Singapore Airshow 2008 Part II!

Correction to part I: It's Elbit Systems, not Industries.

Visited the Land Defence Pavilion thingy after posting Part I. Saw small-arms ammo, and yadda yadda. Okaaay...

UAVs are the future.

I love the B-1. It's so badass! I lost my cap... :(

Saw some of the private aircraft fly over our heads as I waited in line to board the bus home. These guys must be flying their airplanes home too.

Aaaaand. I uploaded the photos onto Snapfish! Can't seem to make it public though. Oh well. I'll send it to a select few, perhaps. Hehe. Maybe I'll upload it somewhere else too.

End of part II.

Singapore Airshow 2008 Part I!

Enough of what happened in the week. There's nothing much to say excep that we went around clocking mileage and such. We went rather close to the airport on one of the days but our convoy managed to find a point to U-turn back and return to our original routing.

So I shall focus on the main thing: Singapore Airshow 2008! I am at the exhibition grounds right now, using a computer that has access to the Internet (duh!) Right after guard duty I headed home, changed, and headed out. Reached Pasir Ris MRT at aroound 1145, to catch the shuttle bus to the exhibition grounds. It was sheer madness! The standard Singapore long queue was abound, and it snaked all the way around the station, then zig-zagged towards to the pick-up point. I wasn't in the best of moods to appreciate anything, and soon I found myself just walking and walking without really thinking until I was chastised for cutting queue. Oh dear... Feeling ultimately guilty I started slowing down and letting tons of people pass me. *sighs* How evil, eh? :P

Anyway I reached the grounds too late for most of the air display save for some stunts by a USAF(?) F-16, the A380, and the air display team from the RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force), the Roulettes. That got my blood boiling, and I started snapping photos like crazy. I also lost my cap in the process (dropped it, it was nowhere to be found 10 minutes later. I made at least 5 rounds around where I lost the cap but I couldn't find it! Efficient cleaners? Or did someone pick it up? I should never have brought that cap out, it's a little memento from the 12th Muhibbah Camporee in Thailand I attended as a Scout back in Secondary 3. Perhaps I should have took better care of the damned cap. That was a mood spoiler.) I breezed through the static displays (you'll see what photos I took when I upload them somewhere), and chatted with some USAF avionics techs and aircrew who were hanging around where their aircraft were parked (this you'll see too). The biggest attraction was of course, the B-1B Lancer (aka the 'Bone'), and everybody wanted to take pictures with the crew of the big, badass bomber. There was even a group of undergraduates (a local university, they said, doing a project about aviation weapons. My guess is that they're from NTU, maybe the Aerospace Engineering faculty? Wished I was there). I got a shot of the B-1 from a *certain* vantage point, but I'm not going to tell you where. :P

Heading to the display pavilions, I just took a quick walk through it, without paying much attention. The loss of my cap might have contributed to my loss of interest, plus my hurry to get home. But yeah, there weren't much things that aroused my curiosity, although as usual, Elbit Industries (Israel), had some very cool stuff up on display, some new concept called the Dominator Integrated Infantry Combat System (correct?). A lame and flashy video intro-ed it to everyone who was watching, but the basic comcept is there. Linking (infantry) units across the battlefield to strike at the enemy from all directions with high-tech weapons and fire-control systems. Pretty much what everybody is focused on nowadays, no?

I managed some small talk with the U.S. pilots but went no further, partly because I'm a bad conversationalist and as mentioned above, everybody wanted to take photos. They ain't interested in NS, hmm? :P And since I'm a freaking ground-pounder... I wish I was in the Air Force. Hehehehe. I think I will end this post for now and go home to upload photos. This has been a very rushed air show, and I hope I have more time to slowly enjoy it (prefably with a friend) next year. God damn... The clash with my guard duty was most unfortunate. Anyway, signing off!

Friends

A tiring deployment outfield, and our Node Proficiency Test (A node is the equivalent of a platoon) finally concludes! The Company is now declared operational! We conducted our Ops Parade right after the end of the Test at some field location (not in our parade square), where Colonel Raja came and affixed the battalion patch onto each individual's webbing. I was wondering, at that point in time, what makes this parade so special? (Apart from gaining operational capability on Valentine's Day) What's it that makes it worth being proud of? Perhaps it's the effort that each and every one of us put in, and the tiny little personal messages and exchanges Colonel Raja had with each and every member of the company.

We were given nights' off that evening, and as usual I headed to Jurong Point to eat. Saw many people whom I knew, like some OCS cadets (you bloody lucky pilots!), my friends at Sungei Gedong, and some of my female ex-classmates who went to NTU (Nanyang Technological University) to study.

My weekend was spent levelling my Zero Online mecha. Ugh... the grind is starting to set in already, heh. I got so desperate for Gundam 00 that I went to tudou.com to watch the Chinese subs. *sighs* The plot thickens even further, even further! We had a brief exchange of fire between the Meisters and Team Trinity. And... would someone confirm the stuff seen at the end of the episode WERE GN DRIVES?!?!!!!1111. If they were, then... OMFG. So many of them! IT sucks that no one in camp or my closer friends out of camp (:P hehe) watches 00, or is at the same episode as I am. Can't talk about it, can't give spoilers. Aack. WATCH 00, MY FRIENDS! xD.

And, looks like *certain* people are giving this here blog some negative publicity. Hmm. I wonder if I should change some things about it. Hmm...?

Bah. Back to camp.

I got Singapore Airshow tickets! I'm going to go for it no matter what! RAWR!

Stranger In A Strange Land (Happy Chinese New Year!)

我心中的呐喊，你听见了吗？
俺の心が叫ぶ，聞えますか？

A quick week, and a bookout on Tuesday! For Chinese New Year! I've been wanting to blog but I kept procrastinating... Well the week off flew by and it's once again time to book in. Freaking sian, but at least I'm less than 1 year to ORD already. Yay?

Well there were a whole load of things I wanted to blog about, those thoughts happened spontaneously, but I forgot all about them (as usual) so I don't know what to blog about. Somehow I feel deader than ever, Chinese New Year is just like a gathering of us cousins, and to meet relatives who we usually don't see, and get updated on what each other is doing and stuff. I don't really care how much I get from 红包(red packet, ang pow, hong bao, whatever) anymore. That's not to say I'm rich enough to not give a damn, but certainly you cannot control who gives what, and I don't keep a chart or trend of how much I get, so yeah whatever. Let it come, and let it flow. Go with the flow. Apart from that, nothing much. I feel I don't even indulge in the "delicacies" as much as I did when I was younger. Hmm... just don't feel like eating, heh. Anyway that's good for health. Eat less! :P

Went out quite a bit with cousins, enjoyed myself much during the break, and now it's ending! :( Aargh. Am I doing something wrong? Why do I feel so... wrong?

It has also come to my attention that this blog is being read by several... well... 'other' people. (Not "undesirable" yet, shall I say?). Welcome to my world then, all of you. This isn't all of it, and to hell with it if your opinion of me goes even lower. o.o I know you all have accessed this blog before... Feel free to continue reading.

That was not directed at my friends, of course. Chill.

I still feel strange.

Expectations

My mom continues to haunt me with my various trappings, and I'm constantly reminded of my shitty self and life everytime I reach home. She makes it a point to jab at the fact that my younger cousins have now surpassesd me and have made achievements, while I'm just a loser. Which I probably am. I lost my temper today, and I regretted it immediately afterward. So much for having patience, so much for being unflappable.

Booking out later than everyone else sucks, as I discovered on Friday. Watching them go while I stayed back because (I guess it's punishment in a way, since it was pretty much our fault for not updating our stuff during the exercise) Colonel Raja wanted to make a certain point to my platoon commander, my heart sank and I felt really damned... well... sian (How do you quantify sian? It doesn't mean boredom in this case.) Well I enjoyed dinner though, since I met up with Reynard (one of my best friends, studying in Australia right now) upon booking out. The Belgian dessert shop (don't really remember the name now) at the Beach Road food centre serves really good stuff, I tried the waffles with ice-cream and melted chocolate dip. Mmm... (I don't usually go for such stuff though, but IMO it's good enough). We later joined Wen Xiang, and sat around Starbucks chatting.

For a loner like me, it is gatherings with familiar people that I enjoy a lot. My secondary school (Dunman High School, DHS) class (2A) gathering was on Saturday, and although not too many people attended (what, 8?) it was still good. We had lunch at Café Cartel (money fly away), and stayed and chatted for like 3 hours before moving off. Having nothing else to do we discussed our plans for one hour before the girls and the guys split up (Yen Ling followed us till her boyfriend picked us up though. She's still the ditz she was, but hey, how ditzy can you be with a GPA of 5.0, a perfect score? Is this all an act? Heh.). We spent time at the arcade, played pool (my 3rd time, I think, hehe), then had dinner at Marina Loft (the food court) and went our separate ways, me returning home with Reynard.

And then World in Conflict all over again. Whee.

I wish I can revive my drive for doing things, I wish I was as driven as Eunice.

Bookouts fly by real fast...