Burn bright like star

Moonlight Sonata

2012-02-17T23:18:00.000+08:00

The Human Abstract decided one day that they were not being awesome enough since the release of Digital Veil, so they decided to release a cover of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and you can bet that it's every bit as awesome as "amazing neo-classical progressive metal band covers famous piece from genius composer" would imply.

On a related note, after last year's flurry of amazing albums from The Human Abstract, Protest The Hero, Last Chance To Reason, Iwrestledabearonce and Mastodon, the music scene in the months ahead seem depressingly bleak. It's time for me to start looking out for new bands to get into to fill the void. Suggestions are welcome and I promise to be open-minded enough to give every band a listen, at least for 2 or 3 songs.

That's right, let's just keep soliciting feedback from my amazing readership of awkwardly loud crickets.

A gramme is better than a damn?

2012-01-27T23:56:00.001+08:00

Just finished reading Brave New World. I know that it's compared a lot to 1984, seeing as both are dystopian futures which heavily feature brainwashing, but I find that while 1984 tries to scare the reader with the horror of the totalitarian state's thought police, Brave New World is unsettling in a much more subtle, perhaps more deep-seated way. The only thing worse than losing your freedom is not wanting it to begin with.

Reading this book has been the most intellectual stimulation I've had in recent memory, perhaps all the way from before NS.

Ideas are bulletproof

2012-01-25T17:38:00.000+08:00

Just finished reading V for Vendetta. It's not as mind-blowing as Watchmen was for me, or maybe that's because I didn't get the shock factor of reading an Alan Moore comic for the first time. Still, it was a very good read and really caused me to think about the distinction between chaos and anarchy; are they the same thing, or is there a subtle and yet important distinction between having no order and having no imposed order? Did V really help an oppressed nation rise against its overlords like he claims, or did he just decapitate an already ailing country and leave them to deal with a different brand of misery? Perhaps he only represents one of anarchy's two faces; V's destruction to Evey's creation. Perhaps he recognised himself to be only half the man that anarchy was meant to be, and so forcibly transferred his mask to Evey.

"There, did you think to kill me? There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There's only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof. Farewell."

Now that I managed to check another book off my to-read list, I decided to take on something else: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World has been borrowed from the library and now sits in my bag, waiting to be brought back to camp to read. I seem to have a taste for these kinds of totalitarian dystopia satires...

I used to want you dead, but now I only want you gone

2012-01-22T16:11:00.000+08:00

Sometimes, I like to hunker down for a heavy dose of introspection and retrospection, examining what went right or wrong with my life and myself, and figuring out how I can make myself a better person from those experiences. Other times, I like to watch stupid videos on the Internet while chuckling to myself while family members scramble to find the IMH hotline. Right now, it's the latter.

This first video has a deceptively tame title. Seriously, you need to watch this, even if you don't play the game (fyi I've only ever played MvC 1 on the original PS)

I've always wondered how I can stare at nyancat for what seems like several eternities without being able to turn away. The answer, of course, is awesome subconscious hallucinations. And did I mention that I LOVE this new nyancat song?

Yup, a ten-minute loop of the song. But you probably already guessed that it was coming.

This last video is the ending credits of Portal 2, coupled with yet another great theme song from Jonathan Coulton, Want You Gone. It's weird how I've fallen in love with the ending credit songs of both Portal and Portal 2 while having never played either of those games before. I know I'm missing out on a lot, but in case you didn't know, I only trust my laptop to run games with Plants vs Zombies-like graphics intensity, so I'll grab a copy of Portal 2 as and when I feel like my laptop would be more awesome with a self-destruct function.

Mental drought

2012-01-14T02:10:00.000+08:00

I think my brain is trying to rebel against a mental drought. These few days it's like I will instinctively seek out intellectual stimulation when previously I was perfectly content sitting around doing nothing. Unfortunately, actually finding and partaking in such activities has so far only reminded me of how long it's been since I last really cranked my brain up to 11. While trying to teach my bunkmates what I learned during H3 maths, I realised I could barely remember half of what I learned, and it only becomes more true for H3 physics. I feel like I wasted my time to spend a whole year taking extra lessons (including half a year of pure insanity when physics clashed with maths) and then forget everything in the same amount of time. As nerdy as it may sound, I may start bringing H3 math questions into camp to do, if only to protect my one-year investment.

While on the subject of intellectual stimuli, I realise that as a person born in the 90s, I've already missed so many amazing movies which engage on an intellectual and artistic level, rather than on the "boobs and explosions" level which basically describes 70% of all current movies. Perhaps one of these days I'll make a list of all the movies I want to watch, and slowly hunt them down. I already have a few potential candidates for my list: Citizen Kane, Soylent Green, Rashomon, and The Room (because I've heard about how it's so legendarily bad that it's gained cult status). And while I'm at it, I might as well make a list for books as well: Metamorphosis, Brave New World, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, A Brief History of the Universe, and V for Vendetta (I know the last one is a graphic novel, but I'm making the rules here).

Fun fact of my life: I have the habit of occasionally reading up on modern physics on Wikipedia. It all started when I asked my H3 physics lecturer what would be good reading for beginner's quantum physics, and he replied "Wikipedia". Ever since then, whenever I get the sudden thirst for random physics-related knowledge, I'll go to the relevant Wikipedia page and just plunge right in without any prior contextual knowledge. Heck, I just spent the last hour reading up on string theory on Wikipedia, and I barely understood half of it.

The journey of a thousand miles has started

2012-01-07T01:48:00.000+08:00

Chalk one up for the therapeutic effects of blogging.

Last Thursday in camp, I opened my SAT book for literally the first time in months, and through sheer force of will, I did an entire paper at one go.

Except the essay.

Oh come on, I'm not a miracle worker, you can't expect me to go from nothing to full papers overnight.

For those of you who care, I assumed an essay score of 8/12 (is that a reasonable assumption? I have no idea), and with help from the nifty magical raw score-scaled score conversion table included in the book, I arrived at a score of *drumroll*... 2260, which is very... kind of... something? Honestly I have no idea what's the market rate for SAT scores, or barely anything about the SATs in general. Gotta make a mental note to research further.

ANYWAY, the point of this post is to commemorate that I've finally gotten off my ass and started some actual work, so yay me :D

YES THERE IS MORE THAN ONE TYPE OF METAL

2011-12-31T02:17:00.000+08:00

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

2011-12-31T01:58:00.000+08:00

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

2011-12-27T00:17:00.001+08:00

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

2011-12-23T22:09:00.000+08:00

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?

2011-12-18T17:40:00.000+08:00

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

2011-11-29T23:48:00.000+08:00

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

2011-11-11T20:49:00.000+08:00

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

2011-11-11T01:26:00.000+08:00

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

2011-11-11T01:11:00.000+08:00

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

2011-11-07T20:05:00.000+08:00

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

2011-10-31T21:19:00.000+08:00

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

2011-10-16T22:09:00.000+08:00

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

2011-10-16T09:24:00.000+08:00

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

2011-09-15T23:28:00.000+08:00

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

2011-09-11T00:57:00.000+08:00

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

2011-08-30T18:31:00.001+08:00

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

2011-08-28T17:42:00.000+08:00

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

2011-08-09T03:40:00.000+08:00

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

2011-07-17T01:46:00.000+08:00

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

2011-07-15T23:54:00.000+08:00

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

2011-07-02T02:08:00.000+08:00

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

2011-06-12T23:27:00.000+08:00

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

2011-06-05T19:04:00.000+08:00

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

2011-05-27T23:14:00.000+08:00

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

2011-05-21T02:55:00.000+08:00

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

2011-05-21T02:33:00.000+08:00

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

2011-05-08T05:12:00.000+08:00

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

2011-04-24T18:49:00.002+08:00

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

2011-04-17T23:12:00.001+08:00

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?

2011-04-14T03:30:00.000+08:00

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

2011-03-27T16:00:00.000+08:00

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???

2011-03-26T23:03:00.001+08:00

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

2011-03-12T23:50:00.001+08:00

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

2011-03-12T23:32:00.001+08:00

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

2011-03-05T02:51:00.000+08:00

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

2011-03-05T00:54:00.000+08:00

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

2011-02-26T22:38:00.000+08:00

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

2011-02-26T16:36:00.001+08:00

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

2011-02-08T22:24:00.001+08:00

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

2011-02-08T01:15:00.001+08:00

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

2011-02-08T00:11:00.000+08:00

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

Truth in advertising

2011-02-07T23:40:00.000+08:00

Rabbit

2011-02-06T22:57:00.000+08:00

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

2011-02-06T22:48:00.000+08:00

C'est La Vie

2011-02-04T02:20:00.001+08:00

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?

2011-02-04T01:40:00.000+08:00

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...

2011-02-04T01:37:00.000+08:00

Literally LOLed XD

Demon

2011-02-01T02:27:00.000+08:00

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

2011-01-31T23:00:00.000+08:00

This guy is AWESOME.

My dream pet

2011-01-31T22:27:00.000+08:00

Justin Bieber is the Apocalyptic Horseman of War

2011-01-31T18:16:00.000+08:00

Chocolate Rain metal version

2011-01-31T17:39:00.000+08:00

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?

2011-01-31T00:18:00.003+08:00

The answer is guns

2011-01-31T00:18:00.000+08:00

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

Escalator broke down

2011-01-31T00:17:00.000+08:00

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

2011-01-31T00:14:00.002+08:00

Geek test

2011-01-31T00:13:00.000+08:00

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

2011-01-30T23:59:00.000+08:00

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

2011-01-28T00:50:00.000+08:00

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

Trolldad Quickies

2011-01-28T00:22:00.003+08:00

The last one made me literally LOL XD

Sad Inception comic

2011-01-28T00:17:00.000+08:00

Eerie text

2011-01-28T00:09:00.002+08:00

Positive Zero Punctuation Review! :O

2011-01-27T23:43:00.000+08:00

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

2011-01-26T19:12:00.001+08:00

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"

2011-01-26T00:31:00.003+08:00

Renovation

2011-01-25T23:47:00.001+08:00

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

2011-01-25T23:10:00.000+08:00

Know your logical proofs

2011-01-25T23:04:00.001+08:00

If only I knew this before H3 maths!

Source: SMBC

2min summary of Pokemon episode 1

2011-01-25T22:56:00.000+08:00

Exactly how I remembered it.

Meta-post?

2011-01-23T01:53:00.004+08:00

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

2011-01-21T00:01:00.001+08:00

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

2011-01-20T00:16:00.000+08:00

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.

Look at this toaster

2011-01-16T01:16:00.000+08:00

After work on Friday was the 4A dinner! :D It never ceases to amaze me that I'm actually in contact with and occasionally going out with ex-classmates from *counting...* 8 years ago! :O It was the usual gang minus melvin plus jocelyn and we had dinner at the Prata House, where the service was glacially slow (maybe like michelle suggested it was because it wasn't a table full of girls haha), the drinks are diabetic (though to be fair this seems to be a common trait amongst all prata shops) but the food is still pretty good at the end of the day. On a random note, I finally got back the Monopoly and Game Of Life sets that I lent to zhaoming at the start of the holidays, though it really isn't of much significance since I never play with them at home anyway. *end of random note* After that jocelyn had to go and the rest of us went to the Thomson Plaza Starbucks, where we were joined by melvin and clarence, who came by completely by happenstance, so the 8 of us shamelessly hogged 8 seats and 3 tables with only 2 drinks :D Had a great time with them, and there was some chatter going on about a 4A trip to Pulau Ubin or something, but it still remains to be seen if that can be finalised before bryan and I head off to Tekong T_T

Yesterday my family went over to my grandmother's house to celebrate my mom's birthday, and somewhere along the way it became a look-at-my-facebook-pictures session. The question constantly coming from my aunt was "who's that girl in the photo with you", and when she stumbled across the "seven wonders" pictures of me and val during orientation the crowd went wild -.- Oh well it's my mom's birthday after all so I didn't put up much of a fight for my privacy.

I was surfing teh internetz when I came across this picture:

Be warned, what follows is a typical example of me over-analyzing something which is clearly meant to be appreciated mindlessly.

It's always being said by parents and counselors and psychologists that being a teen is rough and we have to deal with sudden maturing, hormonal changes and the awkward feeling of not fitting into the child or adult crowds, but at the end of the day we need to sit down and see if it really is such a big deal. We're not even into our second decade of existence; can any of our problems even compare with those of our world-weary predecessors, let alone hold any significance in the big scheme of things? Of course there are teenagers with serious problems, but I'm talking about the stereotypical teenage dilemmas of today, those along the lines of "nobody understands how unique I am!" and "you're not my boss, stop controlling my life!", which sometimes seem trivial and petty in the face of bigger problems. We need to consider why we're known as the easy-to-bruise "strawberry generation" (literal translation from Chinese haha). To put things simply and bluntly, maybe we just need to suck it up and deal with it.

I dunno, I just find myself chuckling to myself every time I see that picture. And for the record that toaster is pretty awesome.

Pack light

2011-01-13T00:33:00.000+08:00

I guess I need to face up to facts: I'm an ex-NJCian. Those were two of the craziest and awesomest years of my life, but the time has come to move on. I may be able to return occasionally as a "wise old man", but my time as a student is up. The past has been great, sure, but the future will always be greater because it alone holds the element of mystery. I guess we need to pack light to travel through life: nothing but the memories in our mind, the people by our side and the horizon in our sights.

In other news, I finally did something today that could be considered work :P We finally got to experiment with an FPGA. Well fine that still isn't working, but it's closer to work than all the other stuff I've been doing the past week or so.

Here's a random song that I heard a few days. Quite catchy and proof that I do not listen solely to metal:

Only the young can break away, break away

Career path

2011-01-12T00:47:00.000+08:00

So I've been told that I think too much for my own good. While that's an accusation that I've been trying to refute ever since, I must agree that their argument does hold water when I'm sitting alone at home on a quiet evening and my mind starts to wander uncontrollably. Honestly, it's one of the fastest ways to get me in a depressed mood.

Since the only interesting thing at work today was the visit to the electronic circuits failure analysis lab at NTU, I decided to take the second half of the day off to go back to NJ. Unfortunately, I happened to choose the wrong half of the day -.- Not only did I miss the walk-in, I also missed the group of people who went back to watch the walk-in in the first place. The OGLs were all busy OGLing and most of the teachers had gone home since it's only the second day of school, so it was more or less a wasted trip for me.

I just keep getting this feeling that I'll have to give up more and more of what I want to do for the sake of work in future. I guess I'm really just over-reacting here, but the thought of being enslaved to a job seriously frightens me. Already I had to give up watching the walk-in (both of them, since I'm going into NS before the SH walk-in), which frankly is taking an unexpectedly large toll on my mood because I've been looking forward to it since maybe last year's orientation. If we work to earn money to spend, why do we work so hard that it takes the fun out of whatever potential spending we might do? If the money is for the bare essentials then it can't be helped, but beyond a certain level of material comfort is a career really that important?

Which is why I cannot fathom how people are willing to choose jobs solely based on pay. I'm talking about jobs that are so boring, mundane and run-of-the-mill that the only reason why anyone would even think of them as ambitions is because they just happen to pay ridiculously well. I mean, take for example dentistry. How many people take dentistry out of a genuine burning passion for incisors, canines, pre-molars and molars, and how many people take it because it's near-guaranteed employment with an impressive salary? I'm not saying that every dentistry course hopeful is in it for the money, but I'm sure most of them are, at least initially.

You see, this is why I don't like thinking too much. It makes me emo and seriously side-tracks my train of thought and writing.

Going back

2011-01-11T00:12:00.001+08:00

So it turns out that department I was assigned to in DSO had scheduled an "interaction session", so halfway through the day we went out for lunch and a movie (The Centurion, which is barely more than a gorefest in my opinion) :P I think in terms of salary-to-effort ratio I've struck the goldmine with this internship :) Having said that, we've already gone through basic PCB design and HDL, so it can't be much longer before we're given actual assignments. Personally I'm looking forward to when that happens; frankly I'm getting rather embarrassed of free-loading off DSO.

Yet despite all that, tomorrow will be yet another half-day for me because we're visiting a lab in NTU with circuit design tools such as an x-ray machine for the circuit boards, so I'm utilising my new-found free time to go back to NJ! :D Perhaps half a year ago I would have slapped myself on the head for wanting to go to school in my free time, but I really want to see how this year's orientation is shaping up, and also maybe say hi to a few juniors and teachers too. It's a pity that I'll still be missing the JH walk-in in the morning, but at least I can say hi to some of my juniors-turned-OGLs and maybe sneak a peek into the Ignis practice sessions with lionel. It may get kind of awkward since I'm not a councillor or anything, but I'll be in Tekong by the time the SH walk-in comes by so I'm willing to thicken my skin to see them at least once.

I think I'll crash CNY celebrations too, since my internship will be over by then :)

Here's a random anecdote from the day: while waiting for the movie to start, I went to the CD shop on the ground floor of The Cathay (the name escapes me) with the rest of my group to browse a bit, and just for fun I decided to see how much of my music I could find on the shelves. The answer: not a lot :( From Avenged Sevenfold I could only find Diamonds In The Rough, which is weird because it's neither old nor new, and it's not even their first concert DVD, so I don't know it was there instead of, say, Nightmare (which I might actually have bought if it was there). From System Of A Down I found their self-titled debut album as well as Steal This Album, which is once again an odd choice since it wasn't even their breakout album (which was Toxicity by the way). From Iron Maiden they had Killers, which is a freaking old album which I don't even listen to (Powerslave FTW :D ). And... that was pretty much it, I guess. Nothing from Protest The Hero, The Human Abstract, Abandon All Ships, Mastodon, Last Chance To Reason, Little Boots, and not even the more "mainstream" and "famous" ones like Daft Punk and Metallica. Freakin' Metallica. I don't know if my eyes deceived me, but I saw Megadeth but not Metallica. What is the world coming to? I've never claimed to be a musical snob who only listens to music nobody's heard of, but when literally all your favourite bands and artistes can't be found in your average CD shop then it's a sign that you're a musical deviant.

Dinners

2011-01-09T02:04:00.000+08:00

Friday was my last day of work for the week. There was a sharing session, first among the interns where I pretty much just sat around and talked cock with the fellow slackers from my room, then from the sensors division who talked about some pretty cool technology which I'm afraid of sharing in case I get gunned down by snipers for releasing classified information (or get a pay cut). My group also had a real-life lesson, as opposed to leeching off the MIT website, but it was barely more than staring at slides and nodding politely. Still, work is an overall enjoyable experience with my new-found colleague-intern-friends, and I can really count myself lucky to be grouped with laxing people like them :)

After work, I headed down to Marina Square Xin Wang Hong Kong Cafe for dinner with OG10, where once again we stayed for hours after all of us had finished our food to annoy everyone within earshot (which was a lot of people, considering how loud we were). After so many weeks in planning and so many postponements, it finally happened! :) Due to some communication problems we couldn't get everyone over, but we still got 11 of us. It was crazy and random as usual, and as always the same old jokes and scandals got refueled -.- Sometimes I wonder what they talk about when I'm not around, because my presence seems to generate the most conversation (and subsequently the most . I guess some scandals never die... (unfortunately) All in all, it was a great time, albeit filled with many facepalm moments (for me anyway).

The next day, I went out for dinner with jacob, junjie, victor and edmund to console junjie over missing the chalet haha. So anyway we went to the AMK Hub Pepper Lunch Express for dinner (minor lulz when jacob complained about his spaghetti before realising that he forgot to add the sauce that was provided), then went up to the cinema to see if there was anything worth watching, but unfortunately The Fighter (I want to catch this movie before going to Tekong!) isn't released in Singapore yet and everything else just didn't seem worth it, so we walked to the playground opposite AMK library to experience "The Spinny Thing of Doom" (according to jacob), which is best described as a rope pyramid with a merry-go-round at its base. So lots of hanging on to dear life on that contraption, some swinging, some sand-playing and lots of general immature behaviour and we went home. Hope to have a few more outings with friends like this before enlisting.

Random video of randomness!!!

:D

Salaryman Man

2011-01-07T00:24:00.000+08:00

I am now a salaryman... man:

Yes, I did embed this completely at random. How did you guess?

Yup, after such a long time of talking about finding a job, I finally started this Monday as an intern at DSTA (well technically it's DSO but those two are virtually synonymous as far as I'm concerned). I went in expecting to have to tackle mountains of mundane paperwork trickled down to us peons from the higher-ups who are too busy inventing missiles and tanks to bother, but what actually happened was in fact the complete opposite. Not only were there no mountains of paperwork, but there were also no mountains of cool engineering/inventing projects. In fact, there haven't been mountains of anything. My past 4 working days have been spent pretty much watching MIT video lectures online all the time (full-length lectures at that, each one lasting nearly an hour) in preparation for the real work that never seems to arrive. I know that I'm insane (like, more than usual) for complaining about getting paid for watching youtube videos, but honestly speaking I didn't sign up for the money. $55 a day is great and all but I really have no intention or target to spend it on right now. I joined the internship really to get some first-hand experience of work life in DSTA, and now it seems that every group besides mine has at least something to do. And there's a sharing session later... What the heck am I gonna tell the other interns, seriously.

Sometimes you just want to drift along aimlessly, but then you see people around you who have taken full control of their lives, charted their course perfectly and are speeding miles ahead of you, and you look at yourself and wonder if you're doing the right thing with your life. Sure you can drift, it's only a matter of getting used to everyone else overtaking you.

The past two nights I've also been going from work to the 25/27 chalet :D Basically just treated the chalet as my house. As expected, it was pretty awesome, when the two craziest classes in the NJC 2009-2010 batch have concurrent chalets next door to each other. It was a pity that I could only join them in the evenings though, and missed out on night cycling because I had to get up early the next day for work :( Still, it was a blast having one last huge party with the awesome 28 gang before we all shave our heads :)

I've had quite a persistent sore throat/throat infection (I suspect the latter) since Tuesday which has been seriously bugging me. I'm just spamming water to try and keep it under control right now and hopefully it will go away soon.

I really need to get used to not blogging during late night hours before going to work. In fact, this is probably not doing any favours to my throat either, so I'd better just go to slee-

WAIT. There's something I've wanted to do for weeks now but I just kept procrastinating. About a month ago, I discovered this awesome band called Mastodon. If I had to describe their music, I'd say they're kind of like Protest The Hero but slower-paced, heavier and more experimental, but I don't have to describe them so I won't, because honestly I don't think I have the musical vocabulary to do them justice in my introduction. So just have a listen:

OK, now I'd better go to sleep.

The air was filled with aerosol fumes

2011-01-01T16:13:00.000+08:00

I need to document the events of last night and this morning before it all slips from my mind, so here goes:

Met you'en, chin, weijian and jianzhong at Clarke Quay MRT. Dinner was Subway, then we walked over to a bridge near Riverside point to play cards and lepak, where we were joined by joshua tan, lionel and joshua ng. Things were pretty slow and relaxed at first, but as we approached midnight there formed a sort of silly string and foam snow mosh pit at the centre if the bridge with complete strangers spraying each other for the fun of it, andeven innocent bystanders such as us were implicated. The family we were sitting next to actually bought four whole boxes of silly string and the children were literally expending a can a minute.

Finally when the clock struck twelve, we realised that the fireworks were happening behind us, blocked by the scape building, so all we could only see the smoke and faintly hear the bangs -.- It didn't matter much though, because the mosh pit turned into a full-blown riot of canned craziness and nobody bothered looking out for fireworks anyway. We purposely sang jianzhong's birthday extremely loud in front of all the revelers, and naturally he became a primary target and was literally soaked from head to toe in silly string an foam snow. One stranger even treated him to his first gulp of hard liqour (expensive stuff, mind you!), resulting in him acting half-drunk on the way to you'en's house.

Once we reached his house, we fiddled around with his electronic drum set for a while (I suck at drumming T_T ) before settling on mahjong and Xbox. Played DOA (button-mashing!!!) and Guitar Hero for a while, then jianzhong and I played Halo. Halfway through our second match (and I was winning OK!) my controller ran out of battery, so just for the fun of it I decided to use the Guitar Hero controller to play just to see how it would turn out, with pretty interesting results. I couldn't figure out how to move or control my shooting (it just keeps firing until it runs out of ammo...), but the whammy bar moves the camera left and right, physically tilting the guitar up and down moves the camera vertically, and the fret buttons correspond to the similar-coloured buttons on the normal controller. Amazingly, even with jianzhong pulling off cheap shots at me with the guitar controller, I managed to kill him once by melee attacking him when he let his guard down XD

So now I'm back home. Feeling kind of groggy since I only had less than 4 hours of sleep, but this year's countdown was awesome and definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience, especially for jianzhong I have to imagine.

Oh, I also had my first taste of beer, which honestly was disgusting. It was like bitter soda water and I couldn't catch the supposed aftertaste that the rest say makes beer enjoyable. I guess I'm just not an alcohol person.

And there are no more concession fares for buses and MRTs! :( My trip back from you'en's house cost $1.16...

That time of the year

2010-12-31T17:41:00.000+08:00

It's that time of the year again, and by that I mean the end of it. Time to look back on 2010 before it slips through our fingers for good.

I went into 2010 with high spirits: 2009 had been good to me, so I assumed that the next couldn't be off by much. Well, it did start off quite well, with orientation being an absolute blast to have gone through, but that soon gave way to a harsher reality that would be the predominant atmosphere for the rest of the year. If I had to describe the year in one word, it would be "inadequacy". I started off the year pretty much already under scrutiny from everyone: fellow students, teachers, even the principal to a certain extent. I had to regain my footing after being thrown into the whole new world of SH2 while meeting their expectations as if nothing had changed from SH1, and it was all the more pressurising when all I could do was stumble around in the dark just like everyone else. More than ever, the thought that lingered continuously in my head was simply to fade back into obscurity, to be able to screw up without catching anyone's attention.

Still, it's during tough times like that when you really learn to cherish what you've got. I feel that I've gotten that much closer with my friends since last year, supporting each other through this truly trying year. All the stupid nonsense that we did together really helped make each day livable and even enjoyable. It was definitely a tough year, but I wouldn't change one bit of it if given the chance.

And this being my 18th year, I definitely felt the growing responsibilities that came with transitioning from an adolescent to an adult. When once I had my futures neatly planned out for me every step of the way, along the course of the year I increasingly had to take matters into my own hands. It's like I've become the captain of a ship I've boarded as a passenger for 18 years, and I've only just begun to comprehend the vastness of the ocean around me. This feeling of openness will definitely only grow stronger in future, a prospect which is both liberating and frightening to me. I still feel like I'm not ready to be an adult, but there's no option to defer life, and if there is one then I'm not aware of it.

I'm going into 2011 with memories, regrets, fears and hope

Elephants, barracudas, fleas and me

2010-12-30T02:02:00.000+08:00

It's pretty ironic, really. Force someone to do the same thing over and over every day and he'll scream for freedom at the top of lungs, but once he actually gets his freedom he'll be too used to his daily routine to make any actual use of it. "Look at me, I could sign up for sky-diving lessons right now if I wanted to!", he yells triumphantly, as he continues to sit in front of the computer watching stupid youtube videos the whole day, just like how he has done so every day so far. And in case you didn't get the hint from this being my blog and this being me typing, "someone" here refers to me *dramatic plot twist gasp*

I'm really not getting the hang of the fact that there's absolutely nothing stopping me from going out of the house every day and having the time of my life doing anything that isn't illegal, so every day I end up going about my usual routine like nothing's changed. I guess this is pretty much like that story where you chain a baby elephant to a tree for so long that when it grows up it won't even attempt to budge as long as you tie a rope to it's foot and attach the other end to pretty much nothing. Well sometimes it's elephants and chains and sometimes it's barracudas and glass walls and sometimes it's fleas and jar lids, but the overarching idea of conditioning oneself to self-impose restrictions is, well, overarching (and so is the theme of animal suffering, but I don't think that's what the storytellers had in mind).

So going back on topic, the reason why I realised this is because a bunch of 28s came over to my house today to play Wii games and generally do stupid things, and they kept saying how they haven't seen me out in quite a long time, which I have to admit is pretty true. And sadly, with the internship starting soon it will mean even less of seeing friends and doing cool shit, but if being a "greater mind" is all that it's cracked up to be then I should have a blast at DSTA too, right?

Which brings me to the idea I've been pondering over, planted into my mind by you'en: maybe I could just stay over at the chalet anyway, then just wake up at 7am to get to DSTA on time. Of course, that would mean having to get a decent amount of actual sleep at the chalet, which would be a pretty tall order under normal circumstances, but nigh impossible seeing how it's a 09SH25/09SH27 combined chalet.

Also, a few days ago I decided, on a whim, to listen to The Dillinger Escape Plan's latest album released sometime this year, Option Paralysis. While I still dare not say that I'm a hardcore fan of TDEP, there's something about them in general and this album in particular, the unique mix of technicality and brutality, genius and chaos, that not only makes it sound like frightening noise, but frightening noise which is actually intriguing and addictive and enjoyable to listen to, and which sounds more and more like a masterpiece the more you listen to it. It's like Leonardo da Vinci superimposed all his most famous works on top of each other to form a blob of ink and colour and showed it to someone and he said "What's with this chaotic mess of sh-HOLY CRAP I SEE THE MONA LISA." And in case you were expecting me to embed a sample of TDEP's work below, I'm sorry to disappoint you for now because I really want to listen to them a few more times through before I decide which song to put down here.

If you're familiar with the game-reviewing comedic genius that is Zero Punctuation, it might be apparent to you that I've been watching a lot of his videos recently because my blogging is starting to seem slightly reminiscent of his style. Just need to sprinkle a few expletives here and there, change half of my full stops to exclamation marks and do away with commas entirely.

Apathy

2010-12-29T02:12:00.000+08:00

The new year is in 3 days, and work will start soon after. Surprisingly I don't feel nervous right now, but then again I haven't exactly been doing anything these past few days so there isn't much of a trade-off anyway. Well, there is the class chalet that I'll unfortunately be missing a large part of, and the 90min commute from DSTA to NSRCC to join them for dinner for those three days doesn't sound very appealing either, but nonetheless I'm looking forward to it :) There're also the outings with OG10 and 4A, which up to this point are still unconfirmed, but it seems most likely that once again I'll have to join up with them later if they do come to fruition. And it might come as surprising for me to say this, but despite all the calendar clashes that have occurred because of it, I am looking forward to this internship. I really want to know more about what will (hopefully!) be my future employer, and about engineering in general. Plus I'm definitely not complaining about the $55 a day ( :D ), though I don't think I'll be spending it anytime soon, seeing how I'll very soon be going off for my all-expenses-paid island resort getaway.

I've given up trying to care about the whole university thing. Heck, I've got two more years to think about it, and no one else is even bothering, so why should I? Drifting along and doing nothing has always been my forte anyway. Does that make me lazy and underachieving? Probably, but I never denied any of that anyway. Seeing friends and acquaintances planning and mapping out their oh-so-bright futures while you're at home rotting away can get rather depressing at times, but mediocrity is something you get accustomed to eventually.

I know that there are so many things that I could and should be doing, but I just don't know what they are, and I've given up trying to find out.

What now?

2010-12-27T01:49:00.001+08:00

I have a confessions to make: I haven't sent my DSTA scholarship acceptance form yet. After all, they didn't mention a specific date, though I have to imagine that I'm pushing "ASAP" a bit far. The reason, I'm afraid, is that I have no idea how to fill it up. I'm referring specifically to the part asking which universities I have applied to or am applying to, and application results for the former. Firstly, I still don't know which universities to choose. My mom has a preference for UK universities, though I question the validity of her reasoning ("When I think of US universities, I think of men with glib tongues and business suits."). Secondly, and more worryingly for myself, I have no idea when or how I should go about applying at the moment, if at all. Do I just let everything slide for the moment, or is there something I should be actively doing? My distress is twofold, because I'm afraid that I might miss a life-changing junction if I do nothing, and because I know that this should be something that I'm familiar with and it reminds me yet again of what a lousy student I am (at least admin-wise).

I have to say that I really regret not clarifying all this stuff back in NJ, and I miss having approachable teachers who will listen to my queries. I'm browsing through Brightsparks forums and university websites right now, but honestly I can't bring myself to believe anything until it's been backed up by a teacher.

Yes, I'm gonna say it: I miss school.

On a lighter note, I just learned today that the treadmill in my house displays distances in miles instead of kilometres, so my stamina hasn't dropped like a rock since post-NAPFA days :D And here I was panicking because I couldn't maintain a 12kph pace (which would give a 2.4km timing of 12min) when I was actually running at 12mph (which is a whopping 19.3kph O.O ). In hindsight I guess it was kind of a himbo moment for me, but I'm so used to being disappointed by my physical capabilities that I'll believe that I can't even finish half of a 2.4km run with a 12min pace.

To-do list:
Read up on universities and applications (maybe I'll make a trip back to NJ to ask the teachers one of these days)
Submit DSTA form ASAP (like, for realz, before they get pissed off :X )
Use the treadmill again (regained confidence w00t!!!)
Practise commuting to DSTA (don't want my phobia of missing bus stops to get the better of me on my first day of work. And yes, it's not enough to get directions there; I need to physically travel along the route or I'll seriously freak out)

And before I forget, this picture kind of struck a chord with me (and I'm not even a Christian). Is this the summary of modern Christmas?

(I guess people without some background knowledge of the Bible won't get it)

Cracked snowglobe

2010-12-26T01:00:00.000+08:00

OK, so I guess Christmas morning started off on a rather ugly note.

Random fact of the day about my life: my mom still sneaks into our (my brothers and I) bedroom on Christmas eve, puts presents on our beds and insists that it was Santa Claus, and we just humour her every year. This year, "Santa Claus" got me a hat, anticipating my lack of hair in the near future (hurr hurr -.-), my younger brother got a Zinc bag (I've never had one of those fancy schmancy Zinc bags :O ) and my youngest brother got a 15-book Road Dahl collection, which would have made me seriously happy when I was 12 (I've only read maybe half of the books in the collection). The problem (there's always a problem, isn't there, or there wouldn't be a point in this post) was that my brother didn't share my enthusiasm over the gift. Bluntly put, he was not happy at all with it. When my mom asked him about the gift, he forced a smile which obviously didn't fool her. During breakfast, she whispered to me "You know, Santa Claus told me that the book collection was the most expensive gift, over a hundred dollars."

The thing is, there were times in the past when the economy was shaky and all we would get was a packet of sweets or chocolates, so the books definitely weren't the "worst" present he ever got by a long shot, but he seemed to react more strongly to this year than before. Is it because he's become pampered with "cooler" presents the previous few years running up to this year? Was I like that when I was his age? Am I still like that now?

Well, maybe I'm reading too much into too little (happens quite frequently with me). He seems to be completely cool with it now, and has even started reading some of the books. Now about my own present, it's not that I don't appreciate the thought, but I don't think I can muster the self-confidence to wear a hat out in the public outside of a walk-in/prom setting. So yeah.. probably won't see me wearing it before I lose my hair. Sorry, Santa.

Going off on a tangent here, I think it must be kinda sad to have your birthday fall on a major holiday like Christmas. Everyone is probably too busy with their festive activities to make a big deal out of your birthday, and if your parents are cheapskates they'll probably try to weasel their way into giving you one present for two occasions (I can completely imagine my mom doing that, haha). Now that I think about it, my birthday is pretty close to Halloween. Maybe if I lived in a country where Halloween is a huge event every year, I would grow up to become a Jack Skellington-style goth kid XD

I have just gotten hold of the complete Tron: Legacy OST, and I have to say that Daft Punk are absolutely amazing. I'm sure the Twitterverse is tired of hearing me say this, but they are seriously talented to be able to create such beautiful blends between orchestral and electronic music that not only doesn't sound forced, but perfectly complements the movie. I sat down to listen to the album and decide which songs to transfer to my MP3, until I realised that I just had to transfer the entire album over. Here's but a small taste:

It starts of purely with strings, and when they introduce the electronic parts it doesn't jar with the music, but rather creates a "digital" atmosphere for it. See now why it's perfect for the movie?

Holy crap, 2011 is only a week away.

Christmas-y thoughts

2010-12-24T18:27:00.000+08:00

Idealism is something that gets laughed at a lot after you reach a certain age. As Christmas comes just around the corner and you see Christmas specials of old cartoons playing on TV, the corny dialogue about the joys of giving and sharing can give goosebumps or excessive eye-rolling syndrome to anyone above the age of 10.

Must it be that we lose our faith in simple innocent goodwill as we age? Is this really what maturity means - a disillusionment of our view of the world? Taking of our rose-tinted glasses?

Or maybe it means just the opposite. Maybe it means being able to see the sparkling hints of good around us even without the rose-tinted glasses. Maybe it means acknowledging that our world is far from idealistic and perfect, but despite all that there is still some genuine good in the world worth cherishing and spreading.

There comes a point in time when every parent will have to look their child in the eye and admit that Santa Claus doesn't exist, but what many people fail to add on is that although magical reindeer-rearing, North Pole-residing Santa Claus doesn't exist, there was once a certain St. Nicholas who gave presents to the children in his town once a year, and whose charity was commemorated as the legend of Santa Claus. Maybe that way, the first thing that will come to the children's minds will be to respect the spirit of giving, and not "So nobody got my letter about my Xbox 360 Kinect set?"

Christmas-themed song! :D

Merry Christmas everyone :)

Not now

2010-12-23T02:45:00.000+08:00

Can't stop thinking about it. Literally, when I have nothing else to think about, it comes to mind on its own. It's trying to persuade me to take action. Maybe it's the body, maybe it's the mind, maybe it's both. What I do know for sure is that its cries are getting harder to ignore, and that it pays no heed to reason or circumstance.

Not now, not for a while. Perhaps not ever, but hopefully not.

It's all just a matter of finding good distractions. Of course, it would probably help too if I spent my 2.45am nights sleeping instead of being awake and susceptible to sudden attacks of introspection.

Enter The Grid

2010-12-22T01:03:00.000+08:00

I watched Tron: Legacy in 3D today (random note: the GV 3D glasses are quite bulky and uncomfortable compared to the Cathay ones, just sayin'), but before I go into my thoughts about the movie, I want to talk a bit first about the general critical reception for the movie.

When I first went on Wikipedia to look up the movie and saw that reviews were "mixed", I just thought that one or two people couldn't make up their minds about it. When I went to search individual reviews on Google, I saw a very clear divide between two camps, one trashing the movie with 20-30% and the other praising it with 70-80%. Depending on who you asked, the plot was either decent enough or non-existent; Jeff Bridges, Olivia Wilde and Micheal Sheen either portrayed their roles convincingly or horribly; the faithfully adhered-to neon-lines-on-black design style is either mesmerising and beautiful or repetitive and dull. It's no wonder the average rating for this movie is around 50%. I've never seen such a divided opinion on a single movie before.

Personally speaking, I thought it was great. People who complain that Tron's visual style is dull compared to Avatar's lush tropical landscape have got it all wrong - while Pandora boasted vibrant colours which emphasised its inherent chaos, The Grid was created to be a digital, logical world ruled by an iron fist, hence the sleek glossy neon lines and the dark background with gloomy skies. And while I'm no Oscar judge, I have to say that personally I found the acting to be good enough. Finally, I enjoyed the plot quite a bit, to be honest. Of course there weren't any amazing game-changing plot twists, but for an action movie it serves its role pretty well. And when you walk out of the cinema and think back, you realise that there are actually some questions to ponder over, even if the movie didn't have time to elaborate on them amidst all the amazing CGI parading.

Also, the music is all from Daft Punk, and who can hate on them? One universal fact agreed upon by all the reviewers (and myself) is that the music played an integral role in enhancing the movie. The techno elements blend in so well with the orchestra that you'd think that this was classical music from The Grid, which of course is the whole point of it. This is one of the extremely rare times when a movie's soundtrack is so greatly lauded (discounting musicals of course). And now, I can't stop listening to this song:

Here's a couple of pictures too, to make this post even more multimedia:

Look at them, they were practically made for The Grid.

Yeah, cos she looks amazing in the movie.

The iconic light cycle. I love how the rider's body fits seamlessly with the bike.

The light jet looks simply amazing.

As a sort of closing statement, the original Tron was also frequently criticised for having amazing graphics but a weak plot, and went on to become a cult classic, so who knows what will happen to its sequel?

There is only one step

2010-12-21T00:20:00.000+08:00

I'm about to use my poetic license of owning this blog to not make sense (you have been warned).

I'm in that kind of mood right now where the slightest oddity is hilarious. Which is why right now I find this the funniest thing in the world:

Also, I have discovered QWOP, often billed as the most difficult game ever created. And after spending a ridiculous amount of time on it (and consequently wasting a good part of my life away):

I would like to point out that above and beyond my 'O' levels, promos and scholarship application success, this is the crowning achievement of my life. Yes, the fact that after about two hours of figuring how to hop on one knee to the finish line I managed to become a national hero overshadows all that, and probably anything else I might accomplish in the future. This is the peak of my life.

Also, here's another game I discovered called Robot Unicorn Attack (it's also available on Facebook by the way). It's so absurdly feminine (read: GAY), and yet crazily addictive that I can't stop laughing whenever I play it (and then I can't stop playing it). And it has the awesomest soundtrack EVAR:

AND WE'LL LIVE IN HARMONY HARMONY OH LOVE

Old man

2010-12-18T00:44:00.000+08:00

Yes, that is what I am: an old man. At least, that's what I felt I was after going for the hockey friendly. The sore thighs and calves, the aching of that muscle that runs across the palm; yup, it's definitely hockey again. And with my swollen knee fresh from the pitch, I now walk like an old man too -.- But in spite of all of that, I must say that it was fun finally getting back on the pitch again :) I'll probably try to go at least one more time after my knee heals and before my internship starts.

And I'm finally posting a song again! Not my usual genre (so all you metal-haters can remove your earplugs now >.> ) It's a techno remix of Still Alive, that ingenious theme song for Portal with the darkest of dark humour interwoven cleverly in its lyrics, and it's just pretty darn catchy in my opinion:

I STILL DON'T HAVE MY IC BACK

Plans

2010-12-16T23:08:00.000+08:00

Finally went out of the house and did something today. Went for LAN with a bunch of 25s plus chin to celebrate panyu's birthday. As usual, I was completely pwned (don't even know why I bother trying, really. I guess for me it's all about the company), and to top things off the LAN shop owner accidentally gave my IC to another person -.- They'll contact me when the other person goes back to the shop to switch his IC, but the thought of having to make a trip all the way to dhoby gaut just to get back one plastic card seriously irritates me. I am officially put off playing LAN, at least for the next few days or so.

So it turns out that as a DSTA scholarship applicant, I have been automatically offered an internship with them, which kind of assuages some of my thoughts and worries from before. It starts from 3rd January and pays $55 a day, but because I'm enlisting in early February I can't experience the full internship all the way to March, which means I'm missing out on a month's worth of salary and experience (and SALARY!!!), but I guess it can't be helped. Short internship is better than no internship, right?

After nearly a year without hockey, I'm going onto the pitch tomorrow to join the juniors for a friendly. Frankly, I'm pretty afraid that I'm gonna screw up terribly due the rustiness of my skills and physique (and also my lack of those things to begin with), but it's my duty as a senior to help them out whenever I can, especially seeing how I more or less abandoned them during the school year due to my H3s.

I should get out of the house more often. After all, I only have less than two months left to spend.

I still have no clue about university admissions.

I WANT MY IC BACK.

I am sinking into incoherence. It is a sign that I should sleep now.

No path

2010-12-15T00:59:00.000+08:00

Still wandering aimlessly. Do the university applications start before, during or after NS? Do I accept the scholarship now or later? Do I try for more or settle with what I've got? Or do I just leave everything for another day?

Yes, I do like that last idea very much.

I really, really, really really really cannot find any motivation whatsoever to start working out again. Not that my mom fails to remind me every few minutes that I shouldn't be enjoying the holiday at the end of the roughest two years of education I've had so far.

There is no path; there is no crossroads; there is only empty space as far as the eye can see.

Steps towards a future

2010-12-14T00:36:00.000+08:00

OK, I'm back from Penang, and the trip turned out to be quite a bit more enjoyable then I initially predicted it to be :) Most of the credit for that belongs to our tour guide, who managed to be approachable, informative and entertaining all at once. it's true, that Chinese saying "行行出状元": he's most definitely the best tour guide I've ever been under. Goes to show the wonders that 13 years of experience can do for you, doesn't it? Maybe this academic rat race of ours isn't the only way to go.

So anyway, more about the trip. Mostly it was about touring the cultural attractions of Penang such as religious and heritage sites. Because they were all half-day tours, in the spare time the tour group would go looking for hawker centers to sample local cuisine, so it was much like a culinary trail too. Oh, and for some inexplicable reason I was rather lethargic for most of the trip, so I was sleeping in between all of that. So basically, the trip can be summarised as temples, food and sleep. I know I sound kind of bitter right now, and I don't know how to explain this, but it genuinely was still pretty enjoyable :)

When I came back home from the airport, my sixth sense told me to check my mailbox before going into the house, and... DSTA finally replied!!! :D I had more or less lost hope already because they said that it would take a month at most to reply, and that was in October, but in any case I now have a provisional scholarship!

But even though I know that I'm really lucky to get this, I need to ask myself if I want to just accept this readily or see if I can get any other provisional offers, because DSTA has a $1000 penalty for refusing a scholarship after accepting the provisional offer. Of course my parents are willing to pay the fine if worse comes to worse, but still money doesn't grow on freakin' trees. And of course, there's also the matter of where I want to enroll. Japan and Germany are definitely out of the question because I'm definitely not a multi-linguist (just look at my Chinese grades), so that leaves a collection of universities in Singapore, the US and UK. Why am I even talking about all this now, when I still don't have a clue how I'm supposed to go about applying anyway? I kinda feel guilty now because I have friends who have made sure to take steps towards securing a better academic future while I, for the most part, have been doing little more than drifting about and waiting for stuff to happen. I guess if you look at it this way, I sort of deserve to not do as well academically? I don't really know what to think, but I do know that I want to change all this. i need to take steps towards a future. I need to.

Underwhelming

2010-12-09T23:06:00.000+08:00

OK, so more about the BBQ yesterday. It was at victor's house and it was the standard fare of fried rice, hotdogs and chickens. Of course, most of it was undercooked or overcooked (note to self: ensure that at least one person at every BBQ actually knows fully what he's doing). And of course, it eventually degenerated into a pyromania session. Everything from matches and firestarters to cheese tofu (dofu!) and marshmallows were burnt to ashes :D Then we presented junjie with his cake, but not before doing something stupid: we put it on a paper plate and actually got it to float on the swimming pool! :D No birthday cake can ever be as cool as the one that floats on water.

After we cleaned up the mess we created, we went up to victor's house where I had my first taste of liquor (which was disgusting by the way; I still don't see the appeal of alcohol), then it was talking cock, taking photos and playing monopoly deal until we went home. I said this before, and I know it's too late for you to see this, but good luck in there junjie! :D

I more or less forgot that I'm leaving for Penang in the morning and I'll only be back on Monday. Can't really say that I'm looking forward to this trip though, there just isn't the same anticipation as with other trips I've had (come on, I even forgot about it). Oh well, in any case I'll be off tomorrow no matter what, so bye guys.

We part ways, but we won't part company

2010-12-09T04:04:00.000+08:00

I know this post has been long overdue since I left a cliffhanger in the previous post about grad night, but now's my holiday, which I intend to spend as decadently and with as little activities requiring basic mental activity (i.e. writing) as possible. Childish and irresponsible? Yes. Beneath me? Hell no.

Grad night was awesome! The food was great, the entertainment was quite good too, and it was the first time I saw so many of my classmates and friends decked out in the classiest of attire. We're finally starting to look like the refined NJCian ladies and gentlemen we're supposed to be, eh? But even if prom was held in a hawker centre zichar stall and we all came in t-shirts and bermudas, I still think I would have enjoyed it. Really, prom is not about the glitz or the glamour or the food; what else could it be about besides the company? It's a celebration alright, but not one for the best-dressed or the most popular, but for the simple fact that we are all NJCians who have survived the arduous two years and have found companionship in each other. I find that people who didn't enjoy prom because it was " not good" have simply missed the point completely. I'm starting to have a bit of regret over not having brought a camera, since that was probably the last time I'll see many of these people, but with the wonders of modern technology (when you mention "modern technology" in a GP essay it's nearly always Facebook, isn't it?) I think it's still possible to keep in touch with friends :)

After prom, the 28 gang minus OAC people went to play LAN at *scape (it's spelled with the "*" right?). First up the dota noobs played CS, where I got completely owned by jaron and zhongxi, whoever happened to be on the opposing team at the time, while the dota pros played dota (like duh). After a few rounds, the dota noobs played dota and the dota pros played CS... and then switched back to dota anyway. It's comforting to know that at least among the dota noobs I can hold my own in dota :D

When we were done with LAN (approximately 2.5 hours later), someone had a delusional fatigue-inspired idea and we actually walked nearly all the way back to bryan's house, which took an hour or so. And when we finally relented and hailed cabs, it turned out that his house was only another 15 minutes on foot T_T Definitely a lesson in perseverance. So we reached bryan's house and the first thing we did, out of all the stuff we could have done, including going for either of two post-prom parties, was watch a pirated copy of Snakes On A Plane, but hey, it was a fair trade for me. It's one of those movies that's so bad and campy that the dial spins all the way around and it becomes awesome. If I haven't mentioned it here before, here it is: I have a weird liking for so-bad-it's-good movies like this.

The rest of the sleepover was pretty much talking nonsense and being retarded (AKA the usual routine) (notice how "sleep" was not mentioned; "sleepover" is the greatest misnomer in human history), and then we went back home. Awesome time guys, and I'm sure the chalet will be even better.

I just came back from a birthday/farewell party for junjie since he's leaving for NS later today, but it's 4am right now which is the latest I've ever stayed up to since the start of the holidays (excluding the all-nighter during the sleepover of course), so I think I'd better sleep now. I'll fill in with the details later today.

All the best junjie! :D