Have you ever had the feeling?

where you close your eyes and you feel like your mind or your brain or "you" are actually leaving your body in this convulsing manner. It's mostly centered around your head area. The closest thing I can describe to it would be like taking the roller coaster or those spinning Gravitrons, where you feel like your body is constricted by the safety mechanism but your head is just flailing around and you're using your neck muscle to hold it in place.

It's been happening every so often for the last 3 weeks. Sometimes, it feels like my brain is "sinking" into the back of my skull and my body feels higher than my mind. Sometimes, it feels like my head is being jerked forward. Sometimes, it feels like something is forcing my head to turn to the side, and my muscles are pushing against it. Most of these happen when I close my eyes and try to sleep. Sometimes, my vision encloses on itself like tunnel vision and I get disorientated for about 5 seconds, which typically happens after I've been sitting down and looking at a screen like my laptop or my phone for too long, and try to stand up after that.

I think its' mostly because of my irregular sleep pattern these few days, but it's not really as irregular as most would think. Just a few hours here and there. Sometimes it would also feel like my eyes and eyelids are on fire which is very irritating.

I always think that just by sleeping for a while I would recover. But that never seems to happen, because if i sleep in the day i would end up to energetic to sleep at night and end up playing til 12 odd before I sleep. which is quite stupid.

anyway, stupid pseudo-medical condition.

Changes

6 weeks +

Direct ferry from UK to holland, takes ~16 hours and less than $100.

UK -- London (4 days) Cambridge (2 days)
Daunt Books, London
Thorpe Park http://www.thorpepark.com/ Roller Coasters (day trip), slightly south west of London, By train. Either 40 or 22 Pounds per pax,  not sure

Italy (18 Days )

France

paris (3 days)

Louvre, Versailles

Language School viable?

Spain 12

Haro 2days (wine festival is on june 29th, NEED TO REARRANGE)

Madrid-Arcos 4-6

Barcelona-Mar Bella Beach 4

NUDE BEACH!!

http://www.kitesurfbarcelona.com/kitesurfing-lessons.html
Single kitesurfing lessons 90E per person

Ferry to italy either Civitavecchia (rome) or Genoa, nearer to Milan

Venice (5 days
Madonna Dellorio
santi giovannie paolo
scuola grande di san marco
basilica san pietro di castello
arsenale divenezza (port)
san zacca ria
santa maria deicarmini
santa maria della visitazione
squero di san trovaso
palazzo ducale di venezia
San Giacomo di Rialto
santa maria gloriosa dei frari
Torre dell'orologio
ponte rialto (bridge)
basilica di san marco !

Milan(4 days
streets
duomo
armani flagship store
some other famous flagship store
saint maria della grazie
basilica san lorenzo
galleria vittario emanuele
Apperitivo drinks

Florence(4 days
Santa maria del fiore
santa maria novella - "I was once what you are"
san lorenzo
mercato vecchio/ponte vecchio
santa croce
santa trinita
palazzo medici (palace of Medici family) !
palazzo vecchio

Rome (Vatican City)-2 days
Colosseum, pantheon
St Peter's Basilica, Sistine Chapel,
Coffee, Macchiato, Caffè Sant’Eustachio
bookabar


WE SHOULD DEFINITELY GO TO AMSTERDAM!!

Storytelling

At one point in time, I used to think my life was boring because I never really had any stories to tell. Any interesting ones anyway. That was a point in my life where i went out very little and didn't have many outgoing friends, so i simply assumed that I didn't have stories was simply because i didn't experience enough of life, and that those among my group of peers who did in fact have really interesting stories to tell either went out of their way to experience life or had life thrust upon them.

And then i went to the army. Any Singaporean who has ever been conscripted, even as a clerk would have their fair share of interesting slices of life to share. And i did. I experienced a whole lot more than i would if i had continued and went on to the university instead. If i went on studying, i would always have this mindset that life is a series of semesters where you get one piece of paper in order to qualify for the next piece of paper to eventually qualify to put something onto that paper called resume and get a job. If i never went to the army, i would never really understand that sometimes you have to reach out and grab the things that you want in life because the System is not simply going to arrange your schedule for you.

But i digress. I went to the army, and i experienced life. I had some pretty interesting things happen to me that i could probably tell other people about. But for the life of me, i still don't really have an interesting story to tell. And my army life is plenty interesting, for one thing, I almost shot my friend in the arm, with a live round. And i got to fire the only Artillery piece that can be fired in Singapore, and freaking dropped the bomb in too early. I also go tmy friends into trouble quite a few times, biggest of which getting me a nickname, which i shall not put here.

And yet, i still can't hold someone's attention long enough to tell my story. I eventually figured out my problem. I cannot tell a story in front of anyone without thinking (or planning) first.

You see, i have a friend, who happens to be my Platoon Sergeant. He has the uncanny ability to speak and hold attention even though most of what he says is not very coherent. In fact he speaks very typical Singlish and he doesn't have the type of impact one would associate with a leader when he tells stories. He is only loud when he is trying to get your attention, which he never really tries to do when he is speaking to a group of say 10 people. And yet for the life of me, i can't figure out why he is so good at commanding attention of the room.

And I've heard quite a few of his stories which are in fact really mundane when you think about it, because most of us like to talk about what happened over the weekend when we book out. At first, it seemed like lots of interesting things happened to him in particular but as time went by, his stories are really all pretty mundane. Which is very curious because he hold your attention long enough to finish telling you a boring story without you realizing its' a boring story until it is over. It is quite peculiar.

After my interview with SMU, I realized that i had a particularly average incident that happened to me during my time as a student councillor, which could be spun into a pretty cool sounding story, which would have helped my interview at that time. Unfortunately, i only realized at the end. Instead I chose to go with one (during the actual interview) that had particular emotional value to me and to us at that time, and because i had such poor storytelling skills, i fudged up the story to the point where i couldn't really figure out what my point was.

If I do have such poor storytelling skills, I sincerely question any of you would really reach this sentence without skipping a few paragraphs.

Colourblind

I watched a funny short video about a guy who couldn't play Puzzle Quest (a game) because he was colourblind. He lacked the ability to process certain colours in his brain.

which got me thinking.

Colourblindness is essentially a group of people who cannot perceive a certain quality that everyone else takes as part and parcel of nature and the universe. But the funny thing is, colour doesn't exist as what we think it is. On a Subatomic level (or something like that, my physics is quite fuzzy), colour is merely a certain wavelength of electromagnetic radiation. In other words, it is just a vibration of a thing. Likewise, so is sound, albeit vibrations of another thing. These vibrations have no meaning until it enters our brains (not exactly the way you think but ok) where it manifests itself as an image. So our brains are the only thing that make any of these meaningful in anyway.

So for something other than a human, i.e a dog, he would not be able to perceive colour. But it wouldn't matter to him because all dogs cannot perceive colour. So if a dog were to "speak" to another dog, he wouldn't say something like "hey, check out the tasty brown steak" because colour doesn't exist in their minds.

Colourblindness is merely a disability whereby others can see what you cannot. What if inherently, inside everyone except you they could perhaps taste a certain flavor of ice cream but you couldn't. It would perhaps be disappointing but it wouldn't really strongly affect anyone in any way.

What if it was something with a much greater impact such as the ability to "smell" radiation gas which could poison you. That would really means something in a nuclear winter type world.

What if aliens came down and perhaps they could see all of the spectrum of EMR. Would we be disabled then? because all along this spectrum existed and we, by nature or our body and mind, are unable to perceive them and yet theses alien beings are. Would we really be disabled for not having something that we have lived without for the most of our history?

The Process of Learning Everything

There is this simple "journey" that everyone goes through when they learn something new. If it were a graph, the difficulty of mastering anything would become exponentially harder as you pick up more and more little "tricks".

I like to break it down to 3 simple stages that everyone goes through.

When you first start to pick up any skill, assuming you have any sort of interest in it at all, certain "big" basics you will pick up relatively quickly compared to anyone else. For example, when you learn guitar, there's the 3 simple chords and voila cool sounding songs. If you learn pool, you pick up how to hit the ball in a semi-straight line and hit another ball. To put it in a nutshell, as soon as you finish picking up about 70% of the basics, you can pull off some pretty impressive tricks, of course to an outsider.

This stage feels the greatest because you feel like at this rate, you can master the game in a few more months. Mastering what seems like a very big part of the game or sport or hobby, is an immense morale booster.

Then we come to the intermediate stage. This is where you pick up the really small nuances that will polish you ability that much more. BUT, it is going to take up a lot of time and a heck of a lot of disappointment. The reason is because the only way you can go through and find out what you don't know, is to do it over and over again and by accident, come up with a certain way or tactic of doing it that makes it easier. And people can never really teach you these things because its more of a problem of you than a problem of the activity. If you were learning a martial art, a certain stance or twist of the muscle will improve your ability that little bit, but your sensei couldn't teach you that unless he is observing you extremely closely, or he is very professional.

This is the stage most people quit because to go through this much repetition without seeing as visible an improvement as the beginner stage puts a dampener on you. Something I came across puts this totally into perspective, and even cooler, it's in video AND image form.

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

And then you go to the advanced stage. Now by this time the disinterested would have already dropped it, or at least stopped really trying to get better. This is really for Olympic athletes and the like. At this point, you're just going thru the motions to become what is essentially a machine at what you do, reduce mistakes. Like swimming for example, or tennis, where the winner is the last to make a mistake. It is incredibly difficulty to even reach this stage, but some do, and people who do are running on pretty much their passion. Which means, I probably will never reach this for anything because I have never felt passion, like ever.

So there you have it, just know that when things start getting tough, it just means you made it over the beginner stage and actually making some kind of progress.

The Comprehensive Guide To Understanding Glennard Part 2: Laws and shit

Many short sentences influence my decisions and/or actions. Many of these are actually quite contradictory if I were to sit down and think about them, but i don't, because when I make a decision, i think about these short rules.

I should really come up with a quick and catchy name, but i'm lazy, so i'll call them laws and shit for now.

Some of them are generic and meant for everybody, while others are specifically for me because I know my various flaws better than others. But almost all of them come from pop culture, so there's that. There's probably more but that's all i can remember for now

Here goes:

1) No one is normal so don't bother trying.

2) Don't expect things, so that when good things happens, it's a happy surprise, and when bad things happen, your hopes were kept realistic.

3) You can't move forward without falling down a few times, so why not speed up the process by making yourself fall as often and as quickly as possible so you can learn from those mistakes.

4) The end goal: Happiness.

5) Never chalk it up to a personality and character flaw when a person does something that you disagree with even though the majority of society does it. People are just generally stupid like that.

6) People are also seldomly DELIBERATELY evil, just stupid and irresponsible.

7) Creativity is the most important ability to cultivate when a baby is growing up.

8) Everything can change in an instant, don't be surprised when you meet an old friend who you haven't spoken to in a while and see him completely changed. One accident in the family or one bad influence can do a lot.

9) I possess all 7 sins, so when I get to Hell if it exists, I wouldn't be surprised.

10) Long-term happiness is very difficult without someone to share with

11) Money is not (currently) a big enough motivator to do something I dislike from 8 to 5

12) Memory is a fickle thing

13) Science is dependable, Art is inspiring. It depends on the mood.

14) Life is short, you are young, take more risks.

15) People are more irritable when they are hungry and just before a meal.

16) Own your work, whether it is terrible or awesome.

17) I don't do minimalism. I just have a nervous every time my own work seems too little

18) I will always envy people who can create art, because they are able to make work that we actually enjoy without having any actual purpose. In other works, people like it even though it has no practical use.

19) We all need to vent sometimes.

20) I'm always here to lend a shoulder to cry on.

Visitors

I've always wondered who visits my blog.

i know perhaps i have one "regular" reader. perhaps just that one guy.

and i also know that sometimes bots and other internet programs like Google will pass by for caching purposes and such and such.

and i also know that there are some less regular people. like those who come maybe every few months just to see what's going on. especially now that there seems to be so little people blogging about themselves, it would seem to make sense that those same people looking for other people blogging about themselves would drop as well.

but the making sense trap is a very easy one to fall into.

i'll explain more about the trap in due time.

but i'm always curious to see who goes to my blog, because i do have a visitor tracker, which is remarkably featurefull, which is a word i just made up. i get to see which visitor uses which type of browser, which websites they came from and also when and how long they spent here. not to mention ip addresses, which at this point seems useless and pointless.

perhaps this is my first blog post where i have absolutely no point at all. just thought i'd share something with you.

Fix

we all have our own fixes, something we will always end up thinking about, even in incredibly weird situations. Something we end up doing because it does something to our psyche and makes us feel all tingly inside, even if it shouldn't. For some people it becomes second nature, something they instinctively reach out for without making a conscious choice to do so, like breathing or reaching for water.

For some people its' shopping, for some people its' music.

For me its' women, Western women, but more importantly beautiful women. Yeah, i know that makes me superficial and perverted or a superficial pervert. but thats' how my brain functions apparently. Sorry for confirming all those stereotypes you had about men. Its' not like i have many other things to fall back upon, right? I mean, i don't play music or shop for clothes. I don't even have much to fall back upon memory wise, since my memory is so bad.

whats the one thing you always seem to be thinking about when you get bored?

Musings

Who are we to judge a person's actions that were we to be in their place, would do just the same. It's neither fair nor just nor wise, but it is human, to be on both ends, receiving and giving.

I have no idea how my train of thought led me to this, especially since i was playing a children's puzzle game. But retracing it would put it closest to harry potter and the bad people who decided to help out voldemort simply because that was the best or only way they could survive.

People who stand up to the face of death are tremendously brave but does that make the rest of us, those not strong enough to do so, weak or cowardly? I think it simply makes us mortals and that is nothing to be ashamed of. Granted i do not know what i myself would do in such a situation, but i honestly am a bit afraid of the answer. i fear that i would instinctively cower away and would not be able to live with myself after.

Been quite a long time since i blogged about what actually happened to me, so im gonna start with as much as i can remember now. last week i watch transformers 3 with yang and edmund. again. because i love watching robot porn. also, the 2nd time around isn't really that good when you're watching it, but when you're not, you keep telling yourself, its so awesome you HAVE to watch it again. but it seldom really is. Watched it at the newly refurbished shaw theatre at orchard, the lobby is quite cool, looks more like a hotel lobby though.

the week in camp was mainly occupied by the 4d3n exercise which consisted of 3d2n of waiting and eventually sleeping. 1 night we spent getting lost and eventually, and this really made my week, we eventually ended up on the road that ran along from the section live firing range to the actual 300m and 100m range to the friggin pasir laba camp, in my m113. which is funny as hell because the 6 of us were on main car-friendly road all the way till we saw the back of the camp near the SOC grounds and we couldn't tell because it was so dark out. but riding a m113 on a normal road and approaching buildings with multiple lights felt really epic, like we were finding civilization for the first time after traveling for so long.

and then we had to turn back.

nothing much after, just waiting for the 24th investiture coming up this tuesday.

Emotionless machine

I used to think that, back when i was a very young kid, that the best say to "win" in life ( and my naivety proves itself when all i understood about life was that you either win or lose and there is a best way to go about it.) was to abstain from all emotions and work towards success based on science and logic. Emotions to me were a meaningless distraction at best and a harmful influence at worst and it had no place in life.

At this point in my life, its very hard to revisit that statement and agree with it, even though i would like to believe very much so that it could be true. Perhaps it is because now i am willing to accept that love is a fundamental, if small part of my life and the love that i have for my family and friends and my surroundings supercede that statement. In simpler terms, as much as i want to and sincerely wish to believe what i did as a child was true, i want to love the ones that i love even more and these two philosopies cannot coexist at the same time.

In 2010, most of the emotional turbulance i felt were very major in terms of impact; there were aignifcant highs and lows in that year which made those periods of "lull" for emotional roller coastal rides seem almost pleasant in retrospect, even though at that time it probably felt like i was bored out of my skull. In 2011, the emotional ups and downs happen much more frequently and even the smallest things, it seems, would affect me quite adversely, for some unknown reason. This pretty much bi-weekly state of feeling a little happy and a little sad and a little excited and a little disappointed is wreaking havoc on my "peaceful" state of mind.

To put into context, a major drop in morale would be when i failed to get into ocs or seeing my father get weak in the knees when my grandmother's body was being moved from the wake down the road to the crematorium. On the other hand, a minor but pretty regularly occuring minor drop in morale would be when somebody mentions in passing that i am incompetent or when i get shut out of a conversation when i am being serious, Or when i find out someone is withholding information for no other reason than he doesnt feel like telling you when you obviously need that information for your work.

I sort of realized how "addicted"( probably too strong for this context) i was to anger and raging at someone. Last weekend i needed to speak with my brother urgently about his behaviour for the last month, which has turned for the worst. After asking politely for 3 times and being shot down because he was more interested in iphone, i had to raise my voice to get him to understand the urgency of what i had to say. We had a talk for what feels like two hours about his worsening state of respect for people around him including his parents. Anyway after that when i came back to camp 2 days later, i was tasked to get the lecture room ready and it was in quite a mess. A fellow spec was playing the drums while i asked politely for him to clean up once. I got a meh response and i immediately raised my voice, ironically asking if he wants me to raise my voice before he starts to move. At that point, it felt like i released a flood of holding back i was doing since i came to this batalion and it felt damn good.

It really felt good to get angry even for that 3 seconds.

I haven't emo-ed in a good long time.

diversity of opinions

sometimes when i think about other people, particularly what decisions they made (or what decisions were made for them) and how they come into this incarnation of themselves, it is inevitable for me to come to this conclusion that because they experienced XYZ or that they were brought up in ABC family or background that they did this, particularly if that was what i would have deliberately chose not to do.

this is probably going to be a long post.

i wonder how at a micro level that we are able to coexist with people fundamentally different from us and come away from such an experience as a better person, WITHOUT thinking that this person I'm conflicting with is a bad person in some respect. let me explain, it's quite rare to argue or come into bad terms with people we think are correct. Usually we disagree when we think we are right and they are wrong. Case in point, opposition presence and how Singaporeans feel about it. We disagree when we think that their point is either wrong or somehow "less correct" than ours. It's hard to walk away from this thinking "hm, he's correct but yet I can't help but not agree with what he said, DESPITE HIM BEING RIGHT."

when both parties have sound arguments and logic, any compromise they make will definitely result in at least one side at a disadvantage. The only way for a compromise to work into a win-win situation is if one or both parties have made mistakes and rectified through said compromise.

So when things like this pop up in our daily lives, one side will usually relent because it's a small enough issue that he wouldn't be bothered, simply because it's easier that way and it's not worth the trouble.

we celebrate diversity in backgrounds and heritage and yet we are unable to progress forward in public decision making because of these often times conflicting opinions.

TBC, because i can't gather most of my thoughts and they are all over the place right now

Artistic Ability

I like to think of analogies quite often, many of which don't make sense.
this is one of them.

I liken my ability to create anything of any vague artistic value to my simple inability to draw a perfect circle. Case in point.

So here you have this imperfect circle. The curious thing about art is that people can see , as imperfection and embrace for all its' worth, as something else other than a circle. Take for example, most comic artists use circles as their characters' heads, and yet they are never perfect circles. But nobody complains and they never seem to mull over the fact that they can't draw circles for shits. Their disproportionate circles become a unique part of their drawing style and they become recognizable for their artwork, not just as individual components but as a whole.

My problem, therefore arises not because of my inability to draw a perfect circle, which as artists before me and many more after will attest that it is simply impossible, by any reasonable standards. It is my inability to accept what is impossible and move on from there.

Many times throughout my life, I would try to draw or doodle. And every single time, i get so worked up over small insignificant details which even if it were to "be perfect", it would in fact worsen and ruin the artwork as a whole. Over time, I have taken this into consideration and then something weird happens, the mindset that i go into anytime i try to "create art" becomes one of "hope everything works out for the best". Every line I draw would be like buying 4D and hoping luck will carry you forward. I'm not sure how many of you would know this, but there are a lot more elements that go into drawing a line that the simple action would suggest. Sometimes i would draw one line over a major section of the paper for a body, therefore it would need a bit of curves, but for some reason if the curves were slightly off and at a wrong direction, the work itself would seem off because of it.

So stupid things like that happen and ensure that I never stay interested in art for long, or at least in creating it.

Maybe that's why i've always been more interested in using digital tools. That way, the Undo button won't leave marks on my paper like an eraser does.

I have always been more of an "idea guy". It's always easy to see something in my head than it would be to translate that onto paper. My creative process is a simple matter of looking at my surroundings, focus on one detail and think about what it is related to and what that is related to and so on until i get a pretty awesome idea. Much like Wikipedia.

Let me show you how it works:

On my table is an empty can of Coke, then i focus on the fine print, then i think about an old article about cheating where the guy prints answers in fine print and puts on his coke bottle, then i think about the hoody i imagine the guy to be wearing, and that he seems to be putting his hands into his pocket very often and him walking through an empty hallway and then i think about the scenery outside.

and now i would create 2 art pieces. One with more subdued colours, probably water colours because that's how i envision the strokes, of that boy with the dark coloured hoody walking along the hallway with lockers to his right and a giant wall window to his left with the sun shining in. the boy is of course looking down.

And the other piece of him, viewed over his shoulder of him looking to his left in mid-stride looking at the inviting scenery outside.

Its' pretty easy to think up of all the metaphorical representations you could do with just this 2 pieces. Its' not even challenging or funny for that matter.

I have a friend in camp who is basically the opposite of me. He is pretty talented, drawing wise, or "creating" wise, but he once shared that he had this problem of not being able to come up with ideas simply because he could not catch on to the "logic" of whatever he seems to be doing or what his teacher is suggesting, i should say. I should say that he takes both art and physics at H2 level, which pretty much qualifies him as a weird person, but he does have a girlfriend so maybe he isn't really so. But then again weirder people have proven themselves not lacking in that area, time and time again. But i digress.

I never would have imagined someone with such an ability to ever have problems like this because i always thought them to be interconnected. I do know of "writers' block" which does strike most creative people at least once, but it somehow seemed strange that he would have this problem of asking why is this done like this and for what literal and figurative reason. I think my mind is just incapable of processing how that would work and still have a killer arm for drawing. Coming up with metaphorical reasons for pretty much any art piece is, from what i understand is stupid. because anything and everything can have a metaphorical reason for being. The Coke can can be red to symbolize passion, the laptop is rigid and solid to represent cold, hard, unrelenting productivity and my socks are made of wool because they are all snuggly and creates a warm homely feel. And i can't be wrong because symbolism is subjective.

and to think i sought out to write a short blog post this time.

Letters

So my friend al sent replied to a letter i sent last christmas. It's always nice to see your friends reply to you. Even if it took 5 months. Bu honestly, what she wrote was touching and i would love to keep this penpalship thing going,

Since she never picks up her phone or replies to her emails.

Thanks al, really appreciate it

Lots of love.

Novel idea

So recently im thinking about writing a story, not so much a novel type fiction. More of a biography style. But considering how i have never read either of them, i figure im going to do a pretty had job at it.

Also, in case you were wondering, im thinking about writing about my parents or maybe only my father. Im also thinking about interviewimg them during weekends around their schedule, like how the writer of "The Last Lecture" wrote. I think there as pretty serious gaps in what i know about my parents' life before my birth. Not just what decisions they made but also the social circumstances surrounding them as youths.

It should be easier to write about my father because he went through polytechnic and army life, which means everything that happened before is pretty easy to extrapolate from my own life because school is still school, although i would still ask a bit here and there.

My mum should be more difficult considering that she stopped schooling at secondary school due to good old sexism. Also she lived in Penang as a kid so there's more to find out.

Some of you may be wondering why i'm doing this. It's pretty simple. My parents have never been great storytellers, at least not with their lives or their past. When they do tell, it's mostly about a funny thing that happened to them that day. So while occasionally i do get glimpses into their past lives, like how my mum knows how to read fortunes from this red chinese book, it never really paints a clear picture. I mean all my life i have been told i was lucky to be born in this generation, in this country and in this time. I think its time i started to examine why people call my generation lucky and appreciate, for what it's worth, what those who came before us struggled for.

I also wanted to know what major decisions my parents made and the circumstances revolving around them. Form what i've heard since my grandma's death, they did have some pretty dramatic moments in their lives and it's a shame i still don't know about them. May be i will learn some lessons here and there. Who knows.

I'm also thinking about learning cooking, particularly on sundays when my maid leaves for her lessons. That usually leaves our lunch unaccounted for and either me or my brother has to go somewhere to buy. It's getting very tiresome to do so and i figured might as well squeeze in some time to pick up something useful. I used to worry that i could not settle my own meals when i moved out to hostels in university life and more urgently, when i went to europe, i would have something local to offer to my couchsurfing hosts.

Here's hoping both ideas succeed.

Eating

Im pretty sure someone at some point in time made a scientific imquiry as to the link between hunger and crankiness. I actually read about this quite long ago as merely anecdotal evidence and was reminded by a blog post from revered genius, and dilbert artist scott adams. I myself noticed the link in that most rage occurs happens just before meal times and almost never occur after. 

I think most people frown upon my suggestions of going for makan because i always seem to suggest it more often than others. Because i am not exactly skinny, people get annoyed when i do so and i know for a fact that the more vocal people like to call me out on it. Saying that all i think about is food. Which is only partially true. Sometimes i have a good day simply because im looking forward to a particularly delicious meal later in the day. Yeah, im easy to satisfy like that.

Accounting Interview

I was thinking back about my interview at SMU. they asked me about what i did as a student councillor and what my leadership style was. i blabbered on abou tthe open house and getting everyone down to talk about internal politics which was stupid as hell. only in the shower did i realise i could have told a much better story.

this is it.

i headed the student study program where we invited a few ex students who scored exceptionally well to come back and tutor some of the weaker students after school. my head teacher advisor was worried about the growing trend with student councillors and other high profile cca-involved students that their grades were steadily declining due to cca involvement. she approached me to head the program to help these kids improve their grades by spending more time in school studying. i had to come up with a way to get reliable tutors for them as more teachers were in meetings or other commitments after school, also there was a problem with not being able to stay awake for such prolonged periods of time, especially when self studying. we managed to solve both problems, with my relatively small team of 4 people, but we did a lot of good in that time. most students grades started to pick up and while it was not an overnight jump, it was better than nothing. and it helped those kids get back to the rhythm of studying after most of their major events such as SYF and A division competitions.

sounds quite impressive until you consider how little i actually did.

Through the eyes of madness

I'm not really sure what this says about my childhood, but since i was a kid, and i do mean when i was like 5 or younger, because i specifically remember thinking this in my god grandma's house until my nursery years.

I used to think about perception and colours, particularly, would the colour red that i see be the same as the colour red that you see, and even if it isn't, we wouldn't know the difference because that same object would always have been that colour and if what i saw red i called red and what you saw was (to me) green, you would also call red as well. I'm to really sure how to make this clearer, but i'm going to try.

Consider that a dog is essentially colourblind, which in case you don't know doesn't mean that a dog's world is black and white and gray, it merely means they can see much fewer and less rich colours than humans. （Scroll to the spectrum to see what i mean). In this case, red to use would appear brown to a dog. But if you had 2 identical toys where one was red and another, say blue, and you trained a dog to pick up the red toy. the dog would in fact pick up a toy that to you is actually red, but yet to him brown, even though he was "trained“ to associate red with that colour in his mind.

So, i was rethinking this old question (in the shower, unsurprisingly) when i thought of a plot for a movie script. i wish i could direct it. it goes a little something like this.

A guy/girl who goes on through life seein

g images (ala Constantine) and words on surfaces(ala Splinter cell conviction) and hears things and occasionally is able to do things like move a cup with his mind or anticipate a phone call or other "randomly coincidental things".

He goes on this great adventure (which i haven't figured out yet) through fantastic landscapes elements embedded in his modern 21st cityscape and suburbia. But as he drags his friends along (the movie actually chronicles their life and friendship from about 10 or 12 to 16 or 19, to capture the difference). It becomes increasingly clear that his friends are unable to see the things that he can see and he is the only one that can do so yet things around him revolve and changes in such a way that it would be impossible for him to have done it himself (ala Calvin and Hobbes, see below panel 3). eg in movie, a crater appearing in the middle of the city. It also becomes increasingly unclear to the audience as well whether he truly does have powers or whether he is schizophrenic or mentally unsound.

So at the end the audience sees (from the camera) pulling out from his eyes and he is sitting in a white room on a brown wooden chair surrounded by his 2 friends in civilian clothes, looking at him and he is in this white flowy clothes that resemble but ultimately do not look like hospital gowns. At first, he has this intense look as if he has been thinking about a very difficult problem and then he just smiles and the screen fades to black.

i have a basic, almost fundamental (if you know what the word means) belief that eventually i will reach a stage in my consciousness and mental facilities that i will no longer be able to differentiate the illusions in my mind from what is going on in the real world. Even now, when i get a message or a phone call in the middle of my sleep, even if i can remember the exact details of the message and the details, i never seem to fully trust that said message didn't just happen in my mind, (and nobody actually called me.)

Often, i wonder how other people perceive their world. That's one of the reasons why i enjoy shows with narrators, like Burn Notice or How I Met Your Mother or a particular episode of 30 Rock, where they showed the individual viewpoints of the different main characters.

In Burn Notice, the narrator is the main character who is a blacklisted spy who can't work, so he goes about his day helping people solve problems they couldn't ordinarily solve. While that on its' own is pretty boring, the narration adds another layer of depth because as he is faced with different situations, you can hear him explain what is going on in his mind as he analyses like for example, how to take out a large biker guy while he is much smaller, or how a certain plan where he needs to physically hurt himself to con another person. How I met your mother works differently, as a comedy, much of it is directed in such a way that what happens to the main character's is different from what he actually thinks. For example,

Ted: That girl totally got the hots for me

Future Ted: She didn't

Something like that, i can't remember the exact scenario where something like that happened.

So, as i have explained i enjoy learning how others perceive the world. So, i figured i share my perception of the world. I cannot see the last sentence of any text message. it has been repeatedly proven with 4 different occasions where i was either early by an hour or even a day, or late by 12 hours ( I didn't see the AM in the text).

Example:

I also have this peculiar way of listening to music. Because i can listen to music on loop for about 2 weeks before i get tired of it, i often will be able to hear the background tracks or tunes or whatever it is called only after hearing it for about 200 times, roughly. about 1 and a half weeks in then i can hear that background beat. but when i hear that tune, it almost changes that song completely, such that i can filter out which "layer" i want to hear, becoming possible to hear 2 different songs. I'm sure musicians are able to do this immediately, but it's quite surreal when i found out about it the first time.

Another weird tidbit, which i'm pretty sure happens to most people, i explained it before. When someone, a stranger, is far away, I see them as if it's someone i know, but as i walk closer the face "morphs" into one of a stranger. I believe it is because as my eyesight is pretty bad, my brain is processing on limited perceptive data and so, fills in the rest with pictures from memory, forming a part stranger part memory kind of face, which is totally not as horrific as it sounds. as you get closer more data and information becomes available and the face becomes what it actually looks like.

And of course, there is how I would look at a woman (LIKE A PIECE OF MEAT, joking). I originally thought of using a picture to describe like what i did with my phone then i realized how completely inappropriate that would be. But suffice to say, my concept of attractiveness, stems from the face. I see someone's face first before moving down, in that order. Generally i find women attractive if they have a nice face, especially so when they smile. But like i told some of my friends before, she has to have a nice voice. Having a nice voice is a greater factor in how attracted i am to her.

So this is how i view, through the eyes of madness.

Uniforms

This is a pretty funny video if you actually can take the vulgarities

it gets me (shocked, surprised, empathetic, disgraced, pissed) when I see the that troops of other countries get to do stupid things like that and nobody gives them any flak for it. i mean we are all people, just because a guy is in his uniform doing stupid things, doesnt make everyone wearing uniforms a retard.

and while sometimes the things that SAF people do are actually pretty stupid, there are times when it actually gets funny and yet we still treat them with the incredulity (i don't even know what that word means) of a kid.

and then there will always be some joker in the background asking, why is there a camera around when there shouldn't be any cameras in camp in the first place.

I do sincerely and humbly ask for and wish that our people grow up a little, and then maybe, just maybe the Saf guys can grow up a little more and maybe do things that are actually funny, in uniform.

You don't deserve to know what happened to her

You dont deserve to know what happens
Its times like these that make me wonder if it is or ever was a good idea to make friends.
I wonder how many of my friends are willing to be honest with me. And if those who are not should i consider them my friends at all. I think i have the maturity of a fifteen year old when it comes to times like this. Like people treating you as if youre just a small kid and dont deserve to know anything. I getthat sometimes people may be guarded and they dont want to share secrets. But i seem to have friends that believe im retarded. And that i cant handle information. You know that feeling sucks.
I understand that most of the time i dont give a shit about whatever goes on with people that are two social connections away from me. But when your own friends withold information from you. Its time to think about why you consider them friends.
I used to think that i have friends because there are people i care about. People i would switch places with in an accident, in a heartbeat. i would jump in front of a train if it meant i could save them. But i found out that its hard to care for somene when you dont know anything about what goes on in their lives. Surprisingly its because you care about them. That you give a damn about their mundane details of their humdrum lives. I would never in a million years thought that not knowing about what happened to my friends when im not around would affect me ths much. But apparently it does. And its pissing me off.

I hate knowing the feeling that somebody's attitude changed and i don't know why or what happened to cause that change. I hate knowing that if it ever came to something drastic that might or might not happen and i would attend the funeral and when his parents or family ask me what happened i can't answer them.

Maybe im the asshole here. Maybe im not doing enough to find out about my friends. But how do you get more information when nobody seems willing to part with it.
Fuck tt shit.

Maybe this is all the alcohol talking but i dont feel any level of high before. Ever. Not once.

I wonder if alchol makes you more pissed.

I think smoking changes the mindset of people. People start changing theirworldview that they have somehow become bad and that the way they perceive things changes. That they start to separate people into different groups where they always appear to be agreeing with wrong people. Or maybe its the other way around. Tt they start thinking of themselves as bad or rotten apples and tts why they do the shit tt they do. I think those who actually feel guilty about what they do still have some chance of recovering from this unconscious segregation of the society around them.

Because at the end of the day, would you be able to sleep soundly at night is all that matters

Financial Planning

So I had this existential crisis in the middle of a financial planning talk yesterday. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's essentially asking yourself why are you here but in a much more panicked manner, probably hyperventilating if you're into that sort of thing.

Here's the progression of events.

We go for a talk about the importance of financial planning and why we should start early. He starts going on about the costs of living such as the most obvious for us which is to further our studies. Then he talks about getting married and owning a car vs public transportation. Nothing really peaks my interest except that its quite refreshing to see actual numbers on things that always seem to be just vague concepts. Then he goes on to talk about retirement. That's when the shit hit the fan. He talks about his past clients wanting and thinking they are able to switch lifestyles dramatically after retiring like giving up a car. He also talks about how much it takes to live from 65 to 83, i cant remember exactly what numbers he used, but it was precisely the point where he said the age in exact numbers that i start thinking that i actually planned to live til 40 and give my money to whomever was still living. Then i started thinking about dying. And whether or not it was just like a long blackout like sleeping or it was more like going to hell or heaven or whatever. I actually pictured the chinese version of afterlife which was a bit strange but i imagined drinking that cup of teat and reincarnating into a kid all over again after living through so much. I wondered if my interests and viewpoints in that new life would be similar. I also wondered if i would live halfway across the world from where i was. Then it got a little overwhelming and i hyperventilated a little. Just a little.

It was a little strange to think about dying so nonchalantly. I think it simply means that there is nothing to live for. Or rather i havent found somethign worth living for yet. Maybe i will someday in the future. Who knows. But i know now. My grasp on my life and my future doesnt extend beyond year 40.

30 70

my throat's pretty fucked up.

been quite sometime since an actual update on my life. so here it is.

3 weeks ago I went on AOAC Full Troop support. If you were an outsider looking in, you could think of this as a few trainees using a batalion as real live practice on the ground. Chess pieces if you will. If you were an actual soldier on the ground, you could call this

a normal batalion exercise with a shitload more old guys with heavy ranks looking down on you and tsking loudly. they also tend to talk loudly, at us.

I can't remember much about it, except that my vehicle was down for the first half of the day and then being the enemy forces for the rest of the exercise. my troopers were pretty irritated with the fact that they have to be enemies, again.

then came 2 weeks of rest/prepping for the next exercise. that passed pretty quickly, because on one of those weeks i had to fly back to Penang for a funeral. oh i forgot to mention, my grandma died.

It was quite surreal for me, because she cared about me more than all my other related by blood grandparents. She lived with my family once and she would always asked if i ate my lunch or what i did that day. and yet i didn't feel sad that she left. i didn't cry, id didn't even whimper. i'm not sure if its' because i've went to too many funerals, or that i'm actually genuinely relieved that she left in peace. Still, there are a few problems in the family area that my mum and her family is trying to resolve and she won't tell me about any of it.

So i came back, and it was exercise time. this time, it's a pre-assessment exercise to see how deep in the shit hole your batalion is. and boy is my hole deep. that didn't come out right.

to cut it short, we had an umpire who pretty much has no clue on how artillery works, and pretty friggin stringent on what armor is supposed to do, which we had no training on whatsoever. So, in reality we were being tested on what we didn't know and what we actually knew was not being tested.

and my pc is pretty much dying from all the extra work he has to do, which is i don't know what exactly.

anyway, our performance is bad enough to warrant a re-shuffling of the commanders. in other words, we need to switch around the roles and responsibilities of some of us, because it's simply not working.

So i became the new detachment commander of Det 6. my pc and ps refuses to call it upgrading or demoting, but whatever. Don't make this into any problem, my ps says. thanks for the pre-warning.

anyway, i heard from him that, the initial reaction from the announcement was quite big from my det, so of course i got worried. and then the vehicle ic and my other spec junrong also told me that the driver remains very stubborn to "accepting" me as a commander, because he, along with pretty much everyone else likes to pull up my old first time impressions. which if you've been anywhere close to me in the past 15 years would know, that it sucks.

so i had to get my det down and explain a few things and find out a bit about their SOP (standard operating procedure). i also needed to in a sense bring down their expectations of me, not only as a detachment commander but also as their leader. because our platoon functions in such a way that during component training we seldomly interact with others, so we have very limited ideas on how others work, which i personally find a bit disappointing. so i needed to tell them 2 things, which was that at times they may see me as a bit of "trainee mode" which is because i'm trying to catch up with the det comd things and also managing people from another point of view. I also needed to explain my working style and my (especially important) tone of voice. i needed to tell them i was straight forward and i said things that were on my mind without beating around the bush, which was different from the way they worked in the past. i also told them that because i have this problem of being a lot louder and harsher than i actually think i sound, so i always come off sounding very fierce. So they needed to focus on what i said as opposed to how i said it. which is what i honestly believed.

then one of my guys, Mahesh, says this, "sergeant ar, i think that you cannot say that it's because you can't change, like i mean your tone of voice this kind of thing, because they say ar that what you say is only 30% of the conversation and then the other 70% is body language."

and that struck me a little. i wanted to explain that, in the field, we don't have time for niceties and pleasantries, but it felt like i was making excuses. all i could say was that i am actually trying to not be so fierce especially in the admin time, but again out in the field i can't make this kind of promises and if they hear me talk like an asshole, it is to be expected and don't take it personally.

i think about what he said, that this kind of thing that can be changed. i guess i've been trying to change this behaviour of mine for the last five years, its an estimate but its' roughly when girls started becoming interesting, which was in sec 2 i believe. but yeah, what you see of me now, is actually 5 years in the making and there is still a hell of a long way to go, so if anyone ever tells you otherwise. Yes, Women have made a difference in the world.

Condensed: the rough guide to first time Europe

Below is the more or less summarised version of the important parts.

Exchange rate as of 150311. 1E to 1.7783 SGD

Museums:
British Museum, Free
Lourve, 6E after 6
Prado, Spain, Free from 6-8pm
Tate Modern, London, Free
Uffizi, 6.5E
Vatican, 14E

Get the appropriate taxi cab rate estimate

Daily Budget:
40-70E per day, including accomodation
Monthly 1200-2100E

starting costs:
Backpack: 200-300$
travel gear, toiletries, Medical Supplies: 100$ ish
Insurance: 50-300
Discount card 20-30$
Vaccinations: ?
Plane ticket: 700 one way, possibly 1100$ two way
Train pass: Brit 318E, Eurostar 42.50E, 5CTY 480E , italy 228E

Food Saving tips
Stick to restaurants that dont take credit cards or have english menus. choose places where you dont see other foreigners
look for restaurants near universities
sample street food, find a few favorites and make meals out of them
cook in hostels, preferably with groups
supermarket dining
try the samples in supermarkets
walk for ten minutes away from major tourist attractions
pizzas. worth it single serving
bring food onto trains
buffets are worth it if its cheap
eat seasonal
gallery openings serve free wine and openers

bring change for bathrooms
find out tipping from the locals

check for service fees and cover charges in restaurants
avoid changing money in hotels airports and changing counters

travel countdown:
submit forms for activites like classes and bungee jumping
look for tickets and insurance
get discount cards
buy travel gear, medical gear
arrange communications
photocopy important documents
check for security issues
pack
test pack
confirm flight

Backpack test
pack in 5 minutes
easily lift over head and wear for 2 hours without back or shoulder problems
able to sit and throw the pack
as little unbreakables as possible
fit comfortably

Clothes pack list
1 tshirt
1 long sleeve polypro shirt
1 microfleece
1 rain jacket
1 plastic poncho
1 thin beach towel
1 pair of trousers
1 wrinkle free travel shirt
1 pair of socks
2-4 sets of underwear
1 pair of sports sandals
1 collapsible hat
1 bandanna/hankerchief

sleepsheet
toiletries
toothpaste
toothbrush
dental floss
cologne
foot file
lip balm
spactacles
face body lotion
sunscreen
mosquito repellant
mirror
all purpose soap
deodorant
condoms

misc gear
earplugs
hard disk drive
marker
spuerglue
tape
sewing kit
padlock
lighter
power adaptors
knife
spoon
comscord
water bottle
plastic bag
cards

first aid kit
elastic wrap bandage
anti diarrhoea medicine
laxatives
antihistamines-allergies
hydrocortisone cream-skin conditions
panadol
compeed-blister cure
plaster
water purification tablets
rehydration packets- 100plus
melatonin/arnica-jet lag
motion sickness pills
tweezers
vaseline
sports tape
antiseptic wet wipes
tiger balm

daypack stuff
map
guidebook
shades
notebook
marker
pen
knife
laser
camera
charger

money belt
6 extra passport photos
railpass
license
id
passport
student id
insurance card
one anti diarrhoea pill
pen
Candy/chocolates

points of confusion
cologne is Koln
geneva is geneve
munich is munchen
prague is praha
venice is venezia
vienna is wien
florence is firenze

germany is deutschland
italy is italia
spain is espana
switzerland is schweiz
sweden is sverge
switzerland is CH
germany is D
spain is E
liechenstein is FL
united kingdom is GB

confirm flights 72 hours in advance

wrong times to go
uk july august to march
fra mid july august
ger july august november to feb
Ita august
netherlans late oct to feb
spa july aug nov to feb
switz nov to feb

Iphone stuff

WB

lock screen all systems operational

halo 3 rank battery

clear lockscreen

clear lockscreen 4.0

no icons iblank

transparent dock

Sources

cydia.hackulo.us

sinfuliphonerepo.com

cydia.xsellize.com

Packages

activator

afc2add

airplane sbsettings

all phone sbsettings

appsync

backgrounder

categories

clearlockscreen

clearlockscreen for ios 4

data toggle

enhanced ctorrent

erica utilities

final fantasy 7 fanfare

final fantasy vii those who fight

halo 3 rank battery

iblank

installous 4

ispazio

landscape lock rotation

lock and unlock replacement

makeitmine

mobileterminal

mxtube

openssh

safari download manager

safari download plugin

sbsettings

simple background

springboard access

winterboard

3g unrestrictor

apps

wireless @sg

sgmahjong

flightcontrol

tilt to live

explore SG

nextbus

Understanding Equality

i'm just going to gloss over the chinese new year and just say that my dad and i (he actually doesn't much) gambled and earned quite a bit over the weekend period.

i was actually thinking about this in the shower (which is a really nice place overall to think about things). I think writing this in the form of a story would help most people better understand what i'm trying to say. i actually have heard of this story before when someone told me when i was a kid. For some reason the 2 guys in the story are always set in historical China, maybe because i was told in that language.

anyway, the story goes that there were these 2 childhood friends. one came from a poorer family while the other came from a more well-to-do family. Despite their differences, they grew up pretty close and remained good friends as they reached adulthood.

Now, as young adults, they try to figure out how to earn money to support their individual families, as all young adults must do. So the poor guy comes up with a great idea for a business and discusses it with his friend. His friend thinks this is a great idea and proposes that they start up this business together as partners. The poor guy is ecstatic about it but tells his friend, "I would not be able to pay for the starting capital as my parents have ailing health and I need the money to support them." The rich guy says "hey, it's no problem" and they agree to pit their money together to start the business, with him contributing 70% and the poor guy giving 30%.

So they start working on their business. They work equally hard each and every day, putting their sweat and tears and heart and soul and countless sleepless nights to ensure that it succeeds. Alas, it does, and one year later they make a profit.

At this point, they need to decide how much profit to take as their salary. Now the poor guy is humble and comes from a poor background. He knows that he shouldn't take so much because he only put in 30% of the capital at the start and so tells his friend that he should only and rightfully take only 30% of the profit.

At this point, think about whether or not you agree with the poor guy before you read on.



The rich guy says to him, "Nonsense, you need the money more than I do to help you family, you can take my share. It is only fair." and decides to give him 70% instead even though they both did the same amount of work.

I can't really remember how this story ends, but my main point is about fairness and equality in some sense. I am going to use them interchangeably unless someone can explain to me the difference.

How do we put our idea of equality and apply it in the real world when both sides seem fair and unfair at the same time. Is it possible to distribute wealth fairly and equally when it is actually possible to do so in both ways and not come across as morally stepping over the line and being greedy.

We take the poor guy's viewpoint for example. He knows that when you put in a smaller share of capital, regardless of effort or ability or willingness, you will come away with smaller profits. That's how the world is run, on the fact that you get to take ownership of your own wealth and possessions and if you put in little, you come out with little. Makes sense. Fair and square. Even coming from the poor's perspective

On the other hand, see the world from the rich guy's perspective, he knows that his friend needs the money more than him and decides to part with it because it would help the poor guy more than himself. In a sense, running it on a needs-based philosophy, that the ones who needs it most should get the help they need, whether or not because it would do more good then. That would also be fair from the perspective of the world, if in this case the world only consisted of the 2 guys and their families. Granted the rich may not think so because you're taking their money, supposedly their rightful hard-earned money.

So which is fairer, if you were not the individual, but from the bigger picture.

I actually thought some semblance of this question when my father was complaining about the government. Mostly the only things he talks about when it comes to politics are how they are taking his money to give to someone else. I mean he's not wrong, it is his money. And that's how the economy is run, by self-centered people working towards their self-centered goals. Apparently, if A levels Economics has taught me anything.

I like to think about it from the government's perspective because i like thinking about taking money away from unhappy people. Actually, no. I like to think about how people make certain decisions and then how they justify (or rationalize, if you prefer) them afterwards.

So the government and taxes are the issue at hand. Assuming the government is actually doing what it's supposed to do, which is the betterment of the lives of its' people. It can be presumed that it is better to raise the welfare of everyone, as opposed to helping the rich and marginalizing the poor. So here comes taxes to save the day in financial redistribution. But how much can you really take away from people and STILL come across as being Fair and Equal. Also, this is assuming that the government doesn't make any money, which is impossible.

When you think about both models of wealth distribution, both seem fair and equal, from a higher perspective, especially so when it's not your money.

But then again, you could go, they should just split 50-50. But that's communist and not good at all and all communists are evil. I actually do have a reason that is wouldn't work and that's people would not be motivated to work hard if they not what they have would still be the same as everyone else.

And now you say, AHA, so can be said about needs-based model. What is different about that is that granted people have less incentive to work, every dollar has a greater value on the community because it is helping the poor people which in turn would raise the bottom limit and society, all the more raising the OVERALL welfare of the community. Thus, incentive, from a slightly higher "plane of thought".

At this point, I become ashamed of myself because we are no longer talking about fairness and equality but just simply which way is better in terms of welfare or growth or other economic jargon. When people think about fairness, it is generally closer to a debate of basic human or civil rights as opposed to economic welfare or other buzzwords like that. In a sense, it feels like the government or all governments are reaching out towards a practical approach, as opposed to ideological. which is great and all, until you realize that this argument can be set forth against many things. Granted, they won't say extreme things, but it takes time.

I think fairness should be redefined. It should no longer be confined to equal treatment per se. But more of a both parties can walk away happy, as opposed to compromise. On second thought, that idea sucked.

iphone

so my brother broke his iphone and its' my fault because i wanted to use the fan, which outlet he was using to charge his iphone, to clear up the air which smelled of fried things and smelly smelly things. it took sometime and a very peculiar position to charge his iphone because of what initially simply appears to be the ports being too loose or something like that. so i took it out and plugged it in.

which ultimately led to a chain of events which resembled plugging in and removing the iphone charger into the phone repeatedly and then it somehow becoming my fault that i just didn't LET him charge in the first place. for one thing, upon closer inspection, there was quite extensive damage done to the phone already. the home button was a bitch and the volume control button was no longer there. now you iphone owners out there must be thinking, how the hell can you remove the volume control on the side. apparently you could, and the inside is all rubbery, like the old nokia phones when you stripped the number pad. the silver casing was also shifted apart from the bottom piece, which was white for him with the stress mark visible from the screws at the bottom. the dock also show signs of damage, since it repeatedly shows the device is not optimized and charging is not supported when nothing is plugged in.

anyway, now its my fault he can't even switch on his phone. which on normal occassion already sucks because he does this whole routine where he basically tries to get me guilty for doing something that i allegedly did while at the same time showing disdain for so much as breathing the same air as him. now factor in the fact that he's pretty much addicted to his iphone, he literally uses it until he falls asleep, you have one hell of a problem.

just for fun, i would try to describe his addiction to his iphone. now something you need to know about my brother is that he is a pretty social animal. by the age of 8 he was using the house phone, land line phone so often i had to squeeze in to get space to use the conjoined tables. by comparison, the first time i had a meaningful conversation over the phone that lasted more than half an hour was between sec 3 and jc 1. i may be 5 years older than him biologically, but he is 5 years ahead of me socially. now you see why my fears of him getting a girlfriend before me may actually come true.

anyway, describing his iphone antics. he is pretty much wired to his iphone. he uses msn facebook sms voice calls on his iphone. and his (along with his just as bored friends) comment threads on facebook are 30 plus long. with one commenting over the next within seconds. that is how wired he is, and yet he is still able to ignore and be ignored by the same bunch of people at the same time. so understanding how connected he is, i am actually more interested to see him without an iphone for at least a day or 2, preferably with me out of the way, just to see if he could cope. i mean he is suffering from pretty serious withdrawal symptoms, only minutes into not using his phone. literally minutes.

normally, i would put this on facebook in 140 or less characters, trying to sound funny. but i figured, according to the way he (and most people for that fact) already would complain about me for what i allegedly did, i guess i shouldn't add fuel to the fire. according to his friends, i'm just adding iphone destroyer and social network wrecker onto my long list of evil deeds and accomplishments like have a megalomanical ego and hogger of computers.

then again, 2 more isn't so bad.

also, i found a dog, whitish grayish brown, has an ava dog tag 208977. probably a maltese or a shih tzu, i can't really tell. and male apparently.

Mortality

so i went to the funeral of a friend's father. i was pretty sure what or rather why i was there. i didn't know his father personally or even in a passing manner. i never heard of him talk about his father so i had no idea what kind of a person he was. so for a while there was a little identity crisis.

why was i going to the wake of a man i did not know?

i figured the answer pretty quickly. i was going to be there to support a good friend of mine who has experienced a loss.

so it was pretty different from the other funerals i have been to. the one where i felt down because my friend who had so much potential had to go so soon or the ones i could feel my parents' loss even though i was not close to the deceased.

it was also the first time i went to a wake where people talked about the deceased's life and the relationships the people around them had. so going there with the expectation of being a friend for support as opposed to being a mourner is a little different.

i learnt a few things that day.

1) most of the 20 year olds i know havent been to more than 1 funeral or less even though they have lost someone, usually a grandparent.

2) when people talk about things and events and emotions, it is only natural that you will put yourself in that situation. in a funeral, people talk about loss and you immediately think about losing the ones closest to you. when people talk about the fun times they had with the guy, you laugh with them even though you haven't the slightest clue of anything they just said. when they talk about how fortunate the family is to have him, you think of your own family, whether or not you've been with them recently.

and yet, all throughout this time, i could only feel guilty for thinking about myself when this is a funeral about somebody else.

the last weekend was pretty fucked up because 2 people lost family members at roughly the same time, albeit under vastly different circumstances.

many of the people who spoke had great stories of the deceased. i wondered what story i would tell if my own father had passed on. when my grandmother passed, i didn't really know much about her. on the car ride my father told me a few stories, of a man who insulted his ability to do anything decent with his life, and of another who gave him a chance.

someday im going to sit down with them and ask them the story of how they came to be who they are.

had a pretty good conversation with a cab driver when i went to camp last week. he had this great voice like a old wise man, and he looked like the sensei from the old karate kid movies.

celebrated yangs birthday this weekend.

to build a secret hallway

you don't really need to carve a hole in the wall. just get a door that's placed semi-hidden and along the side. preferably a room to another room. then place a big wardrobe over it and cut a hole through wood.

TRIP CHANGE TO EUROPE!!

so because of air tickets and the like, we have decided to change our backpacking trip from USA back to europe

so some things remain untouched like this

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

Locations for now:

London

Cambridge

Manchester (old trafford)

Paris

Venice

Milan

Florence

Vatican City

Rome

england 3 weeks

France

Netherlands bicycle travel

Germany

Italy 1 month

Weather conditions:

for reference sake:

Singapore:

June 88F/76F

Today(jan) 86F/75F

All in June

Berlin, Germany: 72F/54F

London, England: 68F/52F

Madrid, Spain: 81F/59F

Paris, France: 73F/55F

Rome, Italy: 82F/63F

Stockholm, Sweden: 66F/52F

in other words, expect temperatures colder than the coldest aircon in singapore, probably for nights and rains. the sun should prove sufficient with just a tshirt. its warmest in spain and rome and coldest in sweden and england.

Railway Information:

Significantly cheaper to get a 8 days in 2 months trip and just use about 1 month, in other words, make 8 "cross country" trips, generally long ones, as opposed to small ones around the city itself. within the city itself, possible to go by bike or bus or walking.

UK: BritRail England pass works with eurail pass holder discount 50% or youth discount 20%, only one applicable because we are not going to scotland/wales/ireland plus BritRail London Pass does not get us to Manchester.

The Rest Of Europe: Eurail 5 country prices at €480 15 days in 2 months, group saver price not as applicable because it is at €627 per person.

Get a 5 country pass for france-germany-netherlands-denmark-sweden. then Boat ride to poland/ukraine for Euro then fly to Italy then boat ride again to spain or train or fly.

Things to do:

Bungee jump (more info: most probably going to Verzasca Dam, 007 Jump, price roughly 170 Euro, http://www.trekking.ch/eng/buchung.asp website for more details.)

Skydive england ( Aff course deemed too expensive, SG price 4k, going for either AFF level 1, or some other alternative, preferably no tandem.)

kitesurfing

roller coaster

Visit sistine chapel in vatican

visit st peter's basilica vatican

watch euro poland

eat fish and chips in england

pizza and pasta in italy

Amsterdam markets + flower auction (get more info)

france lourve, versailles

go language school german preferably (change to spain, roughly 700+ SGD for 1 week home stay)

bike tour around amsterdam free and easy follow book

go university cambridge

nazi sites germany

watch euro 2012 in poland/ukraine (FIND OUT DATES OF MATCH AND GET TICKETS) Qualifying Match Starts from 8 june to finals in 1 July In Kiev, Semis in 27,28 June Warsaw,PO and Donetsk, UK

In other words, most likely mid part of the trip.

OLYMPICS tickets open on MARCH 15

Packlist stuff

Camera

video camera

shades

jacket/windbreaker

weather appropriate clothes

credit card

money belt

map

plug adaptors

To Do list:

Sim cards/ Communication

Hostels

Activity List

get more info on working small jobs

TBC

Budget:per person

Airtickets: Msia airlines 700+ SG-KL-LDN (stansted airport) paris -kl(269E) ONEWAYONLY

Accomodation: Couchsurf as much as possible.

Insurance:

Discount Card: 25 ISE discount card, HI youth card 22,

Transport: Britrail Pass 318E, eurostar 42.50E, Eurail (US 672)ita (169)
Food

Backpack: 100-120

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.