Grey Grey Sky

Today at office, I had this feeling that time was going so slowly...

Or maybe it's just the dark skies which give me a feeling of lateness plus my watch which insisted on showing me a time that's earlier than 1730.

Hmm anyway...

Supposed to go gym with some colleagues today, but due to unforseen circumstances (read: WORK) I couldn't leave office with them. Thought I could join them later (when they're, like, at their last 15 minutes there), but in my haste I left my PT shoes in the office.

Imagine a bloke in vest, hotpants (Hoo~!) AND leather shoes.

Wow.

Of course, in the end I decided that going home straight away would be a much better choice. They said they're going to go gym every week anyway.

Air Force open house preview this Friday...

Happy Birthday Bernard

Yesterday, after making that long post about CDs, I went for a quick swim and then for cell group with Jiansheng.

Hmm it's time I take a step of faith instead of just stop going for church and cell group. And Jiansheng's cell... well I have a feeling I can settle down there once and for all. Hopefully.

After that I went for Bernard's birthday dinner at Fish & Co, Dhoby Ghaut!

It's a standalone building with glass walls and roofs... some more with sports channel inside. AND there was a match between Liverpool and West Ham yesterday.

More about that later.

It was my first time (OK that's so very typical of me) in Fish & Co... so I didn't really know what to choose. YY was telling me about this "Seafood Platter For 2" which will easily leave 2 persons very full.

Now that really made me excited. Chor Bin and I decided to share this meal then, and we're even talking about the prospect of challenging Peng (famous for being a big eater) to finish this platter alone.

Soon the platter arrived and I, erm, deflated.

Not that the serving is small; I actually didn't feel hungry anymore after finishing the meal (though I really have to apologize to CB for taking most of the squid), but on the other hand, I could easily have finished the whole thing alone.

Then came the match.

We stayed during the first half (they were trying to explain to me the meaning of "Offside", to no avail...), at the end of which LFC's Crouch scored a sudden goal which broke the tie. So sudden that we didn't even have the time to shout "Goal!".

We left afterward for City Hall to play LAN. It's been a long time since I played Counterstrike, but I'm glad to say that I haven't quite lost my touch.

On the not-so-bright side, I didn't have so much "touch" to lose in the first place haha.

I surprised myself in the first map which was AWP (the sniper map), and in another map where we all pick up weapons instead of buying them, it was only halfway through that I remembered to choose the shotgun. Easy to makan people using that.

During the match I changed my nickname to "CPL_Wang" (yeah yeah dream on, Private!), and after that those guys started changing their nicks too, to various ranks ranging from REC (Recruit) to LG (Lieutenant General). I even became a RAdm once.

At about 2300 hrs CB and I went off, and the others stayed there to play, since they're supposed to go for duty at the Army Half Marathon at about 4 a.m. anyway.

MORE music

Much more, in fact.

Recently I've been to Cash Converters to look for old Japanese song CDs to, well, learn Jap as I listen to those songs. Haha.

I actually got quite a few good ones there, like a compilation album of hit songs, and also an album by Speed.

This week I went on a hunt with Bernard again... 2 brains and 2 pairs of hands really upped the returns big time, man! This time, between us, we got Chage & Aska (and yes, "Say Yes" is inside), another Speed album, V6, Eriko Imai, Ami Suzuki and some other compilation album of dorama theme songs (with the song I was looking for all the time: "Believe" from "Overtime"). And others too. In other words, overhaul!

Now for some 1st handed CDs... I got a copy of Ken Hirai's 10th anniversary compilation entitled "Utabaka". Haha.

Baka. Baka baka baka.

And also, a few albums by Olivia Ong, this Singaporean girl singer whose songs are mainly marketed in Japan.

Japan?

Well this makes sense if you know that she was once from "Mirai", the Singaporean girl group from n years back which sang mainly Jap songs, and then got disbanded, according to OliviaOng.com, due to "some circumstances". She later worked as a model before returning to a singing career.

The first of her albums that I bought was "A Girl Meets Bossanova". Bossa Nova is a type of Brazillian jazz and the words mean "New Wave" in... Portugese? Actually, one of the reasons I bought this CD was because there are 2 songs inside which I know about.

First was "Fly me to the Moon", a song which people who watch Neo Genesis Evangelion might know about (it's in the soundtrack, sung by a diffrernt person of course). I first heard the Evangelion version during some Farewell event in my JC days and I liked the song immediately after hearing it.

Another song was "The Girl from Ipanema". Ipanema is some place in Brazil. Well I happen to be playing this song on my electone and I find it nice.

So I decided to see what her rendition of these songs will be like.

Well her rendition of "Fly me to the Moon", sort of, erm, flew me to the Moon. And not the teeny weeny, "pruney" (if there's such a word) white coloured moon you see everyday from your HDB block, but that big yellow moon lighting up the starry (to the power of 10) sky of Pulau Tekong Firing Range (minus the noise of the gunshots).

In case you still don't know what I'm trying to say, I was mesmerized. By both the accompaniment and her voice. Yeah.

The arrangement of "The Girl from Ipanema" in the album was nice too, and the part when she was humming to the first verse.

Hmm, hmm hmm hmm hmm, hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm-

OK I shall stop trying to portray it textually.

Other songs in that album include "My Favourite Things" from "The Sound of Music".

I bought 2 other album of hers, namely "Precious Stones" (her first non-Bossanova album in which she wrote the lyrics of all the songs... in English of course.) and the recently released "A Girl Meets Bossanova 2".

Tokoro de...

I missed the broadcast for Jay Chou's new song entitled "Qian Li Zhi Wai" (Thousand Miles Apart) which, I heard, was a collaboration between Jay and veteran singer Fei Yu Qing.

"Shu shang xiao niao ti...."

And I also heard that the song turned out to be quite nice.

Now 8 Sep really seems like "a thousand miles" from here.

For example...

During some point in this year, I got a bit tired of swimming for no apparent reason.

Not so anymore.

Thus I've been swimming quite regularly these days... I'm going to go for a swim later again haha.

Can lah, I'm on leave today (heh heh...). My colleagues at Depot must still be having lunch right now. I've spent my morning watching my Ini D 4th stage DVD and taking naps...

OK back to topic. During one of my swimming trips I came across this sign in the changing room... well the picture will say it all.

A good example of a negative example.

Well I don't know if someone coincidentally left the key there, or they really mean for it to be some demo of really careless behaviour, but don't you find my caption funny nonetheless?

*faint*

This summer, an eventful week needs no translation

Haha I met Wenrong at Tampines Mall while I was on my way to catch Toyko Drift!

NYJC Vs SAF

Looks like NYJC's really that cheena. It actually made Chinese Language Wenrong's best subject!

But I think his recent dose of Mandopop helped a little. He hardly listened to Mandopop in my AHS HO days.

Tokyo Dorihuto was quite action-packed, I think. One thing that made me uncomfortable was that they kept using the word "drifting" when they're actually just talking about car racing. Otherwise, hmm deep down I actually have no problem with the fact that the key Japanese roles are all played by non-Japs.

At least there's this cute Jap girl in the cast! Although she doesn't talk much (I've read that she's currently learning English, so OK...), well, I'm cool with it.

Keiko Kitagawa, the Jap girl I was talking about. This picture is closest to my impression of her in the movie.

Dorihuto Shite Iru Ehu Di San Esu!

Check out the skid marks, man... but I'm not comfortable with their modifying the Evo (a world-famous 4-wheel drive) into a rear-wheel drive just to make it easier to drift. Thank goodness they didn't do it to my favourite WRX Impreza.

Besides the abovementioned stuff, this week was quite eventful. 10/04 guys outing... public holiday... learning day... you name it, we've got it.

Not that the class outing was that successful, though...

Haha no lah, it's just that most of us are now NSFs and not all our NSFs are hoh-miah clerks like me, Kido, JY and Joel (who's actually not so hoh-miah as he's a stay-in unit clerk), who turned up earliest for the outing. Duh.

Our garang commandos had trouble booking out early (welcome to SAF), so they managed to arrive about one hour later.

And as usual, typical of NSF guys meeting up, we talked about army life and hardly anything else. Commando training was really siong, but like what Jeremy (a signaller) said, they're the ones who command a lot more respect than other soldiers.

Yeah, just look at the red-beret 1st Commando Battalion marching at the National Day Parade. Seh!

Kido was damn funny... he left straight after meeting our commando friends.

I don't think I have to say more about National Day, when I was happilly ripping CDs at home while trying to catch Jiansheng among all the Camo-faced Load-Bearing-Vest boys in the NDP.

For our Branch Learning Day this month, we learnt wbout the basics of sushi making from our Branch head, who is actually an enthusiast for culinary stuff. She actually prepared the vinegared rice by herself.

Even though it looks easy, like just putting the rice on the seaweed thingy and wrapping it up, sushi-making actually requires very good estimation of the proportions of the rice and the stuff you put in. Some of us (like Jireh) managed to produce quite professional sushi in various shapes and sizes.

Well, my first few attempts were not really that worthy of mention, but in the end, I guess my fishu-saapuraizu (Fish Surprise!), which consisted of Unagi (eel) and fishcake (our kind of fishcake, not the Jap one with the pink coil on it), worked out in the end.

Getting it all stacked up

A closer view before I roll it up

Fishu-Saapuraizu!

But I had to admit, the filling is a bit off-centre...

We not only made Maki-zushi... some of us attempted Nigiri-zushi (the kind where you put a slice of something on a rice ball). Although most of the rice balls they made are a tad too big, people like Max actually came up with quite interesting ideas like...

Ubi-zushi. Too bad you can't eat this.

My attempt at the Gunkan-maki-zushi (Gunkan is the Jap word for "battleship") which consists of the same rice ball + the same topping + seaweed wrapped around the whole thing could only be summarized as: Too much rice, too little space for the topping. And there's the same old fishcake!

Fish Cake Gunkan

By the way, I was the one who suggested using this kind of fishcake. Haha.

We had green tea to drink as well (to create that Jap atmosphere) and we're given our own foam cups with our names written on it (a good way to avoid mixing up).

My Cup!

Music to my ears

Bought quite a lot of albums recently... SHE's "Forever", David Tao's "Too Beautiful" and Yu Heng's "Real".

In "Forever", the song that gets most attention should be the one composed by Jay Chou, called "Chu Dian" (Jolt). It tells of a girl expecting the beginning of a romantic relationship, and I think it brings out this emotion better than their classic, "Lian Ren Wei Man" (Not lovers yet), which tells a similar story.

"Goodbye My Love" is quite a sad song. Sadder than "Zi Teng Hua", another of their new song which uses the tune from Westlife's "Soledad". What I like most in "ZTH"'s lyrics is the part that says something like "The most torturing part is not the parting. It's the memories which renders you unable to move on, thinking that you can still go back to the past".

In "Too Beautiful", there's this song "Wang Bu Liao" (Can't get you out of my mind) which takes part of the lyrics from an oldie, "Bu Liao Qing" (Endless love). It's quite a cute adaptation, especially the rap near the end of the song which sort of chides the hero of the story for being unable to get over the girl who dumped him.

"Too Beautiful", the song for which the album was named, tells of a woman's enduring love for a guy who hurt her more than once.

Another song that I like is "Zhu Ni Xing Fu" (literally means "wish you happiness" the English title is put as "I don't wanna know"). If you're dumped by a girl who went after another guy, this is your song!

I got to hear most of the songs in "Real" in some segment on YES 933 Fm, and there're quite nice songs in it like "Nu Sheng Zhi Jue" (a girl's intuition) and "Yi Kou Qi Ai Ni" (Love at first breath).

Waiting for Jay Chou's next.

Happy birthday

One thing I'll call Singapore -- a miracle.

41 years of independence... not that "independence" was such a great thing on this day on 1965. It was said that Singapore was "Out!".

On its own. Abandoned. A "moment of anguish". Not really something worthy of a celebration. Most people were actually worried about the future of Singaporeans at that time.

It's the passion of our nation builders that changed things. It took passion to improve conditions like housing and health of the people. Many say that Singaporeans were too co-operative. But if not for co-operation of the people, our nation could not have made it this far.

Some say we're a red dot on the map, but then again, our small size means that it's not really difficult to centralise things and set standards. Which was a good thing, of course.

Freedom from natural disasters was a plus point, of course. But we're lacking of natural resources as well, which is sort of like a price we had to pay for safety.

It's really our people that made the difference.

Fried

Well... a few more days of work, work, work.

And the frustration that I can't get my things done quickly.

PLUS the frequency of new tasks coming up.

Guess this is like school life in some sense... where every of your subject teacher thinks that his subject is the only one you're taking.

But unlike studies, the feeling of being heavily loaded will be instantly gone come knock-off time. And to get my mind really off work, 1 day of leave is actually enough for me.

...

Had dinner with Keon again at KFC... something happened that he said he would blog about... but I guess he can't care less about blogging these days haha... not telling about it is only to my benefit.

...

OK lah... I got normal fries for him instead of cheese fries lah OK? But seriously, the fries at KFC really needed the cheese sauce. Otherwise it's tasteless.

Anyway, he just got some license for driving some armoured vehicle and I had the "honour" of being the first one to have a look at it since he booked out.

Bought S.H.E.'s latest Greatest Hits Compilation, "Forever". Hmm... to some it's not worth getting a CD with only a few new songs, but in this case I don't have most of their CDs since "Together" (their previous Greatest Hits album), so it's worth the money for me lah.

Just that it would be better if I can choose whether I want the DVD or not... I don't really mind not having the MVs if I can pay less for just buying the songs CD.

Recently Jianyuan went into cross-stitching, and for starters, his first attempt was actually quite a major task... a very detailed image of Sagitarius.

Hmm sounds quite fun... so I decided to give it a try too. some would say that designing my own design for a starter is really too much, but to me it's a way I start with any easy picture which I'm interested in. Besides, I'm already done with the design.

Will post the picture of my first cross-stitch piece here after it's done.

Saw an article on the New paper about single adoption (people who don't want to marry but want "children" choose to adpot them). This practice raised some issues.

Well, for me, I'm instantly turned off by people who say they don't believe in marriage.

Also, such practices can be described as "wanting the pleasures marriage can bring without wanting the commitment involved". In this sense, one might go so far as to say that single adoption is like cohabitation and premarital sex.

OK maybe not that serious lah, but why should one back away from marriage?

Vindicated

Yesterday, something happened that made me realised how good it feels to be... vindicated.

Seriously... I can tell that most of my colleagues won't trust most of my claims... because even I can't be sure of things as well.

But seriously... I have this feeling that if a certain "someone" made the very same claims I would have made in my place, the claims would have been well recieved.

Forgive me for being unfair to you guys when I feel that this is unfair to me, but this is how I feel.

Photos

Regretfully, I couldn't put the photos together with my posts... so here are the photos which explain what the heck was really going on in my previous posts...

That day when we went to Marina Square to watch "Road to Guantanamo", there was actually supposed to be an autograph session with Jolin Tsai at 8 p.m.. Wow. We didn't stay for it (except for Nick, who was playing LAN until about 8) unfortunately... but then again, it didn't really matter. If it's somebody else like S.H.E., then maybe I die die must stay lah.

Look at the crowd! We actually saw one TJC alumnus among the crowd... and both Jianyuan and I (the only ex-TJCians present at that time) knew her.

More crowd! The group sitting in front of the guardrails were what I heard to be the fan club members.

Forgive me for having a ceiling fetish... but here's what I took from Marina Square anyway.

Yuh Chian and Songyu, for whom the farewell was organised as they'll be going overseas soon.

The birthday cake!

Happy birthday...

Our blow-soccer we played on Friday. Hi Mr Toh.

Iruka* HOO~!

Haha... I've always had mixed feelings about playing capsule machines because there's a probability that you'll get repeated stuff.

Recently I saw this capsule series at Toys'R'us Tampines Mall which consists of Characters from Winnie the Pooh wearing suits of all kinds of animals. It's actually quite an old series which kept on having extensions... I remembered my friend having one of these tiny figurines... hers is wearing a super kyuute penguin suit.

Well there's no penguin in this extension of the series but there're animals like the dolphin (blue one being more common than pink one) and the ladybug.

These are just part of the series. I couldn't find the images of the rest of the suits.

Well, since it was only $1 and I decided that my handphone could use some decoration, I tried it out and got a Tigger in an apple tree. Haha.

And I was thinking that the dolphin one would be nice too.

Today I went to try my luck again, and I wasn't thinking of getting the dolphin straight away, of course. As long as it's not another apple-tree-Tigger it would be fine. I put in $1...

And out came little Pooh sleeping in the dolphin suit!

---

Iruka: the Japanese word for dolphin.

R-OH

Yesterday we went for this BBQ gathering organised by my unit as a celebration for promotion of some of our officers.

When the whole bunch of us NSFs (including guys from the previous batch like Junming, YY and Yuh Chian) arrived at Changi Haven (where the gathering was held), we started off by watching some Korean movie followed by Mr and Mrs Smith (I found it to be quite an interesting show -- at least there was a "happy" ending). In between the movies we played this game which was like soccer involvng a tennis ball on a table... we scored goals by blowing the ball into the opponent's side.

Then we started with the BBQ! They actually ordered noodles from a caterer as well, so our dinner wouldn't be lacking of carbohydrates. Surprisingly the DXOs were the ones who got the pit started, and the NSFs were only "deployed" to man the pits after that.

The usual stuff like chicken wings were present, and also seafood like fish and squid (Yeah!). There were crabs too, and it was the first time I attended a BBQ session with crabs! Inexperienced as I was, I didn't manage to get much flesh out of the crab I took. Or maybe those crabs were meant to be that way... I actually saw one of the crabs being cooked alive! And it must be the expansion of fluids in the crab's body which gave a whistling sound that gave me the impression that the crab's screaming!

Ugh.

After some eating we naturally divided into small chat groups... I was with Jianyuan, Peng, Chorbin and YY, sharing with them some of the incidents that occured during our WOPC rehearsal. After that YY left and the remaining 4 of us were talking about BGR when one of our officers offered red wine to us. By sheer coincidence (or rather God's will... as it turned out to be a blessing in disguise in 2 ways) I didn't get a cup (well our Sir only brought 3 cups).

OK just to provide some background... During WOPC when I was, erm, "offered a chance to" drink half a can of beer I couldn't stand the taste and made a decision not to touch beer again. However I was curious as to whether wine would taste slightly (only slightly) better than beer.

Hence, when I didn't get a cup of wine, I was initially very keen to have a go at some of Chor Bin's share. I took a sip and

*bleah!*

Forget it. I'm done with alcohol.

So they drank. And they drank half a cup again... Jianyuan wasn't that bad... Chor bin was red in the face already... and Peng took it the worst -- he was really drunk! After that we went to the beach (quite a dangerous thing to do actually...) where I spotted some lone durian shells (erm OK...) and Peng was reciting verses and verses of cheena poetry.

From which I realised that most of the Chinese Lit stuff I've learnt were... gone.

We then headed back to the BBQ site. Peng didn't get any better and we started to get worried. In the end he threw up and we sent him home since he was still having a headache. I wasn't actually the only one who was sober, but I consumed the least wine, so naturally the 3 other guys came under my charge lah. (Hehe...)

P.S. Happy birthday Nick.

We paid.

We paid, for a peaceful journey home.

We paid to take the private transport so that we don't have to stand all the way home, and it's of course better if we can have a short nap on the way.

Of course, nothing is perfect.

Today is one of the days when Justin's on board. You know... the kid whose photo I took a few posts back.

Nobody who sat beside him had a chance to sleep. Even though I was one of the only guys that he would talk (very loudly) to in the first place (the "few guys" include my colleague Bernard), most of the time if he gets to his peak, even the aunties who were sitting beside him couldn't sleep also. Near the end of the journey I felt like apologising on his behalf to those aunties whose displeasure were pretty obvious.

We paid for this.

The Name Game

My E-mail address, is feralig87@hotmail.com.

OK... now what's the colour of a red house?

What's the colour of a blue house?

What's the colour of a black house?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

What's the colour of a Greenhouse?

.

.

.

.

.

.

And what's my e-mail address again?

No way!!! You can't remember?

See, that's why I regret naming my e-mail address after a Pokemon (even though the Feraligator really rocks).

Sigh... I wish my surname is Pan. Then can name my son something like Jia-an. Then his initials will be J A Pan. JAPAN!

Cool huh?

Never mind... but if I keep my surname and name my son Ruixian, then it's not bad also. WRX.

Talk about cars... my platoonmatefrom BMT set up a forum about cars together with some friends. Its url is http://www.2uned.com/forum/index.php.

Hmm maybe I can learn more about car tuning there...

The End

Phew!

Recently I've been missing the return journey on my private transport because I've been leeving the office quite late. Today I finally had the chance to take my transport again, and the air-con had to break down! Haha.

At least after the journey, I wasn't as sweaty as I thought I would be.

Made a trip to the arcade again... and further proved my hypothesis that the less frequently I play Initial D, the better I get. Also, I got to see the ending scene of Time Crisis 4 after much wait... last time there was a guy who gave up during the very last battle, but then again, it's not very sensible to spend $2 just to give the final boss one shot and end the game...

The guy I saw today finished with 1 Hit Point. That was close, man!

Work

I realize that I've not been blogging about work recently.

But not much to blog about as well, except that things are getting better now, like the dawn after a long cold night.

Seriously, I still don't know what got into me that made me screw up Paradestate (basically it's taking attendance) 3 working days in a row. But that's the past. I hope.

Saw my upper again last Saturday when we went for Yuh Chian (Peng's upper) and Songyu's farewell (and learned that CPC has seen generations of good singers before us)... too bad I didn't take pictures (the Karaoke room was way too dark and my camera phone didn't have flash haha) that day... at least to let my dear readers know what he looks like.

Been doing a lot of exploraton these few days... trying to do some Foxpro stunts... no lah, just making data reports lah. But even that task cost me about half a day.

Lots of work to clear, but I gained a better understanding of how my upperstudy's programs work...

Isn't that what I say all the time? Haha.

Got lots of new games recently. Besides Pokemon Fire-red (which wasn't really recent "anymore"), I got a Megaman and a Zelda game too.

Passion for children

It's been ages since I left a mark here.

Well...

Crucifixion: A McDonalds Story

Recently I saw this thing at McDonalds which stunned me a bit. You'll remember this donation collection box for the McDonalds children charity thing at the counter of most (if not all) McDonalds outlets... while having breakfast there a week ago, I cast a cursory glance at one of those collection boxes and behold! I saw nail-pierced (or rather, screw-pierced) hands!

His hands! Take a closer look!

Goodness... they sure didn't know what they were doing!

---

Naan desu ka?

On Thursday our unit went for a movie screening at Marina Square... the movie was called "The Road to Guantanamo", which was about a few Muslims living in Britain, who went to the Middle East for a wedding and ended up at Afghanistan (they went there out of curiosity, and to try those big Naans (some kind of Indian Muslim flat bread). They were really big, but considering the price they paid for it...) during the period of the post 911 Afghan war. They were subsequently captured by Northern Alliance forces along with other Afghan refugees and sent to various detention camps, the last stop being the one in Guantanamo.

Nick later said that one of the morals of the story was "do not do stupid things for big Naans".

The captives were treated inhumanely in those camps... I'm sure the real situation was worse than what the movie portrayed (I supposed they didn't bear to do the strip-them-naked-stack'em-and-take-a-few-shots), but a film is a film after all... Anyway, I think the film already portrayed 80% of the treatments given. what struck me most was the part where an individual captive will be chained in a dark room in which heavy metal music wil be played at a BLASTING volume just to break those captives down.

Other ridiculous-but-not-unexpected stuff will include the I'll-show-you-a-video-with-Osama-inside-and-point-to-any-random-turban-guy-in-the-crowd-and-say-it-was-you kind of brainless-but-we-have-no-alternative technique. I mean that's what interrogators do all the time; they'll only say you're co-operative if and only if you say what they want to hear.

... It's always logical to try breaking a captive down to illicit information, but it's about how far you're allowed to go. Who gives the permission anyway?

"As far as I'm concerned, they (the captives) are bad people... who didn't share the "values" we share..."

But please remember Mr President that most of the soldiers don't share these "values" either, and there's always a big implication for waging a war in God's name. I think the world is getting more wary of America and Christians in general even though American != Christian. Not that I'm saying that Bush supports those vices... he later said that the doers and supporters of those deeds were "not the America he knew". The America he "knew" was an all-Christian nation I suppose.

In reality it's obviously not the case.

Woe to those terrorists as well as they started this in the first place.

... ... ...|

Hmm...

A bit out of sorts these days...

Maybe because of work... or something else...

My life is getting more colourful, with new friends and new places to go and all... I'm glad for that.

But now it's not like last year when I can write a long and crappy story for every simple day...

Maybe it's because I can't use the net everyday... and as days go by, things that happened a few days back may seem now to be much less interesting to me, so I won't bother to put it down here when I finally get the chance to touch my blog...

?

That should be the reason.

Thankfully, I've been taking pictures these days when I'm not that free to record my daily life... and they speak for me.

Really sorry that I can't rant here that often now... both for those waiting for updates (I wonder who will...) and for the pity that some days of my life will just go by like blank sheets... forgotten...

Now for the photos...

O'nigiri, my favourite Japanese rice ball! At least there's half of it left...

Peng on his first skating outing! I wanted to take pics for others too, but my VGA phone camera kept giving me blurred images when I wanted to catch those fast SunnySat dudes...

Justin, the boy who takes the same transport as I do to and from the office (and prevented me from being able to sleep on the journey sometimes)

Haha... what a smile...

See you!

Wheely Wednesday and an Air-conditioned Saturday

On Wednesday I joined Sunny Saturday (inccluding Jonathan) + HP* for a regular skating trip at the basement near Esplanade (I don't know whatthey call it...). For me, Peng and Jonathan, iot was our first time there.

Peng bought skates prior to that, but I was still too poor to afford one... Yichuan was kind enough to lend me his for a while, so I could refresh my nearly rusty skating skills.

Hmm... I think that's a great chance for me to really get the hang of skating... after all, practice makes perfect!

---

Yesterday was my first time doing weekend guard duty, where I have to be there at camp for the whole day! I would describe my experience there using 2 words: "Depot Chalet".

Well, after arriving there (and sweating like a pig), I rested in the air-conditioned duty rest room for about 2 hours (Pokemon Fire-Red for 1.5 hrs, sleep for 0.5 hr) and captured a Kangaskhan before doing 2 2-hour morning shifts and having a sumptuous Char Kuay Teow for lunch.

Kangaskhan

Then, I slept... and slept... for 3 hrs in air-con comfort...

Played more Pokemon... had chicken rice for dinner...

Slept for 5 more hours...

And did my night shift from 1a.m. right up to 7 a.m.! Cool!

Actually I should say "cold", since I did not bring any jacket to shield me against the strong air-con in the guard room...

Despite the long sleep I had prior to my shift, the full 6 hours was actually quite tiring for me (maybe I was affected by the lateness of the hour as well, compared to other shifts like 1 p.m. to 7 p.m.).

Nevertheless, a short sleep during my return journey on the MRT was enough to rejuvenate my senses!

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*Huang Peng, not Hewlett Packard!

WOPC loh!

This week had been a busy one for CPC, because our unit was organizing the Warrant Officers' Promotion Ceremony at the Chevrons (an SAF clubhouse in Jurong East).

I was one of the carpark helpers.

Most of us were there at the Chevrons for 2 days: The rehearsal and the actual ceremony. Some of us went to check out the arcade when we're not deployed, and of course I'm one of them. The Initial D Arcade Stage 2 (it's a rare find, since most arcades have already replaced them with Ini D Arcade Stage 3) was similar to Stage 3 (just a fewer number of courses :P) but it was obvious that the Ini D pros rarely visit the Chevrons. Why? I was able to leave my name on the top 10 lists of a few courses, when my timing was only at the average level.

The carpark people were supposed to wear the No. 4 uniform, so I finally got the chance to wear it again (even though I'm now quite used to the No. 3). We've got to wear berets as well... now that's something new for me -- I haven't worn a beret before during BMT... but who would?

Max wearing his beret

Peng adjusting his beret... well this photo looks a bit...

Nick in the Long 4

So that's how I look when I wear a beret myself...

When doing the actual duty we had to wear this fluorescent vest.

From what I heard, the event was a success... and after the event was officially over, the duty personnel got to taste the food as well... the items that appealed to me included the chicken, the Eclair and the California rolls!

As a form of celebration, one the staff officer in charge of the carpark boys got beer for us, and, well, I had to say that it was the first time in my life I drank so much alcohol (about half a can of beer)!

Drinking alcohol is not a bad thing, but I really have to say sorry to my taste buds... and say hi to Jonathan, our new colleague who is the understudy of Jireh.

Jireh and Max: The "Handover" of... whatever.

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More miscellaneous pictures for this week...

I say, this is going to be the most beautiful shot of Angela Chang I've seen so far!

Unlike Ini D at the Chevrons, this time I'm really happy to leave my name on the top racers list in the Podracing Game at Tampines Mall!

Peng, who was awakening from his sleep during when we're at Starbucks

Now that my new phone supports mp3 and I've got a free mp3 editor from the Internet, I'm now able to use any part of any song for my ringtones!

This week I've been out of sorts... can't even do simple work properly (must have been too stressed)... and I've been spending quite a lot (ever since the new phone episode)... I hope I can spend less and do my job better next week.

Here's to a better week ahead! (If you can see the rainbow, that is.)