Collective videos:

Limbo

I try to look at NS in a positive light and convince myself that I'm making productive use of my time, and for the most part I'd say that I'm quite successful in that, but once in a while a rock strikes my head and I remember that my future life will not lie within the army but outside of it. Then I start to realise that while I'm still stuck in this two-year limbo, those fortunate enough to escape the system (mainly the girls I guess) are already starting to move on to the next stage of their lives. My female colleagues during the DSO internship have already gone on to receive their scholarships proper, and will soon be continuing on to their higher education in a matter of months, while those of us stuck in the army have to complete our mandatory hiatus, losing any hope of maintaining our post-'A' levels momentum. I know that theoretically we're supposed to have lots of admin time to use for planning for our future, but honestly it is very difficult to maintain efficiency and discipline in planning when we're left alone with a flood of information with no real clue of where to start looking. Utterly depressing.

I need a pensieve

Thoughts are literally tunneling through my brain right now. One moment they surface for a quick breather, exposing themselves to my conscious mind to ponder, and the next they have wedged themselves deeper still, back into some dark quiet recess of my head. I guess that's what happens when you have five days of free time to think about life and only two days to try and organise those thoughts. Though I could never even come close to telling you what exactly I'm thinking right now, this is my best attempt at turning my thoughts into words:

I like my current status in the army now. I'm totally adjusted to being a normal soldier after about four months of being a recruit or trainee. Maybe when I was still fresh out of trainee phase I might still have felt like taking a gamble, but not now when I've settled comfortably into what is supposed to be my life for the next 18 months.

Am I allowed to be lucky? Is it alright for me to be fortunate while others are suffering? If not, what am I supposed to do? Feel sorry for them? Give them some of my good fortune? Where does my right to enjoy myself and have a good life end and my obligation to help others in need begin? Is there anything short of total philanthropy that can make me feel like less of a hypocrite? It's obvious that a life devoted either to complete selfishness or complete selflessness cannot function, because different situations call for different qualities. But even if we were to consider a mix of the two extremes, at what ratio should they go together? If neither extreme can serve me well in life, wouldn't it also make sense that no one particular mix of the two can get me through life unscathed either? Then why do we even bother trying to find a perfect balance if it doesn't exist? If we talk about selfishness this way, can the same be said of other vices, or maybe even the broadest sense of good and bad itself?

I am so afraid of adulthood I'm not even joking right now. Life used to be a set of instructions that we could follow without questions, but slowly it has turned into a multiple-choice questionnaire, then an open-ended question, and now simply a blank piece of paper. I hate blank papers, they remind me of econs *shudder*

I read an article a few days ago that now makes me suspect that I might be schizophrenic.

Army talk

A few things going on in my life right now.

23 SIG BN is a pretty cool place, definitely not the worst place a signaler man could end up in. The commanders are mostly nice guys you can talk cock with, so all's good. Except, of course, the location -.- Also, we're going for Exercise Wallaby which is somewhere in [secret Australian place (actually I don't know where it will be held either)], so I'll be on exercise for two months :(

Perhaps I wanted something else before, but I'm now comfortable with my lot. So should the opportunity arise again, what should I do? Status quo or stretching my limits? Or am I setting myself up for disappointment?

George Orwell wrote in the book 1984: "If there is hope, it lies with the proles", but together with hope we find chaos. You can get millions of underlings to carry you up on their shoulders, but those same proletariats can easily throw you down.

There are so many things I could be doing with my time right now, chief among them researching on US universities, studying for SATs and learning driving, but somehow being in the army totally takes the drive out of you to do anything besides laze around.

There is much to learn in the army; there is much yet for me to learn.

New everything

New house, new unit; everything's changing, whether I want it to or not.

First up, my 8-week signals course is finally over, culminating in a 16km route march (which I know is nothing compared to the 28km that the SCTs had to go through, but still, tiring is tiring). I finally have the signals insignia on my collar (though I have to buy 4 more for my other uniforms), and I can finally wear a formation badge and a blue beret (though both of those have to be purchased myself too -.- ). And then there's my new posting...

I still remember at the beginning of the course we heard stories about how 10C4I was the worst place we could go, but nearing the end of the course our possible postings looked so bleak that it became one of the best places we could go to. Alas, I did not go there, but instead got posted to 23 SIG BN. It's not hardcore or anything, and on the contrary I've heard stories of how good the life can get there, but the main issue with it is travelling time: it takes 2 hours for me to get there from home. Oh well, I can foresee a large part of my next one and a half years sitting in trains and buses.

And also if you didn't catch it from my first sentence, I have finally moved to my cousin's old house, where my family will stay temporarily for about 3 months or so before moving to our permanent new house. The new house is nice and big and all (my cousin is a pretty rich kid), but I'd much rather remain back in the old house. The familiarity with the layout, the furnishings and even the neighbourhood is something which I'm afraid I'll never capture again. I'll only be at home on weekends until after my NS, after which I'll linger around for maybe half a year or so before heading overseas for university, so basically for the next few years I'll be having a house that is not a home.

Sometimes I wish that time would just stand still at a particular moment. It doesn't have to be the perfect moment (after all, that moment doesn't exist), but I'll be content as long as it's a generally happy time. Being able to enjoy the same happy moments and going through the same familiar tribulations with my same old group of old friends is something that I find very tempting indeed. Still, in spite of all that I do realise that change is not only inevitable, but also necessary for our lives. Being frozen in time might sound appealing, but think about it: do we really want to do the same thing over and over until our flesh dries into dust? We might not necessarily dislike the outcome of a change in lifestyle, but we sure as hell detest the process. Any form of change, even if it is an improvement, comes with an awkward in-between phase when nothing seems to work for us, but it always smoothens out somewhat eventually.

Still Alive

Last Friday was the first and only IPPT of my SI life (since the other one was cancelled due to Cat 1), and I finally managed to do 8 pull-ups, jumping from a fail to a silver. That's great and all, but I still wonder if I could have done 6 pull-ups if I just tried a little bit harder 2 months ago in BMT, and maybe gone to SCS with my friends. Oh well, regret is useless now, and getting an extra hundred bucks now is nothing to frown about.

I had to do guard duty from Friday to Saturday, after which I went for an 09SH27 gathering, which consisted of Yicen, Michelle, Brenda, Loo, J.Tan, Junjie and finally Jacob, whom I haven't seen since his fateful enlistment into NDU. It was unfortunate that many of the gang couldn't make it due to field camp, but still it was nice to have a lunch outing again. We had lunch at Everything With Fries, which we decided should strive to become EWLF (Everything With Less Fries) or EWAAF (Everything With Appropriate Amount of Fries), because seriously not a single person at the table managed to finish their fries. After lunch, Yicen the organiser abandoned us to fetch J.Gan back from PRBI, leaving the rest of us, plus Tzumi who just joined us, to wander around finding something to do. After moving from place to place, we stumbled upon a flea market at Scape where the girls went shopping and the guys queued up for Gong Cha, and then we all split up. Oh well, at least the class spirit is still kind of alive, if by "class spirit" you mean the lack thereof between the guys and girls. I don't know why I still get slightly saddened by this.

Oh yes, and the combination of IPPT on Friday with no sleep due to guard duty and way too many fries made me really sick on Saturday night XP but all is well now.

More masks than Slipknot

You definitely meet all kinds in the army. On the one hand, you get to know people whom you can hit off with almost immediately and generally have a blast with when we're not being screwed around by sergeants. On the other hand however, you also meet people who are so self-centered and selfish you would not believe they would have the audacity and callousness to pull off what they do, and without batting an eyelid to boot. So to survive this social warzone within the army, we start to play the political game to weasel ourselves out of scraps. And at the end of the day, I wonder if I have changed for the worse after all the masks I have put on.

Moving on from boring ol' introspection, it has been a very hectic week. Three tests (two of which were surprise tests), an 8km road march and a VHF exercise just today, which combined with a stand-by-bed immediately afterwards caused us to book out at 9pm. On SAF Family Day (yup, apparently that's going on today). And to make things worse, the entire day today I felt dizzy, disoriented and unnaturally fatigued; basically, it was a fever without the actual fever (if it doesn't make sense it's because I'm having a not-really fever right now). To top it all off, tomorrow is my NUS GEP interview, which I really don't feel like going to anymore, but then I've already pushed it back for about a month already so it's not really feasible to delay any more. Panadol to the rescue I guess.

Flotsam

Nowadays I get this constant sensation that I'm swimming around aimlessly in a sea of my own filth. I want to rise above my own weaknesses and shortcomings, but once you become a man in the SAF there aren't really any ladders whatsoever being handed to you, and you are left treading water. Sure, you won't drown, but at the same time you'll never get out of that sea either.

On a side note, I don't think I'm getting the DSTA scholarship anymore, since I have yet to receive any news from them since the start of April. Oh well, I'm still on my way to a local education at the very least.

Remember your manners

Wow, it's been waaayyy too long since I did this.

Anyway, I have officially become a fan of Iwrestledabearonce (yep that's one word). Great technical skills, refreshing and sometimes even comedic "genre spasms" (a banjo hoedown interlude in the middle of a song, like wut?), and a female vocalist with the voices of an angel and a demon within her are all great plus points, but general opinion on them is crazily polarised so I wouldn't blame most of you for hating them to the core.Still, it never hurts to take a listen:

And now you can run along and tell your friends that you know what Karate Nipples sound like :D

The beginning of change

So GE2011 has finally come and gone, and I'm having mixed feelings about it all. On the one hand, the opposition made a breakthrough with the WP finally managing to snatch away a GRC from the PAP, hopefully ushering a new age of competitive Singaporean politics where the PAP will have to give it's 100% to keep itself in parliament. On the other hand, this unfortunately came at the price of seeing Mr George Yeo stepping down from being a Foreign Minister. 

However, there is still much to be celebrated from this election. With the WP finally giving the opposition a GRC in Aljunied and other areas seeing the opposition close up the gap to within striking distance (especially Potong Pasir, where the opposition lost by a mere 100-odd votes... What a pity really), the PAP is finally feeling the heat of competition. Hopefully in accordance with economics, this threat of competition will drive them to adapt and evolve to better serve the nation. Although this result is not yet my hope of seeing a roughly 20-30% opposition representation in parliament, it's a sign that it cannot be far off. I'm not looking for a complete opposition takeover like some more ardent opposition supporters are looking for (in fact I think such a drastic change of leadership would throw the country into chaos), just enough seats to get their voice heard in parliament and keep the PAP on their toes.

It's now 5am and I have to book back into camp tonight, so I'll have to cap it here.

Not just a game

Try reading this post while listening to the video at the bottom of this post with the lights off :)

While reading up on Lavender Town Syndrome (supposedly the screeching noise in the background of the theme music of Lavender Town in the original Japanese Pokemon Red game caused the deaths of hundreds of Japanese children, majority through suicide), I came across something more believable and more disturbing.

I'm sure that a game that carries as much symbolism as this has different meanings to different people. Personally, I feel that it is a statement on the tempting and corrupting effects of power. When we are equipped with such power that we can take down anyone who opposes us without breaking a sweat, we tend to forget the moral implications of utilising such strength, until the consequences of our actions one day come back to haunt us.

And in case you were wondering what the Lavender Town theme sounds like:

Just so you know, I've heard this theme a few times these past few days and I have to say that while it's certainly pretty creepy in the wee hours of the morning, I'm certainly not contemplating suicide at the moment.

Speed through skill

Posting results are out, and tomorrow I'll be headed to Stagmont Camp to train to become a signal operator. I should be ecstatic about this result: signals has long been known to be one of the slackest vocations available for combat fit NSmen, right up there with military police, police force, air force and navy. And to a certain extent I guess I am glad. After all, it's much much better to be a signaler than, say, a rifleman. But when you see practically all of your friends being posted to SCS or even OCS while you are stuck as a man in a vocation where you will never be able to shrug off the label of "chao keng", the feeling doesn't sit well somehow. It's not so much about missing the glory of being a commander, but I want to be able to look my friends in the eye and say "I'll be going through the same thing with you."

I guess it's like Bryan said: since I have so much more free time now, I should focus on spending it effectively instead. Maybe start studying for SATs or something. Every man's a leader, not just the commanders, which I guess is true to a certain extent, even though it does sound rather patronising. And in the back of my mind, hope for a conversion course.

I don't know why not getting into SCS feels like the world to me. Really I have so many more important things to worry about, such as why I still haven't gotten replies from NUS and DSTA, and yet I can only focus on these short-term matters which will barely affect me 20 months down the road. I guess it's like what I previously mused, that we tend to gravitate towards what is most current instead of what is most important.

Speaking of which, I need to find a way to say to NUS as tactfully as possible that they should really confirm my application into their university before inviting me to an interview to one of their programmes. And on a date I can't make, no less.

Where is the finish line?

Hello, the blog is not dead yet.

Truth be told, so much stuff has happened since the last post that I can't really remember exactly what happened, nor can I be bothered to try and recall, so I'll just stick with the main points.

IPPT was still a fail, all the way to the end, so hurray for consistency. What really made me pissed off at myself was not that I was inadequate, but that I was nearly adequate. Twice I attempted to do the pull-ups, and twice I only did 5, just short of passing. And when I tried again back at NJC yesterday, I somehow managed to do 6. Well, in any case it was too little too late, so I'll just have to brace myself to become rifleman W S Hong.

After IPPT, we had hours upon hours of graduation parade practice. Every day spent waiting in SBO, waiting in FBO, waiting for that half an hour or so of marching and standing around under the blazing heat, before the cycle repeats itself. Luckily there were a few merciful showers which cut down what would otherwise have no doubt been a hellish period of continuous drill practice.

And then there was the 24km road march. Yes, it was held during the cool of night; yes, we didn't have to bring any store items with us; but n nonetheless, it was difficult; very difficult. I can still recall that period of time between the 16km and 24km mark: we've been marching for hours, everyone's worn out, the end is nowhere in sight, nobody feels like talking, it's just step after step after painful step. Still, we made it through the grueling trek and threw our jockey caps high into the sky on the floating platform. Yes, we're all trained soldiers now :)

Looking back on my BMT experience, I have to say that I'm really satisfied with it, or maybe I'm just a naturally optimistic guy. Yes, platoon 2 was the craziest in Falcon, but it was also because of that that we earned a sort of quiet respect from the other platoons, I guess sort of how people feel about Kestrel but to a lesser extent. I've heard people from other platoons call us the PTP batch (PTP stands for Poor Thing Platoon by the way), but at the same time I've also heard people say that platoon 2 is in a class of its own within Falcon. All in all, I can say with pride that I was from Falcon P2S2.

So my past few days have been spent going out with friends every day, trying to make the most of the very very short one week that we've been given. Perhaps of note is that I visited NJC yesterday, for the first time since receiving 'A' level results, and Lionel and I managed to talk to Mrs Hue for a bit. I felt a bit guilty talking to her, since I was an expected econs A student who ended up scoring a C, but basically she just encouraged us to look beyond 'A' levels and recognise that university is main thing that employers will be looking at in future. I guess it happens to us all the time; when you devote all your time to the pursuit of a goal, it seems like the biggest thing you could ever achieve, even though there are probably other goals beside it that are of equal, if not greater importance. Whether it be 'O' levels, 'A' levels, or even SCS or OCS now that we're in the army, we always tend to aggrandise whatever is most current for us instead of what is most important to us. Which of course begs the question: what is the most important thing? Or maybe, what should be? I don't think these are questions to be answered by an 18-year-old greenhorn. Maybe we go after all the small targets because the overarching objective has yet to be found.

On a random note, I just listened through Last Chance To Reason's new album Level 2 (I thought it would never come out -.- ) and played through Pokemon White, and I highly recommend both. Pokemon White especially caught me off-guard; I was expecting yet another cheesy defeat-bad-guys-and-become-champion plot, but there is an actual fleshed-out storyline here with legit plot twists and character development. When I was roaming the final castle, the combination of the stellar new CGI graphics, epic strings-choir music and plot climax made me feel like I was playing Final Fantasy. And the best part is that even though I just completed the main story arc, I know that I still have a lot in front of me with plenty of side-quests and after-story content. Not to let Level 2 be left out in the praise, I just played the demo of their game of the same name which uses the album as its soundtrack, and it's a really intense and fun arcade shooter that will definitely appeal to fans of retro games. Get both. NOW.

The end of the beginning

OK, I know I've abandoned this place for quite a while, so I'm back to show you guys that the blog and I are still alive.

Well, immediately after my last post about the field camp was the sit-test, which honestly I failed terribly in. If there was one thing I learned from the experience, it was that I simply can't think straight when under the pressure of time constraint. Oh well, all in the past. After that we had a few slack high-key events like live firing and grenade throwing, followed by the 16km road march. The weather was absolutely terrible for the first 4km since we started at around 3pm; I'm pretty sure it was above 33 degrees celsius for the first hour. Thankfully, the heat subsided as evening rolled in and I managed to survive the entire way.

We're POP-ing in two weeks and I'm having mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, we get a full week of freedom and finally the green light to grow out our hair again (at least to a certain extent), but on the other hand I know that my NS journey has only just begun and I still have another 20 months or so to go. On top of that, there's whether I want to go to command school and even whether I can make it there in the first place. Until now my IPPT is still not up to standard, so I can pretty much prepare for a life of mindlessly running around and following orders. The thought of it all makes me want to slam my head repeatedly into the dead end of a future I have created for myself, but I guess I was never meant to excel in the army.

NEW INTERNETZ???

So apparently while I was gone a few new memes popped up. First, of course, is Rebecca Black and her so-bad-it's-funny single, Friday:



Which of course leads to stuff like this:

And this:

And also, the Dating Site Murderer meme, which I personally found hilarious the first time I saw it:

I miss being up to date with teh interwebs :(

More new music

And apparently Protest The Hero also released a new lyric video while i was gone, so here it is :D


Protest The Hero - The Reign of Unending Terror (Official Lyric Video) from Vagrant Records on Vimeo.

Digital Veil

So Digital Veil was released while I was in the forest doing my sit-test. LISTEN TO IT. I'm serious, it's freakin' amazing. Here are some samples:

Burned bright, burned out

So many things have happened the past week...

We started of with the notorious field camp. It was one of the most physically and mentally draining periods I've ever had to go through. Simple tasks like walking now take up a lot of energy since you're constantly wearing boots and trekking through uneven forest ground. Worst of all, unlike training at company line there is very little actual free time because you are constantly on at least medium alert to prevent your rifle from getting stunned (that's stolen by commanders for you non-NS speakers), not to mention the sentry duties that prevent you from getting a good night's rest. Sometimes, even though you think you know what to expect and you think you've gone in mentally prepared, things can still affect you deep inside. My weakness is others' suffering.

So field camp ended on Thursday, and I booked out on Friday afternoon, just in time to collect 'A' level results: C for econs. After all the hopes and expectations laid down on me by the school, I have to say that I have failed to meet their mark. Just like that, their secret weapon which they had been grooming since the start of last year had crashed and burned at the last moment, and hastily swept under the carpet. Just as well; I'd rather fade back into obscurity than have the school announce to everyone that I have failed. To be fair to myself, I didn't fail utterly: I very nearly achieved the seemingly impossible goal, but in life nobody looks for near-success. Truthfully, if you take away all external factors, I'm actually pretty satisfied with my results. Humanities have never been my forte, be it lit in secondary school or econs in JC. I hit an upswing during 'O' levels, and now I've hit a downswing for 'A' levels, and I'm completely alright with not being able to fluke my way through humanities subjects all the time. The problem is that although I'm satisfied with results, the DSTA scholarship board and the university application boards my not be as impressed. If I really lose this amazing opportunity that has been the culmination of months of effort and sheer good fortune, I'd truly be disappointed in myself. In any case, there's no use grousing now. The fact of the matter is that I just can't be well-rounded.

Despite all that, I regret nothing. It has been a great experience being able to take both H3 NTU Contemporary Physics and H3 MOE Mathematics, being able to gain a much deeper understanding of the daily routine which we learn in school. In any case, I doubt that the extra time freed up by sacrificing one of them would have been of much help to my econs. I burned bright, I burned out.

Gunslinger

Just thought that this is an appropriate song given my current situation. This song keeps me awake during sentry duty at 3am man.

First two weeks

First off, the title is a misnomer, since my confinement was actually 18 days, which according to hearsay with my friends in other platoons is one of the longest confinement periods. It definitely sucks to know that your book-out is later and shorter than everyone else's, and that you're having your field camp immediately after you book back, and that you're getting 'A' level results immediately after field camp, and that there's yet another field camp after getting 'A' level results. I can't talk about the details of all that because the army likes to be secretive and all (so much like DSO -.-), but basically life is going to get pretty rough for the next week or so. But as my friends have advised me, the important thing in NS is just to take things one day at a time, so for now I'm going to enjoy my long-awaited book-out day :D

In truth, my NS experience thus far hasn't been all that horrible. Yes there's the waking up extremely early every morning, and the physical training that we have to do every day, and the punishments we get for seemingly petty offences (which is still physical training anyway), and having to do ever-increasing work in an ever-decreasing timespan, but if you do manage to follow the commanders' instructions dutifully then you would have saved yourself a lot of push-ups and learned how to be a more efficient person at the same time. It's a bit like school, except that the teachers skip the basic chapters and go on to second-tier topics immediately, and punish you severely for not succeeding. All in all I'd say that it's a survivable experience definitely, but excelling in that kind of environment is another thing entirely. Being a so-called "leadership batch" which is being groomed for potential officer or specialist cadets, I find myself wondering very often whether I'm good enough to meet their expectations or not. Should I just drift my way through and remain under the radar contented with what I have, or should I keep pushing forward, potentially landing me in a situation where the training is 3 times worse than what I'm going through now? The big question now: OCS/SCS or not?

Drowned in all the army talk, squeezed silent by my helmet straps, somewhere at the back of my head, lies a greater ordeal. In a flash, 18 days went by just like that, and now there's only about 5 days left to the release of 'A' level results. The worse part of this particular problem is that even though it is so critically important to succeed, even though a misstep here could literally ruin my future, there is absolutely nothing I can do about it except sit and wait. So I sit, and I wait.

Five days. All I have to do is take it one day at a time, five times.

Songs that happened while I was gone

So I came back from Tekong and was greeted by awesomeness.

Two from The Human Abstract:





And one from Last Chance To Reason:

Coded to Fail by prosthetic

Prog Metal March (and a bit of April too if you count LCTR's release) is going to be epic beyond words, so I won't even try to type out my feelings now.

School of hard knocks

Tomorrow's the day. That day. That one day that every Singaporean son would have heard so much about from fathers and uncles. That one day that they have buried in the back of their minds for so long, but have been secretly dreading their entire lives. Tomorrow's the day I check into Tekong. Physical and mental grinding like never before await, and there's not much I can do about it now. I'm just going to go in with the ragdoll mentality: go in, get whipped and come out the other end in whatever mangled form I become. In spite of all that, there's still a part of me that's excited for what's to come. After all, grinding is what sharpens mere pieces of metal into swords. I guess you could say that what I'm feeling right now is similar to the feeling of going into a new school, except that now it's a school of (really) hard knocks, maybe 30% dread, 5% excitement and 65% resignation (the math is correct right? I'm transitioning my brain from "thinking" mode to "complying with physically-demanding orders" mode).

For obvious reasons, I'm gonna have to abandon this blog for a while. See you guys again on February 26, if I don't slip into a fatigue-induced coma over the weekend (though seriously I don't know who I'm addressing here anyways, the few people who follow my posts are probably in Tekong now).

Bye :)

Final words

OK, finally an actual post with actual words after so long. I'll try to recall what I did as much as possible.

From the second day of CNY up till Sunday I was on a floating fish farm in the middle of the sea somewhere in Batam with aunts and uncles and cousins from my mother's side of the family whom I never knew existed O.O It sounds really awkward on paper, but actually it turned out pretty enjoyable. Sure, there were sunburns and splinters and cuts from barnacles and no electricity before 6pm, but the feeling of lying in a hammock at 4pm with the sun shining lazily on you and the wind blowing past you and the ground bobbing up and down with the waves more than makes up for all that (note to self: acquire hammock for personal use).

Yesterday there was an 09SH27 dinner, probably the last one for a long time since the February enlistees will all be going in one by one. It was the Dhoby Gaut Just Acia again, seems to have become our standard location for class gatherings when we're not going from school. As usual I ate way more ice-cream than I should :P (on a side note, they have slushies now which are actual really good, better than the 7-11 slurpees) Also, we passed around a birthday card for tzumi so that everyone could sign it, but jacob kept smudging it while trying to write in it -.- Oh well, in spite of, and because of, their epic retardedness, I'll definitely miss my friends. Hopefully I'll meet a few of them in Tekong (talking about the guys here obviously).

March is shaping out to be a life-changing month. It's not entirely because it's Prog Metal March though (but still, Prog Metal March plays a big role in its importance), but also because if the persistent rumours are to be believed, 'A' level results are coming out on 4th March. Quite without exaggeration, our entire future hangs in the balance of what is printed on our tiny little report slips on that day. It's crazy that so much can hinge on so little, but that's simply how it is in Singapore.

Another thing that is simply how it is in Singapore is of course NS. The first of the February enlistees already went in yesterday, and later today another group of them will check in, and after that is my batch on Wednesday. People keep asking me how I feel about it but honestly right now I don't have a good answer for them. I guess I've just been pushing it to the back of my head for so long that I haven't had the time to seriously think about it. I consider myself pretty talented at pushing undesirable thoughts to the back of my head; after all, that's how I could go on for weeks without doing homework and still not feel or anxious.

Speaking of not doing things, I still need to finish packing for NS. Also, I still haven't healed completely from this pretty big and pretty irritating ulcer I've been having for nearly about week now. Not that it's life-threatening or crippling or anything, but I just want to go in with as little to have to worry about as possible.

DO MATH; BECOME UNSTOPPABLE

The gold here is in the fine print, it may be TL;DR but it's totally worth it.

Truth in advertising

Rabbit

Boom. I just gave you a nightmare.

[spoilers]
But seriously, I find this animation short mesmerisingly good. The use of 1950s children's book stickers and illustration style to represent the corruption of innocence; the insatiable hunger of the idol to represent insatiable greed; selling away quill sets to represent rejecting intellectual pursuits for wealth. The twisted, corrupted beauty of this short really is in the details.
[\spoilers]

LOL-worthy pictures

C'est La Vie

Just when I was about to go off to sleep, fate gives me a reason to stay awake for another half an hour or so. And by fate, I meant Protest The Hero:

C'est La Vie (Pre-Order Scurrilous Now!) by VagrantRecords

I NEED THIS ALBUM NOW DO YOU HEAR ME

This is WHAT music?

It's part techno, part death metal, part dreampop, and all good.

I need to start listening to bands that people have actually heard of. Sinking in too deep into the hipster pool here :/

Japanese Girl Explains...

Literally LOLed XD

Demon

If there can be love at first sight, I am convinced that similarly there can be enmity at first sight. While I really honestly try not to be put off to much by a bad first impression, I'll really start to get pissed off if the virtually every subsequent impression is just as foul. Everyone has people whom they simply don't like and cannot bring themselves to like, but while others can ignore them or even lash back out at them, I'm stuck with someone whom I'm forced to see everyday and obligated to treat nicely. Maybe I'm just being evil here, but then again I never proclaimed to be a saint, and he's definitely no angel either.

I may have 101 reasons to dread going to NS, but here's one reason for me to look forward to it: at the very least there'll be less friction, which will be better for everyone.

The only reason I'll ever enjoy a Ke$ha song

This guy is AWESOME.

My dream pet

Justin Bieber is the Apocalyptic Horseman of War

Chocolate Rain metal version

In case you guys aren't aware of the crazily viral video that is Chocolate Rain, here it is:



OK, now that we've all been acquainted with Tay Zonday, here's what I really want you to see:



Pure epicness. This guy is amazing. If you've got a Youtube account, subscribe to him. If you don't, make one and subscribe to him. Simple as that.

Pointless debate?

The answer is guns

It's a satire by the way, but still pretty epic.

Escalator broke down

I'm trying to picture someone just standing on a stationary escalator for hours, but I just can't. Honestly, I just can't.

The secret to happiness

Geek test

So how many can you get (I got all of them, guess I'm a certified geek T_T )?

It's Will Wright's fault

OK I think I've been neglecting this place a bit, especially since the last few days have been pretty eventful. I blame it all on discovering Spore, which is definitely one of the most addictive games ever. Every time I considered updating this place, I ended up playing Spore instead. So yeah, you know who to blame (NOT ME!!!).

So anyway, last Thursday I went with lionel, edmund, junjie and rayson for dinner at the Plaza Sing Carl's Junior (so there goes my two-year streak of only eating there on my birthday), and after that we went to window-shop at the collectors' toy shops on the top floor. They had some really cool figurines, especially the Gundam and Transformers figurines. I'll definitely seriously consider starting some sort of collection in future when I have a stable income. Oddly enough, we also noticed that those shops loved stocking up on Adolf Hitler figurines for some reason, which I found mildly disturbing to say the least.

Friday was CNY celebrations at DSO (also a paid day :D ) and in the morning I formed a team with some fellow interns to participate in their CNY challenge. We didn't manage to fare exceptionally well in the "build a tower using chopsticks, oranges and pomelo" section (AKA 步步高升) despite careful planning the day before, but for the "fold a paper aeroplane that can fly the furthest" section (AKA Leaping into an Auspicious 2011) we decide to heck all the gliding aerodynamics and fold what was essentially a spear, which eventually managed to fly the furthest. So I'm sure we all learned a valuable lesson about hard work: that it doesn't pay off :)

Today started off pretty badly. I woke up in the morning to go to ECP for cycling with some 28 people, but got terribly lost on the way because I'm me, and spent about 20 minutes or so walking around aimlessly in the rain between Paya Lebar and Tanjong Katong (don't ask me how I got there, I don't know either) before throwing in the towel and calling edmund for directions, which is when I discovered that the outing had been cancelled -.- In the evening, my dad brought the family to The Art House where I met melissa working at the reception counter of one of the exhibits. Honestly when she first told me about her job a few weeks ago I thought The Art House was some arts supplies shop, so that came as a surprise to me. Anyway, we were there because my dad wanted us to watch this choir concert called 7 by a group called ONE, which comprises young singers probably around my age or slightly older (and by the way, I'm fairly certain that one of them is an NJ senior). The performance was pretty good - the standard of singing is definitely there, and they made things interesting with the use of choreography and lighting (or rather the dramatic lack of it at specific times). Overall it was a good experience which definitely helps add to my high-brow art cred :P

Tomorrow's my last work day :)

More epic trolls

Oh look, the last one is a Singaporean troll! I guess the internet really is everywhere.

Trolldad Quickies

The last one made me literally LOL XD

Sad Inception comic

Eerie text

Positive Zero Punctuation Review! :O

OK, remember when I said that "Not words" will be the tag for all the posts that are not about words? Well, I guess I kind of when back on my word when I posted a link to a Times article... But like a good politician, I know that when I've talked myself into a corner the best thing to do is to distract the listeners by OH LOOK ZERO PUNCTUATION!!! A ZP review that actually speaks good of a game is a rare sight indeed as fans should know, since Yahtzee couldn't be impressed by even near-universally acclaimed blockbuster games. So here's his review of Minecraft, that game where you dig stuff to make stuff to build stuff for because-it-looks-cool-ness:

Tiger Mom: Amy Chua Parenting Memoir Raises American Fears

Here is a really good article from Time magazine's website regarding the highly controversial book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, which recounts a Chinese mother's very strict, perhaps even cruel methods of bringing up her children, which nevertheless yield amazing results in the form of talented, even prodigal children.

The boy who cried "fire"

Renovation

Today on the bus I was thinking to myself: "I post a lot of retarded pictures and videos on Facebook and Twitter, so shouldn't I post them on my blog too?" I'm only putting a fraction of the nonsense I enjoy everyday into my posts and already I keep finding myself having to resort to awkward "on a random note..." connectors to bring them in, so I thought that it might be a good idea to finally relent and start a Tumblr just like seemingly everyone else. But since I'm a lazy technologically-impaired duck who doesn't want to abandon his Blogger for a Tumblr and can't be bothered to keep both running at the same time, I decided to compromise and create a new labeling system for my posts. From now on, my posts will be free of irrelevant pictures and videos and under "Words", and all the random stuff that I compulsively feel that I have to share with the world will be filed under "Not words", so you can click either heading to sieve out what you want to see. Alternatively, you can click neither and be treated to the chaotic mess which is my mind. Like an actual Tumblr, I'll try to update with "Not words" posts as frequently as I can, hopefully at least once a day whenever I have access to a computer (this really shouldn't be too difficult seeing how my daily ritual involves visiting failblog and various webcomics).

Did I mention that I played CS during work today? That's right, my job is officially more awesome than yours :) It's gonna end in less than a week, and it's bittersweet for me. On the one hand, I'll definitely appreciate not having to wake up at 6.30am everyday to reach work on time, but on the other hand it's been a really great close-to-a-month with the bunch of new friends I met at DSO. In any case time marches on, so there's no use dwelling on the past.

STARE COMPETITION

Know your logical proofs

If only I knew this before H3 maths!

Source: SMBC

2min summary of Pokemon episode 1

Exactly how I remembered it.

Meta-post?

Do I have an emo blog?

Well, personal blogs are meant for people to express their emotions and obviously frustration is one of those emotions that really needs to be vented for a healthy state of mind, so it shouldn't be striking that many personal blogs are more on the emo ranting side. Still, there are certain implications of FML-ing on a blog. Does it make you a drama queen who loudly proclaims her every little grouse hoping for swarms of concerned people to rush to her consolation? If not, why post your rants in a public medium like a blog if you're not trying to get attention?

Personally, I think that for myself at least, blogging is sort of a compromise between keeping your feelings bottled up within yourself and blaring them out for everyone and their neighbour to hear. I like to think that I'm not being too much of a whiner but still have a few people in the vast ocean of the internet to hear what I have to say. I guess in a way it's like a non-religious session of confession. And also instead of being repentant for our sins, we flame unsatisfactory aspects of our lives, but hey, nothing is sacred on the internet.

Oh look, I just posted all that on a blog.

On a random note (I think thats my most frequently used phrase on this blog), "look at this toaster" is starting to go viral. I really hope it becomes a full-fledged meme, because really it's pretty awesome :)

Now, I may have a slightly above-average taste for hardcore music, but I don't usually dabble in extreme metal. That being said, I'm pretty captivated by this song by extreme progressive metal band Meshuggah called Bleed:



And to wean all y'all non-metalheads, here's the same song "diluted" with a some pop:



I say "diluted" with quotation marks because Paparazzi actually does a pretty good job at complimenting the other songs. Both are pretty awesome :)

Drift Along

My recent posts have been about my day-to-day experiences, but now I'm shifting my thoughts to events in the near future... If you glanced at that countdown clock at the top-right corner, you'd have guessed right.

I've said this so many times before that I think it would have become pretty annoying to hear, but I'm completely unprepared for NS. Between catching up with friends and working, I barely had time to work up a sweat. For one thing, I know that I'm gonna fail my pull-ups, and that's before factoring all the near-fails I had during NAPFA (chiefly sit-ups).

Work's ending soon, and then I'll have roughly a week left before going into Tekong. Part of me wants to stage a last-ditch effort to get into shape, but the other part is asking how much I can improve in that short time. If I can't make much of a difference anyway, wouldn't I be better off spending my last week living it up to the fullest? In any case it's CNY week, so I'll most likely default to the latter option anyway.

Whatever, I don't need or want any fancy rank there. I'm currently just aiming to survive the two years so there's no need to go all protein powder-obsessed all of a sudden.

March of music

Went for dinner with a bunch of 28 people at the AMK S11 today, basically just ate and talked, then moved on to the AMK Hub Macdonald's for ice-cream and watching soccer. Nothing particularly special about this dinner, but enjoyable all the same. I notice that I've been going out for dinner with friends a lot lately, but it's really now or never since I'll be going off to NS in a few weeks' time. By the way, I got shifted from BMTC school 2 to school 1, which means that I'm now further from the jetty T_T Unfortunately, it also means that I'll no longer be with the huge number of friends who were also in school 2 with me. Well, at least I know that josias and guanhao have been shifted over too, so maybe a few more friends have come over as well.

With new album releases from both The Human Abstract and Protest The Hero, March looks set to be the most epic month of the year, and I'm predicting that even though it's only January now. THA just released a new song, Patterns, and the album art for Digital Veil:

I'm loving their new style with heavier metal combined with a heavier classical influence. This looks set to rock the musical world when it comes out. And personally I think the album art looks cool too :)

Still no new song from PTH (why oh why! :( ), but they did release the title of their upcoming album, Scurrilous, as well as the album art:

Yes, it does look like something out of a drug addict's dream, but there's a background story to this. This is actually a painting done by the bassist Arif's grandfather a long time ago, and the name of the painting was Scurrilous. I did some research on the title and it turns out that it isn't a made-up word: "scurrilous" is actually an antiquated word meaning "vulgar or crude", which I think is a hint at theme of the album. Also, we can infer where Arif got his stoner genes from.

Sometimes I get the feeling that I'm drifting too much. There are people my age already making investments and actively working towards university offers, while I'm here living each day by the day and waiting for things to happen. I'm just afraid that if I even try to do things on my own I'll screw up completely. I'd rather wait and see what everyone else does, even if it means losing early bird privileges.