Excerpts from my iPhone: Affecting Others

When I was a kid, I couldn't really comprehend how my own decisions affected others close to me, particularly my family. It made no sense at that time that when I chose to stay at home and play my computer instead of going out with them would cause them to be easily infuriated. It still doesn't because i perceive that to be an individual decision that would only affect myself. I wasn't making any kind of statement or proving any point by not doing something in particular. "No, I refuse to be in the company of those who choose to eat lunch on time" I wasn't saying that. But people would somehow twist and turn my perceived intentions until i, for some reason became the bad guy.

I still struggle to catch many of these really subtle implications of my actions these days. But its' easier now when i see my own brother making the same decisions i made 5 years ago. Then, i wanted to stay at home as often as possible to play because that was the only thing in my mind. He does the same except he has a choice of skating or playing video games. But the general implications are the same. My mum would get frustrated at trying to talk to an adolescent son and my dad gets frustrated but quiet, when my mum does. Now, at least seeing it from a third person perspective, you get to see what went wrong in the communication. Sometimes it's the tone of voice that gets people jumpy, sometimes the fact that people are rushing for time or that the activity in question has been pushed back for a long enough time. Of course i still miss many of the cues that arise with this and my dad is hardly useful at all (in that regard). He just keeps quiet. I wonder if he's figured it out yet.

Excerpts from my iPhone: Beliefs And Such

16 Oct 2011

For the longest time since i became "atheist", one belief that i held very religiously was the fact that with as much potential for evil that men is capable of, we are also capable of great good. And that is a good enough justification for one to be good as an individual, because sometimes we all need that glimmer of hope to know that mankind is not a forsaken race. I call it a religious belief because it was something i believed in because i had faith in the humanity of all people, and because if we were to really take a look closely, it would be quite hard to find any reason or logic to do so. But i persisted, and believed that man was good for the better part of 4 years.

Now, I am having what some would call a spiritual crisis or religious crisis. That the one fundamental belief that you held which kept you grounded to the world was so shaken it almost feels like nothing is true. Something akin to God is not real or perhaps not as dramatic, more like there is a fourth holy book after the bible, a new New Testament.

I can never truly process how people can remain persistently selfish. It always feels like a major flaw in one's moral code when helping others is replaced by self-preservation. Perhaps I'm the weird person. Perhaps this world really does run on greed and self-preservation. Perhaps altruism really does not have a place in our culture. Perhaps I was really really wrong for those 4 years.

I'm not sure. But all I know is that if the people surrounding me (in this tent) represent the greater demographic of how Singaporeans and the Singapore Society is like, then there really is no good reason to defend these sons of bitches.

hypocrisy

i have a great deal of respect for comedians. They are able to make people laugh even in the worst of days.

and yet for that same reason, i pity the television hosts, with their fake smiles and larger-than-life attitudes.

I often find myself saying why do people run for fun, even though i know very well its' the same reason i enjoy eating meat.

Excerpts From My iPhone: About Adults

This is a series about some of the notes i have written in my iphone. Most of the time i type away at my phone when i have no access to a computer and yet something comes to my mind that i have to write down. They generally are written much more quickly than regular blog posts and tend to be more emotionally charged, so expect grammar errors.

At 18 or 19, i figured out that adults were also growing and capable of making mistakes and not as infallible as i thought they were. They used to have this high and mighty place in my mind where they were always right and if you chose not to listen to them, you were either trying to be deliberately wrong or just alternative and rebellious. There was usually a consequence associated with no listening to adults. Like going to detention or failing grades.

But at some point, I figured out that they were as clueless about most things as I was, perhaps just slightly less. This realization changed many things. I became more understanding of adults as one capable of making mistakes and yet i also held this reverse view of them not "supposed" to be wrong"

Ultimately, the biggest change was that it allowed truly pointless people to exist as adults. There are remarkably  lazy, greedy, evil or otherwise pointless people who exist. And as a kid, i couldn't really comprehend them other than being this one-dimensional creature who exists solely to make life miserable for other people. Much like the boogieman, or in my context, Ah Bu Neh Neh (Indian) who would come and catch us if we disobeyed our elders by wandering outside a safe place like our homes or the 5 meter zone around our parents. Eventually i grew up and while i still had to cross paths with pointless people, i had the mental capacity to equate them as either born flawed or poor childhood. There literally was no other explanation i could give to explain why they are or who they are.

Being another adult who makes mistakes, it becomes easier to comprehend these people as people who kept continuing to make those same mistakes throughout their 20s and 30s, never really having grown up, much like myself now. And the justification i can give when someone like my father makes an irrational decision, is the same as when that asshole cuts my path and flips my off when i've done nothing.

Eventually, i will reach another milestone in my life which explain another mystery of humanity that i never knew existed. Perhaps one day i will figure out why humanity is capable of so much greed and justify it as self-preservation.

Picture concept

close up macro shot of a handcuff with a hand inside, with either the lock or the side engraved with the apple logo.

APPLE SLAVE.

yeah, im going to get the iphone 4s. yay hypocrisy

MY BOOKS ARE HERE!

I would probably be the last person to be excited about books. But the excitement surrounding these are not so much the books themselves. Funny story actually.

So I will be going to Wallaby in less than 48 hours. Last week i decided to bring some first generation entertainment to bring along. Originally i had planned to buy just one of those books but i couldn't seem to find it anywhere, considering its' not a very famous book by an American (hence, import) author. Anyway, being unable to find it, i decided to go online to Opentrolley to get it.

On the website, they were advertising a September discount where you could get books at about 10% discount and free delivery for 3 books. So i just picked 2 books that happened to catch my attention.

So with my 3 books at the shopping cart, i was wondering, and this happened over a few hours, whether i would want to spend slightly over $50 on just books. And by around 8pm, i noticed that there was a delivery info that said that it would deliver in 4-7 working days. this was sunday and i thought to myself, if i want to use this opportunity (the discount ended in a day), now would be the only time to do it. So i panicked and bought it in the end.

And the story does not end here. Those of you observant enough would notice that since i bought it on a sunday, the shop could technically deliver it to me on the next sunday, where i would already be in Australia because my flight is in the morning. Which means the reason i bought the book in the first place would result in me not having it. So i stressed about that for a good half a day.

And then i got over it.

Because i have something better to stress about. On Tuesday morning, i noticed that it was 4-7 WORKING days, working days did not include weekends. Which means i had 2 reasons to not get my books on time.

So obviously when it came, there was an immense sense of relief. btw, it came 2 hours ago.

Speaking of Wallaby, YES THAT IS A PLACE THAT I AM GOING TO AND WILL BE FOR THE NEXT 3 WEEKS. For those of you that still use this blog as a place to track my whereabouts (you're probably the only one.) I will be leaving tomorrow morning and coming back on the 17th October.

Also for your reference, my carry on bag. It looks bulky and weighs a lot, but that's just because I'm too lazy to pack all my things nicely. So instead, throw and squish until a vaguely bag-shaped thing appeared.

For your information, this is the only actual book i intended to get. It was recommended by a guy on the internet called John Green of the Vlogbrothers. For some reason, i felt compelled to buy this book because he was the one who chose to plug it. When the 2 of them try to sell you things, things that are either their jobs or their friends' work, i always want to buy them because they sound so sincere. It's really a good marketing strategy, even though it's not even in their business to begin with (one is an author and the other is a musician).

Also the lady on the cover looks pretty cute. I'm not going to lie, she is probably half the reason i bought this book anyway. Even though this book has no picture.

with regards to new facebook layout banner thing.

idea for picture as new banner layout thing over facebook.

take for very relaxed but pretentious pose, like the lonely island, e.g sit on giant reclining chair, like a boss. then with bold words. at the right side. with each word over each other. like angry. pretentious douchebag. at the right side.

Sidelining And Baselining

So what I do on long moments of silence where I am both alone and separated from technology is to ponder and reflect. I know that may make me sound deep but it doesn't, it's actually more of letting my mind wander on to various unconnected and seemingly random ideas and events and things, which unfortunately happen to be myself more often than not (our brain is actually more selfish than we think we are), thus, reflecting.

You may be thinking, hey you have an iphone, you could use it on the bus. To that I say, not all the time, as i get car-sick when i read on a vehicle sometimes and that stops me from doing anything other than listen to music, which for some reason takes a backseat to pondering.

I will call this activity sidelining for reasons i will explain later.

So in the past i find myself sidelining pretty often, usually in the shower or on long trips in the bus. This particular trip was from my GodGrandma's house to Mustafa Shopping Centre. But now, i find that i have much less time for that. Don't get me wrong, i'm still as alone as ever, but the number of bus trips I've been taking have sharply decreased since i only need to take them twice a week. I also used to be able to do a lot of sidelining before i slept when i was young, up to 2 hours on my bed, in the dark. But now i usually find myself tired enough to fall asleep approximately half an hour, i don't know, time is much harder to gauge lying down without my glasses.

Honestly, i find this activity to be one of the most self-destructive things that i do. Mainly because I am such a pessimist and have such a low self-esteem that most conversations with myself, which unless i'm thinking about an abstract idea, would devolve into a self-blame session. Granted, this has happened a lot less lately, but still, given a large enough amount of time doing nothing and without access to other activities that keep my hands busy, self-worth levels down pretty quickly. (quote stolen from friend)

As a direct result of this, many of my self-descriptions for interviews or biographies, i like to tell people that i want to experience life through doing and not watching (and consequently sidelining). Because it seems like a pretty reasonable goal to have. That i (and also, everyone) should take more time to do things instead of watch things.

However, if there was no sidelining, this blog wouldn't exist. Or maybe it would, in the form of, i had bee hoon for lunch today.

~~~

On a completely unrelated note, i will explain to you what is baselining.

Multiple sources have confirmed that (by logical inference) HAPPILY EVER AFTER DOESN"T EXIST.

and not for the reason you would think.

(dubious science ahead)

Our squishy human brains are designed to lower your endorphin level (happy juice) if you experience the same type of happiness over a period of time, thereby requiring you to do something that will bring about a greater level of happiness to get the same amount of satisfaction. In other words, your brain is deliberately making it harder to be happy if you are happy for too long. Granted, it works for the reverse as well, because if your too sad for long, your brain will treat that level of sadness as normal or average and thus you need less to be happy with your sad pathetic miserable life.

I'm not sure if you can guess why i call this baselining.

Happily ever after does not exist in the way humans understand it because most stories talk about it like it's an award, something to be given out when you've finished your quest or saved the princess. As happy as marrying that princess may be, you will not so much as become happily ever after, but more like happy for quite a while before this joy tapers off. But that's not catchy at all.

The only foreseeable way to remain happy is to continuously do new and different and exciting things that will bring joy from different sources and different perspective.

Also, this brings up the fact that being sad actually enhances the experience of being happy. Like i mentioned, your brain will keep your "average" low if you are sad for some time. Thus, wouldn't the joy of doing something amazingly joyful that much greater if you had lived in a state of immense sadness.

Would it be worth it?

also, unrelated note, my dog can no longer walk on his hind left leg. I still haven't gotten the details from my vet.

People Are Dumb

The Sims 3 Medieval (turns out to be a much better game than i expected) has this short intro video where out of the blue the narrator just says, People are dumb. He was talking about just watching people evolve as a society and civilization without influence, and they ended up screwing themselves.

I forgot where i was going with this.

Oh yeah,

I was thinking about the idea of leadership development in Singapore. that's a weird segue.

Anyway, I'm not sure about the system of other countries, but we as a nation seem so obsessed with bringing up leaders so much that every kid is encouraged to be one. I'm not sure if you know this, but no system in the world requires a bunch of leaders and no followers. So it makes very little sense that education doesn't really teach you to be a good one. I mean there are very obvious personality types that are not suited to be leaders and while teaching them certain things are useful, it is ultimately futile to try and get them to stand up in front of a crowd when they have nothing to contribute, unless of course your aim is to teach them how to bullshit their way through such a scenario.

To get people to lead in a situation that they have no expertise in is quite counterproductive because only a very small section of the population are prepared to do that, psychologically. I understand the business and future need for such a quality but at the age they are in, leadership seems to require a slow approach. Especially for kids who never want to talk in the first place.

I think the system stands to gain more by teaching kids to take the initiative in things they already know, or at least they are interested in. And i see the problem in that kids are interested in topics that aren't very academic, but shouldn't that be the job of the teacher. Maybe trying to spin a non-academic topic into something with some sort of a teaching point seems more useful a skill than say, powerpoint presentations. We all know we've had enough of them.

Students are less equipped to absorb what we have to say than we are to teach them what they want to learn. And I'm always interested in people who can turn something mundane into a genuinely interested thing to talk about. I've recommended Extra Creditz before in the past because while gaming is not a certified school-friendly topic, i find that they have so much more to teach us about the medium of storytelling than anything else.

And today i want to recommend someone who actually can teach you something useful. Vi Hart. Maths turned into poetry, impressive stuff. Watch her doodling in class series, that's what i'm most impressed by.

Anyway, i have a steak to get to, so i won't elaborate anymore.

Joy of Youth or The Criteria Of Sad

Since my birthday video, and possibly even before that, I've been thinking the Criteria of Sad. To explain, at what point can a person be sad about his life and not get shit about it (gossip, complains, other negative things).

But that's not what drove me to write this post. For a better part of today i was thinking about growing old, and being a senior citizen and particularly looking back and reflecting part. I wanted to ask an old person, like my god-grandma, was there an age or a period of time, where her life was the greatest. Because, in this world, some people are truly happy and they will tell you that they have never been happier. 2 cases that may be true, one, eternally optimistic, happy throughout his life, or 2 just so happen that his old age coincides with the happiest period of his life, i.e he had to suffer a lot as a youth or adult and could finally retire with relative peace and happiness.

So, naturally, being the selfish person that i am, I put myself in that shoes and thought, would i want to be that old. Because for most of my life, all I've wanted is to reach that semi-permanent state of happiness where i have a great wife and awesome children. And while I usually think of my end-state when i do reach any of my long term goal is around the late 40s or 50s. That is the age i would be when i either "win" or "lose" at life, in my imagination. So, as a result, i never really think that much about the silver age with greying hair and whatnot.

A few moments ago, i did. And it occurred to me that i don't want to grow old. Well, i pretty much assume that but i never really had a good reason besides dementia and other brain or age-related disorders. Not 10 minutes ago did i realize the most compelling reason to want to be a kid (or youth) forever. This is the only time in my life where i can wake up and not do a single thing and then go back to sleep again. This is why bachelors never want to be tied down and mentally 12 year olds never want to get a real job.

So i guess i should be happy about that fact, but I'm really not, aside for just discovering something that I hadn't before. Perhaps it would be necessary to go through the pain of doing something in order to appreciate nothingness. Like how people living in peace like to complain about boredom and other high-maintenance problems, while the people in violent conflicts just want to get out of it.

That was part one, moving on to part two, something i actually thought about for quite some time now.

The Criteria of Sad is something i came up with after going to about 3 or 4 funerals. At that point, i was pretty sure i was at the lowest point of my life. Turned out, the universe wasn't done with that. There has been a seriously ridiculous number of health and/or medical things that have struck at my extended family this past 1 1/2 to 2 years. And it has gotten to the point when my god-uncle called me, i hesitated for a while before picking up. And while i am forever thankful nothing has happened to my parents and my brother, this constant stream of bad news is very unnerving to hear. I can be talking about a certain topic in the car and all of a sudden one of them just talks about another one of my relative who went to the hospital and i would be shocked at hearing this 3-4 day old news.

And it's not just health, personally, i have been suffering a lot of blows to morale in relations to work and SAF but not only that. my friend has also suffered a major episode in his life which I obviously feel bad for him.

So it's been a bad year all around and i was thinking about whether it gave me a reason to brood and act all emo-y about it. Here' a thing about me that you may not know, I like to complain a lot on this blog and facebook and other medium but one thing i hate doing is being sad to attract attention. I would very much rather act stupid to do so. But still, acting normal or even somewhat happy when you don't feel that way takes a toll on you, and just externalizing some of the sorrow or fear or disappointment feels great.

I think about that magic point where you can in fact brood around in life where no one will give you shit. Because brooding is the emotional equivalent of letting your shoulders down after you've tensed them up. But even after going through all that, it still feels like i somehow not "qualified" to do any brooding because as far as anybody's concerned, nothing has happened to you. And just to be clear, most of the things that happened, happened to someone else, and i only feel sad because i am capable of empathy, more so than other, it would suggest.

So i never really feel comfortable telling others about something that happened to someone else, even when that someone else is related to me, because my relation with that guy, the "victim" not my friend, has never really been that close in the first place. As opposed to someone who, say his father died. That, everyone can empathize with. So it's extremely understandable that he can choose to avoid people and keep quiet.

I find it so remarkably strange that while other people in SAF and thinking about how to get more days of compassionate leave while i'm here thinking about how to be emo without people complaining.

MESSED UP PRIORTIES.

Cross-Specialization

Recently, I just realized something. i have 2 friends in camp who are essentially nerds, in other words, they have nerdy interests like gaming and computer hardware and some other stuff. I actually have more, but for this case, just the 2 of them will do. So you have these 2 "more-or-less" nerds but they do have a very distinguishing trait from other nerds.

They are very avid runners. They have essentially blended 2 very different and often times contrasting hobbies as their Main interests. In other words, if they were to have to fill out a survey or governmental form, they would have to put running beside another pretty nerdy activity like gaming. They have Cross-Specialized, a term i just borrowed from D&D

And it never really occurred to me until very recently, because these 2 activities are so far removed that they never ever come up simultaneously in the same conversation.

I think for any non-sporty person like myself, it is quite a reasonable worry that girls will be attracted to people who are generally smart and fit at the same time (of course good-looking is also somewhere in the equation). So I used to think about the fact that my "prime" would be the years immediately following either BMT training or SISPEC training because I would be the fittest and therefore most physically attractive at that time, given that my intelligence or even maturity would not fluctuate wildly.

So when it hit me that these 2 guys have actually Cross-Specialized, I got a little worried for a while, like about 2 minutes (yeah, it sounds weird to be worried about someone else being a "better catch", i know). Then I realized that both of them are actually single and more importantly, have pretty bad track records with the ladies. Granted, experience-wise, I would be the least knowledgeable about any and all Boy-Girl Relationships. But, still, observation would still suggest that while they may have successfully Cross-Specialized, they are actually not as great as others may be.

For example, both enjoy running, but neither can consistently get a Gold for IPPT 2.4km runs. In other words, they may be good but not as good as people who just mainly do that 1 activity. Also, even in the realm of intelligence or knowledge, both are actually "muggers" who work really really hard for examinations instead of just being able to absorb information quickly and apply them.

So to provide a gaming metaphor, they may have put their points into 2 different Tech Trees, but they aren't as far ahead as those who only put in one.

Disclaimer: Of course i know that there are virtually no people who do just one thing and identify their whole personality by that one thing, I just meant that even if they have different things, its usually related, like sporty people like soccer and running and basketball. Stuff like that. It's more important to show the contrast between such "clashing" activities like running and passively gaming.

You will never get this picture

Moe Little Pony by ~waiwaiwai on deviantART

Unless You're as Childish as I Am

Idolization

When it comes to music, i never really came to a point where i love a particular singer or band so much as to the point of "idolization". So i could never really "get" why my friends around me enjoy "chasing" after certain bands, especially given the rise of Taiwanese boy bands like F4 and 5566 in 2004 (?) and more recently K-Pop groups like, I don't even remember their names.

So do they dance? or sing? or something? 

 Something particular weird about this trend is that people seem to have favorites among these 12 or 13 almost identical girls, which blows my mind because i can't recognize their faces if they so much as switched positions. Here's the curious thing about me, i can never garner enough enthusiasm about a particular artist or songwriter or band because at some point, my mind would go, well, he is bound to screw up some of the times. Now, To give you a better picture, i'm not really the guy who's not into music, i actually can put songs on loop for a month or so because i love that particular song so much but yet i can bring myself to like the artist half as much. For example, some of the songs i enjoy include, Low from 2009 or 08 by T-pain and some others where, upon hearing just the first 2 or 3 seconds can hum out the rest of the tune.

But yet, i can't ever seem to give into the "fanatical" fandom that is how some of my friends are. I mean i do actually like a few artists like The Fray and B.O.B and The Lonely Island, but it will always be those same few songs that I hear instead of the artist themselves. In fact, the only album i remember buying was when i was 5 or 6 when i bought this album by this guy

Zhou Hua Jian

And even then it was still those few songs at the top, which i would get up and walk over to the stereo just to repeat them.

 So when it comes to movies and books and pretty much everything, i can never really like the artist as much as i like the work itself.

 So when Emma Watson came up with this weird fragrance commercial, i felt "obligated" to like it even though, i didn't like it as much as i think i should have.

Side note, she never speaks in this 1:45 minutes of advertisement, so that may be a root cause.

 "Too many air quotes"

Public service vs. personal vices

Tbc later when i have access to a keyboard

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