The Things I Do~

Into the last week of my attachment. I think that without much doubt, I clearly enjoyed this year's attachment much more than the previous. Not simply because the travelling time had been cut by a fourth, but also because of the company. In SCSC, I came under the charge of 22 Lieutanent Colonels and 5 Colonels, who have nothing to say to me other than to give me more work. In my unit, I was kind of treated differently.

I had 2 main tasks set out by my boss this attachment. First, NDP 05 Parade and Ceremony.

In short, we were to make sure that the timings were not screwed up. Imagine what will happen of the President arrived just as the F-16s flew by in salute to the nation.

The second objective was to recap. If nothing goes wrong, I will be returning to my parent unit (the one I am at now) as a Fire Unit Commander. That is a mere 1 year away, so I thought that its time for me to return for a refreshers course.


That is what we call a fire unit. Cool isn't it? Who else wants to join Air Defence?

~~~

Its a mere 3 weeks left to returning to London. My last year there. When I first left for London, it seemed like I would be there for 4 years, which was very long. I don't remember my Secondary days flashing by with such speed.


Oh well. Just have to make full use of this year in London. To make things worse, exams occur straight after Easter hols, and it had been shortened to 4 weeks this time round. I guess I can forget about travelling for an entire week in Easter and turn my attention to the disgusting notes.

Ok I am on off today... an off helps grin.. the starhub guy came and tried to rectify the problem with my net, but he didn't really succeed. Told me to continue to monitor it and see how it turns out. Yeah, and by the time I am done monitoring I would have left for London already and its a see-you-next-year case again.

Shall be going out to look for a gift for my nice aunt who have been taking care of me ever since my exile from my family. The feeling of guilt of forgetting her birthday was totally intolerable. I keep the dates of my friends on my mind always, but how could I forget hers. Unforgiveable.

Going to hm's place in a while, then meeting the IC guys in the evening for KBox. My first since coming back to Singapore. Time to start croaking. Anyway anyone else who read this and want to join us, we'll be at cineleisure from 1900H onwards this evening.

我要唱歌~
Those of you who watched the initial D spoof of Jay Chou would understand the joke here. Ha~

K, I left out an all important picture from the Sojourn entry. How could I miss out the 3rd finalist of Project Superstar. Presenting :-

Kelvin!

That kind of time

For those of you who do not have the patience to read through the load of ramblings below. I am having a bad day. That's about all.

I think no matter how hard a person trys, he can never manage to keep his spirits on a high all the time, and mine took a plummet this week, somehow. In fact, Monday wasn't a bad day until I was charged with the mass production of appreciation certificates that were due overnight, and my boss was in Genting without much instructions left for me. Then as usual I had to say wrong things in the evening, and things went downhill from there. I set up the print shop in my room with a nagging, uneasy, unhappy, unpleasant feeling nagging me knowing that I did something wrong. Then printing errors start popping up. Then my aunt came in and gave me her birthday cake. I forgot about it totally. Then the guilt from my mistake earlier in the evening came back to haunt me. By the time I finished around half 10 at night, I was pretty much exhausted and wanted to talk to someone. Managed to talk to Hm for a while, but it was almost midnight. That helped ease me up a bit, but the night's rest wasn't easy. I can be a rather surly person without much rest. You could guess that the first half of today wasn't pleasant, trying to do research and sort out the certificates. In my opinion, that is just a total waste of time. While I am trying so hard to print out certificates for the participants in APPRECIATION of their efforts put in for NDP, I am getting calls from them asking if they could excuse themself totally from the function, if they could get someone else to collect the certs on their behalf. Hello? What about appreciation of our efforts. Cheers. Lunch in 20 minutes. Shall have it alone for a change. Shall not let my mood get the better of me.

Sojourn!

Lex: no thank god I did not have to extract that molar. It turned out to be a pretty bad infection not caused by the tooth. It eventually went away after I completed my prescription of anti-biotics.

~~~

Sojourn came and went!

Initially, I was a little hesitant about participating in this year's Sojourn as an OGL. Will I be able to let the enthusiasm which I used to have flow through me once again this year. After all, I'm Year 4! My God... I could remember Anliang as one of the enthu year 4 seniors who was present during my Sojourn as a fresher. There seems to be some kind of gap between us even though he's only a couple of years older as he was on PSC scholarship. This time, the gap between me and the new bunch is :- 5 years!

Turned out that it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Didn't exactly submerge myself into the crazy and frenzy of the games as I used to be able to, partially because of the generation gap and partially because I've quite exhausted myself the days prior to the camp.

Anyway these are what we have been doing the past few days. Ice breakers came first, with quite a few absurd games that the fantastic gamemasters managed to come up with, for example, trying to squeeze your heads under this line. No problems for those at the higher end, but for those big heads (may it be an excess of brains or ego) trying to squeeze under that on the lower end, it was quite an interesting sight.

And we also have Dog and bone with a vicious (or rather, slippery) twist to it. The tarpuline was generously doused with loads and loads of soapy water, and the bone is, of course, soap. When the guys' numbers were called, it wasn't hard to imagine the result: Taupok! Coincidentally, Edwin excused himself from the game. Dun think that we dunno that you didn't play. We have long memories, and it'll carry to London.

As for the gals, Cat Fight~

The photograph of day 1's OG taken prior to the freshers being torn apart into different groups to commence the Island Hunt.

The first part of the Island Hunt brought us to Esplande - Colors of the Bay, followed by the dreaded Padang, Fulleton Hotel, Suntec Carrefour and then the National Library. We were so tired by then that we cabbed to the next destination, Istana Park, where the poor gamemasters Edwin and Melvin had been generously feeding the mossies at the Park and illegally disobeying the government's campaign to rid dengue fever by providing themselves as a vital food source.

Following Istana Park, the more interesting (downtown) hunt begins. We proceeded to Orchard MRT, where we were supposed to amuse the commuters exiting the station by treating them all kinds of silly antics before we can continue. I suppose this is the first time that the Kallang wave appeared within Orchard MRT itself.

Next stop brought us to Taka Harrods (I didn't even know there's a Harrods in Singapore.) To demonstrate how slack my group is as compared to the rest of the OGs, we paused long enough to take a photo with the friendly shop owner of Harrods. It kinda sticks out amongst all of us, so its pretty hard to miss.

After that was HMV, where we took part in some crazy Air Guitar Competition organised by 98.7 where a bunch of us strummed, shaked and rocked to tunes on a strapless guitar that had a couple of string missing. I guess at that point of time most of the spectators believed that either Imperial students were enthusias or we too, had a couple of strings and nuts missing in our brain like the guitar we carry.

Final stop: Harbourfront, before we finally headed back to Sentosa for a deserved rest and dinner. Shag..

TBC

Pace of my life is slowing down

Have not been this relaxed for quite a while.. The pace of my life have slowed down considerably since the end of NDP last Tuesday. Here's a bit of update on what happened since then..

Wednesday & Thursday: Bedridden, except for the hours I spent at the dentist and Hui Min's place. My god, I didn't realise that a knock on my cheek could cause me so much pain. Here's the story: I got a sharp knock on my cheek, and since its wasn't badly hurt, I didn't think much about about it.. Until the last molar start to hurt, and the gums start swelling. A fever followed, and yah, I spent the next couple of days in bed. Ok at least it recovered well enough for me to abandon my fluid diet by Friday.

Friday, back to work, and off to the movies in the evening. Watched Bewitched with Hm in the evening. Even though the reviews didn't make it out to be a really must watch, but Nicole Kidman's performance and that this is a remake of the popular TV series made it quite a value for the 9.50 spent on it.

Saturday: Sentosa recce and games trials for Sojourn this coming weekend. This is going to be my 4th, and last Sojourn I guess. I really dun know how I would feel after this particular one ends. I hate changes. Yah, but that's not the point for the time being. Also recce-ed the jungle trail route for the night walk. Gosh.. the night for the night walk coincides with the 15th of the Lunar month. That by itself is enough spooks without us needing to tell any ghost stories. Anyway we were feeding mossies as we walked the trail, and discovered (actually I have seen them many times before) real big ants with jaws bigger than their body. I wonder how it feel to be bitten by come of them.

Sunday: As usual, there isn't a first half of the day, as it was spent in dreamland. Woke up, did a bit of research for my paper, and went out to meet hm. The original intention was to go to the Carnival at Marina, since its the last day. Plans were changed though and went to Marina Center for a walkaround, Sushi followed by fireworks. Disappointing. I should have stuck to my original intention and brought her to Marina for the fireworks. In the end part of our view was blocked and I only offered her a partial display of what promised to be a great display.

Anyway looking ahead, have decided to do things that interest me rather than to follow the advises of my seniors, since there is really a huge difference in our studying style =P The tentative choice which I selected:

Digital Image Processing
Digital Signal Processing and Digital Filters
Spectral estimation and Adaptive Signal processing
Speech Processing
Linear Optimal Control
Graphics
Entreprenuership
Innovation Management
Finance Management

Sounds Cheem, don't they?

NDP05 concluded!

NDP ended! In midst of the posts by everyone else wishing Singapore a Happy 40th Birthday, and how much they love the country, I just want to say that I am glad it is over! Yup, burned 6 Saturdays ever since returning to Singapore so far, and if I were to consider clearing my offs accumulated, I would be saying goodbye to my Squadron next week.

In short, the actual parade (at least for the parade and ceremony section) was a big success. None of the timings were out of place, no one fainted, and everything was perfect!

The commander of the Red Lions did give us a scare though when he tried to land in the audience seats.

The secretaries of Special Functions - Parade and Ceremony, and NDP05 Exco chairman.