The Other Settler

This week I 've been going to town quite frequently.

First was to shop for Mark's birthday gift and Bernard's ORD gift. At Borders where I bought the pre-paid gift card for Mark, I also bought a copy of the Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince, all because it was sold at $9.95! Goodness, there's still the price tag on the back stating it's original price, which was over $40! Great deal, man. We shall see if Half Blood Prince will replace Goblet as my favourite volume in the HP series.

After Borders I went to Kinokuniya (I foresee myself going there more often in the future) to get some comics and to check out the Ima Ai Ni Yukimasu novel, which insipred the movie (which I will watch someday) and the drama (which I will still watch again someday).

Found the novel, I did. Found out the price as well: over $30. Sigh. I will still buy it someday, with a certain amount of regret because of the price, of course.

As for manga, I got the comic version of Evangelion (not the side stories, but the adaptation of the Anime itself) which was in Japanese. With Furigana, haha. From a brief browse of the book, it's more graphics than text (which means, relief from fatigue from reading stuff like Deathnote).

Another manga piece I got was entitled "Welcome to NHK". Not the Nihon Housou Kyoukai (as in, Japanese Broadcast Association) but the Nihon Hizai Kyoukai (as in, the Japanese Association of Useless Bums). I first saw an advertisement of this comic series from one of the volumes of Keroro. Kwok Onn said it's good, so I thought I might give it a try.

Eva and NHK.

After my Kino trip I rushed to Cineleisure (it was quite late) to check out the possible choices of board games for Bernard. Comics Mart was still open, so I found out the price for a few board games we may get for him.

The next day Chiang Wee brought me to Serene Centre to get the board game. We pondered over a few choices, and finally settled on Seafarers of Catan, an expansion of Settlers of Catan which Bernard already had.

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This Friday was Bernard's ORD, and so we sent off the last of the Old Guards on NSF Br.

Will miss the day of sharing return transport with him, on which we talked about... mostly stuff related to Japanese, haha. And oh yes, all the "ear-dropping" legends that he made while working here.

Chiang Wee who knew VBA as well could succeed him as the VBA guy of our branch. Thank God, otherwise... otherwise I might as well paste a dart board on my chest all the way until my ORD. Or not really, because I think Mdm has already given up on trying to persuade me to learn some programming rather than Foxpro (which I still have much to learn).

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On the same Friday I went for dinner with some colleagues in town, and after that we followed Kelvin to the Esplanade Library, where you can borrow media items under a paid membership. Most of the stuff there couldn't interest me, though. The music related stuff I saw there are classical music, or generally Western music which I hadn't really touched before.

The next day Bernard organised an outing to Settlers' Cafe, Clarke Quay branch. This time there was quite a large group, and we began with games like Swap (a card game which I played with my cell group before) and Jungle Speed (a game of spotting patterns and snatching totems).

After that we switched to this card game called Citadels, in which we play different characters every turn and build different districts until a certain level of achievement is reached. The game would have been quite balanced if not forthe fact that there was one character which we regarded as most "useless", and the gameplay sort of made it easy to predict who will get that character for every turn. Nonetheless I found the game quite easy to pick up, and it didn't render me thinking on my feet like Munchkin did.

I did join them for Munchkin later on, though. I guess what appealed to me the most about this game was the element of humour.

Some of the photos I've taken on that day...

The very cute bird statue near the Clarke Quay area.

A quite impressive building, called the Central, I think.

One of the boats you can find on the Singapore River.

Just a random decorative pillar we saw at a traffic junction.

Tall buildings never failed to impress me.

The official 10/04 class dinner

Hmm 2 weeks ago we had a "class dinner".

But actually that was just me and my clique in 10/04.

This time round it's almost all of us!

It was arranged at Suntec Pizza Hut and the original plan was that Ms Fong would turn out also, but due to urgent matters she couldn't come.

Nevertheless we had a good time there. Even though all the guys could talk about was life in the SAF, well... it's through telling others our experiences that we realise life is actually not that boring like we always say, is it not?

Yong Chuan, Esmond, Joel and I shared one family feast consisting a seafood pizza and a hawaiian pizza. Thank God it was quite filling, but I forgot to take pictures until we finished eating, so...

We took a group shot but I haven't recieved the photo yet. But then again I took some random shots whenever I could, so...

Yong Chuan & Esmond('s hand)

Jeremy & Alex

Maoxin & Kaicheng

Maoxin

Joel & I

Jianyuan & I (I'm an inexperienced self-photographer, so pardon me for that weird expression)

Kaicheng & I

Got to thank Hafiz and guys for organising this gathering... it's been really long since 10/04 got together as a whole... and only half of the class went for the one last year, so this gathering could be considered successful lah.

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The Prequel

Before meeting at Pizza Hut, I went window shopping around Suntec and made a few stops at the usual places.

I was planning to explore for new Manga/Anime (it's essentially Keroro or Eva) figurines I might be interested in, so my destination would naturally be those figurine shops and the Capsule Machine Parade (I coined this term myself) at the Family Link (which links (duh) the mentioned wing and the Arcade/Cinema wing).

I arrived at the wing with lots of restaurants and kids' shops, expecting to see the Family Link, but it was nowhere in sight. Puzzled, I followed the only way I could find...

I have a bad feeling about this

I kept walking until I emerged from the walkway into the Arcade wing.

My worst fears were confirmed.

The mini playground with foam flooring... and the Capsule Machine Parade... Gone!

Thank God the figurine shop merely moved, so I could still do my figurine search. I found this series called KeroKoma (Keroro Commando) where the characters have gadgets fitted to them for combat. A bit expensive, but that's because the figures are poseable!

Girotank: Desert Hunter Version

Genoci-Mois, which I suppose is another version of Angol Mois

Keroro platoon... FIGHT!

Happy New Week

A week of new beginnings!

Firstly, we started on our IPPT training again! Still the push-your-limit style... the uphill sprints and so forth. Due to the cold and humid weather (which will end with this week, I think), we could actually see the condensed water vapour being emitted from our bodies. "Smokin'!"

Got a haircut and a pair of new spectacles as well! This time I chose a plastic frame, not too thick, transparent. I think it would somehow give a smart look.

And my colleagues brought me for my first bowling game!

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Watched Death Note 2, and Erika Toda was all over the place, and she was... Uuaaarrgh... Kawaiiiii~!

OK, Toda aside, there were quite a lot of deviations from the original Manga story, but I think they all sort of made sense. L made a surprisingly brilliant move in the movie. Light in the movie was quite close to the one in the Manga but his leaving the piece of the Note with Takada's name written on it was, to me, way below Light's expected level of caution and intelligence.

The story of Death Note also got me thinking about some issues. Like capital punishment, the definition of justice, and most importantly forgiveness. Even though I would never call Light "good" (I wonder if he ever loved anyone), the fact is there were the victims of crime (e.g. Misa), with their broken lives, placing their hope in Kira (Light's alter ego), a killer of criminals who go scot-free.

I guess most readers who feel uncomfortable about Kira's killings (like me) feel so because deep down in their hearts, grace, i.e. favour for the undeserving, is at work. Somehow we just wish that those criminals still be given the right to live on.

Of course, even though I'm Christian, I still struggle with forgiveness. After all I've not experienced something that ruined my life so much as having your loved ones killed, so I cannot say things like "It is not right for victimised parties to wish for the culprit's death." Sometimes when I look at reports on murder and rape, I will also feel that the culprits were better off dead.

Forgiveness. It's the answer to the classic question "What would Jesus do?". Yes he had the right to tell us to forgive. He himself forgave millions for humans for their sins before and after he came to Earth. Even on the Cross he prayed "Forgive them".

I don't know what else to say.

The issue of forgiving major criminals or not would always trouble me I think.

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.