How to make a biography documentary

Open with either a cinematic landscape shot or a very zoomed in then zoomed out shot of the person or something closely related to that person or a thing that will be of significance later on in the documentary.

then do a short introduction of the person, by interview and/or showing short clips and old children photographs. clips must be reasonably poor quality. during which time the background must be playing jazzy or acoustic music, must be light, not to overpower the subject. narrator must have relatively pleasant enough voice to not sound boring.

do interviews with people who used to know him in the past so as to fit a chronological order. at this point the music must be sufficiently light to cover up the background buzz but not the voice of the interviewee, or no music at all if it does not disrupt the atmosphere.

then do a quick montage of growing up, if said time does not bring with itself any thing significant enough to talk about. this time use upbeat faster music. show maybe footage with friends, graduation, school, etc.

start delving into any problems. start by showing the roots of it. perhaps signs or symptoms of a much deeper problem. perhaps interviewees have seen it coming but never do anything about it. perhaps an event foreshadowing it would occur. music at this point become darker. narrator must take note not to over dramatify the script and let the video take care of the change in mood. remain as neutral as possible.

at this point decide whether or not the documentary goes up or down. whether it becomes a tragedy or an uplifting story.

i may actually do this one day you know.

my problems are hardly worthy of a documentary.

Is it wrong to ask for someone to bitch to this christmas?

and yet when when that person comes, i become so focused on wanting to spend as much quality time with that person that i just forget all about kao peh ing (cursing) on all my friends and the words never come out.

im probably using ironic wrongly, but it's ironic how much i wish i had a friend to spill my guts to and yet when that person comes, i don't give a damn about any of it anymore. i guess its those moments in between working and hanging out that really eats the person up, i.e me. Also, i guess the only real way i can bitch without being hypocritical is to tell it to a stranger or in this case write it down. i mean when a person does step up and say, hey im your friend, tell me your problems. at that moment my problems literally disappear. THAT person appearing is precisely the solution to my problems.

i know its' wrong to wish the world revolves around me. i mean people have a legitimate reason to not go out with me today, for real. like work and church and stuff. but its those times where you realize that you are actually not their top priority that bugs the hell out of me. and not the kind when his/her grandma is passing away and you still feel jealous she's taking up more of your friend's time than you. that's just plain bastard. its' those times when yo feel like your friend is putting his friends above you even though you think he's closest thing you have to a friend. i guess one way to describe it would be to think that you're best friends with Felicia Chin, even though she just treats you like a hi-bye friend in college. i mean you'd think sometimes people really have legit reasons, like the fact that the time or the place wasn't firmed up so she or he made plans with other people, it happens, i accept that. but then there are times when you make plans so far ahead of time, like 2 weeks, and everybody all confirmed and stuff, then the morning she or he calls you to say, oh sorry i made plans with some other guy yesterday, totally sorry. NO YOU'RE NOT, Fuck.

i guess its' really the holidays that get to me. every holiday i find a way to mope around the house. even my brother has friends around playing dota with him.

i think i can finally understand why people become workaholics. their excuse of a life is so soul crushingly disappointing the only way they find gratification is through their achievements in the career. i probably would if i wasn't so damn lazy. but a the same time, when i see someone useless achieve the same qualifications as me, i think to me, am i really that useless? It kind of demeans whatever glory or at least pride you could have in that achievement. maybe this is what people feel when i get my grades.

i want to volunteer in disaster relief. i want to risk my life to help those in other countries dying. i want to have a legitimate reason to not be able to hang out with my friends. at leas that way, when i re-evaluate my life on my deathbed. i can say to myself. well glennard, you didn't really have much of a social life, but at least you did a lot of good to a lot of people, so i guess that makes up for it somehow.

I hope they don't judge my parents when i eventually turn out to commit suicide/be a serial killer.

FUCK.

so there's this game

so i recently stumbled upon this game, not a video game, but a board game and a "game" in the loosest sense of the word if you expect it to be any fun at all.

its called Train by Brenda Brathwaite.

i already know the ending but i really don't want to spoil it for you guys, but i do want to say this.

the impact of this game is so deep that without even playing it, just reading about the gameplay and allowed to to drop my mouth in reaction, i think proves how powerful this game and particularly the medium can be.

i just want to touch on the idea of emotional involvement for a short while. i remember a year ago or two when my father started taking an interest in the stock market after it crashed, and i was watching the Business channel or whatever it was called, and i was watching the numbers across the screens and i told him, what the hell the numbers are so big and they still say they don't have enough. and then i read across a small headline in the bottom bar that said that a firm was losing upwards of 6 or 7 digits a day. A DAY, they were losing that amount a day. people can scrape that amount in a lifetime and they can lose it in a day.

and then over the next few days we went back to my extended family for some thing that i can't remember and i overheard my accountant aunt saying that seeing this kinds of numbers is a normal and everyday thing, and you don't really care since it's not really your money. and i thought to myself, did the money people can so used to seeing these kinds of numbers that they don't feel anything when it's going down the drain or is it that it's not their money so they don't care.

i was surprised that people could be so emotionally unattached to a number as ridiculously large especially when what they were losing were not only money from fat cats, but also grandparents' retirement funds. so i thought about how people no longer had any emotional attachment to statistics, especially numbers in any form of way simply because we were overwhelmed as a kid, in a country like singapore with overt emphasis on education and proof and evidence and all that.

so when i think about the fact that there may be 1 in 10 psychopaths around and that 80% of the world population lives on less than $10 a day, i wonder how many people really have any sort of reaction to something like this. it feels really pointless when people really are apathetic to simple issues like that.

let me draw you a word picture, courtesy of ~danny

the weight of an elephant is 10000 pounds, that means nothing to anyone
it is equal to the weight of 2 SUVs, way easier to quantify that 10000 pounds
now lets take the number out completely, it is equal to a big slab of metal that could make you a stain on the carpet if it was dropped on you, so much a stain that not even your teeth would survive the impact. nothing would be left except a funny pink stain and the echoing shrill of a person who has just been squished under a giant slab of metal.

and that is information without numbers

Brenda manages to do this with history such as slave trade through the medium of games. i wonder if i could do it.

i wonder if i could convince people of things

just some thoughts

too many people

We Don't Know Because We Don't Care

i finally figured out what's wrong with our political system

too many people

when you give too many people the same type of job, most people will stop working, giving the hardworking ones too much to do

im pretty much an oddball

i want to be the best and yet at the same time i want to do as little as possible

for some reason people seem to think these are mutually exclusive ideas, that one cannot exist without the other

so as a result i end up hanging around either people who want to do as little as possible and yet never want to achieve anything. OR people who want to be the best and yet despise me because i seem to be doing very little. hanging out with either group always leaves a sour taste in my mouth because i feel like the other half is missing

i think i fully cemented my post as the worst sergeant.

because i made a decision on the spot after AFTER asking a stupid amount of people on what was supposed to be done, and actually following their advice or instruction. only to find out i (and by extension, they) was wrong and yet the only person to have done anything about it.

there really are too many commanders in our company. it's like my hands are tied everytime somebody asks me what to do. i cannot remember the last time i told somebody about what to do in a concrete and firm manner (aside from stupid things like smoke breaks and toilet breaks) without going on the phone and asking someone else. it's like im just a messenger and my mouth is just somebody else's by extension. i can't even friggin decide on what time to fall in without 2 or 3 people breathing down on my neck, asking me why i didn't do this or why i did that. I DID THAT BECAUSE SOMEBODY ASKED FOR INSTRUCTIONS AND IT SEEMED LIKE THE ONLY THING LOGICAL AT THE TIME. it feels like nobody treats me like i have brains of any kind.

im probably being oversensitive. but i always seem to be around when bad news needs to be announced and yet conveniently lost when good news comes around.

and i become the bad guy because i had to make a decision at that point in time and now people think im incompetent even though i have yet to be punished. you know what i really hate that. in fact sometimes i hate it so much i wish i was punished so at least i get some sympathy points instead of people pointing and talking about how incompetent i am.

yeah im the bad guy. i hate being the bad guy

Rapunzel

watched rapunzel over the nights out this week. actually watch 2 movies over the week, easy A on the last weekend.

i think i fell in love with rapunzel (the character) like 10 or 15 minutes into the film. i just could not stop smiling everytime i see her. but honestly i don't recommend rapunzel or any disney movie in fact to brooding teenagers. i think disney movies require a very specific frame of mind before you can start watching it because its Meant to be a kids' show, so anybody going in with a mentality of over 15 has to accept various plot holes or unbelievabilities (i just totally made that word up), and not be so cynical. im surprised i enjoyed it so much, although it probably had something to do with my mood on that particular day. anyway, i also downloaded the princess and the frog at home after watching rapunzel. the music and the characterisation is incredibly amazing and it is so rare to see such a light hearted yet musically great film, i think. because with films like inception and i can't think of any off hand, they have great soundtracks but the movie itself is so intense or otherwise draining that it's hard to remain retardedly enjoying the music for music's sake.

that was surprisingly long for a paragraph on disney films.

yay all my friends are having exams now, an actual reason for not being able to go out with them. anyway i think ntu exams are already over, granted they actually started term 2 weeks early. i suggest to all ntuians (i have no idea what to call them) to gloat about this and rub it into THEIR faces before your term starts and they rub it in yours for starting early.

update on army life

all my troopers hate me. like for real, no exaggerations no emo dramtic going on. i am literally the worst sergeant in my platoon, of 13 specs no less. even my friend (who talks to them on a more personal level because he smokes) says that im being too harsh on them. really? its quite difficult to walk this fine line between letting them go and maintaining discipline, especially when they think they can get away with anything if you let them go and they hate you if you punish them. i really have no idea what to do. like literally, because everytime i see some things and i let them go, it becomes something easily forgotten and yet if i do something about it, they kick up a big fuss.

if any of my troopers were to read this, they would probably disagree completely. but i seriously have no idea what to do in such scenarios. but what another of my friend said was i felt wuite true, that being a commander is not a popularity contest (and if it was, hell would freeze over if i ever had a chance of winning), its about doing your job and doing it properly. it shouldn't matter what they think about you. but yet on some level, what they think about you will determine whether or not they listen. so you see why i'm torn over this issues.

also, ive been trying to get the mailing addresses to some of my friends in hopes of writing a letter. because i find letter writing to be on a more personal level ever since ive read harry potter. which admittedly is stupid.

yes it is stupid don't try to change my mind about it.

insensitive

a few hours ago, i found out (through facebook of course) that an old friend of mine, well i can't really say friend, more like schoolmate, was pregnant.

to me that came as a shock, because she was only 1 year older than me. so naturally i decided to find out more. in that short span of about 30 seconds from being on facebook to going to her blog, i was about to say some really insensitive things about her, things like how she's too young to have a baby, things like well i never really thought she would not have had sex by now. you know insensitive things.

so then as i read the "whole" story (its about as whole as it can get without speaking to her). i realized that they went through the same thoughts that i would have had if it were my girlfriend who was pregnant. they were about to abort the child, before realizing they could not live with themselves if they ended it. and then at that point i realized.

it doesn't matter how sound your logic is and how practical a decision may be, there is no way you could have gone through with a decision like that without any thing going on in your heart. the couple sound like they are very much in love with each other and i hope they do so for the rest of their lives.

some life lessons

been playing Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, its an incredibly awesome game. it feels like ubisoft finally made just enough adjustments to the point where it gets fun. particularly the addition of having more control over elements around you and in fact being able to decide between stealth and active combat and these elements aiding both significantly. one particular disappointment is that the music which made the AC2 experience so immersive seems to be lacking in this game.

anyway, i cant remember the last time i blogged so im not going to recount all the things that i've been doing since. the only things i can think of that i've done lately is that going to pizza hut because evon decided to pang seh us and wayne decided to be sick and that i watched harry potter 7 part 1 with some of the platoon. admittedly, (spoilers) the most disturbing part of the movie was that harry and hermione starting kissing semi-naked, and that one of my friends thought that moment was hot and he was surprised i didn't think so. personally i don't think that body was emma watson's, maybe that was with cgi or whatever.


anyway, quite a bit of free time and quiet time at home, since my bro is out. and as per usual been thinking. here's a few pieces of my mind.

remember when somebody told you that practice makes perfect, that be the best that you can be, eliminate your flaws and fix your mistakes. what i actually started thinking about recently was that how much of your flaws is actually part of your humanity. you know like people say be yourself. so when you start trying to reduce your imperfections, are you really becoming less human in a sense. i know this question is really pretty inconsequential. but as i went further along that lines, there are actually people who are innately flawed in such a way that they hurt either themselves or society in general. on one level, there are people who are prone to addiction, either in a way that is harmful or not, and in case you didn't know there is actually a real cluster of nerves or grey matter of whatever the hell is in your brain that is the center of addiction, which can be physically identified in a brain scan. when we try to help them be a better person, are we taking away their ability to be human in a sense, because so much of addiction fixes is actually patched on sensory cues that really just cover up the problem in the first place.

and then there are the even more dangerous, where people like psychopaths (which by definition
are people who cannot feel. granted this is an oversimplification) or even serial murderers and perverts who take pleasure in causing pain. when people remove these urges from them, we call it curing them when in a sense we are taking away their humanity. granted you could reason it with the fact that by letting them be themselves, we are placing serious threat on other people, other people who are doing something positive or at the very least not being a negative influence on people.

then again its a pretty stupid question

every so often, i like to pretend i can teleport, or at the very least walk through walls.

never stop learning and keep your mind open, because you won't know where you pick up the
cleverest nuggets of information you never thought about
i.e.

when you're in a conversation, people say more when you keep quiet and let them talk than when you cut in and try and ask a question to probe him more.

source: surprisingly fan fiction.

also, friends remain friends when one thinks they are smarter than the other. which i can't say is not true for most of my friends, sounding really arrogant now.

i sometimes wonder ( and worry) if I'm gay when i think about whether or not i will remain friends with another guy friend for a long time and the fact that i enjoy his company quite a bit. Then i remind myself that men don't turn me on, only women do. men don't make me stare to the point of drooling no matter how good looking they may be, only women do, and they don't even need to do a lot.

i also realized that i was quite a hypocrite when i criticized facebook birthday messages for being insincere when I was tempted to do that on so many occasions. i settled for sending smses.


i think something that actually passed through my mind quite a number of times that a comedian by the name of jon stewart manage to crystallize so well is that what we can control is only our intentions, what people take away from it, their perception of it, is entirely out of his (jon) control and to think or more precisely overthink them would only prove to be pointless and personally, too overwhelming for your mind.

shtuff i would do in america

this list will be constantly updated, because i can only think of so many things to do

anyway, me and edmund are planning to go to america to backpack around the states
tentatively, which means, maybe probably possibly prosibly

so i figured i keep some reminders of things i would want to do there because i cannot think of anything right now

also if anyone would like to join us you are very welcome, particularly girls, because 2 dudes in a prolonged period of time in a foreign land would most likely end up wasted and or STDed

also to note down here is that the university vacation days are as follows
SMU
30nov to 3 jan for term 1
19 april to 15 aug for term 2

NUS
5 dec to 9 jan term 1
8 may to 1 august term 2

NTU
27 dec to 21 jan term 1
23 may to 29 jul term 2

so the list as of now is:

eat a new york pizza
visit times square
visit san francisco bay bridge
visit white house (meet president)

271110
see ground zero
see empire state building

121210

Packlist stuff

Camera

video camera

shades

jacket/windbreaker

weather appropriate clothes

credit card

money belt

map

plug adaptors

to do list

transportation: check out transport between states and also within states, bus, train, etc

Currency: find out if travellors' checks still useful, findout how much to bring on person

Comms: access to internet, how to communicate back to singapore, Phone, etc? sim card usability in other countries

buying stuff from usa, delivery costs?

Empty your brain tank

it is much easier to listen then to say.

and i'm not the only one to think so.

and if I really think about he is probably the best listener I know, and I would be a close second.

but then again i doubt many people trust me enough to tell me things, much less believe that i'm a good listener.



because we all have our own insecurities that when we say the things that make us the most vulnerable, no one would stop to listen, or even worse, no one would care.


many things were said that night. and it's remarkable really, that it only took us what 7 or 8 years before I really emptied my brains out to someone, i hope the next person doesn't take that long.

and he was the one who wondered out loud, "wha, wo ren si ni ze me jiu, xian zao cai dong ze xie dong si" i'll get that translated to chinese soon.

it feels good though to empty your brains out.

he also said, you look like you like to say this kind of things one meh, a bit also don't look like.

there had to be some sort of truth to that, i mean not a lot of people ask what i was thinking when it came to personal things


but it felt good, it really did

has it been that long

its been more than a month
and i couldn't even tell hahas

quite a few things happened this past month
for 1 thing
i participated in this little widdle third sergeantning parade thing that was just no big deal at all, not one tinsy bit

and i've also been screwing around with my iphone
apparently the ios4 does not support winterboard for per-page wallpapers
theres probably 9 of you out there going huh

but its quite hard to really explain what i've been doing exactly

but it is easy to tell you what i've been doing in camp though.
apparently being a commander means that as long as you're not wanted you can disappear to wherever you want
and by disappear to wherever you want i meant, sleep in bunk for 8 hours straight, after waking up for breakfast

also i became a detachment 2ic. im not sure if any of my non army friends know this, but that's what i've been trying not to be among the my peers, because that essentially means that i am among the bottom 5 specialists in my team of 13.

which is not really a good distinction to have

i would have actually been quite pissed or emo about it. i really would have just crashed in my bed in my army bunk if not for that fateful weekend

that very fateful weekend when i realized 1 very important thing

that i do not have a girlfriend or ever had.


i know it's difficult to jump from one conclusion about army to something about having a girlfriend
so i'm going to need to explain myself a little

so basically that weekend, i was surfing on facebook, wallowng in self-pity as usual. that usually happens when i see people talking to each other on the wall and having each others' photos up together and i get sad, that is all. and the entire morning or afternoon i was totally preoccupied with the fact that the probability of me becoming a detachment commander (basically the other appointment) was incredibly slim given that i either screwed up or people weren't watching when i did something right. so as i surf and surf through facebook. i began to notice a trend, everyone i knew were getting on with their lives, they were to Uni, getting to work learning to drive, celebrating birthdays, partying clubbing. and i'm here at home watching them on the internet. and i thought to myself, why the fuck am i still stuck in social limbo, that time between finishing A levels and enlistment where virtually no one called me out until the last 3 days.

so i started to think and obviously continue surfing, and it became obvious to me that i'm "stuck" in army, socially and emotionally, not physically, because i don't have someone outside waiting for me. i don't have a girl can or at least wants to meet me every time i get to book out of camp. i also didn't have like this bunch of friends who always had their friday and saturday nights free and lived for the nightlife and partied every chance they had, and they had each other.

now i'm not saying i don't have anything. i'm saying that i have a "few" groups of friends where 1 group is often unfortunately too busy for me, because they are busy with their own life and another where i could always hang out with for pool at hougang plaza in the afternoon but nothing much because we always seem to meet on sunday and i always have to book in at 10 which cuts short a lot of activities since its in boon lay or choa chu kang.

i mean i have to respect that my friends (and this time i'm not saying i don't have any, so don't accuse me of that) have or are living more important lives than mine and as much as i had to admit it, the only way i could get them to want to hang out with me as much as i want to hang out with them, is if there were as bored as i am, and that is not something i would want to wish on anyone.

so i figured. if i had a girlfriend or at least a girl who liked me, i knew i could look forward to booking out every time, because i knew i would be wanted at least by someone to have my company around, you know rather than just booking out so i could sleep at home at night.

and thats' how i got my mind off being the worst 5 among the sergeants. and maybe now when i tell the story like that it won't seem like a big deal. but it definitely felt like it the past 3 weeks before getting appointed.

and it sucked.

now at least the sucks part about my outside life is outweighing the sucks part about my army life.

blessings

my birthday was last week

so i decided to do something that i don't do since ... well i never really did it before

so i decided to count my blessings

i have a very happy home with people inside it who are related by blood

i have four walls to surround me in case i get cold

i have a constantly stocked fridge

i have friends i can count on

electricity is not a foreign thing to me

i have enough blood to give to other people

my shoes have only one hole in them

im not allergic to sunlight and sergeant majors

i can perceive all colour and thus the beauty it provides

my limbs are all in working order

sees beauty in people without makeup

has a closet full of clothes that are very comfortable for sleeping but not so much for being looked at

and most importantly, has you as my dear reader

i just realized

i haven't felt happy in a really long time.

i mean i have laughed on many different occasions throughout this period of time, but i haven't felt like walking around my house like i used to and just be satisfied with everything as it is, like i used to. and that level of happy isn't even the highest level of happy that exists. that's like just a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10. and even that i haven't felt in a long time.

maybe its' because i haven't felt like i'm doing anything positive in the world, or i'm not making any progress or something. everything just feels like a blur with the past being over too fast and the future being to slow to reach me.

or maybe its' just this perpetual level of shagness i keep feeling. there is just this tendency to sigh at everything. sigh at the computer, sigh at the dog, sigh at the clock, sigh at everything.

i wonder what drives people to smoke or drink or go on one night stands. i mean most people do it because it has become a habit to them. they are just used to lighting a cigarette everytime they are not doing anything or going to a club to grind every midnight. but its more interesting to see how they start. i mean people don't do things for no reasons. there has to be this compelling reason for them to do such a thing that they have never done before as well as a trigger, a strong push when you're already near the edge. so the interesting thing is under what circumstances do they get that, both the nearing of the edge and the big push. i think 90% of people already have something they hate in their lives, no matter how insignificant it may seem to you. a person could be worrying about his test scores while another just had his breakup, its' all pretty compelling reason to feel sad about your life, but depending on who you are it may not affect you just as severely. but more interestingly, where do they get that big push? is it when they are surrounded by friends who are just as intoxicated, or when they just feel so overwhelmed by all that emotion they just pick up the nearest stress reliever (or so they think) and do it.

i don't know

i just realised the last time i felt happy was when i was in tekong. when everyone else around me was sad. maybe i'm a sadist that way. but i felt happy waking up in the morning and knowing that i am going to train to become a better person and a better soldier. and i felt even happier during my parade when i finally "graduated" and my parents were there to see me.

and then after that, everything became pretty much meaningless. i haven't consoled in a friend in so long, it just feels so difficult. there never feels like there is a right time for this kind of thing, but yet you still know that there are things you have to get off your chest even if you can't phrase them in words and sentences. so many times of the day, i feel like my friends are all moving off without me, and it feels lonely, even though they are just standing there beside me. isn't it strange to feel lonely in a crowd of friends? and for the record, i think my friends are the greatest in the world, i just don't know how to reciprocate them.

maybe this feeling isn't sadness, maybe its' loneliness.

some things

i wish i had a baseball bat

----

Joy is watching your friend smile because he earned something and he knows it
Sorrow is watching your father not being able to compose himself everytime he thinks about his mother
Envy is watching your friends become a couple and wishing you could have the same
Pride is watching your students get something he worked hard for
Regret is watching your father tell you about the stories you wish your knew earlier
Happiness is looking at your family and knowing that there can never be a substitute
Contentment is not caring who is looking

I wished I watched less and did more.

----

Emma Watson cut her hair a few days ago. it takes some time to get used to. the weird thing is that every time i see her i get used to this demure, high class, elegant girl and woman because everything she does feels like things have been thought over, and also its always very comfortable to see her do certain things like speaking in a certain way that makes her feel girlish and just very cute and yet when you see her cut such a short pixie cut, immediate things come to mind like the singer pink and other punk-like girls out there. so its kind of weird to see her personality come off in such a drastically different look. but i doubt she will change much, or at least sincerely hope she doesn't change her tune and voice and personality and everything that i love about her. also, i have been given pink a lot less credit than she deserves, seeing as she does many not only humanitarian things but also does not "rebel" for the sake of doing so, much like most "rebels" nowadays.

----

i have been doing a lot of thinking lately since my grandmother's death. thinking about my own funeral in the hopefully distant future. thinking about how i would react if the people closest to me would go one day. thinking about the idea of forever. during her funeral, there was a part where we had to throw coins into a small bucket of water and try and get her to "cross the bridge". after we did that, the priest/ religious person would go up on the small stand and chant certain hymns.as he reached a certain part in the hymn, suddenly a lot of people would start crying and i didn't understand at first because he was speaking in dialect. later i found out that the "hymn" or so i thought was actually the priest addressing the mourners, telling us to live our lives to the fullest and do more charity work and stay healthy for the sake of each other and that would have been what she would have wanted. the part where people cried the hardest was actually about him saying that she is gone from our lives forever and we will never see her again until it was our turn. my aunt was so shook up by this she started muttering to herself in the middle of the night when we were doing work for the next day.

so i started thinking about the idea of forever, the fact that from now on when we go to her house , we will never shout Ah Ma from outside the door like we've been doing the past 19 years, the fact that my father and my aunts and all their siblings will no longer have their parents around to talk to them, the fact that my cousins will never hear from her to go study ever again. and it pains me so much. i felt like i never fully coped with her death and even more scarily that i am already so shook up when i never even fully appreciated her when she was around , how would i react when the ones closest to me go.

My cousin also said something to me that shook me up throughout the whole funeral. he was buring the incense paper when he started to talk to himself. he said :"i just realized that i never told her i love her" and that is going to be a regret that he has to live with for the rest of his life.

i don't ever want to have a regret like that.

----

i also have been thinking about what i would want my funeral to be like. i've actually been thinking about since i was in secondary school but i never got it penned down. firstly, money issues, a quarter will go to my parents, a quarter will go to my god grandparents. a quarter will go to my brother along with any worldly possessions that i may still have. 10% will go to charity, either an orphanage or the international red cross or the salvation army, that is for any of my surviving relatives to decide. 10% will go to my school, SRJC and HIHS, generally with more going to the jc. the last 5% will be given or donated to whomever needs it the most, as deemed by my surviving relatives. should any of my relatives pass before me, the money will go in this order, my brother, my parents, my god grandparents and their family.

as for the funeral itself, nothing overly religious, just maybe a small joss stick bin and some incense paper for the more conservative minded who still wish to pray for me. other than that, i want joyous band music to be played around the place and also framed pictures of words from famous people put up on the walls. either quotes from famous people, or things i said myself. i also want people to have paper to write what they would have wanted to say to me which will be put together with me and cremated. i also believe in no loose ends, so if anything is not finished by the time of my death or any issues or remarks not said, hopefully this will be the channel to do so.


----

change is getting more and more burdensome

To the family of the grieving, today is the day a beloved mother and grandmother passed away

To everyone else, it's just another thursday.

sometimes you don't really know a person until you've heard her stories
i never got the chance until today
she left and i never knew what kind of person she was
the only thing i knew was that i didn't like her and i didn't know why
"when you die, everybody loves you"
today i found out what kind of person she was
and i realise that's the kind of person i have been trying to be all this while
and to think i wouldn't have known that had she not passed away
i don't know what to think of myself
and i don't know what to think anymore

I am a Specialist of the Singapore Armed Forces

With Pride, I Lead

Got Food, I Eat

Got Time, I Sleep

Got Mission, I Report Sick

----

Shag Cannot Think.

this bag

This bag holds a laptop and a gun

you're welcome

pool table

ive been thinking about buying a pool table since i was in sec 4

i still want to

unfortunately, my house, despite its sheer size, is still considered too small for a pool table, which is disappointing

i checked on some guides online and the recommended size for a room is as follows

for a 9ft table (tournament size, and my preferred choice), 18ft 4 by 14ft 2
for a 8ft table, 17ft 4 by 13ft 8

for those of you like myself who can't convert imperial to metric units, here's a pretty handy guide.


Here's my living room from another view


another quick conversion guide from my measuring tape is that 16 ft is about 4-6 cm shorter than 5m


for those of you observant enough, may notice that my living room has a rather perculiar pillar/wall/support structure rising out from the left corner of it. yeah, that's the part that's screwing up my calculations.

so technically, my living room can be extended significantly lengthwise, but not widthwise, also my tv and sofa is going to be there so there has to be enough room to put the sofa there to watch the tv.

anyway, i'm predicting that there will be a high likely hood that i may have to stand on my sofa to hit the white ball when it's near the corner, which to me is quite ok and more fun actually, since i'm usually the one laughing the loudest at any pool hall, but my guests may think otherwise.

there's a particularly cool pool table that i have my eye set on

it's the Fusion table by Aramith. Looks very classy and elegant and doubles as a dining table complete with matching chairs

unfortunately, it's priced at 6500 per unit and is only a 7ft table.



my living room is 15ft by 13ft 9 inches from before the pillar, which means, the length can be extended but the width will have to be sacrificed.

my dining room is 13ft by 11-12 ft, which at first i thought would be enough for my table.

so, the only thing i can do now is to wait til i get my own bachelor pad before i can get my own pool table. hopefully, when and if i stay overseas for a long enough period, land and pool table prices will drop

Autopilot

you will never know what it's like to wake up at 4.30 am and sleep at 5 the next morning, only to wake up at 6 am, to change out of your uniform and prepare to carry your bags outside the gate.

and you will also never know how it feels to wake up on a friday, thinking it was a sunday, only to realize minutes later that you still have 2 more days to relax before doing everything all over again.

_____


everytime i get to hold a gun, i get a rude reminder that life is not like the movies, that i can't run into a building full of bad guys with nothing but a trusted gun and a badass attitude.

you know how the universe likes to remind me, by making me wear my LBV and doing basically anything, including being on high alert, where you must, MUST bend your back forward like some cripple trying to speak to someone much taller.

i read somewhere in an article about driving that, people actually go into autopilot mode when they drive after some time, because they think they are already above average drivers. you only truly understand how dangerous that is the next time you try to slice a tomato in autopilot mode, essentially your whole mind zones out and you go into your own little world while your body carries on doing the same action over and over again. Autopilot in itself is not dangerous, when you're maybe doing homework or running from one place to another, but when you put the lives of other people into that equation, a reaction that is just simply one second slower can cause numerous losses of lives.

and why am i talking about autopilot mode, scientists say that people slip into this is because human beings weren't designed to do mundane tasks. everytime you do something new, your brain absorbs all the new information and as a result become sharper and more alert. on the other hand, doing something repetitive creates boredom and causes your brain to focus on other non-old things, turning your attention away from what needs your attention most, the old lady crossing the street.

so i talk about this autopilot mode because i want to illustrate the sheer redundancy of certain military activities. while i'm glad we no longer need to clean our own plates after meals because that has already been outsourced, there are still so many activities that remain pointless and redundant and often, the excuse of "maintain discipline" and "conditioning" is often used.


actually i'm just pissed the haven't invented a car-wash-like machine to clean our rifles.

i hate cleaning rifes.

___


also, people other than sam have not yet responded to my idea, i needed to call al, before she "approved" anything. so yeah there's that, nobody else seems to remotely use their emails.

last bookout felt like labour day, so everytime i see my watch and see that its already 20 something of may, i get shocked. repeatedly.

little time

within this short span of 12-ish hours. i must

pay off sleep debt for the past 25-ish hours of waiting for live firing with micro naps in between

try and get as healthy as possible after being out in the rain for 1.5 hours and before tekong field camp

choose what to appeal for and what to accept for uni

prepare my clothes and make sure they are dry and relatively clean, which is dirty by most civilian standards

and have a good enough lunch and dinner so i wont crave anything during 4 days outfield, even though i still will.

---

anyway, planning to accept architecture from NUS and trying to appeal for either aerospace eng or psychology. haven't really decided which yet. probably going to put aerospace this year and if i fail, go for it again nxt year with psych as 2nd choice.

also, the srjc sc investiture is on july 20th, so if any past councillors read this, try and make it there, anyway, we should try and keep a close connection with the school and our old teachers who helped us out so much, it would only be unreasonable to forget them once we leave school.

i'm trying to write an email (just like old times) to convince as many people to go as possible and if even better, go there a few days earlier to give them some tips and advice on what their next 2 years will be like. something like a presentation and open table kind of thing. i don't think mrs tay would have any objections so i think the hardest thing to do is to convince ex-councilors can make it

anyway, unusally optimistic about helping out others. the lack of sleep must be doing something to me.

so umm yeah

(btw i can't rotate them properly)

so umm i kind of got into architecture. i got the letter on 12th while i was away for field camp, my dad sent me the sms.

some of you guys may know that i wasn't selected for the interview. i actually thought i sucked too hard at the aptitude test itself. because i did suck. all i did was take the cardboard, fold into 3 parts and then fold up into a pyramid prism thing. so yeah, i did what a kindergartener would have done, and i got in WITHOUT an interview. seriously wtf school of architecture. oh yeah i cut a hole at the top so i guess that separates me from the rest, i guess????

if u were there at the exam hall, you would see throughout the entire hall was filled with much better peices of work than mine, i was just like, better start preparing for the next choice.


oh and i also got the letter from ntu, which accepted me into mechanical engineering, which honestly sounds like a better choice for me now. i don't know.

my priorty now is still to become an air force officer first and foremost, if that can be done, i wouldn't need to get into architecture.

also, at the college day thing, i told some of my teachers how i flunked my test in architecture. so they proceeded to tell me bad stuff about architecture like its going to take quite a long time of studying before you can become an architect and stuff like that, which was ironically left out when i asked them for advice. this goes to show, people like to tell you what they think you like to hear. so if you want to know what they really feel, tell them the opposite, like if you're marrying this particular girl, tell them you're breaking up so they will give you their honest feedback.

also, just came back from field camp with possibly throat infection because my throats going out and i have coughing

fate would have it

yesterday my father told me his friend just went down yesterday and made specs with him, turns out he's now the CO of bmtc school 2. in other words, according to him, he could have written a letter of recommendation to send me to OCS and subsequently, go to air force. BUT he was 1 month too late cuz posting come out liao. and you know what's the funniest part, he actually went down 1 month ago to collect contact lenses, but fate just had it that they didn't talk about the army.

i thought about it for five minutes later and as much as i hate to admit it, if i could not go to OCS on my own accord, then it would be rather meaningless for me to be transferred there because of somebody's letter. in other words, i would forever doubt myself for not having the ability to go there on my own.

but then again, I COULD HAVE BECOME AN AIR FORCE OFFICER!!!

Edit: I finally posted this on 15/02/12

yesterday

finally booked out of sispec, or as it is now called scs. damn bloody far, at least can book in at night nt so bad.

so far, everybody is fitter than me, so crossing over is going to be harder than i thought.

yesterday, went to school to get some prize. in SR, it's a pretty big honor to be invited back on college day to receive a prize. in my bunk, it's a prize half of those who did A levels would get.

it's ironic, because when you're in the school, people getting one or 2 or 3 As would be screaming their heads off and getting congratulated left right center. but when you go out into the working world, you'll be competing with people who upon receiving scores like you would break down on the spot. just look at the Uni application crowd, one look across the board, in this case using my bunk as a representative of the A levels students, and you know that the score you're getting, however happy you may be to get it, is only average. so in SR, peope get overwhelmingly excited to get what is only an average mark outside.

i'm not bashing SR, the school that has given me so much and yet i keep forgetting to donate to the endowment fund every time i go. i actually drew extra money from the atm before i went so i could donate, but bloody hell, forgot again.

many times i think i have taken too much from the school and given back too little. sometimes, i think about going back to help them out before A levels, but always gt NS. often, i think about going about and giving a speech about how to prepare better for A levels. occasionally, i think about speaking to the next batch of councilors because we didn't get much face time with the ones directly taking over from us.

what i'm trying to say is that, i'm proud to have been from SRJC, because when i go to serve my nation, i see a lot of scholar retards, a lot of those got brain dunno how to use, and then i really appreciate the opportunities that my school, both SRJC and HIHS NPCC, gave me to lead, then i really understand what it's like to talk to people who don't really listen.

i'm proud to say that we were the batch who pushed the PW As from 7% to almost 70%, that we were the ones who pushed mean A levels from 65 to 70 points. But above all, i'm most proud to say that although we won during the Nike Human Race, we were the only ones who stayed back to pick up rubbish, because this is the kind of thing that you don't learn in the classroom, this is the kind of thing you pick up from the atmosphere, the culture, the seniors and the teachers around you, and this is the kind of thing that makes you stand out from the Raffles, Hwa Chong, Saint Andrews crowd in the world.

Al was the valedictorian for our batch, which was unsurprising. her speech was long but it was still interesting. it's quite surprising that she got such a low score for her psle, but it's just like her to work so hard to become valedictorian. she should become a teacher, totally.

i've been on this computer writing this post on and off for the past few hours, checking out youtube and facebook in the meantime, so i can't really remember what i wanted to say at first. so that's it for now.

and about the things i said at the start. i'm still really proud of Srjc, and if you're from there, don't be offended, and if you're not, don't get the wrong idea, it's still easily the best school with the best teachers and the best culture. easily the best teachers

POP LO!

POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP
POPOPOPOP LO

last week

last week i went to dental

got 2 fillings for my 2 front teeth, which hurt like hell cuz she (the dentist) needed drill so everytime i had to gargle, i could feel with my tongue, a hole in my 2 front teeth, like an apple after you take a bite out of it.

went to find hihs teachers, but they had stupid sports day so most of the teachers were gone according to the security guard, and it started to drizzle so i needed to get out of there fast, so i ran to the bus stop, and went to srjc. talked to a few friends who were still there and also some teachers. most complimented how much i slimmed down, which felt good. it really did. i'm not a vain person, no really i'm not, but it feels good for other people to compliment you.

anyway, talked to a few past teachers, most of them were rushing around to do their stuff and pack up and i just followed some of them around and talked as they walked. i talked to Mrs jerene tay about my appraisal and also some council stuff, went to see the 22nd council do teach the 23rd elects, which is really interesting, because they sounded quite like how sam and the others sounded last year. also saw some of the elects practice, i would have said something, but mrs tay talked about some girl "invading" the orientation and i decided to shut up to not embarass myself.

also talked to ms ni. went to her office to talk about stuff, generally stuff about school, also asked her about me, improvements and stuff. quite interesting to hear teachers talk about students when they're in the office. can't really say much of it here. but we did talk about my GP, even though i don't really ever need to use GP specific skills again.

that saturday i went out with hao xiang. it's been a long time since i saw one of those i used to call brothers. 3 years. too long. still had a great time after so long. still had a lot of laughs. didn't really do anything much. spent a lot of time walking around and queueing up, but it was still really fun. we waited for half hour before eating at suki sushi buffet. we tried to compete with each other to see who can eat the most. by plate number 14, i couldn't take it anymore, and he forced down one more plate just to beat me. we ended up laughing at each other and causing our stomach to hurt like hell because we laughed too hard. it was damn funny. we also played pool, which was fun. i miss pool.

it was a great weekend last week, i doubt this week would be as fun. heck, i doubt my whole block leave would be as fun as that weekend

i is sad today

typically i get sad for a bunch of reasons. usually they're kind of obvious, like House not having a new episode this week, or FF13 not coming out in english in singapore.

but today is different, for some reason. i can't exactly pinpoint where and why i am so sad, or rather why i'm so not happy.

but i can tell you how this sad day started. it didn't even start today. yesterday at 2345 some person called me on a landline, i.e not a handphone, a 6xxxxxxx number. then the woman on the other line told me that she was from the air force recruitment and that i was no longer eligible for UAV and Air warfare officer, 2 out of 4 vocations which i applied for. first things first, i was 90% asleep during the phone call so i couldn't really make out much of it, just that i needn't go to some talk on saturday at cmpb which is difficult as hell to go.

then comes 2 problems. first thing it was april fools' day and it was close to midnight. no government agency calls near midnight, ever, or we would have the most efficient public service sector, so i thought to myself hey maybe it was a joke. second is that. since those 2 are actually the easier of the 2 vocations i'm applying for, then what about my other vocations, which is pilot and weapons officer, both of which are significantly harder to get into because they actually require flying. if i'm not even eligible for the easier ones, what chance do i have with the harder ones.

so i decide to call the hotline in the morning, i tried calling from 830 all the way to 10 before remembering it was good friday and no government agency would be working. fuck.

then my grandparents came to do some praying and burning incense paper. they do this every year because good friday is near the sao mu festival and my grandfather's ashes or something are in my house, for some reason, since my father is not the eldest son.

and my sore throat is still there since i caught "something" from my father. he has since healed but i still ave cough and sore throat for 3 weeks now. with the occasional headache and flu on and off throughout this period, i think it's pressure building up in my sinuses, but i don't know what causes it. i actually went to the MO in tekong about this and he made me wait 4 hours in the friggin waiting room for both my x ray and his diagnosis, only to tell me that its' better for me to see an outside doctor. WTF. on bookout day no less.

anyway, that 4 hours got me "kicked" out of drills squad. i was put on reserve team for missing the one session that i couldn't attend, the same day they needed to get "volunteers" who actually don't want to be in at all. nice

and then back to today, i got so tired after my lunch/breakfast of 2 paos, i fell asleep on 2 wheely chairs in front of the computer after i lost my connection, and i slept from 130 to 5 or 6. and waking up didn't feel as good as it should be.

during my internet time, i tried to find out more about the air force pilot selection process. and what i found was just a load of absolutely not helpful at all things. worst of which is that i need to get into OCS first before i can get into the air force, contradicting what the guys who brought us to the compass test and aeromedical centre told us, which was that we would be put into flying experience program before we went to australia for air grading.

i had to think about OCS. because i really really want to go, but i don't think i had done enough in the commanders' or even my own section mates' eyes to deserve a place there. so with that considered, i'm quite sad. someone told me that a PC said only about 70 per company would be going to command school, meaning roughly 25 to OCS and 50 to sispec. i have to be in the top 25 in my coy to get in the first place, and my ippt is just a pass and my soc is chui like hell.

I'm just really tired


also sick, feel my sinus building pressure again

How to Overcomplicate your life

Step 1: Have x number of choices where x is a positive integer and 0 < x < 2

why not having only ONE choice is bad: basically out of every single course in every single university, i have managed to isolate my preferred choices down to 3, Architecture, Engineering, Psychology (in FASS). This doesn't look complicated until you add in Step 2

Step 2: Get External Opinion

Why other people's opinion is bad: when you think about it, getting advice and suggestions from others should be a good thing, that way you get different points of views and a broader perspective. isn't that how democracy was born (Note: it probably isn't) It does sound good, until these points of view clash with one another or even your own.

All my life i've been thinking i was a science person. that's the way my brain functions, when i look at a situation, i figure out how it came to be at this state, how something may or may not happen due to the current "forces" at work, not how people should have been more tactful so as to not hurt his feelings.

den my results come out as my science subjects being the worst, which is actually pretty normal considering most of my other papers. den i ask for advice from other people, teachers friends seniors etc, and they say i'm more of a language and arts person, den immediately and i say immediately because i actually saw this in the middle of the jungle under a basha (tent) and said WTF out loud. i asked even more people and they gave me the same response, so now i'm screwed because on one hand i don't doubt that they may be right, and yet i also cannot let go of the fact that i'm really not much of a science person.

but of course all this is nothing compared to if you did Step 3

Step 3: Future Prospects

future prospects adds in 2 elements of chaos that would drive any manger insane, the unguaranteed possibility of a great "payout", in the form of a secure job or paid fees via scholarships, as well as the fact that getting one is going to screw up something else that you've already been working for.

In Tekong, I expressed interest in signing on in the airforce as either a pilot or an officer who controls big guns. Don't sound off any alarms yet, it's just interest, i haven't signed any contract or any thing yet, they need to evaluate my capabilities before they make the decision. and besides there's a 90% chance that i will not become a pilot, not because i suck that hard, it's just the "rejection" rate of applicants.

the good thing about signing on is that it fulfills one of my 2 criteria for a job, it cannot be an office job. the other thing is that i can apply for the saf scholarships which would lift a huge burden off my parents.

unfortunately, that also means that i can only take either engineering or psychology degrees. which would be bad if i already accepted to architecture course by then.

that also means i have a hard time applying for scholarships that apply to architecture or even other courses should i be accepted to the university itself

and that's not even considering overseas universities.

headache.

According To My Mother

My studying habits haven't changed since I was in primary school.

in fact she was prepared to guilt trip me and "talk" about my habits, or in her words' "let me bang my head on the wall so i know how it feels."

more essentially, she has been doing that since i was doing my psle.

thats friggin 6 years ago. and she's been preparing after every major exam

woah. i think i just used up all my luck juice for the next 10 years

post a level/field camp celebration

some of the platoon mates got together 10 plus people to go to supperclub, which surprisingly, isn't for supper.

met about 4 of them at 9.30 at city hall more of them stream in. got in at around 11 plus, they bought 2 vodkas and 1 johnny walker whiskey.

it cost 1 person roughly $50 to get in and drink that shit, and most people only got 6 cups, which is the suck.

so the first real drink i get, they got me to down vodka half full cup with some mixers.

by the 4th, i felt warm out of breath and still i didn't feel high. clearly something was wrong

my last cup was the whiskey, and still i didn't feel high yet. the dancefloor started filling up, and our pc shravan came at that time so we started to dance, it started to get crowded and got a weird ah quai started to dance near us and moving around.

i only managed to dance for around 1 hour before i had to bail. took a cab home and ended vomitting on his cab, my pants, shoes and my wallet, and only 5 minutes from my house. i ended up giving the cabbie all the money i had, which is like $19 and a us 5 dollar bill.

so to sum it all up, i drank vodka for my first night, which is a bad idea according to my mother, i didn't get high, and i vomitted.

so for anyone who wants to do me a favor, do not invite me to a club

i am not a club person

i just did it for the experience.

Hello, Happy New Year

This is what i said to every teacher i met yesterday, along with merry christmas and gong xi fa cai


Got back A level Results today, like everybody i was scared, but bo bian, cuz i want to act man, so cannot act out. so the principal started giving his talk about how some subjects have a certain percentages of passes and A+Bs, which for some reason everybody cheered, even though it had no meaning per se, i.e comparing with last year's results or predicted MSG.

but the one thing that was very impressive was the fact that people with a minimum 3 H2, GP and H1 Content Subject Passes, increased by 10% from 63% to 73%, which is incredibly amazing considering the kind of people that come here and what he's has done with the school and students themselves during a short span of 2 years.

another thing impressive was that 2s10 is in the top classes with an average msg of 76 or 79, i can't really remember, 76 is the more likelier choice. this is the only point i started cheering

so the principal started going through names of 80 pointers and above. Edmund's name was on the second page, but his score was easily predicted, since he tops the school regularly. Then came a few people i knew but didn't really care about, then came Tricia's name, which also wasn't a big surprise, cuz her L1R5 meant she should have been in a different school. then as soon as the next page came theodora's name, where everbody was just as stunned as her to see her name, but still congratulations on job well done. Xiying's name also came up on the screen and i was quite stunned she did better than edmund

for the next part it may be a little difficult to explain on paper, on the 7th-ish page was wei hin's name which was the second from the bottom, so i lagged a bit cuz him and i were sitting beside each other and sitting down at a corner, with a bad angle at the screen. so i saw everybody started turning around to cheer and congratulate wei hin, i just looked up and scanned the page for his name and score and i also turned around and did the same. but then i glanced something familiar at the screen below his name, i saw sim, then i open my eyes big big, i saw bing then i open my eyes even bigger i saw han, so i sit up very straight to find my english name glennard, i wanted to throw my hands up in the air at that moment, but i made sure it was me first, so i looked at the cca and it was the student council. i did a fist pump and let my back slowly return back to the floor before putting my hand on my heart and trying to slow it down. along the way i can hear people congratulating me, including wen hui turning around and saying wah lau. then after me came people like wen jie who cried like crazy and Al who got the top among the council, and samuel and sam for getting special mentions, both for different reasons.

later went to the concourse to actually get the paper, waited for a few people to get their paper, when my turn came, ms Guo said this to me: "you really surprised a lot of people with your results." Awesomesauce. my results breakdown is GP A, H2 Math and Econs A and H2 Physics and H1 Chem C. so i got ACAAC, pronounced A-kak.

saw a few of my friends, they both did relatively well, enough to get into local university. when to find some teachers to thank them, like Ms Ni and Ms R and Ms Guo and Mrs Lim. Mrs Lim in particular told me how you get A 1 ar, damn surprising you know. i wanted to find my council teachers but i couldn't find them and i was running out of time cuz my dad was waiting at the gate. so i have to go next time.

this is the more in depth breakdown of my grades. i have both of my sciences getting C while my Econs and GP got A, which is going to be a problem if i apply to engineering, but considering the type of people they allow in, i shouldn't have too much competition, except for maybe aerospace engineering. surprisingly, my grades are actually quite suited for FASS, but my father is incredibly against it because it doesn't have much of a future in singapore. but if i were to somehow get into fass, the only thing that appeals to me both intellectually and job wise, would be psychology, which by my father's definition means talking to siao nang everyday. Ms Ni says i'm suited for sociology for some reason. i dunno why.

7 things you need to know about field camp

SHORT WALK

DIG HARD

HOT CHOW

GOOD FIGHT

LONG NIGHT

SLEEP TIGHT

and that the Red Army Leader Is very good at mindfucking

IFC : Camo On, Camo Off

for the uninformed, ifc means individual field craft, which sounds really complicated, but its' just things you need to know how to do when you're in the jungle during an operation.

and what we learnt is seriously just the basicest of the basic, and it is still complicated as hell.

it's not that it's physically demanding or anything, it's just because of the fact that you're in BASIC military training, everything you do needs to be in a certain particular order, meaning in order to execute a simple movement, you need to bring your left hand to your side and hold your gun and then use your right hand and then blah blah blah. the deliberate decision to place everything such that you need absolutely precise control of all 4 limbs simultaneously means that people who are clumsy and/or slow get stressed out pretty fast, and the easily stressed out get clumsy and slow.

also, here's some food for thought, imagine you're about to run over a low wall, roughly your waist level. it's too high for you to just raise your legs to jump over but low enough for you to put your hands on the wall and push yourself over it, the way you would sit on those metal railings in bus stops (i wonder where they went). this in itself is an incredibly simple movement, something that primary school kids have been doing since metal railings existed in bus stops.

now add a rifle and it becomes 10 times more complicated. for some reason adding a rifle to your hand is somehow going to screw up pretty much every movement. here's why, when you have your rifle, it means that you are more or less in hostile territory, in other words, be prepared to shoot in less than one second. in even more words, that means you need to be holding on to the grip (where your finger is 3 cm away from the trigger) at almost all times, essentially eliminating the use of any of all those 5 fingers you found yourself so attached to. now think about that simple movement of jumping over a wall again. now you have 1 free hand, 2 legs and 1 extremely elongated metal arm thing that's going to get in the way of pretty much any confined space. so imagine going over the wall, the first instinct would be to do exactly the same thing, but then you'd realise that if you did the same movement of putting both hands on the wall and vaulting over, the hand holding the rifle would have crushed fingers thanks to the rifle plus your weight. if you try to let go of the rifle and place it flat on the wall, your sergeant would f you upside down for letting go of your rifle and letting the enemy shoot at you. if you try to use one hand and vault yourself over, 2 things you need to think about, 1) does that one hand have enough strength, 2) how are you going to place your other hand so that you can still shoot forward while not making yourself off balance.

now imagine all those considerations when you have probably a hundred more different maneuvers you need to do like proneing and leopard crawling and hiding behind cover and high kneeling and lots of stuff.

but its' not all bad, its' actually quite "fun" not in the traditional laughing giggling fun but the satisfying feeling you get when you do the whole procedure right, after screwing it a thousand times, kind of like A Math. in fact i'm going to name this the A Math Joy.

but camo sucks. camo definitely sucks

I've Been Thinking

For the past week i haven't had any access to the internet, so obviously i didn't know what was going on on the blogosphere of me.

so i came back and what i saw was, well people trying to stop me from doing something stupid, which being my friends, they know 2 things. 1) They have the best of intentions at heart. 2) They know how bad i am going to fuck up if don't say anything. And for all intents and purposes, they are really great friends and they are just doing what is, under the moral etiquette of friendship, the right thing to do.

and then i realized,



i spent too much time trying to change other people's mindset on this blog.


and this blog is by far the worst way to do so.

hell, playing my message in the form of a catchy song with a guitar in Somerset MRT would be a better way

so i have been thinking that i have been doing it all wrong all these time.

writing my stuff any funnier, more interesting, more charming will not attract more people to read my words. with 33 viewers every week, many of which just the same one person, what i'm going to say is not going to have a lot of impact on how the world revolves.

so far the only way i have been able to garner any response of any kind has been through either being incredibly emo or doing something incredibly offensive. by being emo, i trigger the natural reaction in most people to return me to equilibrium, a state of non-emoness. while being offensive generates hate from all corners of the world.

as unpleasant as these 2 methods are, they are the only way i know that there are still people reading my blog. it's pathetic, i know. but it's the same reason why people who can afford it, steal small things from places like 7-11. or like why rich and powerful people feel that they need to go through prostitutes to feel any form of human contact, however meaningless.

when you stand away and watch from the side, your brain is still functioning rationally, and you tell yourself, these people are retarded. even i know i'm retarded. but yet, for some unknown reason, it just always seems to keep happening. and most of the time i only figure it out after i do something stupid. like the guy stand 2 blocks away from the 7-11 he just stole from and looking at his hands, filled with a pack of tampons. he just doesn't need to do it and yet he does it for no apparent reason.

so i thought, why try so hard, why put all these dumb pictures and get so much flak for it. i started this blog with the intention of acting as my surrogate memory. i type away at my keyboard so that future me can remember all the lessons i already learnt.



and about all the offensiveness.


my principles tell me that i shouldn't need to apologize for something i believe in.
just because nobody agrees
that i needn't hide behind the mindset of the majority when i want to express my thoughts.
that i shouldn't be afraid
that if i truly believe that what i say is true then there shouldn't be a reason that i fear consequences.


yet i apologize

because i should.

because our friendship is more important than that
because we should be able to talk with different mindsets
because we needn't trade our shoes and walk a thousand miles
Because we're already friends
and i should have known better

if it was any other group of people, i would have stood by what i believe in.
most people call that being stubborn
most people would be correct
but our friendship is not worth that
it's not worth throwing away all that.

so i'm sorry

and who's up for some mahjong

responsibility

state of which one is able to answer for one's conduct and obligation


obviously the picture was just a small thing

but it made a huge impact

because it was something you believed in

and something you hold close to your heart

and when somebody who doesn't care

twists it into something inhumane and offensive

you become outraged

you think its' distasteful

but that's only because you associate it with so many other things

so the next time you make fun of people worshiping elephants and cows or people counting their money or having big noses.

think about jesus pointing that middle finger at you

because that's what i would do

had i been jesus

but i'm not

so i'm relegated to lose

i will probably never win

because i am not the majority

and for everyone person i offend

a thousand can overwhelm me

yet if you do the same to someone else

nobody can stop you

we can only shut up and suck thumb

i'm still a small little ant in this world

but that does not mean i have to fear everything else

psychopaths

Hare's Checklist and other mental disorders

Psychopathy, as measured on the PCL-R, is negatively correlated with all DSM-IV Axis I disorders except substance abuse disorders. Psychopathy is most strongly correlated with DSM-IV antisocial personality disorder.

Factor1: Personality "Aggressive narcissism"

• Glibness/superficial charm
• Grandiose sense of self-worth
• Pathological lying
• Conning/manipulative
• Lack of remorse or guilt
• Shallow affect
• Callous/lack of empathy
• Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

Factor2: Case history "Socially deviant lifestyle"

• Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
• Parasitic lifestyle
• Poor behavioral control
• Promiscuous sexual behavior
• Lack of realistic, long-term goals
• Impulsivity
• Irresponsibility
• Juvenile delinquency
• Early behavior problems
• Revocation of conditional release

Traits not correlated with either factor

• Many short-term marital relationships
• Criminal versatility

The official stance of the American Psychiatric Association as presented in the DSM-IV-TR is that psychopathy and sociopathy are obsolete synonyms for antisocial personality disorder. The World Health Organization takes a similar stance in its ICD-10 by referring to psychopathy, sociopathy, antisocial personality, asocial personality, and amoral personality as synonyms for dissocial personality disorder.

realise that if you remove promiscuous sexual behaviour, i would actually be a psychopath

To the 30 odd visitors to my blog from 17/01/10 to 24/01/10

Because nobody left a reply out of 30 odd people.



(except wen hui and yang, THX!!)

Less Is More

Because the less is more doesn't apply to me


!!!WALL OF TEXT!!!

Attractive

(Via Friend's Tumblr)

Because Only Some People Get That Attractive

it's sad

when every emotional response becomes a calculated action

Deja vu

i went back to my old posts to check on something

then i realised that one of my posts from last year was also titled week 5

this is what i wrote 1 year ago


although then, the week 5 and this time round week 5 means different things.

also, due to me giving up my precious time for my nation, i would have no time to do the things people say for 2010, unlike years before. if you want to read past posts : year 2009, year 2007.

so i need a favor from anyone who visits or just passes by this blog. if you look to your left, you'll see a little blue box, most people call that a tagbox. now insert you name and then write one thing you love about me, and one thing you hate about me. just write anything you feel like writing. if you feel that i have changed a lot this past year or i have stayed the same too much or that i just a dumb loser fucker also can. i won't be around on the weekdays to do any banning or deleting posts anyway. i'd probably be holding a SAR 21, in my long 4 and aiming down the sight anyway.

Week 5

this week in camp more eventful

but again cannot really say much.

i took my ippt cat today. improved most things except pull up, still zero fighter arr, sianz

then got female recruits join company next to us, but too bad the buildings not connected so cannot sneak over.

some stuff also happened in armskote during this week

we also got do new route for route march. leg pain ar

but outside camp, nothing much happen ar. my dog still misses me, my bro still wants to use the computer and my friends still have their weekends fully booked up. so life as per normal.

Strangely, Even Now, It Feels Weird To receive News Last.

i counted

i drank more than 5 dollars worth of drinks

combined with 2 packets of potato chips and 1 packet of fries

i came into tekong with close to 45 dollars

now i only have 29 dollars excluding the mac meal i ate at pasir ris

hopefully i get my pay by today

Learn

Ba Gua Zhang
Parkour
Meditation
Street Fighting
Card Cheating
Parachuting
Lockpicking
Pickpocketing
Juggling (for real)
Hung Ga
Speed Reading
Eidetic Memory
Alertness

How to make friends

and that's about it for now, can't remember much now anyway.

will learn them someday

2 stupid (funny) ideas

yesterday, saw an ad (some designer clothes or something) of a dude whose body was at a 45 degree angle. in other words, he looks like he's about to fall, but the camera caught him before he landed.

so i thought, how about i make a picture of people (ie. me because i can't ever find a good model) in that half-fall position, except their hands are in other positions, like elvis, or superman except falling backward, bodybuilder poses, james bond 7 around the cheek, things like that.

i got another idea this morning, of a music video, where the lead singer (the one i imagined was a girl) would be in a showdown with someone else, and the other guy had a gun. so throughout this showdown, she'd just be singing her song with an emo expression (i don't know why i thought of that for any particular reason), so the other guy would look very pissed as they walked around slowly in the circle. then the guy would shoot her, and she would just fall back in slow motion while she continued singing her song with the same emo expression that never changes. that she would lie on the floor and people would come over and the blood would continue to flow and she would still have the same expression singing the song, until it ended when her eyes finally closed.

yeah, these are things i think about

i dunno what to title this

In case you don't already know, i'm a fulltime NS man now. For those who don't understand what that means, it's simply that i will be paid to stay in Tekong (and possibly other camps) to undergo physical and combat training (read: tekkan sessions) for a measly 350-ish Sing dollars for the next 2 years, hopefully by then, my allowance would have increased.

There are only 2 things you would really need to know about my NS life. I'm from Taurus Company in BMTC School 3 and I can only read smses at around 9-10 at night. Everything else is on a more or less need-to-know basis.

I mean sure I have stories from army life, from my other sergeants and officers and also my own, but over the course of just 2 bookouts, I realised that no one really cares about what happened to you unless a ghost was involved. so I will most probably not list them here. Every now and again, I would write a few interesting stories here, but that is simply to remove the burden of memory.

But my main purpose isn't to talk about NS. it's about Koreans. Particularly those not under Kim's zone of power.

It would be hard to argue that K-Pop has not reached mainstream popularity in Singapore. So I won't. But we have to remember that there was once a time when a kid liking korean pop groups would have no one to talk to about his/her idols since everyone was all up in 5566's collective junks. But that's a time that people would rather forget.

Anyway, enough sidetracking. I am actually much less concerned about how popular they are. Everytime i hear someone talking about them or singing their songs, I would, for some reason, instinctively go on the defense and go, "hey, you don't even understand the words." But that is of course, an irrational response since I find myself singing lyrics (making phonetically accurate sounds to) japanese songs, like songs from animes for example. So clearly that would be just a schoolyard excuse to me not "appreciating" the K-Pop scene.

Four score and seven years ago (which would make me exactly about 11 years old), I learnt that arguing over music and in particular, musical taste, goes nowhere, ever. At least in fashion or some other perception driven industry, there is a universally understood standard of ugly, even if you could not explain exactly what ugly has to comprise of, if you see it you will know. But not in music, because even the worst music had a (cultish) fanbase. But of course, that isn't to say that the K-Pop music isn't good. It's listenable, and it isn't Chihuahua, so based on that achievement alone, it has earned itself 10 points.

So what is it about K-Pop that I just cannot sit comfortable idolising them. Almost 500 words later and I finally reached my point. Bring up cosmetic surgery with anyone who knows K-Pop groups by name and you'll be immediately greeted with "but "so-and-so" confirm not plastic one, Confirm one!" Talk about photoshopping and the same defensive response arises, usually only about the one they like. I googled up some statistics on South Korean plastic surgery procedures and found quite contradictory results. The first or so google result from Nationmaster.com lists South Korea as the 15th country with most procedures and on a per capita comparison, South Korea actually has less than Singapore, being 27th and 26th respectively. This is very strange at first, and I presumed that the real statistics would be in Korean language websites, until I realised that the data was compiled from 2002. Another result yielded that Koreans Fucking Love their plastic.

At this point, I have to reinforce that I'm not being a hypocrite (now). Maybe when I was a kid and was too naive and was much too high on Disney movies and after school specials that I would be ( just a little) against cosmetic surgery. I mean, if it was someone who was close to me who has thoughts about getting plastic pumped into their body, i would advise them to spend the money on other things like learning a new hobby or giving it to me. But if other people decide to do so, then I can't really make a rational reason not to do so since it not only improves their looks but make the rest of society look more tolerable by making me look at them and forgetting everyone else. It's simple ethics, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and the many in this case refers to people who like looking at hot women.

What I'm actually more interested is the fact that people are willing to so vehemently deny such accusations even though deep inside they know it to be true. I'm not saying that the only reason that they are hot is because they have plastic surgery, or the fact that girls cannot be hot without plastic surgery. But take a look at any promotional material and there will be quite a number of telltale signs, the funniest of which is that if you take the a ruler and place at any 2 girls knees, you will be able to draw a straight horizontal line that is parallel to the ground. I actually can't find the picture online because i don't really know how to search for their pictures when they have so many.

I believe that the same response can be elicted from fans of jap idols when you tell them that the idols just lip-synch and dance, some of which who even don't. I think the entertainment industry will eventually crumble or at least become soulless (i can't find another word to describe it) if this trend continues. The idea of skill or talent is becoming less and less important in such perception-driven markets. Personally I find such "situations" quite sad. Simply for the same reason you wouldn't hire an incredibly organized and neat lawyer to fight your cases for you, or a very good counsellor to do surgery on your body just because he makes you feel safe when your on your death bed. In the entertainment industry, the X-factor is very important, whether its just that star quality or the whole package. But as we moved away from Sinatra's time (singers who really could sing) to the present, the image they portray becomes exponentially more important. This can severely hurt not only the current generation of singers, actors and all that, but also the future ones. Right now, I look at hot women because they are the only ones on my newspapers and magazines, the singers who actually does the singing for them gets no attention and as a result his/her pay actually goes down because the demand for such talent decreases. simlarly, when you put big names on movie screens and television dramas, the fact that they cannot act, makes watching the show painful, but also the writers and directors to lose credibility while the middlemen like promoters and sales continue to earn money, simply because fans are willing to watch crap if you sprinkle some dust over it and put a nice ribbon.

Eventually children, younger and younger, will understand that you don't need to learn how to sing or how to act to be loved by millions, and eventually they will aspire to be Kim Kardashian instead of aspiring to be Mariah Carey or Christina Aguilera. Talentless figures dangling in front of your face, with no cultural value, put there to take you money, while you get high everytime you see them.