Beware, innocent denizens of the lion city, for a new fiend has been unleashed uponst the unsuspecting populace! With dual-wielded shiny new glittering P-plates, you'd better RUN AWAY!! RUN AWAY!! and let the poor sod filter, damnit.
Once more a person has stepped forth to take the solemn oath and swear that when he becomes a skillful road user (i.e. filters without signalling and speeds up when orange lights appear) he'll be nice to all the poor newbies out there with L and P plates. The biggest road hazard out there, after all, is not the unnecessary re-repairs of the BKE which takes ages to finish and eons for them to finish painting the lines on the road... it's the other road users. Witness how many people crash into other cars, as opposed to cans of non-existent paint.
So there i was today, with my family in the car and me in the driver's seat trying to gain some experience on the road (need to level up to gain cunning skills like Dodge and Haste and take 20s on (radar) traps) and of course the newbie's nightmare is being stuck on the leftmost lane in the expressway and having the most insane problem trying to filter out. Now i know why so many Singaporean drivers are aggressive: it's Darwinism at work.
Time to test my skills again.
Sunday, July 27, 2003
Friday, July 25, 2003
Another year, another video
I'm drawn by this very strange compulsion to blog, for some reason. I feel this need and obligation to update at least once a week. You never really get those on paper private diaries, but then again you don't quite write the same stuff in blogs as in diaries... But why? privacy? Probably boils down to some deep social fear of being judged. hmm. Also i guess it doesn't always pay to wear your heart on your sleeve. Coz then you tend to do a lot more cleaning up when blood is spilt.
So i'm 20 now.
So far, the better b'day presents have been to the tune of passing SOC on monday and an IPPT silver on thursday, both completely legit, too. ^_^ So i've actually managed to persevere long enough to pass my 2nd yr and 1st yr SOC without any .... stealth camouflage. Whether that makes me stupid and masochistic or not, i dunno.
That and a b'day SMS greeting from someone half the world across whom I haven't spoken to for half a year at least. Which is pretty touching, that someone i've practically forgotten about actually remembered and bothered enough to send a message. =) Nothing more heart warming than to suddenly hear from a long-lost friend.
strangely now the tides of sleep call so strongly that i can't remember what it was exactly about the video that i wanted to write.......... so i'll write that another time.
what a pointless blog entry.
So i'm 20 now.
So far, the better b'day presents have been to the tune of passing SOC on monday and an IPPT silver on thursday, both completely legit, too. ^_^ So i've actually managed to persevere long enough to pass my 2nd yr and 1st yr SOC without any .... stealth camouflage. Whether that makes me stupid and masochistic or not, i dunno.
That and a b'day SMS greeting from someone half the world across whom I haven't spoken to for half a year at least. Which is pretty touching, that someone i've practically forgotten about actually remembered and bothered enough to send a message. =) Nothing more heart warming than to suddenly hear from a long-lost friend.
strangely now the tides of sleep call so strongly that i can't remember what it was exactly about the video that i wanted to write.......... so i'll write that another time.
what a pointless blog entry.
Absolut 0 @ Zouk
Advertisement! UChicago's hosting this party at zouk on the 2nd of august, and it'll be a gathering of mostly US and UK uni students... i quoth:
"with a whole planned program prior to the party that features wacky US drinking games like a beer pong as well as dances cheoragraophed by Richard Tan (he's some zai cheorographer i hear)."
"Absolute Zero aims to bring together current Singaporeans studying in the United States, prospective students, as well as professionals working there. We hope to provide a fun and relaxed atmosphere to allow intermingling and a chance for students to interact with one another. In the process, we hope to create an awareness of the American culture and to give another perspective of how Singaporeans adapt to life in the United States. "
tickets go for $16 pre-order and $18 at the door, and they include 2 standard house pours, all night entry to zouk/phuture, and entry to absolut zero. do lemme know if you're interested in going!
"with a whole planned program prior to the party that features wacky US drinking games like a beer pong as well as dances cheoragraophed by Richard Tan (he's some zai cheorographer i hear)."
"Absolute Zero aims to bring together current Singaporeans studying in the United States, prospective students, as well as professionals working there. We hope to provide a fun and relaxed atmosphere to allow intermingling and a chance for students to interact with one another. In the process, we hope to create an awareness of the American culture and to give another perspective of how Singaporeans adapt to life in the United States. "
tickets go for $16 pre-order and $18 at the door, and they include 2 standard house pours, all night entry to zouk/phuture, and entry to absolut zero. do lemme know if you're interested in going!
Thursday, July 17, 2003
You're the smirk,a frown-smile hybrid that's a
little bit cocky and usually associated with
evil or arrogant,but attractive people.You
probably just don't give a damn,but it's
everyone else's fault if you don't because
you're too awesome to have any real faults.
What Kind of Smile are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
Driven
I passed my driving! w00t! only problem now of course is that my driving sucks so bad in a corolla that i don't trust myself to drive alone in that without getting either hopelessly lost, killed, or in jail. Nissan sunnys rock. Somehow my mum's car has a really stiff clutch and gearshift and her mirrors enlarge the view so it's unsettling the first few times you look back and see the pickup truck is right THERE and GAINING FAST.
but yea no lifts for now until i can drive safely enough to not need insurance. That's illegal, isn't it? hmm.
--
Some SDP people were selling their newsletter outside centrepoint last weekend. So of course i bought it, just to see the quality of opposition in singapore, you understand. And without taking any particular political bias (stop sniggering) i think the SDP newsletter is pretty darned shallow and one-sided. Although it does have some salient points (Where's the GIC money going to? cf DJ calch's bye chee bye 17 billion dollar remix) some of it is just martyr-ism about chee being thrown in jail and a lot of stressing the increase in minister's wages (which isn't terribly true either, they had a wage freeze and then a pay cut) But welllll. I suppose a political newsletter has to be politically motivated. Some other things i wanna say shall be censored for the purpose of being politically neutral.
I suppose i just proved the SDP's point about there being no real free speech in singapore, didn't i? hmm well.
but yea no lifts for now until i can drive safely enough to not need insurance. That's illegal, isn't it? hmm.
--
Some SDP people were selling their newsletter outside centrepoint last weekend. So of course i bought it, just to see the quality of opposition in singapore, you understand. And without taking any particular political bias (stop sniggering) i think the SDP newsletter is pretty darned shallow and one-sided. Although it does have some salient points (Where's the GIC money going to? cf DJ calch's bye chee bye 17 billion dollar remix) some of it is just martyr-ism about chee being thrown in jail and a lot of stressing the increase in minister's wages (which isn't terribly true either, they had a wage freeze and then a pay cut) But welllll. I suppose a political newsletter has to be politically motivated. Some other things i wanna say shall be censored for the purpose of being politically neutral.
I suppose i just proved the SDP's point about there being no real free speech in singapore, didn't i? hmm well.
Wednesday, July 16, 2003
Phlogging is cool.
Kah Keng and Kah Seng are in the news again! This time for a new innovation that allows people to update their blogs using their phones. kewl, ain't it? The full story as it appeared in the straits times is available here, and the website for registration and stuff is www.whisktech.com.
Would you use your phone to update your blog? Can you SMS as fast as you type? Is this finally the end to al those irritating moments where you wanna blog something, but can't be bothered to write it down coz you don't have pen and paper handy?
Would you use your phone to update your blog? Can you SMS as fast as you type? Is this finally the end to al those irritating moments where you wanna blog something, but can't be bothered to write it down coz you don't have pen and paper handy?
Monday, July 14, 2003
Books by people with too much time
So there i was browsing thru Borders with Am, and in the young readers section there was this book called "an analysis of harry potter books 1-4" selling for $50. Hard to believe, but within its covers was a chapter by chapter analysis trying to discern the direction the septology was taking...which....when you do think about it, is prolly pretty futile since J.K.R. probably has a pretty vague idea herself, or at least she doesn't have anything set in stone yet and will probably adapt her story according to which characters and direction hollywood likes best. =P The book even goes so far to suggest a few imponderables ("where was colin creevey going with that bunch of grapes?") and even a couple of potential endings (The Alice in wonderland scenario: supported by these little clues they seem to have discerned from dissecting the text) Gosh.
Which is probably only second to this other book i saw in borders once upon a time: Postmodern Pooh, which dissects Pooh in even greater more farfetched detail, and reads into the tiniest details to suggest how Pooh is actually a story built upon strange themes with names i cannot begin to comprehend without a uni course in anthropology and history. What i DID manage to grasp was how they suggested how quite a few of the characters were gay....
-- major mental image changer warning --
based on stuff like
"and Piglet suggested: 'why don't you stay over at my house until your new one is ready, Pooh?' Pooh shuddered and replied 'I should like that very much, Piglet. Very much indeed."
-- well okay it was paraphrased but the gist is the same --
And these really free people actually make money from it! ick.
Which is probably only second to this other book i saw in borders once upon a time: Postmodern Pooh, which dissects Pooh in even greater more farfetched detail, and reads into the tiniest details to suggest how Pooh is actually a story built upon strange themes with names i cannot begin to comprehend without a uni course in anthropology and history. What i DID manage to grasp was how they suggested how quite a few of the characters were gay....
-- major mental image changer warning --
based on stuff like
"and Piglet suggested: 'why don't you stay over at my house until your new one is ready, Pooh?' Pooh shuddered and replied 'I should like that very much, Piglet. Very much indeed."
-- well okay it was paraphrased but the gist is the same --
And these really free people actually make money from it! ick.
Starvation and Feasting
Been too busy to post this past week. But what a week.
Was outfield from monday thru till thursday, and gained some insight on what odd subconscious streamers of thought must have inspired my blog title: was reminded of the multitudinous joys of travelling behind armoured vehicles on a dry dirt road. Rapture. But well it's an experience anyway, and after all the squished up attempts to sleep in a rover seat with an AC1 drum next to you giving you just about enough width for your shoulders if you position it -just- right.... and the incense offerings to the mosquitoes of the forests in frenzied attempts to appease them and LEAVE ME ALONE and my boss was repeatedly interrupted from his dinner and in the middle of changing his undergarments by the call to move out ("jiiiiii dan!!!")... i guess things could've been a lot worse.
To cut a long story short, I lost some noticeable amount of weight after 4 days (forgot to weigh myself coz i was in such a rush to book in last weekend. blah.) and put it on again at the MAS D&D on saturday:
That's me in blue with a grey tie. *vaguely*
At which i looked completely crap coz my hair was misbehaving after being mistreated by 4 days of dust and dirt and no water, and i looked pretty haggard too for some reason (no it wasn't the late friday night playing black and white till 3am, i swear ^^) but was memorable nonetheless: It happened to fall one day before Jess' birthday, so we bought this sinfully sweet white choc truffle cake from the shangri pastry kitchen and had them wheel it into the ballroom (which had 85 tables BTW, go MAS!) in the middle of the D&D. Supposedly it was going to happen during a lull in the programme, but due to some cockups and running behind schedule, we eventually decided that it wasn't too wise to start singing loudly while people were receiving prizes on stage so we snuck out with a tray with a beautiful cake on it and started behaving more our age.
All in all, quite a night, especially when we moved out of the hotel and to the esplanade where we sat and chatted for a long while and heard the strange stories of seniors of cultural differences ("I asked for a lift and the receptionist directed me to a gym") ("their co-ed toilets have urinals!")
and of course none of us won the lucky draw prizes. Although i suppose we won almost-free dinners at shangri. $3 apiece. MAS knows how to take care of us alright.
Was outfield from monday thru till thursday, and gained some insight on what odd subconscious streamers of thought must have inspired my blog title: was reminded of the multitudinous joys of travelling behind armoured vehicles on a dry dirt road. Rapture. But well it's an experience anyway, and after all the squished up attempts to sleep in a rover seat with an AC1 drum next to you giving you just about enough width for your shoulders if you position it -just- right.... and the incense offerings to the mosquitoes of the forests in frenzied attempts to appease them and LEAVE ME ALONE and my boss was repeatedly interrupted from his dinner and in the middle of changing his undergarments by the call to move out ("jiiiiii dan!!!")... i guess things could've been a lot worse.
To cut a long story short, I lost some noticeable amount of weight after 4 days (forgot to weigh myself coz i was in such a rush to book in last weekend. blah.) and put it on again at the MAS D&D on saturday:
That's me in blue with a grey tie. *vaguely*
At which i looked completely crap coz my hair was misbehaving after being mistreated by 4 days of dust and dirt and no water, and i looked pretty haggard too for some reason (no it wasn't the late friday night playing black and white till 3am, i swear ^^) but was memorable nonetheless: It happened to fall one day before Jess' birthday, so we bought this sinfully sweet white choc truffle cake from the shangri pastry kitchen and had them wheel it into the ballroom (which had 85 tables BTW, go MAS!) in the middle of the D&D. Supposedly it was going to happen during a lull in the programme, but due to some cockups and running behind schedule, we eventually decided that it wasn't too wise to start singing loudly while people were receiving prizes on stage so we snuck out with a tray with a beautiful cake on it and started behaving more our age.
All in all, quite a night, especially when we moved out of the hotel and to the esplanade where we sat and chatted for a long while and heard the strange stories of seniors of cultural differences ("I asked for a lift and the receptionist directed me to a gym") ("their co-ed toilets have urinals!")
and of course none of us won the lucky draw prizes. Although i suppose we won almost-free dinners at shangri. $3 apiece. MAS knows how to take care of us alright.
Sunday, July 06, 2003
The last supper
Welcome Calvin! The latest to return from the land of milk and honey.... to the land of the Sambal Stingray. oh yeaaaahhhhhh. We're starting a gang to hit all the good hawker centres in singapore, now that 2 hungry people actually have access to convenient transportation. (and it'd better be 3 ppl soon. *mutters*)
So we whacked chomp chomp for an oily $47 worth for 5 people, not counting our individual main courses. The kway pie tee and fried taupok there really rock. But to digress from more trite ramblings... I wonder what sort of people would queue 40 minutes for a plate of fried hokkien mee? Is anything really worth that much effort? And across the road is this fried kway teow stall where people queue up to an hour at lunch (i learnt the hard way.) Singaporeans are horrendously spineless when it comes to some things, like japanese cat dolls (tm) and long queues for anything in particular. It must be some instinct....maybe it's due to some variant of the law of gravitation. =P
But mmmmmmm. good food. the last i'll eat for the next 4 days. Time to lose all that unhealthy oil by starvation. And no i'm not anorexic, i'm just going outfield.
menu for tonight (for future reference):
6 x $2 vats of lime juice (yes for 5 people)
Char kway teow
Chicken century egg porridge
lemon chicken
chicken chops
kway pie tee (oooooh)
sambal stingray
sambal calamari
ou luat (however you spell fried oysters)
fried taupok/fishballs/fishcakes
various desserts and snacks (goreng pisang! sweet potato! yam!)
which ended up with this broken belted result:
that's not me, by the way.
So we whacked chomp chomp for an oily $47 worth for 5 people, not counting our individual main courses. The kway pie tee and fried taupok there really rock. But to digress from more trite ramblings... I wonder what sort of people would queue 40 minutes for a plate of fried hokkien mee? Is anything really worth that much effort? And across the road is this fried kway teow stall where people queue up to an hour at lunch (i learnt the hard way.) Singaporeans are horrendously spineless when it comes to some things, like japanese cat dolls (tm) and long queues for anything in particular. It must be some instinct....maybe it's due to some variant of the law of gravitation. =P
But mmmmmmm. good food. the last i'll eat for the next 4 days. Time to lose all that unhealthy oil by starvation. And no i'm not anorexic, i'm just going outfield.
menu for tonight (for future reference):
6 x $2 vats of lime juice (yes for 5 people)
Char kway teow
Chicken century egg porridge
lemon chicken
chicken chops
kway pie tee (oooooh)
sambal stingray
sambal calamari
ou luat (however you spell fried oysters)
fried taupok/fishballs/fishcakes
various desserts and snacks (goreng pisang! sweet potato! yam!)
which ended up with this broken belted result:
that's not me, by the way.
Saturday, July 05, 2003
The morning after
Ah damn i closed my browser by accident. chewed up a really long post. @#$#@$
But it went something like this....
I'm still looking for an opera-friendly commenting system, haloscan doesn't quite cut it coz the counter doesn't seem to work.. so i won't know if there are any comments unless i actually click on it to check. Grr. if i can't find any better commenting system i might actually have to use *choke* IE to update my blog. =P
But now that i've actually got comments up, I feel much more inclined to long proper posts on this blog-under-retrofitting. =)
Yesterday was the most frelling stressful day in army for as long as i can remember. Not so much of the oh-no-i'm-screwed-i-just-lost-20-pagers kind of stress, but the kind of mental and emotional presssure cooker which just keeps pressing down on you until you go past your elastic limit into plastic deformation. =P
I don't know of any other place where you can go from running 5km in the morning to running to get that damned ID tag you left 4 storeys up which you need *NOW* to running outdated badly coded programmes on sucky slow computers to running after people to hunt down their signatures and pass them stuff to running down the corridor to try and finish up that errand faster so you can get out of camp before you waste too much of your civilian time... (I still booked out 40 min later than most ppl, but well.)
But work stress is nothing compared to emotional stress. Somewhere along the line i must've really cracked, coz when this other equally-stressed soul went from playing computer games to complaining about how he just got f*ed upside down by 4 superiors he didn't even know for someone else's mistake, to criticising how i did my work when i was scrambling around trying to find something that someone else had misplaced... i just lost it and shouted at the whole bunch of people in the office coz the thing i was looking for was just -there- and despite my repeated pleas for people to help look nobody cared. And then this person took it personally and shouted back ("fine you can do it yourself") even though it was as much his responsibility as mine... and i got really angry and him and told him "yes, good, now scram." in less polite words. Which is something coz i can't remember the last time i swore loudly at someone and actually meant it. :$
My problem is that I can't stay angry at someone for long enough for it to have any productive use. After a while i started feeling really bad at shouting at him and miserable and upset and still buried in work anyway. And so i finished up the work alone, and felt really crap coz i'm gonna be spending 4D3N outfield with him next week and if we got into some argument it'll be complete hell. But luckily he came back down the office after he was done showering and changing and packing... ("go pack, i'll finish up.") {insert sappy scene equivalent here} So good, we'll live to be stressed another day.
I really don't understand why i can't stay angry. My capacity for anger is probably rivalled only by my capacity for lima beans. It's quite a bad drawback coz it means i don't show my fangs as often as i should, so i tend to get the shorter end of the stick if i'm unable to wile my way out of things. I've never thought so much about power balances and control in life before i entered army. It's just so much a part of life now... But i guess this is the real world.
Happy birthday.
But it went something like this....
I'm still looking for an opera-friendly commenting system, haloscan doesn't quite cut it coz the counter doesn't seem to work.. so i won't know if there are any comments unless i actually click on it to check. Grr. if i can't find any better commenting system i might actually have to use *choke* IE to update my blog. =P
But now that i've actually got comments up, I feel much more inclined to long proper posts on this blog-under-retrofitting. =)
Yesterday was the most frelling stressful day in army for as long as i can remember. Not so much of the oh-no-i'm-screwed-i-just-lost-20-pagers kind of stress, but the kind of mental and emotional presssure cooker which just keeps pressing down on you until you go past your elastic limit into plastic deformation. =P
I don't know of any other place where you can go from running 5km in the morning to running to get that damned ID tag you left 4 storeys up which you need *NOW* to running outdated badly coded programmes on sucky slow computers to running after people to hunt down their signatures and pass them stuff to running down the corridor to try and finish up that errand faster so you can get out of camp before you waste too much of your civilian time... (I still booked out 40 min later than most ppl, but well.)
But work stress is nothing compared to emotional stress. Somewhere along the line i must've really cracked, coz when this other equally-stressed soul went from playing computer games to complaining about how he just got f*ed upside down by 4 superiors he didn't even know for someone else's mistake, to criticising how i did my work when i was scrambling around trying to find something that someone else had misplaced... i just lost it and shouted at the whole bunch of people in the office coz the thing i was looking for was just -there- and despite my repeated pleas for people to help look nobody cared. And then this person took it personally and shouted back ("fine you can do it yourself") even though it was as much his responsibility as mine... and i got really angry and him and told him "yes, good, now scram." in less polite words. Which is something coz i can't remember the last time i swore loudly at someone and actually meant it. :$
My problem is that I can't stay angry at someone for long enough for it to have any productive use. After a while i started feeling really bad at shouting at him and miserable and upset and still buried in work anyway. And so i finished up the work alone, and felt really crap coz i'm gonna be spending 4D3N outfield with him next week and if we got into some argument it'll be complete hell. But luckily he came back down the office after he was done showering and changing and packing... ("go pack, i'll finish up.") {insert sappy scene equivalent here} So good, we'll live to be stressed another day.
I really don't understand why i can't stay angry. My capacity for anger is probably rivalled only by my capacity for lima beans. It's quite a bad drawback coz it means i don't show my fangs as often as i should, so i tend to get the shorter end of the stick if i'm unable to wile my way out of things. I've never thought so much about power balances and control in life before i entered army. It's just so much a part of life now... But i guess this is the real world.
Happy birthday.
Friday, July 04, 2003
How disgusting
The comments don't work properly in Opera. Yet another non-opera friendly java code. But it's still the most geek-friendly browser around anyway. How ironic that finally now that my comments and guestbook are up, i'm too tired to post anything of commentable significance. Oh well.
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