Not metal

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

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



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



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



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

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

Watching others tread the same path

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

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

Post-Wallaby

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beast Within

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

Rivers

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

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

There's dust on everything

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wallaby

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

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

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

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