Sunday, June 13, 2004

u can save me. feed me. yep that's the theme for the world vision 30-hours youth famine camp 2004, and i just got back from da ngee ann polytechnic campus. yeah participated in this overnight camp thingy, and boy it has gotta be an eye-opener for people like me who did not took part in any such famine camps before. basically we're not allowed to eat any food or bathe for the whole duration of the camp, and yeah all these are supposedly to heighten awarness of child problems in third-world countries amongst singaporean youths. i'm not exactly that hungry nor tired, but my body ain't feelin' that great right now cause both my arms and legs are hurting like mad.

surprisingly this camp is dominated by the sa peeps, and yeah you can almost find a saint lurking around wherever you go. heard that sajc wasn't the only jc which announced this camp to the school community, but guess the saints are just a bunch of people who'd nothing better to do durin' this holiday term lol. but besides the massive influx of the saints, the whole camp is generally spread evenly across the various jc. up till this point of time i can't determine if there's other people besides jc students who are inside this camp, cause i'd never came across any poly or secondary school students.

the camp organisers splitted the campers into various country groups, and i happen to be fitted into cambodia group 01. the members of this team includes: weiling, geraldine, cheng siong (cs), zhiwei, amanda, huiming, zhuming, joanne, me and another gal who i've forgotten her name. gee there's only 3 guys in this group, with the gals doubling the guys' total count. i feel that there's a pretty good mix of various jcs within our group, and we've got people from srjc, sajc, nyjc, hcjc, vjc and finally tpjc. our group leader is a year our senior, and she's currently into her first year at smu. a pretty lame bunch of people we are, and yeah most of the people there are chinese-speaking which came as quite a surprise to me cause i've always had this idea that most jc peeps speak english as their first language. lol that's a bad form of discrimination i know, but that's what i really feel. i managed to be on quite good terms with the rest of the dudes, and i also learnt some very lame games from the group too. the leader herself is a kinda strange person cause she loves laughing to herself after saying something, which i presume to be a joke that she just cracked. most of the times we can't really hear clearly what she said, and that's because her voice was rather soft. i didn't knew that tpjc produces such demure girls lol. *grins*

well we've quite alot of activities in stalled for us, and that includes things like simulated activities in the form of third-world countries' scenarios, newspaper cum old clothing collection, an extraordinary night walk and a concert to reward all of our efforts on the final day itself. the games within the simulated activities are rather okay, but there's some stations which just pisses us off totally as the facilitators are just bloody inhumane in our eyes. well the two other guys had some misunderstanding with a petty facilitator, and that bastard was constantly trying to make things difficult for us during the night walk. zhiwei suggested we boycott our break fast meal and pour it down on that idiot, while geraldine almost lost control as she really wanted to give that bastard one good tight slap across his cheeks. i have to admit that i'm very pissed off with him too, but luckily we didn't do anything to him in the end or else we would really be in serious trouble then. i'm in charge of carrying a pail filled with water around wherever we go, and boy it's so darn heavy bringing it everywhere for hours that my arms are aching right now. and carrying the heavy load of newspapers this morning certainly didn't help to improve the condition of my arm - it sorta worsened it i guess. managed only to sleep at around 4am, and yeah only had around two hours of short rest before we're awaken by the loudspeakers signalling that it's time to rise and shine. lol guess what? it's my first time sleeping overnight at the stadium's running track with only some trash bags laid out before me. kinda interesting, huh.

was a meaningful camp for me i suppose, though i guess it would definitely be more fun if a few of my friends could actually be within my group - it's always a plus to have some people that you know beforehand for a camp i guess. but it's cool to make new friends too, and it was rather comforting to know that there isn't anybody with much of an attitude problem in my group heh. unlike some peeps i came to this camp soley for the sake of having experience and not for the 30 cip hours, and i believe i had more or less gotten what i set out to achieve before this camp. actually i'm really surprised to know that i didn't really had any serious tinge of hunger though i was practically fasting for 30-odd hours straight, but i think the supply of packet drinks and the fatigue within me that made me immune to the growling of my stomach (if there's any, that is). there's really this sense of achievement within me and lol i'm sure i didn't regret turning up for this camp.

gee, and i missed the portugal-greece euro 2004 match on television. but that doesn't matter much anyway, as long as i know that spain has just achieved victory over the russians by one goal to nil.

Friday, June 11, 2004

oh shit it seems that there's quite some things to pack for the 30h famine camp tomorrow and i've not done any kind of stuff packing as yet. *sigh* just managed to reach home only after a day out at town with yuzhe again. yeah guys usually don't go shopping in pairs, but guess both of us did just that cause he needs to buy some things back for his parents back in china. prior to meeting yuzhe at orchard mrt, i met up with iskandar to return him his math booklet which i've borrowed for over a year now. lol guess iskandar's such a happy man nowadays, with amirah following him around wherever he goes.

yeah first of all we got an anti-wrinkle moisturiser cream for his mum from lancome paris. lemme tell ya that it's very weird for us to buy such cosmetic products over at ck tangs, especially when there's no gals beside us. the promoter was kinda shocked at first, and think she kinda laughed when she noticed that there's just two males standing right in fronta her asking for "any anti-wrinkle product". think she was having quite a hard time determining what did we really need initially, and it was just as hard for us to understand all the cosmetics lingo she used. we're afterall guys, and we absolutely know nuts about the fact that different type of wrinkles require different type of specialised cream. got the cream in the end, and it costed us a whopping 109 bucks. gee, think it's right afterall to say that the fairer has a much higher spending power than the average male. haha i'm being a lil' sexist here.

got some nutritional supplements from gnc as well; and while yuzhe was listening to the attendant's explanation about how the various pills work, i spent my time looking around the shop. kinda overwhelmed by the sheer amound of tablets they offered there, and they come in containers of various sizes too. gnc calls 'em biotablets i reckon, but that just a c coined up term meant to confuse normal consumers like us. in the end yuzhe bought 90-plus worth of pills, and lol i pity his parents that they'll have to be poppin' them after every meal as directed by the attendant.

last stop for us is the guardian pharmacy. yuzhe said that his dad is kinda overweight and would like to help buy some slimming pills home, and yeah the choices available are kinda obvious: extrim or xando. seriously speaking i don't find any major differences between the two brands, and i guess both of 'em work pretty much the same way by refusing to let your body absorb all the carbohydrate molecules and force them out by inducing some laxative effect on ya. such pills work wonders of course, but i'd never believed in them cause they're costly and you have to carry on taking the pills for as long as you want to remain slim - unless you turn smarter and start to change your lifestyle dietary and exercising habits of course. so it was just a case of simply determining whether we like michelle chia (spokeswoman for extrim) or fann wong (spokeswoman for xando). we chose extrim in the end cause i hate that fann wong bitch and it's perceived to be generally more successful by the public. a 3-months' worth of 180 pills set yuzhe back by 299 bucks. whoa.

had our dinner at breeks! restaurant at taka later on after walking about hunting for the above stuffs, and yeah was my first time there. lol didn't expect the staff there to be overly-friendly and they greeted whoever walked in or out of the place. had a mix of korean claypot beef rice cum veggies (couldn't recall the name of the dish) and vanilla milkshake. hmm the food's there great, and it isn't that costly too unlike fish and co lol. but i think the milkshake's a lil' overpriced costing a friggin' four bucks but well, that's just the cost of dining out for ya.

gee think i gotta go pack my stuffs for the camp soon. *groans*

Wednesday, June 09, 2004

gee i didn't have any wink of sleep yesterday night at all. yeah in fact i've been fully awake since i opened my eyes yesterday up till now, and yeah i endured through the long lonely night with a dose of both power98 and the net. i know this isn't good for my health at all with sleep being one of the prerequisite for the body, but seriously my internal bioclock's so screwed up that i've almost turned into an owl. minus the irritating hooting, of course.

had breakfast with mom over at jurong east, and to my surprise people are actually queueing up to get the free today newspaper. apparently the newspaper distributors stationed over at da je mrt station was told not to give anything out till 7.30pm, and i guess people have started to form a queue since 7. surprisingly, the demand for streats wasn't that high though - yeah one could just walk towards the person giving out streats and get one from him within seconds. up till now i can't comprehend why singaporeans prefer today to streats - is it because of the media hype surrounding it with all the advertising done on mediacorp radio and tv, or is it plainly because streats is just thicker? god knows. but it was a common sight though to see people queueing up for today after receiving a copy of streats in their hands. that's just typical singaporeans i suppose, layin' their hands on whatever free stuffs they can grab before they report for a long day's work. and feeling bored myself, i decided to be of the 'em too - yeah got a copy of streats and went on to join in da fun and queued for today. man i'm kinda overwhelmed by just the sheer length of the queue; it was as if they're giving out some costly mp3 players as a free gift, seriously. in the end i successfully had two copies of newspaper within my hands after a while, and yeah they're my companions for the bus ride home.

*sigh* i think the attitude of singaporeans are getting a lil' outta hand here, especially when it comes to claiming free stuffs. yeah i know it isn't a punishable criminal offence, but i doubt everyone in da queue needs that free newspaper that badly. anyway there's always the streats paper around and content-wise i believe both of the newspapers are offering the exact same thing, except a little bit of word substitutions every now and then perhaps. in short, people are just queueing up so that they won't be at an disadvantage as compared to the rest.. in terms of a free newspaper. how much lamer can singaporeans get, really. but of course i'm not referring all singaporeans here - i know most of ya here wouldn't go to such an extreme extent for newspapers. well it was kind heartening to know that some of the peeps can't be bothered with having two papers at the same time, as they walked off the mrt station after having the streats paper. at least not all singaporeans are like that heh. :)

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

was out with yuzhe for the evening today, and yeah just managed to got back home. sometimes it's really funny thinking about how i managed to click so well with some prcs - guess few would actually even consider about hanging out with 'em in the first place. and yep, today's not the first time i've fooled around with yuzhe not wearing our school uniforms lol.

woke up really late today - managed to climbed out of bed unwillingly after the clock struck four in da afternoon. had a haircut after i stepped outta home, and yeah went straight over to cck mrt control station to meet yuzhe; but i didn't forgot to place five good bucks on france winning the coming european championships heh. :) guess he was kinda shocked to see me reaching well before the prearranged time, for he had already bought himself a copy of lianhe zhaobao newspaper in the hope that he would have a good read on his own before i arrive. initially we wanted to go to the basement food junction foodcourt for my breakfast-cum-lunch-cum-dinner (i didn't had any food at all for today), but in the end after walking one round about the foodcourt we decided that we should dine somewhere else. and so we ended up at the suki sushi bar above. had a pretty good meal there, and gosh i didn't realise how bland and tasteless sashimi can actually be, not until just now that is.

but anyway, both of us decided to go to play some pool over at mambo. as expected (and always) i got thrashed by yuzhe - he's sucha fantastic pool player, or maybe it's because i just sucked? god knows. lost all 4 rounds to him, once he thumped me with 6 balls remaining on my side. lol luckily there wasn't many people around us at that time, or it'll really be a darn embarassing thingy for me. the last round incidentally was the best one for me, but yuzhe still managed to emerge victorious with 2 balls remaining on my side. not that close a game frankly speaking, but i was really not doing anything right tonight. got a couple of free shots and i didn't hit my intended target most of the time, and i can't even shoot long straight easy-to-aim balls properly. heh guess i'll be better off playing pool over the net or on the phone - at least the balls goes exactly in the direction where you want it to heh. was losing so badly that i suggested playing counterstrike at the lan shop downstairs, in the hope that i could win yuzhe at something. yuzhe was laughing and he joked that i wouldn't even win him also at counterstrike. bah and he was right afterall. we were playing in different teams with 2 other bots per team, and his frag counts were much higher than mine. argh think i really suck big time man. and to top things off he killed me twice using the moronic he grenade, with the bot knifing me till i was dead in the last round. haha but yuzhe was lucky in the end, cause i reminded him that he has left his stuff back in the lan shop. see i'm not sucha poor loser afterall, though i did hurled some harmless profanities at him as usual for fun. harmless profanities? hmm that's gotta be an oxymoron. but who cares anyway.

gee. guess i really sucked big time today.

Monday, June 07, 2004

i wanna be a rsaf pilot! yeah and i'm not joking here. i just went to cmpb for my pilot aptitude test earlier this afternoon, and the whole test thingy lasted for around five hours. yep five bloody hours right spent right in front of their hewlett packard workstations doing all those computerised tests, can you actually believe it?! actually i didn't really think much about flying for my whole life, except for that period of time when i was just plainly smitten over the aweness of the pilots in the movie pearl harbor. anyway it's more like a romantic story about a love triangle, rather than a historical military film. but i still think being a pilot is an great honour to a man - even if it means me meeting any unfortunate mishaps and lose my life in da process. i still think it's worth it yeah, especially when you're giving up your life to protect your country, your family and of course that very girl which you love deeply. guess being a pilot is not simply being just an elite of the country; it encompasses whatever determination, compassion, loyalty and love a true man can ever possess. wow what crap am i blabbering about here?! guess the five hours of intensive questioning really drained all my brain juice, however little present, away. oh whatever.

don't think i'm gonna do well in it anyway, for i was like being extremely slow in response to all the questions and my reactions are also a tat slower than what the computer expected me to be. how disappointing. but i guess the hardest component that i had to face was the time when they're testing me over the general coordination of my various body parts - between the eyes and the arms, and also between the arms and the legs. as expected, i had alot of problems trying to guide the constantly-moving dot towards the centre. its movement is just too bizarre and erratic for my poor limbs and brains to handle basically. i was trying sooo hard to get things right, but to no avail - up till a point when i thought that i was sucha loser and wanted to give up straightaway. yeah i'm beginning to have some sort of mental seizure cause it's just so goddamned fuckin' frustrating thinking over how a small lil' red dot can own me. total ownage, i've gotta say. the other stations ain't that good for me either, cause i'm unable to comprehend all of da onscreen instructions properly due to my fatigue (i slept at 3am last night and had a two-hour geog lesson prior to this). plus my mind simply refuses to visualise the actual scenarios correctly and i was left with pretty much guesswork to do throughout the various tests. the test over arithmetic problems was bad for me too, cause i just simply sucked at math - yeah a jc student who can actually get stumped over a simple subtraction question. how much of a failure can i get man, really. but the last test was the simplest i guess. okay it actually isn't much of a test, cause it simply just consist of mcq questions asking you about your personality in general. yeah the test administrator said that there was no right or wrong answers (duh) and the test's just there to let rsaf understand the testee (i'm tempted to type testis, lol) better. sound simple yeah, but there's a catch to it: there's 187 (yes, one hundred and eighty seven) of 'em and yeah my arms were kinda swollen after shading 187 bubbles. but there's 2 positive things that did came out of the test: one, there's a cute mini plane for all testees as a souvenir for enduring that five hours of pure shit; and two, the test administrator is indeed chio! yeah i know i'm not supposed to focus my attention on her, but she's really cute and lol my eyeballs can't help but tilt towards her every now and then. poor coordination of the eyeballs, i've gotta admit. heh. :)

final test results would only be available in one or two months time, and a pass in it only introduces you to the next selection round: and that's none other than the interview process. get through the panel of interviewers succesfully, and you're gonna say goodbye to your mates in your fighter jets? nah, far from it. you still have to go through a detailed medical checkup for piloting courses. and that's not all - you're only accepted successfully as a pilot trainee when you performed well in your bmt and managed to qualify for a place in the officer cadet school. sounds impossible? definitely. but am i losing whatever lil' glimmer of hope which i possess? surely not, cause i really look forward to the day when i can call myself a pilot. a real one at that, and not one inside any computer flight simulator games.

Sunday, June 06, 2004

guess joel's right afterall. he told me sometime ago that most bloggers will display similiar characteristic: that they will update their blogs faithfully on a daily basis for the first few weeks, before the frequency of updates start to dwindle down to perhaps an update once per two weeks. lol if i ain't wrong i refuted him on the spot, that i'll be one of the few exceptional cases - but apparently i'm wrong. heh guess my pure laziness has taken its toll on me, plus there's not much things to write about anyway. i mean i could always give a detailed account of whatever things i do everyday, starting from the moment i open my eyes till the moment i close 'em; but heh that's bound to close a couple of heavy eyelids i'm sure. throw in exact accounts of when i go to the loo or even the number of steps i took walking from one point to another, and voila you'll have the perfect recipe to send your reader to slumberland straightaway. think they should award da nobel prize award to me for discovering the perfect solution to cure insomnia. what crap is this lol.

yeah it's been a wonderful season for sajc in the year 2004 as we conclude with three championship trophies back in our cabinets - namely vball girls, bball boys and cricket. plus we're runners-up in others like soccer, bball girls and bowling. it's a major improvement as compared to last year, which was rather disappointing for the saints community i've gotta say. of course the whole sporting calendar is not over as yet cause there's still the track and field meet in july. the sailors would also be fighting for the saints later this year too. hope that things would go smoothly for all of 'em, and may god bless them with the best of luck in whatever events they're taking part in. yeah it's been a wonderful journey for the supporters too i believe, for it's not an everyday thingy that you get to attend finals here and there. records were broken - with the vballers bringing the first ever girls championship trophy for the college and of course, the crashing in of the sajc soccer team into national stadium as finalists. sometimes things just begin to get a lil' outta hand as there's like 3 must-watch matches within a week; and that the students have to compromise with their tutors so that they could be dismissed early to catch all da action live in person. lol, don't think you can find such supporters' madness in other colleges that easily. yeah only a spontaneous community like the saints can do it hehe. up and on! :)

heh the action just doesn't stop here man. true the interschools might have more or less ended for most sports by now, but it's time to divert my attention towards portugal for this month. yeah the euro championships 2004 tournament is gonna take place there, and i'm sure it would be an interesting one too. major upsets are taking place more than ever before for the record, and i believe constant underachievers such as spain and hosts portugal would sure be fired up so as to rise up to the occasion like never before. lol yeah the team that i would be focusing more of my attention on would be the iberian spaniards, led by the charismatic spanish golden boy raul gonzalez (okay i am being biased here). i'm pretty confident that traditional powerhouses such as the italians and holland wouldn't go on to lift the trophy cause they've been very out of sorts recently. okay i'll take back my words a lil' bit, cause i'm sure the italians with their solid defending would surely progress to the next round unless a really major upset occurs in their group. watch out for czech republic especially, for they might just be the outside contenders to pose a real threat for the favourites. don't write off teams like switzerland or latvia as yet, for the ball is round (an overused cliche, i know) and the turning tide might be in their favour. of course, huge favourites like france would be set to defend their european crown with their phenomenal players such as zidane and henry. haha one team that i would find interest in their progress would definitely be england. guess they're just overhyped by the aggressive media reports splashed across tabloids (including the dumbo new paper). i don't consider them to be underachievers, cause i have serious doubt about their capabilities - wayne rooney is just another overhyped wonderkid i'm afraid, but he might just prove me wrong this time round; and i don't think the english team falls into the category of underdogs, for their team is surely much more stable than before. but what am i to talk so much about all these when i'm just the average dude who watches televised soccer? but hell this is my blog so i'm free to say whatever i like huh. what crap. but you can be sure that my eyes would be fixed into the most prestigious international soccer tourney next to the fifa world cup. will spain shock and awe, or would they go back home in shame? guess only time would tell..

Tuesday, June 01, 2004

i'm totally shagged upon returning back home from the 2004 saintscom camp at school. and yeah i only managed to regain back all of my energy after having around 7 hours of undisturbed sleep lol. apparently, i'm deprived of sleep cause i only managed to really close my eyes for approximately an hour last night after the flurry of activities that took place at night hehe. and i'm like feeling so dead for the whole of today. argh.

the camp was not as bad as i expected - yeah though gary did throw his weight about here and there for some period of time, i didn't really have too much a problem over both him and keith. well i think that keith ain't that inflexible afterall, for he was like interceding for us and arguing with gary over the cancellation of morning physical training after several protests from the members who severely lack both sleep and energy. haha the good thing was that physical training was made optional in the end, and i think gary was the only poor soul who hit the tracks in the end. guess he was too pissed off and needed to let off some steam by running around. can't be much bothered anyway - i just feel that it's not a wise decision to make everyone run and end up with casualties in the end.

had a fun but physically exhausting on day one - yeah the sporting activities and wargames really drained our bodies of our energy man. haha i'm finally picking up the game of soccer (i hope) and i was like having a much greater control of the ball instead of whacking the ball about aimlessly. was able to fake the ball here and there for a couple of movements, and lol can you believe that i actually can do stepovers? gee that's something i would've never had dreamt of before i came into this camp. but then, my penalty kicks still need much working on cause i'm still failing to convert any kicks successfully. but it's not that bad afterall cause i strongly have this inkling that i can only improve my game from here, especially when i've only seriously played soccer for only like one or two matches? hehe i know i suck. and my group totally dominated the game of basketball. lol we were literally thrashing the other teams and lol though i didn't really shoot much, i managed to get a three-point shot in just before the buzzer went off. that's gotta go down as one of the most wonderful shot that i've made! yeah group 2 must dominate the whole country!! :)

after that it's time for the wargames, using self-made water bombs as our weapons. but i think my group just lack the killer instinct and yeah we didn't win any single wargame match at all. that's just so sad. :( the whole of saintscom watched the mummy returns which ended at around 1+am, and almost everyone began to doze off to slumberland. well except for a few adventurous few, apaprently. the few of us were like exploring those quiet regions of the school at night, yeah places like the jacob ballas building and also the various toilets which we otherwise wouldn't have access to normally. oh yeah we went to the hidden tunnel also, and that stupid place was so bloody hot and humid though the night was cold. haha the guys brought the two gals to the various boys toilet, while they brought us to the female toilets too. what a wonderful insight into the sa toilet culture of both genders. well though the boys toilet was generally bigger physically, but i think the girls toilet are way better - perhaps the lack of urinals made the place seem more spacious, and that there's no strong offensive odour found in the sparkling-clean girls toilet! oh, how i wished the boys toilet was in sucha clean condition too. and yeah i can safely say that i've explored each and every toilet, of both girls and boys, in sajc. me and yew kuan are the new toilet experts now haha. :)

time check:3am - but both of us weren't planning to sleep yet. yes our body seemed not be able to take the whole shit anymore and our eyelids were becoming especially heavy after a long day of activities, but we're both afraid that we can't wake up in time tomorrow. we're supposed to wake up at 6am, and seriously how can we wake up in 3 hours' time? so in the end we decided to chill out at the cafe and talk. yeah we talked about the sailing people and also some saintscom people, and also about how cliquish rv people are which accounts for why they are generally looked down upon at jc level. we closed our eyes momentarily and boy, my legs were experiencing extreme cramps cause of the coldness. while keith and gary woke up at 6am, we went back to the dormitories and much to their surprise we conked out in fronta them. guess our bodies can't take it any longer and we are really in need of some kinda break. can't really be too bothered about the conditions of sleeping anymore (we were lying on top of beds made up of 4 tables) and yeah managed to rest our souls for one hour before we began to wash ourselves up to get ready for the counterstrike competition, which was the highlight of this camp. not much of recharging to talk about, but at least it's better than not sleeping at all yeah? =x

counterstrike was generally bad for me, for i've grown rusty after not touching it for like months on end. was watching myself getting fragged innocently by the better players. but then again, some of the matches was not evenly balanced - yeah all the good experts were on one side, while the other side consisted of the newbies (the girls) and the lousier ones. lol i think we suck real bad and there was one map in which we didn't even win a single match at all. how pathetic can things really get!

overall i've gotta say that this is quite a nice camp. the j2s were able to mix well with the j1s, and everyone was more or less spontaneous. there was much lame jokes and harmless insults being hurled about to each other to spice things up a lil'. joel was especially talkative and hyperactive, while chern yang was his old self talking to only the girls lol. at least everyone talked to each other more or less, and think the gelling is evident. hope that saintscom could be this fun always and that they would invite the alumni members back one day to have a fuckin' good time with each other!

keith did it!!

about

age: 18
gender: male
birthdate: 23/11/1986
school: st andrew's jc
email: asdboy@hotmail.com

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