As I await the arrival of the new year I do something which I do every year - recap, reflect, and resolve.

This year, just like the last, was an eventful one. I had my first work experience at a convenience store. I went through one of those 'rites of passages', National Service. Suffered under Gryphon Company in Basic Military Training, learnt alot in Signals Institute, and saw alot as I serve in my unit. Went overseas on an aircraft for the first time, to Australia. Was not on a holiday there, but I was happy I finally got out of my little well.

Below is my resolution for the year 2007:
1) Get into army in one piece, and survive in it until the end of this year in one piece.
["Come out in one piece" is 2008's resolution haha]
2) Enough money to support my [slowly increasing] gaming expenses, with enough to support myself, and also enough for university expenses. [That sounds difficult.]
3) Learn something useful and thereafter, build up a portfolio perhaps. This is really difficult, given that I have not much time left. But I definitely need to do something if I want to have some form of a "bright future".
4) Keep my brain alive. [Two years inside the camps can apparently make people lose all forms of thinking skills.] I may restart solving programming problems.
5) Seriously, the world a better place.
6) Peace and health and happiness for everyone around me! Including myself haha.

Reflecting,
1) Haha I got the year wrong. That aside, I have survived! Done!
2) I was spot on. I spent hell lot of money on gaming haha, namely graphics card to run the ever demanding games, with a power supply box to power that card. An additional piece of RAM, and Playstation Portable. After supporting myself there wasn't much money left for university. Oops failed. Consolation was that I did not end the year with lesser money than I started the year with.
3) I did learnt useful things, but I don't think the amount of effort I put in was enough to warrant a pass. Failed.
4) I helped a friend with programming problems through a couple of months, but in terms of ACM UVa problems I did not do anything more than registering a new account with their new server. Brain is half alive I guess.
5) Nope. Still a f* up world as ever.
6) From my own perspective I guess everyone is still overall happy ba; everyone has their ups and downs, but at the end of the day I think its still a bright day for all. Pass ba!

I admit I have neglected my little resolution, chucked it aside and deep into the archives not long after I came up with it; hadn't been a great year. Having said that, I have another year of contract with the government, so I have decided to give myself a second chance to fulfil it; a second year to turn those fails to passes. Its the same resolution for year 2008!

Resolution for 2008:
1) Survive in it till the end of the year, in one good piece, alive and kicking and able to make my own logical decisions. 'Come out in one piece' is 2008's 2009's resolution.
2) Save money!
3) Learn something new, and not procrastinate anymore.
4) Keep my brain alive.

And I realise I have confused resolutions with wishes. So,

Wishes for 2008:
1) The world a better place.
2) Everyone, including me, to lead happy lives.

The hand on the clock has crossed twelve; I sincerely hope year 2008 will be a much better year than the previous.

Happy new year to every single person on this Earth. May everyone achieve what they set out to do.

Last but definitely not the least, one year, one month and twelve days to ORD!

I was early New Year feast to the mosquitoes residing in my camp. At least twenty mosquito bites on me, and three deaths for eating without permission from the food.

The guard comd 'did not want to see anyone sleeping in the TV room', ordering all those who wanted to sleep to sleep on the beds. He himself took a pillow and went in to sleep.

One fine day you were at a very, very, crowded food court, about to die of hunger and eagerly searching for a seat and a table to sit down so as to fill up your grumbling stomach. Unfortunately all seats were filled up with hungry patrons induldging (slowly) in their meals. Then you spotted a table where the occupants were about to finish their meals, so you decided to stand beside them and (in)patiently wait for them to get lost (haha).

Just at the moment when they stood up and were going to leave and you were about to conquer their land, suddenly out of nowhere came a tray with food down onto a table. Irritated you looked up to see...an old woman.

You tried to argue that you had been standing there for a very long time, but she refused to listen to you. She asked, where's your food, where's your food.

Where's your food.

Leave is like school holiday. They are always gone before you know it.

Instead of reading up on Ubuntu I spent the remaining two days gaming. Wasted my time away, wasted my life away.

The latest winner of McDonald's contest is yet another female. Haha the forummers are complaining that the probability is not adding up.

New year is coming! New year means new hope!

Hope tomorrow will be a good day.

UPDATE: I finally got Compiz Fusion to work. The guides I found did not quite work, but they gave me some ideas where to look into, so I went deep into the lib folder, made intelligent guesses and created symbolic links around.

But I was very disappointed to find the special effects, and the entire computer, very, very sluggish. Effects were at most around 10fps, and even web surfing was a little of a chore.

Well at least its working. I think the effects are sluggish because they are no longer optimised by the graphics card. Shall take a rest for now. Perhaps spend tomorrow tweaking Ubuntu for better performance.

END OF UPDATE.


Another day of dirty work.

Today I tried to setup my graphics card, in order to get the infamous cube spinning on my computer, aka Compiz Fusion, the special effects which are way more cool than those on Vista.



Its one problem after another. The installation of all packages went fine, but the special effects did not come up, and worse my entire computer became very sluggish.

One thing good about Ubuntu is the large number of users, so there is bound to be someone who has the same problem as me. This time, unlike the SATA harddisk driver problem, I did not take long to find out what the problem is. Its quite a common problem.

Turned out ATI's proprietary drivers have no support for this new OpenGL extension, something which nVidia has done long ago =(. The solution is to either use ATI's open source drivers, or link up to Mesa's library.

I am taking a break now, hopefully I can solve it by tonight.

Yay!

After almost a day of dirty work, Ubuntu 7.10, or Gutsy Gibbon, is finally running perfectly on this computer!

Since the day I got this Pentium D I have wanted to install Linux on it, but when I tried 6.10, or Edgy Eft, many months back, it stumped me with weird errors, which I suspected had something to do with my SATA hard disk, but I had no idea how to solve it.

Today I got the urge to try again, so I downloaded Gutsy Gibbon, burnt it on a CD, and installed it. Yay it booted into the desktop; the SATA error was gone!

But it was not a smooth sailing trip. For unknown reasons my network adaptor could not work. Ubuntu detected it fine, but it could not be activated, and the light on the router did not light up.

Combed through one entire night of forums and articles, tried countless ways, switched between Vista and Ubuntu a million times (because I could not surf the net on Ubuntu), but could not get it to work.

Just as I was about to give up, it miraclously came online. I have no idea why, although I suspect its because of the update to the latest drivers.

There's still alot to be done, but that's all for tonight.

Early Christmas morning I did one of the dumbest things one can do. I took a train down to Jurong East, pass two passport-size photos to a specialist, then took the train back.

The station was packed with communters commuters, because train service between Yew Tee and Woodlands towards Marina Bay was disrupted. Communters Commuters were everywhere, on the platforms, at the control gates, on the escalators, not knowing what to do. Announcements boomed over the PA system every few seconds informing, and apologising, of the disruption.

Quite oddly, by the time I reached Tampines, the displays read the disruption of the service was from Woodlands to Kranji, towards Jurong East, which was, the opposite direction.

I have yet to know what happened, since the announcements did not say anything more than "an accident". Hmm lets hope its nothing serious.

UPDATE: So I see. There were two accidents.

Back at Tampines there were dark clouds hovering over the sky. I made a gamble that it would not rain until I reached home, so I decided to walk home from the interchange.

Unfortunately I lost.

The moment I stepped into the corridors of the sports complex the rain came down heavily. This was one of the few times that I really apprectiated the efforts of our government - sheltered walkways linking up the flats. So I was relatively free until I was at the closest possible distance from the clock tower erected in the middle of the park behind my house.

Alas! There were sheltered walkways on this side of the park, and there were sheltered walkways on the other side of the park, all the way to my house. But there was no sheltered walkway across the park!

Some small event, but over-exaggerated by me. Ha.

Christmas eve was spent waiting to book out. Haha. Our kind boss let us off at noon, although all I did was to follow a few friends to an Egyptian restaurant for a little meal, after which I spent the rest of the day rotting at home.

Hurray for the next few days! Clearing my leave all the way till Saturday night, and I wish they will leave me alone. Sunday will be my second (and hopefully my last) extra, and also praying Monday, New Year Eve, will be another half day.

Merry Christmas again to all!

The past four days was a nice little break for me. A proposed outing to Ubin for biking was cancelled because of heavy rain, so we ended up rotting at Suntec instead. Still not that bad, spent time catching up with each other.

It has been a very, very, very long time since I went to Sentosa! The last time I went was in primary school, and I have completely no memories of the place, save for some photos. Then again the place has changed so much that even my friends could hardly recognise it.

A little letdown in the morning, when only half of us turned up, but the day changed for the better when we bumped coincidentally into four colleagues from our unit (very, very, coincidentally, considering how small my unit is and how big Singapore is.). Ended the day with cycling, something which I have not done for the past year.

Saturday was watching National Treasure and attending a choir concert, in support for a friend. I was there to make up the numbers, because I can't really apprectiate choir music. Haha.

Going out for the past three days pissed my mother off, so I was grounded today. Spent the day resting and getting my energy back, before booking in tonight.

Some people think taxi drivers earn more now that fare prices are up. Ya right.

Someone realise that so far the winners for Mcdonald's Ring, Eat, and Win contest are all females. Haha so interesting. Conspiracy theory, according to a few.

As I have said in my tag, I don't really have anything to say. Past two weeks we just sat in our workplace and waited for phone calls to come. Phone calls meant work. Once done, back into the room, and waited again.

It was not a happy week, then again. Wearegivenofftomorrow,andallthosewhohaveappliedforleaveorofftomorrowwillbegivenhalfadayoffincompensation.

To top it off alloffdaysawardedbeforewewentoverseashadbeenwrittenoff,whichmeansmytwoandahalfdaysofoffaregone.

Sometimes its not because of the people one meets inside that turns one into a vulgarity-sprouting, middle-finger-pointing machine. Its really because of all the shit that one gets inside that he really needs either or both of those mentioned to get all that off his chest. Otherwise he will simply go crazy by the time he comes out.

You see how your boss pesters you to finish your work quickly, because he is rushing off to a chalet organised by the big boss. So you run around on an empty stomach trying to complete the task.

You see how everyone comes back to attend an important event, because the boss of the bosses says that everyone, except those overseas, must come back. Then on that day you see your every own small boss missing, and you know very well he's somewhere here in our motherland having fun.

I may have exaggerated a little, but its more or less there.

Don't say time will pass very quickly, because it is not. I really can't wait to go back to studies.

Nothing can be more demoralising than having to go back to camp on a weekend. For the mistake I made in Wallaby I have been "awarded" two extras, which I serve tomorrow and on the 30th.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is very fun! Very intense, really took me into the game. The cinematics and special effects made me felt like I was watching a movie, yet involved in it as well. At the last part of the game the entire team was injured after the bridge they were standing on was bombed. I was on the ground, the surroundings blurred, then the bad guy appeared. To my left the leader of the team, also injured lying on the ground, slided me a pistol, for me to pick it up, and shoot the bad guy, ending the game.

The screen tilts when you reload your weapon, because you have to retrieve a magazine from yourself. It tilts left and right repeatedly when you run, because thats what happens when you run. The smoke from the smoke grenades were so realistic, during one mission I threw too many of them that I myself could not see the way forward. Haha.

Besides playing as an infantryman there was also one mission where I played as a gun operator onboard the AC-130 Gunship. Three guns for me to use, the 25mm, 40mm and the 105mm O.O. And the screen was a thermal imaging TV, so everything was black and white, with friendly forces imitating faint IR beacons on themselves.

I guess the only bad point about the game was that the game was too short. But overall, very fun game!!

My short weekend ends here; hopefully tomorrow will be a good day.

Years back I subscribed to Starhub's 1.5Mbps broadband plan. Through the years they doubled the bandwidth to 3Mbps, then to 6Mbps, and soon from 1 Jan 2008, to 8Mbps. The price had however remained the same (in fact went up due to the rise in GST).

And now they launched a 1Mbps plan, at about half the price -.-'.

Wouldnt it have been better if they had kept the bandwidth the same, but reduced the fees we paid every month?

At the start of the year DDR2 RAM was selling at $160 for a 1GB piece. It dropped to around $100 in a couple of months, which was the time I bought a piece to increase my system RAM from 512MB to 1.5GB, because then I thought it would not drop furthur.

Fast forward to now, it cost $30 a piece >:(

Too cheap to resist, so now..

Heh.

External hard disks were also hard to resist. Maxtor and Western Digital were selling 320GB hard disks at $129, which was about $0.40/GB. I very almost bought one yesterday. But in the end I didn't.

I still need one..two hard disks containing four computers worth of information had failed in the past years[because I always transferred my stuff over whenever I changed computers], so I lost quite alot of stuff, some memorable ones. So far I have not done any backup for this computer I am using, and although its a new computer there is no telling just when the hard disk is going to fail.

So much for those 0s and 1s.

My five days of off-in-lieu has come to an end, and tonight I will be booking in again [although I have already went back last Wednesday to do guard duty :(]. The store are still on sea making their way home, so I don't know what is in store for me this week. Hopefully nothing more than some moderate physical training.

Like companies out there, this month being the last of the year, is the month of clearing leave and off. Some people have fourteen days of leave to clear, but I only have a pathetic four days of leave, which I have applied around the Christmas period. Then again my big boss says the stores will come home right after Christmas, if that happens my leave will be converted to off-in-lieus :'(

Good week to all!

I still have more to say.

During our R & R we stayed in a motel which was directly opposite a ceremetry. Nothing happened throughout the night; i was dead asleep, but my friend whom I shared the room with saw a white light went across the room.


Done by some homesick guy I guess

It was the eve of the Australian elections, so I guess its no surprise to see..

I was a member of the computer club back in secondary school (last time still got very zai name one - Advanced Computer Applications Club, or [AC]² heh).

Sec 2 days were the days we spilt into the respective groups. I went into Multimedia, where I learnt how to use Macromedia Director to create animations and games. End of Sec 2 there was the annual National Software Competition, and that year we were supposed to create a ten minute animation on telecommunications.

Well back then the club was rather poor to afford expensive graphics design solutions, so when we needed a picture of a "wildman", we couldn't find any (back then our source of graphics was Microsoft's Clip Art gallery)

We consulted our senior (one who inspired me alot), and he told us to modify ourselves, using Microsoft Paint! I was in charge of getting that wildman. Haha.

The "wildman" was afterall, a man, so first of all I needed a picture of a man.



I used Paint and edited it, until it became....



The wildman was to fan a fire to create smoke signals, which was a form of telecommunications in the past, so we needed an action of fanning.



Lastly we used a software called GIF Construction Set (which was already available in the school computers back then), put both pictures together, and....

Ta-Ta!

I'm very proud of my work ok! But in case if anyone is curious, we did not win anything. Lol.

Something to share, hopefully cheers readers up. Secondary school days were so fun then.

(In case Microsoft wants to sue me, we only used it for educational purposes! No commercial purpose! And we never claimed it to be ours!)

Good day!

(I wrote this halfway one day after I came back, but never found the energy to complete it until now.)

I'm home! After 23 days in a foreign country.

Before all, happy (belated) birthday to my blog!

Sun, sand, sand, sand, alot of sand, rain, mud, sweat, shivers, shooting stars, kangaroos, cows, horses, 18 wheelers, beer, wine, chlorinated water (really aqueous chlorine), bathing with 6 men together in one room; been there, done all that!

I breathed sand, ate sand, drank sand, wore sand, bathed sand; I touched more sand in 23 days than in my last 19 years. In fact some of us joked we would die from excessive sand intake soon.

It was my first time I work in my unit, and now I have a clearer view of my job scope, what to do, what not to do. I have also better understood the personalities and characters of the people around me, just how @#$%! some people can get, so I now know who to look up to, who to ignore, whose tails I should not step on.

Then again who knows? Maybe to the others I am @#$%!, and should be ignored.

It was during outfield that I realised handling long entangled cables really sucked. Especially when I was trying to untangle them and someone hollered into my ear to hurry up. We really should go wireless asap.

We used to think camouflaging ourselves was horrible, until we had to camouflage our vehicles.

Right now I (may) have at least three extras waiting for me, because of a mistake I made. Hopefully it was only a threat my name was not sent in.

Two things I regretted not bringing to Wallaby: Camera and gloves.

We were told then that if we brought cameras we would have to surrender them, only getting them during our R & R. It turned out instead to be free-for-all photo taking, although a warning was given during one of our ROs to take note what photos we took.

On some days the weather there got really cold, so while my uniform and jacket some warmth, my hands were freezing away. Terrible feeling.

The afternoons there were very hot. So hot that sometimes I just could not stand under the sun for one more second. After the sun set the weather got drastically cold, really balls shiver. The sun started rising at 4am, by 6am the sun was high up in the sky shining brightly at us, yet the air was still so cold then we had to wear our windbreakers just to walk from our tentages to the toilets.

I saw the biggest night sky I ever seen in my life. In the outfields of Australia it was total darkness at night and on some nights where I was deployed on a huge open ground, the night sky I saw could not be contained in my vision, and the number of stars I saw was simply uncountable. That was also when we spotted shooting stars. Especially the last night of exercise where four of us laid a groundsheet on the ground, and slept under the stars.

I only spotted kangaroos near the end of the the exercise, when a family of four hopped past us. Some of them followed them all the way down the hill, where they saw an entire pack of about ten of them. I could only regret not following. There was a cow farm and several pony farms along the route from camp to town, thus I saw more cows and horses than kangaroos.

No luck with koala bears though.

Rockhampton was a little similar to the Singapore heartlands. I guess its sort of a transit town between large cities, because of the large number of motels there. I guess they valued family more than we do in Singapore; most of their shops closed after 5pm, with late night shopping till 9pm on Thursdays, and were totally closed on Sundays.

During R & R we went on a trip to the Capricorn Caves. Nothing much to see actually, its simply caves. Or maybe its just me who don't know how to apprectiate those flowstones and such.

I drank a grand total of three cans of beer, from brigade, company and platoon happy hours, plus several more mouthfuls from losing at some dumb games, and a couple of cups of wine. I still don't like beer. At all.

After spending almost a month there, most of us agreed that we have actually gotten quite used to life there. Living conditions was much better than we expected, except that place lacked entertainment, and we somehow got that extra bit of freedom compared to Singapore. In fact we wouldn't have mind staying there for a longer time. Great experience!

***

After coming back home I had a two hour sleep (actually three because I overslept by an hour), then met up with my friend to go back to Anglican High for its open house. Nothing much has changed; it felt more like CCA orientation day when I was back in Sec 1. Alot of new and unfamiliar teachers now, though a few ones from my time were still there. Didn't get a chance to see them unfortunately.

Poor country pumpkin me is going out for the first time! I'm quite excited actually, although I know there's the hundred crates waiting for us there. [Secretly I'm hoping the half of the people who have already reached last night will have unpacked everything by the time we reach there today. Heh.]

Alright, I'm off to



See everyone soon!

Something interesting for everyone to see:

Anglican High School Open House
Saturday, 24 November 2007
8.00am - 11.00am

I wonder what do they have to show. Hmm.

I'm seriously hoping I will come back alive and kicking in one piece.

Back in trainee days the people around me were, sadly but frankly, all hi-bye friends. We spent a few weeks together going through training, then thats it, they go east, I go west.

In unit its totally different. We stay in our respective units permanently till we ORD, we hold permanent positions, so basically I eat, sleep, shit, bathe, suffer, with the same bunch of people for at least a year. Should some happens, they are the ones I work alongside with.

Perhaps because of that the unit realises the importance of us knowing each other well, and it goes to great lengths to achieve it. Last month I had platoon cohesion, where my platoon booked out early on a Friday morning to have lunch together. Today was company cohesion, where the entire company booked out yesterday night (except for poor me and my friend who had guard duty), gathered at The Chevrons today and had a little inter-platoon bowling competition.

My platoon narrowly lost to another platoon, so there goes a half day off tomorrow for us.

I do wonder if cohesion really serves its purpose. Last month when we helped the other platoons packed their crates under the bloody hot sun the bosses encouraged us on with "Company effort! Company effort!". Then now when its my platoon's turn I don't see any company effort anywhere.

Nevertheless I still enjoyed myself. At least its something different from the routine PT and regimentation everyday. Nothing beats sleeping at home too.

Kitbag has finally been inspected and sealed. Now we are all just waiting for the big day to come.

"Not many people from this company gets confined, so there are not enough people to do saikang during the weekends."

The downright stupidest thing one can ever hear coming out from a mouth. Its like saying there is nobody to clean the jails because there are not enough criminals getting thrown in there.

Seriously. Really. Very. Stupid.

Welcome home, Sergeant!

Unfortunately I could not hold on to the momentum; lost the drive to log in and navigate all the way here to type something. Then again, I'm pretty sure no one is interested in what time I wake up every morning, what food I have for lunch, or how many bags of trash I throw on a particular day.

Two weeks ago a staff (sergeant) broke into a fit of anger, apparently because someone used a stamp(or chop) and stamped(or chopped) three times on his table, and damaged something as well. The entire company was gathered in the office so he could show everyone the 'damage'. I was on a course at another camp then, so I didn't know anything until I came back in the evening. As no one admitted to 'vandalising' his table, the entire company had their nights off forfeited until the person steps out.

To most of us he is kicking up a big fuss over it, but perhaps what seems like a minor incident to us may be a major one to him. We always tend to assume everyone feels and thinks the same way as ourselves [read: self-centered]. A rich guy finds it normal to spend 11 bucks on a meal, but a poor man doesn't necessarily find it normal too. Its always this lack of understanding and accommodation towards others that causes all the unnecessary conflicts to arise.

If everyone cared and nobody cried
If everyone loved and nobody lied
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride
Then we'd see the day when nobody died

Luxury items are a huge temptation. I have, for a long time, resisted them, constantly reminding myself my financial status is different from the majority out there, but now I am craving badly for a Playstation Portable. I have always hoped that people be less greedy for money, and believed that people should work for their interests and not for the money, but now I begin to see that it will be impossible. Money makes the world go round; I don't think there is anyone in this world who list washing toliets and sweeping roads as his hobbies.

[I badly want to ask why there are people who spend billions of dollars everyday on luxurious cars and properties, while there are many out there who struggle to scrape together enough food to feed themselves each day, but seeing the amount of money I have spent on this very computer I am typing on now, I think I have no rights to question them.]

So instead, my question should be, how much is considered enough?

My friends were discussing about multi-level marketing not too long ago, about how their friends 'invested' lump sums of money in MLM companies. They got back their capitals after many months, along with [very] significant amounts of profits. It does sound very tempting with all the money involved, but a strong smell of scam lingers. There is a long thread in the forums, and interestingly there are people who stand by this scheme.

Personally I prefer to enjoy the money I earned with my two hands, and not by throwing money into a bottomless well, then sit there and pray everyday that it will throw [more] money back to you.

Ok I have not answered the question I raised. I'm quite unsure myself actually, so meanwhile as I try to find out, my answer will be:

知足，知足！

Instead of hitting the games right away the moment I reached home, I decided to sit down and (try to) write an entry worth the readers' time reading. Challenging task.

Despite my lack of meaningful blog entries due to my monotonous lifestyle this half-abandoned blog of mine still receives its share of readers every day; definitely not hundreds of hits like those celebrity blogs, only single-digit visitors on weekdays, with a little over ten during the weekends, and I am really very grateful for that, for it perhaps proves that I am not what my MSN sub-nick says I am.

Blogs, one of the results of Web 2.0, has survived over the years to become one of the most popular mediums for information sharing. Besides being a substitute for diaries for many, blogs are used by some as online commercial stores, by some to publish podcasts and jokes to entertain the masses, and others as a way to make themselves well-known overnight.

Blogs, with their abilities to store past entries as archives, serve as wonderful memories in which they can revive as a click of the button. I have always enjoyed reading my own past entries, but unfortunately my English vocabulary is not good enough to bring out the tasty juices within. Luckily for me I have friends who went through the same shits as me, and thus provide a stereotypical view of my past experiences. I also have the benefits of a class blog, where different people provided different preceptions to things that had happened around me, and my (previous) CT rep from my JC class who can use his powderful English to make the good old Vee Jay days sound like they happened just yesterday.

Indeed, days seemed much better back in the past. School was stressful of course, I was disappointed with my crap results, whether academic or co-cirricular. But there were plenty of fun times I had with all my friends, from secondary to college. The times spent walking down the slopes of AHS towards the MRT station, then afternoon tea TM MacDonalds before heading for home. The dumb jokes cracked while on bus 31 home. The days in [AC]². The days in iCOMP. [Shit I am too geeky.] Soccer at AHS street soccer court. LAN at Katong. Not forgetting the numerous class gatherings.

Now, nine months since we have graduated from college, everyone is leading separate lives now. The class blog has become a graveyard, with the occasional stir nothing more than a cat meow. To be fair its not just the class blog; most blogs I notice, even mine, are struggling to stay alive, or is it because I lack friends of age groups who are not in uni/in army/studying for O'Levels/A'Levels now? Haha. There is hardly any time for any outing, and the nominal roll is always a miserable number.

Judging from my past entries I think I sound more cheerful back then.

Staying in camp dulls me out quite abit. Sometimes I just could not find any energy to joke with the fellow signallers in my company, so many times I am actually left on my own. Sadly the same thing happens when I book out. So a dull me can only produce dull entries which dull the readers.

Hurray to the blog archives, not just mine but also my friends', for they put smiles on my faces everytime I read them. Hopefully these blogs will stay on, so the archives will always remain in the years to come. Some say that we should not look at the past anymore, but rather, look forward, but then I beg to differ.

Sometimes when I listen to songs from my MP3 player I have the habit of listening to the same song that I like over and over again, just to savour the nice melody that comes out from the earpieces. Sometimes I listen to a song for a couple of seconds and I skip off to another song, because I don't feel like listening to it. I wonder what may happen if there are similar controls on our lives. Skip the exam periods because I don't feel like taking them? Staying at the same spot and playing soccer over and over and over again?

On the other hand, I think perhaps because there are no such controls on our lives, that we learn to cherish the fun times we had, making them all the more worthwhile to remember, and to endure through the hard times, then taste the fruit of the labour.

I'm not entirely sure the purpose of this entry; as usual my incoherent mind is acting up. Perhaps I just wanted to make sure readers don't waste their time coming here each time. I have more to write, but a break first for now. Hopefully I can get something else up before I book in tomorrow at 10pm, for a sentry duty on Sunday.

Packing has finally completed, after slogging it out for the past few weeks, rain and shine.

Rather shocked when I read about the death of Colin McRae, the racing legend whose name has appeared in the racing games that I have played over the years. Maybe this will end with DiRT.

Recently I got my hands busy with Java, and now I realise Java indeed spoonfeeds alot. Many of the functions that we used to crack our heads trying to write can now be found in their packages. On the other hand it looks neater than C++, since everything is object-oriented.

I want to continue, but not in the mood to do so.

I'm struggling to keep this thing updated, since my weekdays are spent in camp, and now guard duties have kicked in.

Nothing much for the previous week, (un)fortunately.

Currently playing the game DiRT, which is a new racing game to the long running Colin McRae series which I have played for a long time. The series get fatter with the release of each game, and DiRT continues the tradition. Now the game not just offers standard WRC rally cars, but also hard-core off-road SUVs, buggies (or buggys?), and even huge dump trunks!

These new vehicles add a whole new lot of challenges to the game itself. SUVs and dump trunks, with their (very much) higher centre of gravity, will flip and roll if you turn a corner at very high speeds, easily making you drop from first to last.

I also notice there are alot more uphill races, which make vehicles run much harder than before. There are rallies set in Japan, and yes there are Initial D-style winding roads that run along the side of hills, but no they aren't downhill races.

The graphics has also improved quite alot since the last game, and now some scenes look like they are taken from Tekong. Haha.

The game also incorporates a damage system that makes Need For Speed: Carbon look like a noob game haha. Knocks and hits during the race damages your car and performance drops, and crashing into a tree at 150kmh instantly puts you out of the game.

This game is very CPU-intensive, in addition to being graphics-intensive, perhaps because the game actually computes interesting statistics like longest distance ran on two wheels, highest jump, average speed etc.

Overall, great game!

Ok, game review over. Have to sleep soon, because when I wake up again it will be back to camp for guard duty.

After spending almost the entire week last week at the NDP floating platform helping out with AHM, its finally over.

We the new signallers were stationed in the AHM command post, the main nerve centre where all orders and information went through. My work wasn't exactly that tough actually, perhaps because of my rank haha. Mostly I just helped carry stuff around, swept, cleaned, and did and printed charts. Most of the time was spent doing nothing, or playing with the family of cats haha.

The eve of the Big Day was the busiest of the week. Upon reaching there at 9pm we helped set up a function room for officers' and VIPs' wives and children, which involved shifting sofas and coffee tables around. Then I pasted posters around the place.

The remaining night was spent standing next to the charts pasted on the walls in the command post, updating the charts as road closures and setting up of waterpoints, medical posts and ambulance posts came into effect. The room was almost exactly a scene of a war room haha, where all the walkie talkies screamed at the same time.

By the time the run started in the morning I was already very tired, since I never slept at all, and the many cups coffee I drank did not help.

Being in the command post meant I could see almost everything that happened during the run. I saw the complaints from the public and the hotels on the noise pollution, the updates of people being hospitalised, and yes, the death as well.

We waited for the event to be over, tore everything down and sent them back to camp.

Now that its over I can no longer go home on weekday nights, have my lunch and dinner at Marina Square, and no longer work in a place outside camp. Life will be back to normal when I report back to camp later.

Good morning! Blogging on my old Linux machine haha.

It has been a long time since I used Linux, after I got my new Compaq running on Vista and for some reason, refused to let Linux run on it.

My father recently bought a router, which has since resulted in my first ever computer network in my own house (haha, years after many others have done so). The good thing now is that I no longer need to fight with others over the use of the computer haha.

My father is using this Linux machine, and he wants to surf Chinese websites, so I installed Chinese support on this Linux. Now its displaying Chinese characters correctly, and the only thing I haven't do is allow the input of Chinese characters, which I have forgotten how to.

"Once Chinese, everything Chinese".







Right now I have a Vista + Fedora Core 5 + XP combo on my network. I haven't tried file sharing yet. Heh.

I think I'm easily impressed haha.

I came home today to read a sad news about a young 16-year-old student who got killed in an traffic accident.

Its a waste, everyone says. A school runner whose family has already planned for an holiday two days after his 'O'-Levels ends. Died before he could say his last words. Well, at least a consolation is that many people are crying for him.

I wonder what will happen if I were to die someday somehow all of a sudden too. So far all I know is that my good friend will be happy that I have died. In a way it makes sense.

I spent this entire week at the NDP floating platform, helping out with the Bay Run which will be held on Sunday. Besides fellow humans the saikang warriors there had another species of animals for company: 3 kittens and their mother.

The tiny blue-eyed kittens are very, very, VERY, cute. No kidding.

Unfortunately when we returned today the number of kittens was reduced to two, and we had no idea where the last one went. Hope its still alive though. The siblings seemed oblivious to the absence of one of its members, still happily playing with us and among themselves. They took our boots as objects for them to sharpen their claws and teeth.

The mother, while looking tired the entire day, was still able to eat a packet of rice given to her. She gave off low meows whenever she saw us, and I wondered if she was asking for more food or if she was pleading us to look for her child.

Then again the entire family looked pretty relaxed. Literally 吃饱睡，睡饱吃。When it rained they just hid in the shelter, and continued sleeping. What good lives they lead.

On the first day in armour my sergeant sent to me...

An order to do saikang.

After breakfast in the morning, went down to Marina Bay to do setup and carry stuff. Finished late in the evening, thus we were given the option to go home and book in tomorrow morning.

Definitely its a little of a morale booster, even though the time spent at home is short. Hopefully I can get through the rest of the week peacefully. Starting tomorrow, technical handling of my new weapon.

On the second day in armour my sergeant sent to me...

Thankfully the day has been very peaceful so far, so I guess nothing should happen until next week.

My (then) platoon back at SI has created a little uproar, because we were trained to do what is not required by the units, and in our respective units we are told to do what we were not trained in. Emails are flying around to gather support, and our course commander promised to look into it.

Frankly speaking I had not expected this little unhappiness among my platoon mates. The same problem happened to me too, but I thought that me a lowly Private should just accept whatever is given to me, so I had just resigned to my fate. Haha perhaps I have sat on the fence too much that I lack my personal stand. Now that the big shots are looking into it, I give my support as well. Its not about retifying our problem; its ensuring that the same problem does not occur in future batches.

My eight week stay at SI has been quite an interesting one. During my stay I experienced the complex relationships that exist among human beings. Haha ok its not that chim, but I saw for myself how the superiority complex that some people have can make them think they can push the 'lowly' beings around, casting out all forms of respect we should have towards each other.

Extending my point I also saw how people who behave differently from the rest of us are being ostracised and made fun of. Indeed, there seem to be a certain formula to which all of us are expected to be adhering to, and those who do not follow that standard formula are declared abnormal, and frequently becomes the butt of jokes. Interestingly this formula is the formula just because the majority acts this way, so again this superiority complex descriminates the minority.

I need to say that I am no saint, but a ordinary human being just like anyone else, so there are times I couldn't help but laugh along too. There are times I get fed up too. But I think there is no need to say it squarely in his face that he is stupid.

There is a need for a compromise somewhere sometimes I think.

On a less serious note there were times I enjoyed myself. The platoon as a whole, especially my bunkmates, were all pretty easy to get along with. I enjoyed reading all the comic books my friend brought, and playing the card games with others. In fact I was more upset leaving SI than compared to leaving Tekong.

Unforgettable also, of course, was the female toilet at the first storey of the accommodation block. Two groups of prowlers from my platoon heard the doors inside slamming repeatedly when they walked past during their prowls. It didn't happened to me, (un)fortunately. After this news came out, a whole lot of ghost stories from Tekong to SI was told by fellow platoonmates.

In my new unit I am allocated to a bunk (literally) full of PSPs, which I have no idea whether its a permanent or a temporary one. But I expect myself to be ostracised soon, since I did not follow the majority and get a PSP myself. Hmm.

Not long ago I had installed a fan on the side panel of my computer, and it used to be a intake fan. I turned it around now so it becomes an exhaust fan, and I think it is working wonders in bringing down the temperature of the system. I am considering drilling more holes on the side panel so I can add another fan to bring out the hot air coming out from my graphics card, and it shall be on hold for now.

I've ran out of things to say. Till the next time. It will be a long week.

Past two weeks have been very eventful.

Last second week was my final tests and exercises. Not too difficult, half screwed only.

Absence of an entry last week was because I went down to Sim Lim Square to get these:



Not exactly a well-known brand, but I bought it because the distributor can be trusted. Bought a power supply box as well, because my previous box could not supply the power it requires.

I spent a long time deciding which to buy: high end but old, or mid range but new. In the end I settled for the former, because I decided that I rather the graphics runs smoothly than have eye candy at a horrendously slow frame rate. I'm very happy with my purchase, and what is really needed now is time to play the games.

I spent the day fixing up everything, hence the lack of time to blog.

Last week was the final week at SI. There was summex; nothing much to say, except it was f-up at usual. Last day ended with a graduation ceremony, and half a day of area cleaning until we were finally allowed to go.

Friday was my first day at my new unit. Everyone was so busy with all kinds of stuff to attend to us; by the end of the day we booked out still not knowing what we are supposed to do. And shitty stuff awaits me when I book in on Sunday night.

Life currently sucks, and morale have dropped to a new low. Hoping things will improve very, very soon, although I think I still have a long way to go.

Last monday was radio exercise, and while other platoons get to travel to various parts of Singapore in their exercises, ours was held in different parts of the camp. I was quite disappointed actually, but I guess the purpose of the exercise was to learn, and I did learn quite a bit.

Wednesday was my first ever guard duty, and I did prowling with my friend. Time passed fast, but it was tiring walking up and down the slopes and stairs.

Inside the guardroom I couldn't help but noticed a plaque which stated that the guardroom was 2nd position for the "Army most courteous guardroom", although that was many years ago. I am rather amused, because I wonder to what extent courteous can a guardroom be.

"Good morning! Welcome to x Camp! How may I be of service to you?"
"Will you please take out your camp pass and show it to me? Thank you for your cooperation!"
"Please raise up both hands and place them behind your head, and squat down, so that we can arrest you. Thanks!"
"Please put down your weapon or I will have to shoot you. Sorry for the inconvenience!"

That particular morning many people were coming into my camp to take their IPPT, so they needed to get camp passes from the guardroom. In that case...

"Thank you and have a nice day! May you pass your IPPT with flying colours!"

One night we ordered fast food from a particular fast food chain, and it was a rather big order. When the delivery came they missed out my burger, and they promised to come back with it. In the end they took one hour to deliver, and I had to force it down my throat in half darkness in my bunk, because it was past lights out.

Two platoons have completed their course and passed out, and next week another platoon will be doing so. The place's getting quieter.

Awaiting me in the coming week is four tests and preparation for my last exercise.

As the end of course nears, the last three weeks are filled with all sorts of tests and exams and summary exercises to complete, although I have assurance from my friend that they are easy to pass. The end of course also means getting posted to unit. All of us are eagerly awaiting (and guessing) where we can get posted to. The dream post is a 8-5 job at SI or at HQ. Haha.

We were given five weeks to complete the first chapter of our network course, and now we have two weeks to complete the second chapter. I have just completed five module tests, and the scores dropped steadily from 92.3 to 65.0:(

The presense of animals in our accommodation block has spiced up our otherwise monotomous lives there. First was a bird nest complete with a little family that appeared a few weeks back. The bird nest was mysteriously destroyed, but the family of four still sits at the pipe every day. Then there is this cat which has fur so neat that I suspect its someone's pet. It hangs around the ground floor lobby, which we play with when we go downstairs for a snack at night. One thing I note is that it meows at everyone, as if its trying to tell us something.

Finally something for everyone to enjoy, thanks to G.

The Japanese have finally uncovered a mystery. How does the small arrow on your computer monitor work when we move the mouse? Haven't you ever wondered? Now, through the miracle of high technology, we can see how it is done. With the aid of a screen magnifying lens, the mechanism becomes apparent. Click on the following link and you will find out:

http://www.1-click.jp/

The image may take a minute or two to download and when it appears, Slowly move your mouse over the light gray circle and you will see how the Magic works. Then move fast and stop. Don't forget to try the left click button.

Back to studies.

Just realised network is actually quite fun. The theories are bloody dry, enough to send people off to dreamland the moment the lectures start, but the hands on are definitely interesting. Or maybe its just me.

Celebrated Racial Harmony Day on Friday (haha and I thought I will never experience it anymore after graduating from school), and we played traditional games. Cheated our way through Zero Point haha. Then there was the performances after the games. Each platoon was supposed to send in a skit script, and the top three gets to perform. We thought our skit was shit, but apparently the rest were even shitter, so we got first. Haha.

Watched Harry Potter. Its no wonder why many said its not as good as the previous movies. Overall the movie was not bad la, but even at 2 hours 10+ mins I still felt like it was too hastily rushed, and lacked abit of climax.

After that went down to Marina to catch a little of the NDP preview, specifically the defence display. First time I was in such close distance from moving choppers, but then its still abit too far. Standing at Merlion Park, the waters did not splash on us as promised by the papers when the Chinook came to 3m above the water. The only memorable event was when the Chinook carrying the national flag flanked by four Apaches flew past directly above us.

Ah. I plugged my expectations against my experience at the Air Force Open House last year. I can still remember the deafening noise from the fighter jets.

Tomorrow will be one packed day. A final tutorial and exam will be on Monday and Tuesday respectively, and I have six modules yet to complete. And then there is the network simulator which I have just downloaded that I hope to play around with.

Now that I'm out of BMT and in Signals, we get to book out on Friday evening, instead of the Saturday afternoon back in Tekong. In addition we have night's out every Wednesday, whereby we get to spend the evening outside.

I will do the same thing every Wednesday and Friday late afternoon - sms my two good friends to agree on a time and venue to meet up. We are in three different camps, but still not too far from each other. Time is precious, especially nights out where we book out at around 1800 and have to be back in our respective camps by 2200++.

Actually for nights out we do not do more than just sit down somewhere to have a chat while having dessert, but to me its important. Its quite an enjoyment simply listening to them talk.

Nothing spectacular after booking out too. Just a dinner, then home. But there is a big difference between having two friends to laugh with while taking one-hour MRT trips and sitting in a corner seat all by yourself staring into space.

The cookhouse at my camp is getting seriously overcrowded, now that the officer cadets had joined us. Last Friday there was a brillant idea to give a talk to the entire camp just before lunch. We spent more time queuing than eating the food.

I have a test come Tuesday, and I have a hefty 10 chapters worth of physics to study, but I ended up wasting more than half the day today rotting away.

Die Hard tomorrow morning, then a trip to the library, then a quick drop-by to my friend's house, and then studying for the rest of the day before I book in again.

Life.

Everyone has more or less settled down in the second week in Signals. Its still lessons and more lessons everyday; there is more laughter now, but a slight hint of low morale still lingers.

I'm lacking something to keep me occupied after my lessons end in the evening. I'm trying to cook up some ideas with regards to a project I hope to do, but so far I have not come up with anything useful.

Its Live Earth today, and some people are pointing out the irony that they are setting up stages that can power up 10 cities to tell us to save the Earth. Well personally I thought the videos and messages on environmental conservation should be useful, but celebrities blasting out their hits are..hmm.

I thought I will only have a brief brush with computers during my signals course, but never did I expect that I will be diving deep into computers for my 8 week course.

The BMTC e-posting put me into the 'infocomm 2' course, which is manpack radio. But on my first day there I was instead posted to the 'infosys' course, where my main job is well, computers.

Not too bad I guess, after looking through my schedule for the next 8 weeks (7 weeks as of today), because I will be learning very, very, very useful stuff.

Then again, I do miss the days of chiong-sua-ing with my friends by my side.

For now, I just sit back and enjoy my course.

Now I have so much free time at night, its time I bring in some books to read.

For the past week I have not done anything worth mentioning here, which explains the absence of entries here. But it seems like I'm not the only one to have outdated blogs around. Hmm is the blog trend dying out? Haha.

Block leave went by too fast for me to enjoy, and soon I will be packing my bags off to CCK where I will start my next phase of national service. Not sure what to expect yet, though there's nothing much I can do anyway. Just 走一步算一步 lor.

Besides gaming and web surfing I have not done anything related to computers for the past few, erm, months. Not sure if I will get to play any computers during my signals course, but now I have a sudden urge to start creating games using Macromedia Director again, something which I have stopped doing since secondary school. I'm glad to see Adobe is coming out with a new version of Director; previously I was still wondering if they are going to stop producing Director, since Flash is much more popular now.

I personally prefer Director, because I only know how to use Director hahahaha.

My urge came about after spending an hour in the library today reading a book on how to create racing games haha. I fell aslp after reading less than a fifth of it, because I have already half forgotten my maths haha. Besides the following chapters on OpenGL was getting too complicated for me to understand. Now.

But too bad, my urge comes as my block leave ends, so I no longer have whole days to sit in front of the computer to program. I should be spending my weekends outside camp, but I will be busy meeting friends. Anyway my first week in Signals shall be spent doing some observations, to see if it will be appropiate to bring in some books haha.

Till the next time.

Life sucks when one has no friends. Its my block leave but I have no one to enjoy it with.

Contrary to popular belief I am not spending all my time playing games. Gaming is only fun when you play with friends, not with some predictive AI.

And it doesn't help when I am neither close to my platoonmates, nor share the same interests to them. I don't find clubbing or DotA fun, for instance.

POP loh!

Tuesday and Wednesday were perhaps the most enjoyable days of my entire BMT. Tuesday night was one rare night of total havoc. While waiting for the tonners to come and fetch us back to Rocky Hill the recruits splashed water at the commanders. The commanders took revenge by making us fall in and knock it down, then made us all wet too. Then there was the push ups and jumping jacks which everyone for once enjoyed doing.

But perhaps the single most memorable thing that night was cheering as a company of 400 men: 200 lao jiaos at coy line, another 200 from the new mild obese batch, something which the neighbouring Hawk Coy could only envy. The roar produced was magificant.

After a final exchange of well wishes between the two batches we went back at Rocky Hill. Back in our own coy line we were given a lights out timing of 2359, and a last minute decision to order pizzas resulted in a party till late at night.

POP itself was just waitng and more waiting.

And now I'm a private. What's next for me? A good 11-day rest before I report to my new unit next next Monday. I don't know where I will be posted to; for now I just sit back and enjoy my block leave.

All right, my friends say I reveal too much about NS, so instead of just removing sensitive stuff I turned all of them into drafts. Yes we were told by our OC on our first day of enlistment with regards to blogging about national service, but I thought whatever I have blogged previously are already freely available in the forums and Wikipedia. Never mind, it doesn't hurt staying out of trouble.

Thanks to NS I have lost touch with all the latest news. Computex, the second biggest computer expo in the world and the largest in Asia, is ongoing now in Taiwan. The difference between Computex and the numerous IT shows we have here is that, Computex is a place where the different manufactors exhibit their latest technologies, whereas all our IT shows are simply giant while-stocks-last sales.

Anyway I was reading the various articles on Computex, and I realise exciting stuff like the Intel X38 chipset and DDR3 memory on motherboards are coming up. My computer is becoming outdated!

Then I surfed game websites and realise EA is coming up with a new Need For Speed game. I want!

In other news, Nvidia may be slashing the prices of its latest Geforce 8 series of graphics cards. Wonderful news to me, since I am really hoping to get one soon. I do hope the price cuts will come as soon as possible.

A few more days to POP!

While waiting for Hamachi to connect I might as well post an entry.

If you think I have been doing nothing but playing games the past few days, you are wrong! [I'm not a game addict!]

Spent Tuesday and Wednesday at home, didn't dare to go out because my CSM has once told us they do random calls to our houses to make sure we are at home resting and not outside having fun. Thursday and Friday went to PC Show [yes I went twice, not because I was crazy, but because I was going with two different groups of friends whom I have not met for some time].

Yesterday I spent three hours looking intensively at both NUS and NTU's websites, trying to decide which course to accept before the deadline is up.

So today evening I will be booking in again, at the record early time of 1740. This week will be a half-xiong week for me, thanks to my fever last week. There is re-IPPT [I heard will be tomorrow! I definitely rather go tomorrow than book in again during block leave], SOC, and the last major event before we pass out - 24km route march on Tuesday. The consolation is that there is Recruit's Evening tomorrow night, and we are booking out on Wednesday, because of the obese batch that will be coming in.

Now I am [im]patiently waiting for Hamachi to connect me up with my friend so we can have at least a game of Tiberium Wars before I book in. But sian Heaven seem to be out to spoil my day. Haix.

At the top of my wishlist: a 8600GT 256MB GDDR3!

I have been talking too much about army isn't it? Can't blame me actually, since my life now is nothing but army.

On my trip home today it suddenly dawned on me that I have not seen a weekday Singapore for a very, very long time. Today I saw a typical noon where students have just finished vacation lessons and were lazing around the bus interchange chatting with friends while waiting for buses to come, and office workers walking through in groups either to have their lunch, or to return to office after their meals. The entire crowd created a buzz that is usually not seen on weekends, where people would generally just be heading towards town to meet friends and shop. It is even worse at Tekong; I don't even get to see anything that is not green in colour, or hear anything else besides the firing of gunpowder.

I miss being a civilian.

In other news, computer games are getting more and more realistic these days, which is supposed to be a good thing, but the games are improving too fast for the hardware (and our pockets) to catch up. An example is this. I have always loved playing off road racing games, but the previous game, Colin McRae Rally 2005, could not run on Vista, so I was excited when Codemasters was coming out with DiRT.

But alas, the system requirements of the game are too high! My five-month-old computer just reached the minimum system requirements, and when I tried out the demo, the game was very laggy, even at the lowest settings (640x480!), so laggy that it was almost unplayable.

I recall my good friend told me before, meeting the minimum requirements only means 可以动。Haha.

I thought maybe the problem lies with my graphics card, because 7300LE is an entry-level card which was created for the purpose of home entertainment (aka watch movies), and not for intense gaming. I realised in recent days that the GPU temperature is 70degrees when idle, and easily shoots up to 80degrees when playing games!

Ok fine, I am just giving myself an excuse to buy a new card, since the PC Show 2007 is coming. Haha. Then again, the 8600GT looks like a good buy, and the fact that my good friend has got himself a powerful card recently is tempting me furthur.

Ever since I got my own NETS card and allowances from the SAF every month, I have become more and more greedy. You know, NETS is scaringly convenient. Just one swipe, press in 6 digits, and ta-ta, the thing is now yours (Recalls purchase of my $106 RAM. Bloody hell it cost 50bucks now nia.).

Fortunately my willpower to resist temptation is rather strong, because I frequently think about where I am going to find money to study in university (yes, I lied to my PC when I told him I do not have any financial problems. Well I do not have any now, but I foresee that happening in the future.), which is why you don't see me with an external hard disk or a PSP in my hands.

Going back to games, I don't think this advancement is going to slow down, going by the description of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, a to-be-released game. While PS3 and Xbox 360 gamers can enjoy all these games without worrying about lagging or hardware not being able to run the game, PC gamers will have to burn large holes in their pockets.

I'm tired.

Its good to hear that our dear Prime Minister is donating his pay rise to charity for the next five years. While I personally think its more of a case of succumbing to pressure, it is nevertheless a good move. Hopefully the other ministers will do the same too.

Recently the airing of a radio drama on yes933 has introduced listeners to a song which they use as the theme song. Quite nice I like.

小情歌
这是一首简单的小情歌
唱着人们心肠的曲折
我想我很快乐
当有你的温热
脚边的空气转了
唱着我们心头的白鸽
我想我很适合
当一个歌颂者
青春在风中飘着
你知道就算大雨让这座城市颠倒
我会给你怀抱
受不了看见你背影来到
写下我度秒如年难捱的离骚
就算整个世界被寂寞绑票
我也不会奔跑
逃不了最后谁也都苍老
写下我时间和琴声交错的城堡
最后谁也都苍老

Everything is packed and ready; now I am just waiting for the time to come. This will be the single thing I will miss most during my BMT:



It is in its most unglamous state because I was lazy to put the casing back after I installed the second hard disk to it. Hopefully I can still recognise it (and more importantly, remember how to use it) when I come back.

See everyone in two weeks!

Recently the press and the public are hot over the issue of raise in civil servants' pay. Now our dear Prime Minister is going to be paid five times the salary of the US President.

Of course anyone in the low-to-middle class will be unhappy with this raise. Why the F* are the ministers getting millions of dollars a year in salaries while I get barely enough to survive? Of course, credit should be given to them for running the country well, but isn't $3.1 million a year abit too much?

I had a little discussion with a friend not long ago, and I think maybe I am too idealistic; I expect those ministers to serve the country out of their interests and love for the country rather than for the pay. If I were to question them then I will have to question the CEOs and talents of commercial companies and top professions as well, in which their salaries are being pegged to by the benchmark used. It makes no sense for me to question, since they have already gone ahead with the pay hike and they are not going to listen.

I find it amusing that they are debating about their own pay in Parliament. They can't possibly object to a raise in their own pay right? Quoting from CNA: "In the debate that followed the announcement involving civil service pay revisions, Members of Parliament generally agreed with paying competitive salaries for top talent in the civil service. "

The lust for money and power blinds all.

Then there is also the issue of the use of means testing in hospitals. During the elections two years back the Health Minister, standing for his party in a GRC, said that there may never be means testing at all. Now the same person is saying means testing will be carried out within the next 12 months.

I can't fault him anyway, for he said there may be no means testing at all, meaning there may still be. They give all sorts of reasons to back up their actions, leaving no room for arguments and flaws to exploit. What to do, bo bian accept lor.

In two days I will be enlisting into National Service. I am saying this here so that readers have the time to know and give me all the good luck I need. Haha. Perhaps if I am enlisting on another day there will be no need for me to do this, but sigh, I am enlisting on the Friday the 13th. Its a just-in-case kind of thing. Haha.

Time passes very fast; not too long ago I was still cursing the whole world why I am going in April instead of January when many many others are going in. Work has blurred my prespective of time, and very soon now its my turn.

National Service will be the start of another phase of my life, which will last two years. While I have already heard alot from my friends how BMT is like, hearing is still different from having to personally experience it myself. Its like orientation all over again, and orientation has always been nerve wrecking to me, because I have a big problem with going to a totally new place and talking to strangers [Recall that ECG test during my medical checkup].

Except this time, I am living with strangers. Hopefully I can adapt quickly.

In this world, there are very lucky people who are born into very close kint families, and have many good friends around.

There are not so lucky people, they either have no friends, but they have very close families, or they have no families, but they still have plenty of good friends to depend on whenever they need someone for company.

Then there are the real suay ones who have neither.

There are many times when I will feel that I belong to the last category. Sometimes when I sit infront of my computer eating my dinner, while everyone else sits down in front of their tables with their families enjoying nice meals. Other times I come up online to see none of the good friends online, before I find out they are outside happily with their own groups of friends.

No one actually hear me complain about it, because at the end of the day I will realise that at the very least I still have a complete family living under the same roof. And that I do not have to turn to drugs or cigarettes to fend off any loneliness [On the other hand, computer games seem no different from drugs or cigarettes haha].

Then again, relationship is a two way thing, and I think I shut myself out too much.

I don't feel like ending here, but I have to agree with G that 'blogger seems to have a negative induction force that blocks out all thoughts except the useless ones'.

Oh great. I can't get any linux installed on this computer.

After many days of procrastination I finally decided to get myself to work today. Hooked up my spare hard disk, formatted everything inside, and popped in the first cd of my Fedora Core 5.

To my utmost surprise a bunch of garbage text appeared, after all the initial booting. After trying a few more times to ensure its no freak accident, I went to try it on an old computer, and it worked. Suspected the error has something to do with my SATA hard disk, because the last thing it was loading before it hanged was some "sata_sil drivers", so I combed the Internet to see if anyone else have the same problem as me.

Found one here. Exactly the same except I only had 2 lines of garbage text and not one entire screen of them. But the help did not seem helpful.

Decided to try Ubuntu instead. Downloaded v6.10, burnt it to a cd, and tried it out. I was not expecting any problems with Ubuntu because I have v5.04, and the live cd worked when I tried it earlier on.

Surprise surprise, halfway through loading it hanged. Again I suspect its the hard disk.

So now I am back using the v5.04 live cd, typing this entry out. Very interesting to see that an old version works while newer ones don't. Maybe I am too noob to know why.

Have not decided what my next course of action will be. Most probably I will install this v5.04. Wonder if updates are still available for it. Either that or I disable the SATA controller, which I have no idea how and don't wish to because I don't like the feeling of something missing.

Or I physically plug out the SATA cable.

I just realised my previous post was my 500th post. I have blogged so much crap! May this blog live forever!

I experienced my first hiccup with Vista just now when my Hamachi could not enable the [virtual] network adaptor. Did a fresh reinstall and it worked. There wass a slight lag at the menu when I first opened up Generals, although the game itself was alright. Maybe because I used 800x600 low settings.

Tiberian Sun was the first strategy game I played, introduced to me by my primary school friends [wow there was like, six years back!], and I pretty much enjoyed it. Ever since I had been a CnC fan, hence my email address haha.

I still remember back in those days my mother had rather strict controls on my playing computer games, so I would wake up very early on Saturday and Sunday mornings to play, because she would be out at the market for at least an hour hahaha.

Later the Firestorm expansion came out, and got me all excited. Helped my good friend buy a copy at the *ahem* shop opposite my house [At that time the market rate was $8 for one cd, $15 for two, bought together with my friend, saved 50cents each ha]. At that time the game was rather popular among my classmates, so we spent alot of time talking about it.

Early secondary school days another CnC game came out, Red Alert 2. I remembered wondering why the name Westwood Studios was gone and replaced with EA, but I did not really know the story until I came across Wikipedia. Anyway my gaming experience went up to a new level as my classmates and I would meet at LAN shops to play. Usually we played the map Arctic Circle [because it was the only 8-player map?], and even formed alliances or stategies to gang bang those we don't like first lol. We came up with very interesting rules then, like no one is allowed to use France [because its Grand Cannon was too powerful], and also 30-45 minute truces so we could build up our forces.

I did not play the next game, Generals, because I was still using that Pentium 3 450Mhz then. My first encounter with that game was during a LAN session, and I remembered I was one of the first to be killed, because the gameplay was completely changed and differed from the previous CnC games so much so that I don't know how to play at all.

Along the way we also played first person shooters like Counter-Strike and Battlefield. Then all of the sudden the trend shifted to Warcraft and DotA and MMORPGs, which I don't play at all, so I was immediately ostracised.

Wow I digressed too much. Actually all I wanted to say was that the sequel to Tiberian Sun, Command and Conquer: Tiberium Wars has hit our shores. The launch at Lido was apparently overwhelmingly crowded with hardcore fans eagerly wanting to grab the game plus all the free gifts.

What about me? Well initially when I read about this game was in development [that was last year I think, when I surfed Wikipedia during one of the computing lessons :p] I was very excited about it, simply because I liked Tiberian Sun alot. Its a different developer now, but EA promised to keep the game as close to previous CnC games as possible.

Last month a demo for the game was available for download, so I tried it out. However having played that I find the game only quite alright; somehow I just don't like it as much as previous games. I can't exactly place my finger on any particular aspect, but I suspect its the overall feel of the game. It doesn't bring back the fun I had when playing Sun.

The new game is abit too sophiscated, unlike Tiberian Sun or Red Alert 2 where everything was much simpler.

I think again, maybe its because the game is abit too similar to other games.

Then I think again, maybe its because I am older now. Last time I had alot of friends whom I could talk about the game with, like how to complete a particular mission or which unit was better etc. There is no one I can talk with now.

Then I think again, maybe its because I have played too much games.

I may be too quick to pass the judgement, since I have only played the demo and not the actual one.

After so much trouble and time I finally got Vista installed. About reading and hearing about all the bugs and problems and whatnot, I am glad to say I have not experienced any of those. Yet.



Initially it was a "wow" because of the visual effects. But later it became "chey" because otherwise there is really nothing new about it.



That is the glassy effect on the sides of windows. Looks pretty cool, but apparently that simple effect itself requires a rather powerful graphics card.

Perhaps the only thing that I really had fun with was the Sidebar, where you place Gadgets, or tiny programs on the side of the desktop. The ones that came with Vista were not fun. I found pretty interesting ones on the Net:



There is one that tells me the weather in Singapore, one that tells me the weather on the eastern side of Singapore, and one that shows photos of traffic conditions of our expressways, all updated every few minutes. There are lots more, from stopwatches to mini notepads to even Sudoku games.

Performance wise, it runs decently on my computer, perhaps because I have packed it with enough RAM. But booting up takes a much longer time compared to XP. Games run with not much difference as in XP, although loading seems a little bit longer than usual.

To conclude, from a consumer's point of view, Vista is not a must have.

Yesterday was my last day at work! Finally!

After three months of endless slogging and another 1 week plus of dragging, I finally worked for the last time at that store yesterday afternoon.

As if heaven is out to play me, the manager was transferred to another store and a new manager, the one ofrom the store at the nearby MRT station, was transferred here. Apparently she is much better than the one who left. I only had a few hours of interaction with her, so I could not pass any judgement.

The new manager actually asked me to work another day today, because there is a shortage of staff. I went to the schedule to check; oh the one doing the morning shift took a day off today, perhaps to take advantage of the fact that there is a new guy working. After some consideration I still decided not to. Seriously had enough. Besides the multi-tasking auntie colleague is back today, so should be no problem.

There was no farewell or whatsoever yesterday. The most was a simple "Take care ah!" from the old auntie who took over me for the overnight shift.

[To sidetrack a little, it turned out that the old auntie did not turn up on Friday because she went off to Malacca; a close relative was sick and admitted into ICU etc. Well I was never angry with her; she's a very nice person. I was angry with the manager for not having enough staff on hand to handle last minute situations. There was supposed to be two person doing overnight, not one.]

I have learnt quite alot during my three months of work; that will be one post by itself.

Yesterday afternoon my mother called me asking if I have any friends in Taiwan. Immediately I know why she asked that. My Vista is here!

Having read the forums [again] I knew what to expect; a postman turning up at my house to pass a parcel that comes from Taiwan, which consists of a big brown envelope holding two discs inside.

I have not decided when to install Vista. Most probably at a later time.

I am going to make sure that next Tuesday will be my last day. I have had enough.

Everyday I reach the store to get scolded by the colleague doing the morning shift because I arrived on time. (I'm supposed to reach early to take over her, so she can go home earlier. Then she herself can arrive like half an hour after her working hours started.) Then every night I always have to wait well past my working hours for the one doing the overnight shift to take over from me, because they always come late.

Then there are times like today when the person taking over me did not even come, so I had to wait till 1am for someone from another store to come and relieve me. I was told 1am, so I told me father to fetch me home at 1am. Then i waited till 1.15am, before I decided to call that store if that person was coming. At 1.15am he was at his store saying he was going to come.

So by the time he reached, and checked that everything was in place, and I was allowed to go, it was already 2am. My father, having wasted an hour waiting for me, was angry, scolding me and saying I should not have asked him to come at 1am if I was not allowed to go at 1am.

Coincidentally, the area manager called some time after midnight, and was surprised I was alone and from the afternoon shift and was waiting for someone from another store to relieve me. So he asked why the store always seemed so short of staff.

I think I should be the one asking why the bloody store is so short of staff. I, a bloody part-timer, is working a bloody full six days a week. I had already asked to quit last week, but because the auntie colleague was going back to Malaysia, she asked me to help my boss out another week, which I agreed on her account. (I had actually anticipated this from earlier experience, which is why I asked to quit at an earlier date; to allow for a buffer)

I could not argue with the area manager, because a customer came halfway through the conversation. When I picked up the phone again he was gone, and he never called back. Luckily he didn't. I was going to erupt then.

I clearly asked my boss if this week would be my last week, and she agreed. Then yesterday she smsed me (wah, don't even dare to face me) to ask me help out another week. 也是她说，过了这个礼拜我就不用做了，现在她又叫我做多一个礼拜。好咯，什么都是她说，我什么都不用说了。

I rejected her immediately, saying I can at most help out one or two days. Today's schedule came out, and I was scheduled to work next Monday and Tuesday, after which from Wednesday onwards, the auntie colleague will be back.

In the past few days at least three people have applied for a job in the store, with another two (one of them is ex staff I think) applying today. But I still don't see their names anywhere in the schedule, which I wondered why. I still remembered in my case, I was asked to turn up for work immediately the following day, after I applied. Why can't they do that?

This work has made me realise just how inconsiderate people can be towards others. They can pass you a cash register without a single $10 bill and leaving you to die in hell when a customer passes you a $50 bill for a New Paper, because they have already knocked off and don't care how you are going to survive eight hours with nothing but only $50 bills and 5cents coins in your register.

They can happily sit in the storeroom reading magazines munching on hot piping sandwiches while you are outside at the counter placing a customer's purchases into plastic bags, mental calculating how much change to give back, apologising to another customer's enquiry why there are no more Gulp cups left, and getting panicked because the queue was reaching the door.

So now that I finished this bloody post its already 3.15am, just as I finished my dinner/breakfast/supper.

It has been a long time since there are three people working the afternoon shift. Work is so much more relaxing when there are three people working, because there is at least one person standing at the counter at all times, so I-who-do-not-want-to-touch-that-damn-cash-register can run around doing stock up.

Tomorrow will still be ok because I have someone working with me. The challenge will be Friday and Sunday, my supposedly last day of work.

I still have no clear idea what I should take in university. Some ideas yes, but the exact course and university, no. Maybe that is because I have not yet decided what I want to do as a career.

And I still have not decided whether I want to apply for a scholarship or not. Not that I can go for any with my results, but I need the money. However the application process (read: essay) and the selection process (read again: interview) is seriously putting me off.

For now I am more inclined towards applying for financial aid instead, but I have a few days to consider before the only scholarship I am applying for, if I am doing so, closes on the 23rd.

All the talk about going with your heart and going with your mind and go for your dreams etc, its so much easier to say than do.

Yay I think my vista is coming!

After nearly three weeks of seeing the following message:

Order Status : Order awaiting shipment
Shipping Date : TBD. Check back in 2-3 weeks for more information
Carrier : Standard

almost every night I checked, I almost wanted to call up and ask them when I will receive my Vista, when I logged in last night and saw a new message:

Order Status : Order sent to Back office
Shipping Date : TBD. Check back in 2-3 weeks for more information
Carrier : Standard

Then this morning I checked again and it was another new message:

Order Status : Order received
Shipping Date : TBD. Check back in 2-3 weeks for more information
Carrier : Standard

And very soon later:

Order Status : Order is approved
Shipping Date : TBD. Check back in 2-3 weeks for more information
Carrier : Standard

Coupled with the fact that the people in the forums are gradually receiving their copies, I should be getting mine soon!

Now I am only scared that there is no one at home to receive the two dvds when the postman comes.

Working in the last week before quitting is like running the last lap of 2.4km. The end is so near, yet so far.

My last week of work started today, seven days from Sunday to Sunday, with an off day on Saturday so that I can go for my class outing (if there is one) and a buffet dinner courtesy of my cousin. This last week will be a difficult one, because the auntie colleague will be taking leave from work from Wednesday afternoon onwards. Analysing the timetable Wednesday, Friday and Sunday will be my worst days of the week. Wednesday because I will be working with someone I don't like. Friday and Sunday because I am apparently the only one working the afternoon shift. Friday still looks okay because the manager is around until 6pm, while someone will be coming at 6pm. Sunday is the jia lat one because the manager does not work on Sundays.

The first day has passed. six more days to bear with.

I think the problem with running the last lap, especially for me, is that I keep thinking how long more do I have to run before I finally reach the finishing line, thus that makes time seem to move really slowly.

On a brighter note a thirty-year-old has applied for a job in the store. His application form is still lying on the table, but hopefully he will turn up very soon, learn the ropes quickly, and I can step down asap. Given his age I assume that he has already worked for many years and will have no problems getting the hang of things.

I'm very tired.

The word "Fire Drill" was non-existant in my mind until today, when a fire cum evacuation drill was held to see if people can run for their lives fast enough in a real fire.

At 3pm, the fire alarm went "RRIINNG!", twice. Because money making > everything else, only my boss went to gather at the assembly point, while the rest of us remained in the store, business as usual.

So at the end of the drill (I have knocked off by then), all I saw was a couple of Civil Defence vehicles and officials. I still don't know where to run to if an actual fire occurs, but unless one happens within this two weeks, I guess there is no need for me to know.

After work I went down to Suntec for the IT show, with the primary purpose of getting a new pair of earphones. Walked around, besides the Sony and Microsoft booths screaming their Playstation 3 and Vista, everything else is about the same as previous shows.

I believe that the Playstation 3 is overrated.

Specs-wise, the PS3 is impressive. Cell Broadband Engine, G80 graphics core, Blu-ray, full HD support. All sounded great. But the gameplay has somehow stayed the same. Flagship games like Resistance: Fall of Man and Ridge Racer 7 seem no different from any other first person shooter or racing game out there. Its still big bad monsters running towards you with its fangs open wide open ready to eat you up, and you using that super duper ultra ultimate laser atomic nuclear explosive machine gun to kill them. Or you controlling a powerful nitrous powered R34 STi Evo 206 306 911 995 999 RX CXX XXX Concept Rally WRC GT chasing the opponent down twisted repetitive tracks round and round and round, who, using the old 1cc turtle beetle tortoise, can, for some reason, still run faster than you.

Sure the gaming experience has improved. One can drift that tofu shop's AE86 round a bend at 1, 000, 000 km/h while the screen stays fixed at 30fps without lagging (I personally witnessed that). Perhaps now the monsters get smarter and all count 1 2 3 and blast you together instead of one by one so you die a faster death.But its still the same old objectives of killing all the baddies and save the day or winning all the races and becoming the race king. Sooner or later people will lose interest in gaming.

Nintendo came up with a great idea in the Wii remote. A personal opinion as a step in the right direction. I think that games are not simply about how faithfully they follow the laws of physics or how (eeringly) close they look like real life objects. Its also about how innovative the objectives are.

Then again, the PS3 is still in the early stages, so (again) I need not comment so much. Perhaps precisely with the cutting edge hardware the PS3 have the resources to support future gaming innovations.

Maybe there is something wrong with my eyes, but I don't see any difference between playing games or watching tv on a conventional television and on high definition capable ones.

I believe the Vista is overrated too, but never mind.