Happy Birthday 2 Blog

As of yesterday, my blog is 2 years old.

2 years! And still going strong! Or not?

Hmm...

Actually it's quite nice to have started my blog at the end of the year. Sounds a bit cheapo, but can combine anniversary post and year-end post into one, haha.

In this year... well I served almost one year of National Service. BMT was surely a once-in-a-lifetime experience (especially now when I'm not even a combatant) and those days were really etched in my mind, possibly for life. Pity was that I missed quite a lot of stuff, like route march in the rain (I kept getting sick on route march days and it's not that I wanted it to happen), BIC: The Leopard Crawl, Back Crawl and other crawling patterns you can use in field battle (I missed it because I was recovering from fever. I was thankful for that -- my back was already itching like crazy).

And the gastric pain developed during my BMT days. Because of it I learned how to make myself burp when I'm too full (instead of just waiting).

Moving on to CPC as a clerk... it's the days there that really changed me. More than BMT did.

I learned to open up more... I know it's because it's an all-guys environment, but I believe my days there will shape me into a one who can survive my days in the co-ed university campus which I will eventually have to step into.

Also, my passion for the Japanese language sort of revived in CPC. Quite an unlikely place, but there're lots of Jap fans there, and I found this aspect of the culture there pretty heartwarming. If you put me in a place full of Korean drama and K-pop fans I'll probably die of suffocation.

My confidence in singing was found there as well! For bringing me for my first serious KTV session, and for letting me sing at all, thank you guys.

As someone who needed acceptance above all things since day 1, I have to thank all my colleagues for accepting me for who I am. Things would have been different if not for them.

• Mdm... you said I'll definitely grow in my days here. I know I will.
• YY, I knew you only had 1 month to teach me stuff, and I got you pretty worried when you left. After you reached ORD, the first few times you returned to office you only heard complaints about me... the last few times you returned the complaints stopped (Phew), but I was either too sleepy or on sentry duty. Nevertheless, I'm always glad that you came back, so do come often!
• Nick (who managed to convince Mdm to give me chances again and again)
• Dom (whose knowledge of computers saved many a day (read: my day))
• Bernard (nice sharing return transport with you... and Settlers of Catan!)
• Chor Bin (I heard NSF HQ will be introducing "Cable TV next year", so we'll be charging!)
• (Part of) Sunny Saturday (you guys are really the ones who got me going back to my Jap materials, haha)
• The IPPT training group. We shall overcome! Or remain as LCP...
• The Monday badminton group... do come next year!
• Fellow brothers in Christ in CPC... you guys played a part in refreshing my faith in my working days, and my eventual return to the faith from my backsliding.

and many more... Some of you are gone, some will stay a while longer in CPC... we're going to move on, to a nice year ahead!

Ah yes, this year I started going for cell group! I have Jiansheng to thank, for always making the option of joining him for cell available (in explicit ways), in those days when I almost began to doubt my salvation (with good reason, as my lifestyle was really degenerating). And for my cell, who made me feel at home since day 1. Erm why are we no longer eating cheezels now?

I learned how to cycle too, and it added a lot of convenience to my travel.

OK I have a lot more friends here and there to thank and to bless... and for those whom I left out... you guys are in my heart too!

This year I want to put down the grudges I bear (if there is any at all) and move on. I also know that due to my poor skills in dealing with people I have offended quite a few individuals. I ask whoever I have displeased for your forgiveness and understanding.

Dec 30 has come, and gone, and will come again when my blog reaches 3 years of age, then go and come and go and come... just like 24 Nov on Keon's blog, haha.

The Last Name... uh no I mean Week of December

Christmas

I spent Christmas with my fellow Student Venture friends... and we went to Timothy's church for service.

During the service I could really feel the festive mood... maybe because I'm surrounded by Christians haha. Something like my typical mood during Chinese New Year.

I realised that over these few years, the meaning of Christmas to me was totally different from what it was to me before. For instance, if someone hadn't talked to me about Orchard Road a few days ago, I wouldn't have even thought of that place, which was supposed to be a Christmas hotspot for Singaporeans.

To me Christmas is just a day to remind myself of why Christ came to Earth and what he'd said and done during his days here.

I was observing everyone during our little gathering and I glanced upon Tim's bag, with the wording "LAND COOL" on it. Hmm...

Wait.

Wasn't that...

Oh! The "L" is exactly the same font as the symbol used by L in Deathnote!

Anyway, after everything we went to Coffee Club at Siglap to have lunch. Since I'm into budget dining (read: Food Court), a meal at any cafe will generally cause me to feel a bit of a pinch... but the meal was filling (which was what I looked for in every meal anyway) and I was in the company of friends!

While having desserts, we shared a few cakes. We're cutting chunks off the corners of the cakes and at one point we realised that the remaining portion of the cheesecake took the shape of a coffin!

And so, we used our forks to make a cross pattern on it!

For some reason I felt that I had to take a picture of it in Black& White.

That afternoon, Jiansheng's lips were glossy for some reason (he denied having applied lip gloss) and remained glossy no matter how he tried to dry it. Hmm...

Jiansheng's Strawberry Smoothie, Jonathan's pot of tea and the Choco mint cake we shared among ourselves

Xiaoyun & Jonathan

Timothy

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Retail Therapy

Weiquan (LEVEL 20) is on a SHOPPING SPREE!

OK as of that time, the ORD of 2 of my seniors was approaching. So I was thinking maybe we could prepare some gift for them. Since I was on leave on Wednesday, I went to town to see if I could get the stuff I wanted there.

The problem was, I didn't know much about "what I wanted" to get either!

Kelvin suggested getting a shirt originally, but a fashion disaster like me should think twice about getting a shirt, especially when it's for someone else! He later suggested that we get a bag instead, which I thought was a pretty nice idea.

It was at Marina Square where I found "it". I went into this leisure and sports shop and saw this Nike bag... it just looked different. When I first decided on a bag, I was thinking of a Deuter bag, but I realised that would be a bit too common. The Nike bag... well, it was certainly big enough, and it had this air flow system in the backrest side which made it pretty cool.

Later in the day, I went shopping for a watch. I saw one which I thought was $98. Turned out to be $198... the price tag was partially blocked (%$#*#!). Oh well... then I decided to get this watch which I thought was quite cool and I personally liked very much, and which didn't cost a bomb.

Of course, talk about shopping... I'd shop for my own stuff on the way as well! At Isetan I saw this patterend shirt which I found to be nice, and since I don't have many white-coloured shirts, why not just buy it?

OK that's pretty silly... taking a photo of my mirror image...

Another shirt which I found interesting but didn't buy... a rounded collared shirt with thie "fu" wording on it

Weiquan (LEVEL 25) is OWNING!

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ORD loh!

Not me lah.

It's Nick and Dom, whose understudies were already pretty established figures in our branch, who left this phase of their lives on Friday.

The 2 of them played pretty important roles in my NSF life, and our office will surely be different without them around.

Still, I shall again wish the 2 of them all the best!

Yeah this is the bag we got for Nick. And you can see the backrest with the dents on it... it sort of distances your back from the bag's back, thus allowing some air flow.

And the watch for Dom. The reason why I chose green was because whenever I think of Dom, I think of him in his green jacket.

On the same day we celebrated the birthdays of Chor Bin and Mark. We got cards for all our ORD and birthday personnel, but we'll get Mark's gift at a later date. For Chor Bin we got a Liverpool jersey of which I didn't take a photograph. As for the secret item I got him...

Haha... as of 29/12/2006, Chor Bin shall be called "Mr Bean"!

A closer look at the label.

YY came back for a visit as well, and after work he treated us to the movie "Night at the Museum", which, to me, was an unexpectedly great show.

Dinner with the guys

On Saturday some of the 10/04 guys came together for dinner at Pastamania, Cineleisure. We happened to be seated at the same spot where we had our 10/04 farewell dinner with Ms Fong, so it was pretty nostalgic haha.

Yong Chuan was telling me about his recent trip to Japan, and he was full of praises for the country and the people. Good.

Someday I shall make a visit there myself, and return to Singapore with loads of merchandise and emotions. And photos.

The festive set at Pastamania was pretty filling... well, it was for Jeremy and JY. I ordered some seafood pasta with clams, prawn, squid and mussel (mussel!) inside.

After dinner we had pool. I was a bit off-form because of my injured elbow and because I hadn't played in ages, but could still make it lah. Joel was pretty good, I found out.

I see dead people

OK we didn't do any morning run this week.

Our officer was on leave and, well, since we had a course which spanned over Monday and Tuesday, we had quite an amount of work to clear in the remaining working days.

Or, for people like me, I did not go running in the first place as the weather was too cold for me to take a shower afterwards! Haha I can never be Commando you know...

Oh, the course!

It was an Open Office (a group of free-of-charge office applications available for download) Calc (the spreadsheet program in OO) course.

I went to the course in quite formal attire (because of a casual remark made by Kelvin that he's going to wear long sleeved shirt). The long sleeve shirt I bought at the beginning of this year came into use then.

Formal attire, plaster-below-lips version

Our venue of training happened to have moved from OUB House (at Raffles Place) to ST building (near Tg Pagar) recently. And in the Course-joining instructions we're given very ambiguous information: The venue was stated to be OUB House while the map given led to ST. We followed what was written and ended up at OUB House before Kelvin called them and was told that it was at ST instead. Never mind... the view at Raffles Place was pretty breathtaking (The concrete jungle never fails to impress me... and you guessed it. I love Coruscant too) so I took a photo of it.

The view at Raffles Place!

While it turned out to be quite an eye opener for some of our colleagues, for others (read "the NSFs") the whole of the course was basically a subset of what we already knew in spreadsheet programs, given our experience in Excel.

Good thing was, the PCs had Internet access. Period.

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On Monday Dad and I had quite a good badminton game with another father-son pair. My pants were not absorbent enough, though... after the game it was dripping wet!

On Thursday I went for dental appointment at SAFTI MI (wait... that's near Boon Lay! But it's SAF covered, so...). The dentist said that if I were to get my front tooth filled, the filling would come off easily, which was what I sort of expected. He offered to smoothen the edges of the chipped part for me, so I let him do it since the edges were actually quite sharp and were becoming quite a bother for me. My tongue felt much better after that.

Yesterday I was at home all afternoon trying to do my book review, and you bet it was hard trying to secularise a review on a Christian book! But my office, more than 50% of whose staff are Christians, was still a secular environment. So...

I was just thinking that I've been buying less CDs and VCDs now... until yesterday, when I decided to give my support to Westlife once again by getting their "LOVE Album". Along with that I bought the "SHE Moving Castle Concert in HK" CD, which was, I think, the first concert CD I ever owned. Most of the songs inside were not new, of course, but for some reason I found some of them better than the record versions! Maybe it's the arrangement of accompaniments and their way of harmonising... Haha Ella did a rendition of David Tao's "Ai Hen Jian Dan" (Love is Simple) which I found was pretty good! Tank was there as well, and he sang "San Guo Lian" (Love in the time of the 3 Kingdoms).

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"Curse of the Golden Flower" was indeed a art piece with vibrant colours on display. In terms of bloodiness I was reminded of another plot-in-the-palace film, "The Banquet".

In Banquet you get a close-up view of blood splashing. Crimson, translucent, making a melodious tune as it splattered against pillars and walls. A Lot of Blood.

In Golden Flower you see blood. Staining the bodies, yes, but less splattering. Or at least, not that close-up. There were much more dead bodies, though. When Jay Chou's (yes, Jay Chou!) legion of golden armoured army was wiped out by collosal spiked shields, their bodies littered the palace ground just like chrysanthemum petals, trampled on the ground, mixed with mud and soil. A Lot of Bodies.

And yes, for the mind less appreciative of artful films... if Jay Chou doesn't get you curious enough, well... all the females wear very low cut outfit. So low cut, I fear for their modesty whenever they happened to be running around.

Fly me to the moon

Fly me to the moon
And let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter & Mars

In other words, hold my hand
In other words, darling kiss me

Fill my heart with song and let me sing forever more
You're all I long for, all I worship & adore

In other words, please be true
In other words, I love you

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It's scary sometimes, when you hear, during the credits in Evangelion anime, the "REI" version of the song where "worship" is pronounced "wore-sip".

I wonder if doing that many versions of this ending credit song contributes to the lack of funds near the end of the anime's production...

Go biking!

Well, I think I'm the kind of person who dives head first into every new discovery.

And one particular night after work, I went Changi Beach for cycling again. Cycled all the way to somewhere near the SAF Ferry terminal (Nostalgia!) and had a "head-first" crash along the way while trying to dodge a passenger (I'm still not that skilful huh?). Ended up with a bruise near my lower lip, a minor cut on my left knee and a chipped front tooth.

My bruise, if you can see it. Just behind the bruise is an ulcer in my mouth, and that's the real painful part.

The chipped tooth wouldn't have been that painful if not for the fact that the core became slightly exposed. So you can imagine when I bite into a chilled apple...

And I still haven't learnt my lesson yet. Either that, or I learnt another lesson: Never give up just because you fell once.

On the next day I bought my own bike and started some long-distance biking... from Tampines to East Coast Park!

Click to have a look at my bike!

I chose a not-so-biker-friendly route so I had to pay for the consequence of bumpy sections and near-ball-crushing experiences. Nevertheless, I felt a huge sense of satisfaction after arriving at East coast park. The cycling road was pretty nice, and I cycled all the way to... well I just kept cycling until I reached that SAFRA country club which my family went every year (for the past few years) for chalet.

The bungaloes.

On the way back from the country club I got past The Middle Of Nowhere and it started raining.

The Middle Of Nowhere

Well thank God it was just a small rain, even a drizzle.

On the way there were also these structures whose purpose of existence was unknown to me. Still they were quite impressive to see.

All in all it was a nice trip, but the return journey was ardous! You know... exhausted and wet, wishing that you knew better than to put yourself in this quest you have to complete no matter what...

And then, Home Sweet Home!

P.S. After my JC days during which I suddenly lost interest whatsoever in romantic love (I was still "straight" at that time though), recently I started thinking about the whole issue again. I even had dreams about it. Haha. It will really be quite an exciting journey when I finally find the girl who will smile when she thinks of me and will also make me smile when I think of her.

HO Chalet 2006

This Friday I went for the chalet organised by the AHS HO senior alumni.

This year it was at Changi Holiday flats in Changi Village. Basically they're just flats being allocated for chalet-like purposes. Even though it was "within civilisation", there's still the Changi beach nearby, and the wide selection of food available (including seafood restaurants, food centres, Prata shops, bars, etc) made it a quite comfortable place.

I went and stayed for the night on Day 1, during which, most of the time there were people playing mahjong or card games and the rest of us watched the Fullmetal Panic VCD that Shao Chung brought.

For dinner we had Subway sandwiches, and since I'm not entirely familiar with the system there, I just ordered Cold Cut Trio set which was on offer that day.

The first night there we slept pretty late, partly because we played Uno. Seriously it's not a game that's to be played before bedtime, because it just doesn't seem to end. In the end we actually had to stop playing as the game just dragged on. Good thing was, I managed to do some stunt I wanted to do right before the game was forcefully ended, haha.

The beds there. Our flat had 2 2-bed rooms.

The non-sleepers room.

Tai Man

Ningxi and Jackson

Shao Chung & Allen playing chess

Shi Lei, who was just beginning to sleep

On Day 2, I woke up the latest: about 9 a.m.. We had prata for breakfast, after which we went biking at Changi beach. I still didn't know how to ride a bicycle, but I decided that it would be a good chance to learn. Within the one hour I somehow came to be able to maintain balance for a few seconds.

Changi beach, from which the beautiful Pulau Tekong was visible. On a clear day you can even see the BMTC buildings! Nostalgia!

A plaque with engravings on it, telling of the mass killings of Chinese men which took place there during the Japanese Occupation.

Kelvin then arrived and we all went back to the flat. Originally we wanted to try out the Karaoke room, but all I could say was... it was worse than G1 Family Day in terms of songs available.

So it was back to more mahjong (I began to gain some understanding of the game) and more FMP. Way Si passed some bee hoon to Tai Man and Jackson, who brought them back to the flat so we could all have it for lunch/dinner.

Since there was nothing for me to do, I went alone to try biking again. This time I finally managed to maintain my balance. So I too can ride a bike now!

My rented bike and I

Near the evening we played some truth-or-dare (minus the "dare") game. There were quite a lot of interesting questions being asked, about personal issues like funny or regretful incidents which happened to you.

For the funny incident I talked about the one when I slided down a grassy slope on my butt and ended up with this big soil stain on my white school pants, which people mistaken for shit.

We had the bee hoon, Satay and Rojak for dinner while watching the Golden Horse Awards presentation, after which I left.

"Sew" shiyou!

Ah... a well deserved 1-day leave, let's do something meaningful to make it worthwhile!

Ah... I know, I shall sew my LCP rank insignia today!

Lalala...

Originally I was supposed to get it done the weekend before last week, but due to unforeseen circumstances (read: I sewed the insignia on the wrong position) I could only finish sewing them today.

Hey, it was hand-sewn OK?

Haha well, I love to sew things, so I decided that even though it might take a longer time than asking for help from some Army shop, it might be better if I could just do it myself.

It took some exploration before I found the way to get the sewing done quick and clean. However it was all worth the trouble and I can finally report to work tomorrow with my new rank!

Atten-tion!

Ta-dah!

The following images has no relation to today's topic whatsoever, but...

Just found it a nice view... I love the concrete jungle!

Aragaki in some Japanese Pocky advert.

Gakki in megane! Haha itadakima~su!

Seriously, would I have had less sympathy for Misa Misa (who's really quite a sad case in the story) if Toda hadn't played that character in the DeathNote movie?

Eh... so we have Tak-kun's 86, an Evo, Doraemon, Nobi and... huh?

G1 Family Day

On Friday we celebrated the G1 Family Day. It was quite a fun-filled event... with activities like Paintball, Bionix (a type of armoured vehicle) rides, etc.

Paintball was the first event for me, and I took a lift on Bernard's car along with Nick and JY to Amoy Quee camp. There was protective gear available for us, so it was quite safe. I had quite some difficulty aiming, and actually got a headshot (the impact just came and, splat!).

Later we went to SISPEC Pasir Laba (where we're supposed to stay for the night). I was informed that the songs which I chose for the Karaoke Competition were not available (?!!!), so I had to go choose other songs. I then took a look at the song selection and... withdrew from the competition. There was simply no song that I'd really love to sing. So there's no point singing just for the sake of it. CPC already has one representative other than me, so it didn't really matter.

The bunks were nice (I heard that they're newly constructed) and spacious. The shower cubicles had racks to put your soap or shampoo on, unlike BMTC where such racks were lacking. After playing Space Munchkins (Chiang Wee brought it), which is a card game where you engage space monsters and encounter scenarios which are mostly spoofs of well-known epic space tales like Star Wars (just imagine... there's a scenario called "I am your father"... and of the wide range of sidekicks you can have there's a "Big Hairy Alien" who, "coincidentally", carries a crossbow!)

Dinner was Gu-rei-to! I mean, how bad can a steamboat session get? With catered food available, as well as the sumptuous steamboat spread, I really enjoyed myself during the dinner.

Following that we went to the Mess to watch a presentation of videos done by various units in G1 Army to commemorate their anniversaries. For CPC it was the 40th anniversary (Wow!) and HRSC was probably the youngest unit of age 1. The videos were generally well done, especially the one by CPC, done by Yichuan, Kelvin and Bernard!

The karaoke competition that followed... I was surfing the Net in the Mess, haha. Heard them sing, and some of them were not bad. The prizes included things like DVD player and earphones!

Continued surfing the Net during the subsequent Free-for-all karaoke session. Played darts with my colleagues, and surfed the Net again. Did sing a few songs here and there, but I didn't have much mood.

They organised a trip to the Jurong Fishery Port but I didn't go, as I wanted to just have a sleep. It's been a long time since I slept under bunk ceiling fan, with my head and feet in the "upside down" position relative to the bed, just like my BMT days.

*Alarm ringed at 5:55 a.m.*

Turned it off.

Woke up at about 6:45 a.m., relieved that we didn't really have to wake up at 6 a.m. like I thought I heard last night.

Went down for a Kickboxing exercise which got me quite shagged.

Washed up and had a Bee-hoon plus Soon-kueh breakfast. Had tea (with creamer) and coffee (I took it before realising there's no more creamer, so I had to swallow that bitter liquid which, after adding 2 packets of sugar, didn't taste like coffee anymore). Saw this worm dangling from a spider web under the table, spotted by Chor Bin. Tried to save it but it was already dead.

Bade farewell to SISPEC and set off for the Singapore Discovery Centre for a guided trip there. Watched a movie entitled "Wired to Win" (co-sponsored by National Science Foundation which coincidentially gives the abbrieviation "NSF") that gives an account of how the brain works and changes under conditioning.

Once again I came to a conclusion that we must have been created by a God. The argument that such elaborate systems in humans, animals and plants simply occur by chance is unbelievable to me.

Next we were introduced to a series of stations where we can participate in games and learn, hopefully, about nation-building. After trying them out, all I can say is that they're generally for kids.

But then again, isn't this Family Day after all?

One station that particularly turned me off was that... that quiz for entrepreneurs thing. True, it's purpose was to teach kids about values in entrepreneurship, but the very idea that there're right and wrong answers to questions about your personal values regarding work and business simply did not fit the picture. I may be a bit biased here because I was personally told by the game that one of my inclinations regarding the issue in the question was wrong.

But... the right-&-wrong thing just didn't fit the word "Entrepreneurship". "You feel me?"

P.S. Finished watching the Gal Circle drama yesterday. A generally likeable drama. Couldn't really imagine, though, what it must have been like to have an ex-Gal Cowgirl brandishing a lasso in Shibyya for 3 years.