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.