Grr... darn it.

Those 4 nursing students could relate to my maternal grandmother in a way I never could. Damn I feel ashamed.

Bought Modern Warfare 2 at $89.90 from the Parkway Parade games shop (the basement one, whose boss has acted in Jack Neo films) from the boss himself. The sucker didn't want to cut price down although Digital Life seemed to place it at around $80 if I remember correctly. (His staff actually quoted me a discount, but he wasn't around. Maybe I shouldn't have... impulsive haha).

So I did not pre-order or get a cheap deal anywhere. Thought MW1 had a good story and everything, (for a shooter), so I think MW2 was worth buying. I'll play through it, and keep it, definitely. One of the few games I actually buy...

Next up should be Starcraft 2.

Christmas, Space Marines and plans gone awry.

1. Have not followed through with my NCAP Technical courses (haven't wrote the email, yet).

2. I got a job offer for my volunteer stint during YOG, but I really want to do it at the Games Village.

3. Karaoke session No.2 was a failure because there weren't enough people to begin with. People dropped like flies, and my dear Romeo alphA inDia novEmbeR couldn't make it as well. Couldn't find replacement people (sorry again, friends! For last-minute requests. You know who you are.), so I cancelled it. Hopefully the option for 31st December can come into fruition. I will ask again on the 28th.

4. Dawn of War 2 was pretty good save for repetitive maps. The storyline and general plot were still okay.

5. I WANT MODERN WARFARE 2!

6. So I spent a lonely Christmas Eve, Christmas, and Boxing Day.

7. Perhaps it's because I'm atheist, so the gods were not on my side. It just rained (as of this post), so it feels as if the gods were mocking me. Haha! (No offense intended).

8. Why am I getting so worked up?

9. Signing off.

AMEN TO THAT, BROTHER!

To continue from the previous post regarding my observation of the second mosquito: On the first day it flew vigorously but it seemed spent by the second day despite bening full after a (few?) blood meal. By the second day, it was spent and appeared visibly thinner. This mosquito died by the second day. One special observation was the downdraft it created, first spotted when the mosquito was flying approximately 7cm above its dead buddy. The downforce created from its flight was actually strong enough to move the body of the already-dead mosquito! Interesting.

And then, on to posting proper. Since the last post, I have been living like a hermit, staying at home (during Study Week) to study for my end-semester exams. It was much slower than anticipated because the computer distracted me, which felt like A levels all over again. Not a good sign. There was progress, but at a drastically reduced rate. Apart from the computer, I basically disconnected myself from the rest of the world and its myriad issues. I kind of managed to wing it through the exams, but I feel guilty because I could have done better, I think. Analysing (not to show off or anything, just needed to get things off my chest):

English for Tertiary Studies: The paper was generally okay, although I did not complete summarising the damn article. There were a couple more paragraphs to go, hopefully I managed to catch the salient points of the entire article in the previous paragraph. Given my less-than-remarkable performance for summaries, this may just be fat hope. Target of B should be achievable, A is possible but medium confidence.

Accounting: I totally gave away the 15 marks for theory. I read through the damn chapter like thrice but did really commit to memory. So I threw out smoke bombs for theory, checked with the book after the exam, found many points missing. But for the practical portions, I hope to hell there is no problem. B achievable, A medium.

(and, insert some unfriendly encounters with daring beggars. What the hell...)

Economics: Missed out a few points here and there and I forgot the definition of some things. Generally still not too bad... B achievable, A low to medium.

Maths: Grr. I guessed the solution to three questions, none of which were 100% correct after checking with the book. I'll be damned if all the marks I lost came from these. Careless mistakes here and there, my buffer zone of 30 marks are getting filled up quite quickly. B is not a problem, A might be.

I am definitely not aiming just to pass since my results for quizzes and project assessments were pretty good. My dismal A level results continually cast a shadow over me (yes, and I STILL slack off! Basket.), plus perhaps the invisible pressure that I feel, being President and all (with many eyes on me?), adds to it all. I've never exactly been a straight-A student, trying to aim for these right now with the reduced syllabus load (Maths in particular...). This will pave my path to semester 2 and perhaps, year 2 and beyond. *sighs*.

That said, while fretting over results shall be compartmentalised to the back of mind as a sub-process (results out in February), IT'S FREAKING TIME TO ENJOY! I shouted (a little) after stepping out of the examination room on the last day. And after lunch, I went about recceing for the karaoke cum Felicia and Shelly's surprise birthday party that was to be held the next day. That said and done, I returned home to pass out on bed and caught up on some sleep... then dinner and all.

The turnout for the karaoke was less than half my expected turnout. It was already not easy to get people to come because most of the international students were going home immediately after their exams (not blaming you guys, your home misses you!). Of those that remained, some never even sent confirmations whether they could or couldn't attend, once past the threshold timing I gave up waiting. Some people also mentioned that they could come, but ended up not coming and (probably) cooked up an excuse to deal with me or something, ONLY WHEN I ASKED. Oh well. Perhaps I am too much a stickler for such things. Too exacting. Imposing high standards - hypocritical, eh?

Sulung, Vinsen, Alvin, Vichika and myself ended up singing at the karaoke for the 3 hours. It was still fun and we all got high and everything, poor Mr Kosmo ran out of voice early on though. Just the 5 of us males... I tell you, if we had mamasans with us, the stereotypical karaoke scene would be complete.

All was not lost for we managed to meet up with Felicia and celebrated her birthday (albeit belated) on the banks of the Singapore River at Clarke Quay. At least, my effort had not totally gone to waste. For that, I am very grateful. We are so going to have another karaoke session soon, I hope. Teo Heng's dirt cheap compared to KBox...

Dinner at some Eurasian restaurant with my cousins today, at a place near my home. While I was waiting for them, I loitered outside the Eurasian Association House, which was opposite President Nathan's private residence at Ceylon Road. I think the (Nepalese) Gurkha guard must have deemed me suspicious or something, because he called out to me about 15 minutes after I started appearing in the area and asked what I was doing. I couldn't hear him properly so I jogged up to the guard post, and explained why the heck I was there. Damn cool dude. Like, totally dedicated to his job. But, chill man! I'm not a big bad wolf... won't blow the house down. :)

I managed to get Dawn of War II also. It seems totally awesome thus far, and I like it... I also want Modern Warfare 2, and something to do during my 3 weeks of break. What should I do? I wonder if Singapore Shooting Association still conducts NCAP Technical courses for Air Weapons...

November Update

As it is, I am either too busy to write here, or just too caught up with my own things during free time to write. Wahaha. Anyway, seriously, past two weeks or so been a flurry of activities. There was my first and official Council meeting with the rest of the councillors, and boy, was it LONG. Like those 3-hour sessions back at SYOGOC, only difference is I was helming it instead of just sitting in as "yet another intern" frantically scribbling minutes. But it was pretty fruitful I must say.

Accounting quiz came along, then Math quiz over the next week. Tricky Accounting paper nearly had me stumped but I managed to find out my mistake in the last 10 minutes. After fixing it, 5 minutes to spare, yay. Maths was simpler than I thought, and the past two quizzes were certainly morale boosters, compared to the shitloads of empty, unfilled questions during my A's. I sacrificed going over to Anime Festival Asia 09 due to revision for Maths, and it pained me considerably. Also, the chance of going out on a date :P with Rain (not the Korean star, mind you! - though I'd kill to have just 1% of his Ninja Assassin physique) to AFA09 -> she was still sick so she couldn't make it. *sighs* AFA10, I WILL BE COMING! PLEASE DON'T SCREW UP MY SCHEDULE! :) Volunteer training for (Pre-Games) Workforce Admin Assistant also took place just last Saturday (21st). Very very fun bunch of people, bonuses including certain *ahem* cuties hehehe. :) But sadly, almost nobody signed up to help out at ITE East on the dates I signed up for. I'll have to work with volunteers from the previous batch who I'm not so familiar with. Time to make more friends!

Now, on to some other stuff. My heart swelled with pride when I was nominated to go for the Council of Private Education's dialogue session regarding the new website they wanted to introduce. But it came to nought when the nomination went through and I got a call telling me I didn't need to go, ostensibly from those MOE people. Oh well. In the end I heard there wasn't much, just showcasing the website and doing nothing to address the issue at large. Now with more news of degree mills coming up in Singapore, the entire trend is a worrying thing indeed... We local students need more protection of our money!

Among other things, the rise of China and her military, APEC (a taxi driver suggested to me we host it at Jurong Island - oh, the lols. :)) But there were jams in places where there normally weren't, so the daily lives of some Singaporeans were inconvenienced (that of retailers, too, especially at Suntec). All for the greater good, I guess. H1N1 memories - a 39 degree fever but I was lucid. Just feeling very hot. Tamiflu made me vomit first time round. What else... Don't seem like much at the moment.

Just can't let my heartstrings be tugged at.

Oh, and I managed to trap a mosquito (that had not fed; it was slim) inside a container sometime earlier. So I capped it to see how long it could survive without food and water. The result:

Day 1: Mosquito was highly energetic and kept flying around inside the container. This species (seriously looks like Aedes to me) preferred to hide near the cap.

Day 2: Mosquito was visibly weakened and flew much less, preferring to just stay and rest. It started losing grip on the curved walls of the container.

Day 3: Sometime over the night, the mosquito perished due to lack of food and water - I doubt it was air, the container probably could let in some air despite me screwing the cap on tightly. Plus the amount of air to consume is a lot considering the size of the mosquito.

I've got myself another sample this time, different species and engorged with blood. Lets observe...

Jiayu, signing off.

MEGA POST. Post 21st birthday (too busy to write)

Let me take this chance to once again wax lyrical about my life during my Full-time National Service. Having been hearing tons of scary stories from when I was a kid, although I disbelieved the older I got, and the more immersed I was into military stuff, I was still afraid, anxious perhaps, on that very first day of enlistment on the 10th of April, 2007. But there wasn't time to think, for the training and various activities everyday just left no time to emo and all. I'm very glad to have met this bunch of people from Platoon 4, Orion Company, Basic Military Training School 2, Batch 2 of 2007. Special shoutouts to my pals from Section 3. Somehow I made it through BMT, reading and re-reading Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers many times along the way (even now, I still read it).

I failed to make it to any school of command, which dashed any hope of me signing on. I remember being very sore about the fact (I'm still sore, to be honest), but there was no choice. So I was posted to the Infocomm 1 Operator Course, Specialist and Operator Training Company 3 (?), Signals Institute to receive vocational training. Days there were certainly more relaxed, and I was put with yet another bunch of people from elsewhere. I have nothing to talk about for these days, except that the days were very very short compared to BMT.

There was therefore a culture shock when we were deployed to the 3rd Signal Battalion to serve out the rest of our NS obligation. In my opinion, 3 Signal is the meanest, toughest and best active-duty Signal Battalion in our entire armed forces, doing the thing only we know how to do. The initial days were tough once again, and we tolerated screaming, shouting, punishments, turn-outs, and the like, going for driver training along the way as well. However, things are fine once you get used to it. Most of my fellow operator trainees were posted in here together with me, and, somewhere along the way, cracks in the relationships between people surfaced and widened (I shall not mention who, or what). We completed our Proficiency Tests at the company and battalion level, then went over to Taiwan. Upon our return, we were directed to assist in the hunt for the then-escaped would-be terrorist Mas Selamat Kastari. By this time, it was already close to ORD so my company began to draw down. We still participated in a Divisional exercise towards the end of my service, and a couple of months after that, I was free (sort of).

My stint in the army gave me insight into life. But during this period, I was not exactly looking at the world through rose-tinted glasses either. However, I served my unit with pride and honour, and I am proud to have been part of 3 Signal once, despite my disillusionment with my homeland's armed forces.

Enough of the history lessons, on to the present.

On the day of my birthday itself, I went for a bonding chalet with my fellow councillors and seniors. We had fun, there were games, and I got dunked. My handphone died because of this, not because it went into the sea, but it still got into contact with water and wet hands after that. Silly me. And thus my Nokia 6500 Slide went to handphone heaven. They bought me cake and we all ate it after dinner... this touches me so. :) Thanks so much, guys. Even though there were no photos... it was still an awesome day.

I kinda forgot what else I wanted to say already. It seems like the week of 25th to 31st October was uneventful right now, although I wasted my time trying to prepare for the Features of Academic Writing test and ended up getting very distracted. EDIT: I REMEMBER NOW! I wore my No.4 (BDU) for Halloween. The various laws scared the shit out of me so I decided not to bring my LBV + other gear along. I feared taking photographs and ended up having less fun than I should have. Grr. Stupid decision, gutless me. Heh.

And for the whole of this week, my parents went to China leaving me home alone to do all the housework and my laundry. I actually quite like it, save for the loneliness and increased expenditure. I failed to bag a girl home, though, wahaha. And I discovered that the bars and pubs along Joo Chiat Road were full of men and Vietnamese mamasans. It somehow felt... wrong.  At the time of this post, my parents have already returned and are unpacking their stuff...

Gah, can't remember what else to write. Signing off.

EDIT: Oh, I remember now. Reading about 1WO Thivvianathan's death (aka Warrant Nathan) in the papers on the 26th shocked me. He collapsed while on a run in the USA, he was there as the advance party for Exercise Forging Sabre, I think. I knew him from my days in 3 Signal, he was the Fleet Sergeant-Major (yes?) for the transport fleet and took very good care of our vehicles and by extension, ourselves even though all of us were not directly under him (but we were still drivers). He was strict, but fatherly and a very dedicated man. I went for his wake, and he looked so at peace lying in repose. May fair winds be with you, Sir.

MEGA POST. Pre 21st birthday.

3 weeks since last post. Getting caught up with stuff and no time to post even on freakin' Sunday... First to sum up happenings over the past 3 weeks. Memories are starting to be hazy, but several important events appeared on my radar of date. Our tutorial group had a barbecue at East Coast over on the 10th. I met up to buy what we thought we needed (miser in me says NTUC would have saved more $$$, heh) like food and all, and we happily trooped down to the beach in my mom's Piccanto. We reached the pit, and I went to start the fire circa 1830... but it was an epic fail. I was unable to raise it by 1930, and decided to go get some petroleum jelly (think that's what it was called) to burn. It worked for a bit, but still the fire failed to come up. Pissed by then, I was on the verge of giving up and the Chinese came in with stuff like paper (not to mention my own idea of using 木麻黄 which worked back in Scouts. THE FIRE COULDN'T COME UP EVEN BY 2130! Until Randie and Yunike got some other Singaporeans from another barbecue pit to come over and help, restarted the whole process and finally got our barbecue going. To the ex-MJC and ex-SRJC dudes, now Sea Soldiers at Changi Naval Base, kudos to you two.

Though I was semi-high and happy and all, but I regard that barbecue as the biggest failure I've ever been to, my fault mostly for failing on the fire. It's an affront to my fire-making skills I've supposedly learnt in Scouting, and it's not my first barbecue. My guess was it went downhill right from the start because I did not use enough firestarters and didn't construct my pyramids properly. But it's one in-fucking-credibly humbling experience for me. Sent some of my classmates home after that before reaching back home to die on my bed after bathing and all. Hehe.

On the following Monday, I got my Dad to send my inkjet cartridges to top-up. The guys there didn't reset the circuit board properly so I had to go down again to let them do it when I came home after school, feeling rather good after talking to someone nice. :). The day rapidly ran downhill as I drove the low-on-fuel car out to Bedok hoping I would last till my stop, and a petrol kiosk for top-up. In a hurry, I left the automatic transmission setting on "D" after parking my car, and rushed to get the cartridge topped up. When I came back, I couldn't start the damn car! Immediately assuming my fuel had run out, I ran around to search for petrol stations, finally finding one, buying 5 litres of unleaded octane-95, and ran back lugging the petrol tin to top it up. Managed to get a funnel and PVC tubing from the cartridge refill shop, and some nice uncles helped me with the top up. Which gave me more than enough fuel to drive home, but I just topped my my tanks anyway. And I got screwed by Mom. Fuck, if only I discovered earlier that I had left it on "D"...
Over the past few weeks I've actually been going around to drum up support for my bid to run for Student Council, posting on Facebook and even entering classes of the other tutorial group to seek support. I realise how similar this is to our Members of Parliament making visits to their constituencies to do the same; drum up support from their constituents! The results came in just on Monday (the 19th), and I got in. At this point in time I would once again like to thank all those who put in a vote for me (that means most, if not all of you, UoN FY August 09 Groups A and B!) - my classmates and friends from other courses, and also my mates from out of school for your advice and moral support. This whole week was a whirlwind of events, with Accounting and Economics tests, and also internal elections for the Executive Committee. Somehow... I ended up as President. I literally fell off my chair when I read the email informing us of the results, and had to read and re-read the email again to confirm what I was seeing.

This stage, the outgoing councillors (08/09 - you guys rock, srsly), May Fung, she of the VP for Student Affairs, and the Advisers Lydia and Teck Chin - many thanks for giving me this opportunity. To my team, if you're reading this: Help me to help you to help us! (yeah, typical SAF saying :P). And to my wonderful Aneru, my inner circle close buddy Jason and my first, one-and-only Mexican friend Gilberto: Gracias for your counsel and advice.

Today came the installation/investiture ceremony for us the 09/10 (PSB IVth Student Council), the III Council members officially handing over their duties to us this day. Apart from being showered with congratulations these two days, I've been thinking about the future and how things might turn out. We all of course want to leave a positive legacy behind... and butterflies spawn in my stomach at the thought of that. I screwed up on my speech though, despite memorising it, the slight change of plans ended up turning half of my speech into mush. Eeeps...

And, *someone* spread the news about my birthday during English lesson. :P As a result I had to go up front, make a little widdle birthday wish... and dance. With a girl. I randomly picked a Vietnamese girl out, and the whole 4 mins or so was pretty damned embarrassing for both of us. Kudos to Vy for being so sporting and nice... hope she feels alright and stuff. But yeah. It's a pretty good way to kick off a birthday, I guess, with early birthday present of getting into Council, the huge responsibility of President, and now this.  As you can see I'm getting tired of writing because my paragraphs are getting shorter.

My previous two birthdays have been special because I don't usually celebrate it, and I spent both 24 Octobers back then in camp. Both times, the entire company was turned out in the middle of the night, just so the three of us birthday boys can have water splashed on us in camp. I look back on those days fondly, especially the first turnout because we really didn't know it would end up like that...

...to be cont'd next post.

Wake Me Up, When September Ends...

(This was finally posted on the 27th of September 2009) It's been a long, fucking month. Some weeks went amazingly, some, perhaps a bit of a downer but perhaps it's my attitude that's been causing it. Anyway, school has been busy, and life in general passes me by. Let me try to remember what I did for the whole of September.

Everything start off from the very first weekend, the 5th. It was an adventure! (I went along and helped my Indonesian classmates celebrate another Indonesian, Randie's 18th birthday by giving a surprise at his home, then tying him up and raping him :P Those crazy girls and soya sauce... gosh. Poor Randie had to bathe again after that, but I'm sure it would be memorable for him. And I spent some time at his home the day before, too (the 4th, Friday). Then it was cycling at East Coast, where I was made to walk a lot because my fellow schoolmates dropped off at the wrong bus stop and I had to pick them up :P (they aren't Singaporean, so I won't fault them too much I guess. Blame Murphy. :P) And it was the barbecue with my Chinese schoolmates that was the most fun and trouble. I popped by to see people, ended up helping them cook (you noobs! :P), and as a result, watched two girls get madly drunk, and spent the night taking care of them with the other guys. One went ballistically emo, the other was high and couldn't help giggling and using English 99% of the time. It was a loooooooooong night, and hard work. Kudos to the Korean Jun who brought a first-aid kit with Panadol, gloves and whatnot. As such, I had tons of work not done, fortunately there was enough time to clear them all. At times, I just feel so powerless at times... I was madly tired on Sunday as a consequence of the weekend.

The next week, we got to know our English presentation results. I scored pretty damned well, so that was awesome. Point of note was the "Fiona Xie Missing" article in the Chinese papers. Damn we're going to lose our number 1 TV hot babe. lol, oh well...

The winning Commonwealth Essay was published in the papers sometime around the second week or third week too. I read it, and it reminded me of the war stories I used to write for submission back in the old days. I was wondering if it were too violent to be published in the papers which gave me zero chance of winning at all... Haha. The essay was written very well, I think, if a bit abruptly-ended.

Third week: Sometimes the past resurfaces, when I want to bury it. At other times I dig it up of my own volition. Victoria Junior College will always have a special place in my heart. I am proud of the school for what it is, and the helluva fun times I spent in there. But my downfall also happened in those two years of my life, the life-crusher that was my 'A' Levels. From end of that until recently, my life was shrouded in darkness and fog. It's been, lightening up these few months, but I am sure I am not the same person I was right when I entered Junior College.

test coming up. must mug. here we go! Pwned the Econs test xD

Now, I was wonder if I have posted this before? This is just a thought of mine: Many times people surprise me with how much they have changed over the years. They have matured, as I probably have (a bit late?). and I used to have bad impresions of them, but they seem more successful than I am for now. Heh. my pride cometh before my fall, and I should stop my self-depreciation.

And, just over the weekend, was the Orientation (and Overnight, aka O2) Camp at PSB Academy. I joined it mainly because I wanted to have a feel of school life, to meet others, and have some fun. That was the main reason. Since I was running for Student Council as a nominee, I was actually required to attend the camp. But I would have even if I was not going for Council. So we nominees became group leaders, to be evaluated by I think the seniors and the referees during the games. We started off with icebreaking and typical camp-style orientation games on Friday evening, and proceeded on to the first half of the Amazing Race-analog, which was to find clues all around school at night. I must say some of the clues were pretty darned difficult to solve, others easy and stuff. So I led my team, the Black Mambas around, taking on suggestions from everyone along the way. We lost in the end though, perhaps due to fatigue, and some interference from some people. I was left questioning my leadership style. Well, I was high that night, and tried to influence others so, but there wasn't support from my assistant in this aspect (he works differently, and he helped me in many other ways, so that was good too). Anyway, it was good, clean fun and all, and we retired to bed and shower at 3am-ish. I ended up not sleeping because I went to play this game of dares with some other Singaporeans, Malaysians and stuff. I tell you, the Malaysians have REALLY CRAZY (and horny) ideas. Wahaha. I have never experienced close contact with females before, but this game, I did every damned thing. Even with guys... *dies* lol. It was crazy. And I became a zombie next morning.

For the second part of the Race, another nominee took over as leader. I relegated myself to last man to chase everyone on (the front wasn't opening up, and the rear lacked a bit of stamina IMO). We managed to make 3rd which was very nice. The clues were pretty easy to solve this time round, though, with adequate hints from our dear ref Zung. :) All-in-all, the camp was pretty much standard fare, but I met so many other students from our courses, and that's the biggest takeaway I got. On a surreal note, I never imagined I'd be dancing to Nobody (the version with all guys dancing to that song) yesterday, having seen the video before. I went home tired and aching, and on a semi-depressive low perhaps induced by my adrenaline ebbing away and the effects of green tea wearing off. Next up is the speech which has me worried. There is some fear about not being able to make it to the Council I admit, which would mean I have no CCA for the next school year (I'm used to CCAs, damnit! Kekeke), but this also means I can dedicate more of my energies back to the Youth Olympics.

I then went down to see the F1 (Singapore Grand Prix 2009) qualifiers since SYOGOC gave us free whole-day tickets to the qualifiers. I only went for the 1 hour race which was the main attraction for me because I am not really a motorsports enthusiast. I was still tired, and at one point in time I was actually dozing off. Well, just the see and hear the cars blast past me is a unique experience, and really brightened up what was left of the day after that. :P I did not stick around to walk the grounds, and headed for home after waiting for human traffic to clear up. On the way back I did see a Caucasian man walking around, handphone in hand, asking if anyone was selling tickets to today's race. So desperate... he looked drunk though.

And that basically sums up the entire frigging month. Jiayu aka JY signs off here.

Posting so little.

I haven't made a post in two weeks. Why? Because there isn't much to post about. Going into the 4th academic week of the school year now, things are slowly settling in (although the quizzes haven't come yet). Lots of pretty (Chinese; meaning from China) girls in school, but also some from the other countries. Being amongst tons of international students, whatever their background, is a new experience. And I've resorted to introducing myself as JY instead of Jiayu (I still think the 'Vernon' moniker is SYOGOC-YOV-exclusive, heh) so I wouldn't have to repeat myself for my non-Chinese-speaking friends. Somehow my tongue seems to get stuck too... but they're all welcome to know my Chinese name, the last vestiges of my roots? Heh.

So the graded presentation for English came to pass on Friday. Everything went well, the timing was... 'adjusted' (thanks Alvin! :D), I said okay, the pictures kind of screwed up but the storm passed. I was acting like an idiot on that day because I made the noobest of noob mistakes. Copy-pasting the picture from my computer instead of inserting it. So other laptops obviously cannot read the picture... I must resolve to save my pictures on my portable hard drive in the future too. So I had to return to my resources to get the photos again (luckily I remembered them, luckily there was a LAN cable for high-speed Internet access). Thanks to Paolo for the laptop, and apologies to everyone whom I acted like a complete idiot too.

Hontou ni gomen nasai! :\

And that's all for the past two weeks, methinks.

First Class, One Year Countdown, National Day Rally?

So school has officially started. The orientation brief went okay and I had to reach out to make new friends, two Singaporeans, some Indonesians, a Cambodian for starters. None of my accquaintances were in PSB Academy-University of Newcastle since they all made it to the Big 3, SIM, or overseas. It has always been like this, for the past few years I guess. Always me going at it alone in a foreign environment. I need to adapt, and I really need to, because this is where I will study for the next 3 years or something. I have got something to prove also, to myself, to the world, to the rest of the people that I am not a failure yet, and I will graduate with a degree, honours preferably (First Class Honours would be truly wonderful... those days are far off, let me concentrate on Year 1 first). Now PSB Academy doesn't have as wonderful a reputation as SIM or the Big 3 (the way I see it), and it's image has been further spoiled by the smokers who smoke outside the school campus (since smoking is not allowed on-campus -> perceptions matter no matter the tolerance level), my ex-classmate reminded me of that fact when she drew in a deep breath after I said where I studied - because her mother spotted the smokers when she passed by the school, and wondered, "Just what kind of students go to this school?" Her words cut deep into my heart, and stung me deeply. From a student who was once in the top 10 - 15% of the cohort... this is how far I have fallen.

I must have the discipline. Already, I have wallowed in the pit of doom that I had dug for myself for two years. Now I am in purgatory, my actions for the next few years will determine whether I can escape, or just fall back into the depths of darkness. The fires of determination have been stoked, but can I keep it burning?

I intend to run for council this time round. We'll see if good ol' Jiayu can make it.

More about school next. The lecturers/teachers for my four subjects seem pretty professional and know their stuff, so what remains is my effort. I have some interesting people in my tutorial groups, plus a bunch of Chinese who are pretty impressed I can keep up a conversation with them for a bit. I am grateful for my four years in Dunman High, and 5 years in Tao Nan, that have allowed me to remain in touch with my Chinese roots to this day (at least able to communicate in Mandarin, for one). And my Mom too, for the endless drills back when I was younger. She now uses them on her tuition students. :P Sadly, Singaporeans are few and far between, I am hoping more will come in next year when the course starts proper.

*****

Friday was the One-Year Countdown for the Youth Olympic Games. At the Padang, the countdown clock was unveiled by the Guests of Honour, which included Mr Teo Ser Luck, Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan and Professor S. Jayakumar (whom I think has to be highest Cabinet-level GOH for a YOG-related event that I've seen thus far - correct me if I am wrong). The emcee for the day was Daniel Ong (I still like him! :), so its awesome, and I went down in my SYOGOC Purple T-shirt, met Nicole, and ended up doing the flag marchpast-waving thing with her and the Young NTUC people. I said my "hi"s and byes to all my ex-colleagues, the feeling was very good. Then the flag waving, where my mini flag dropped somewhere during the waving. I was in front and being photographed so I think some bad photos were snapped while I picked up the cloth flag. :\. The music made everyone high, and we were all (and I mean EVERYONE!) dancing and waving our flags. My arms ached after that, I tell you. I spotted myself on the news on TV, by identifying the flag which I waved (Patrick passed me the big flag to wave, too!), and in newspaper photos, where my sleeves could briefly be seen. Hahaha. So much for appearing in the media. So it was like a massive party, and it's now less than a year to the Games. I wonder just what sort of volunteer training I would receive, and where I would be deployed? Hopefully somewhere special. Anyway, the wonderful people at SYOGOC did a wonderful job organising this and doing all their work, including the interns who stayed on... :) Real cool shit. Maybe I'll come back during my next holidays? Heh.

*****

National Day Rally. PM says economy is doing okayish. Take care of ourselves. Unity and racial Harmony. And the future looks awesome (I quite liked the concept video done by URA of the downtown skyline in the near future). PM asked for YOG volunteers! :) No other comments because I only half-listening and busy doing work. Should I be more involved and concerned? My skills of interpretation are not so up to date and refined yet, yes? But I'm likely going to be a journalist in the future, so...

Hmph.

Signing off, on to yet another day of school.

Comparing myself and the others, and my juniors, always always pains me so. What's the point, damnit?

EDIT @ Monday 170809 1205: Oh, and I missed the STGCC (Singapore Toy, Games and Comic Convention) over the weekend! Busy with schoolwork, and didn't really have the spare time to go for it. I think this is the second edition, the first being held in June last year when I was still in NS. And I missed it again! Oh, the pain! If it's held in August next year it better be at a good timing so I can go see see, and not miss YOG as well. *sighs* I did see some cosplayers around in the City Hall area as I passed it, though. Maybe I'll pull out the P90 and cosplay one day...

EDIT @ Tuesday 180809 1135: Prof. Jayakumar was right. The Padang has been the site for many of Singapore's historical moments, with the declaration of our independence (yes?), the first few NDPs, our winning bid to host YOG, and now, the One-Year Countdown.

Flip to a blank page, and start on the next chapter.

Orientation brief for school is tomorrow. School starts on Wednesday. OH MY GOD! I got the jitters since 4.30pm. GAH!

Please read and comment on my articles on Facebook if you haven't. Thanks! :D

I haven't posted in a while...

Haven't posted in a bit because I was busy being a hikikomori. Well, almost. Sucks, but I am beginning to see the signs... Anyway, with a simple Ctrl-F5 (why didn't I think of that?) Blogspot/Blogger has returned to looking normal for me. So, since my last post, I have still been stuck at home, and going out with friends and stuff. Caught Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (didn't mean to, but since it's with friends, I'm okay with it), and went for a secondary school class dinner (30 July) which ended up with a few of us chatting into the wee hours of the morning (5am) at Chen Chung's bachelor pad.

At this dinner, I met some of the classmates I haven't seen in years (5 and more, since the end end of secondary school!), especially Zhi Perng, who goes by the English name "Hale" and has developed an American accent now, and also Chen Chung. The other classmates who have gone overseas like Michelle Low, Yao Xu, Jeldine were present too, whom I've met in recent times. It was a good meeting, and the food wasn't bad or anything. But it is wondreful to catch up.

I met my ex-bosses (back from my days at Asteroids Cyber) Andrew and Angeline at Parkway Parade again yesterday, but they didn't recognise me so I did not go up and have a chat or something. Oher than this, I have encountered nothing really interesting nor happening. Hikikomori... :P School will start next Tuesday, and with only nothing else but resolve, I step into the breach once again.

And memorials ... we must never forget the horrors of nuclear warfare. I have floated this idea of writing something on it, but I haven't got around to doing it. Perhaps I will do a mega nuclear-war-thing-cum-National Day article on the 9th on Facebook notes. If I'm ever up to it, lazy fucker... Heh.

Jiayu, signing off.

Of falling sick, and quarantines.

I am actually still supposed to be in Vietnam now, but I am not. Instead, I am here, blogging, and cursing, and grieving over all this. It is still annoying no matter how you look at it. What happened? I have no idea. My throat started feeling queasy on Monday night, and by Tuesday morning I developed a fever. Not wanting to chance it, I went straight to see the doctor whose initial diagnosis was the cold, and to see him again on Friday if things did not improve. My 39 degree fever went up and down, and I felt the chills as well as being unbearably hot at the same time so my mother decided to bring me for a second visit on Wednesday instead.

Another doctor decided to just prescribe Tamiflu from the government stockpile. I will never know if I really got H1N1, but statistics-wise I should have contracted it. No idea who infected me with it. Anyway, I DID come down with a viral infection, which the first dose of Tamiflu made me vomit twice over. But by the second dose I was starting to feel mighty fine. Thank goodness for Tamiflu, I guess. 75mg oseltamivir. At $6 per capsule ($60 for initial dose of 10), Tamiflu is a rather expensive drug...

Tuesday also began my self-imposed home quanrantine. I started to get bored by Friday, and was especially so on Saturday. How many social events had I to cancel just because I fell sick? I was mightily pissed at myself, my bad timing, and every other damn thing. I had to skip watching Harry Potter with my ex-colleagues from SYOGOC, missed 20th Century Boys Chapter 2 in the cinemas, missed my ex-air-rifle teammate's birthday, HAD TO CANCEL MY TRIP TO VIETNAM ($200 dollars! AGH! And the fun of going with Wen Xiang to see Jun Wen.... lksdgfh***!!!) among other things, like VJC's 25th Anniversary Homecoming Dinner... (->I never planned to go for that, but the flu is a convenient excuse to blame it on, yes? :P). Now, I am itching to go out. Staying cooped up at home is just too much... Tomorrow when my self-imposed quarantine ends (social responsibility dictates that I stay away from the world for a bit), I'm going to go out or something.

Yeah, crazy Jiayu ranting and raving over small matters such as these. Prior to this I have already spent about two weeks at home. This week was supposed to be my 'active' week, but in the end it was yet another week at home. And with this, there isn't any time left before school starts. Goddamnit.

Something I need to comment about though. Last week a news report came in in the papers about a certain NUS undergrad having sleazy photos splashed online. I got wind of the news a few days before it came out in the papers... and I was shocked! I actually knew this girl from my primary school days... While doubting the credibility of the the pictures, what I was sure of was this: She made enemies somewhere who were out to sully her name (there were some hate comments already). And sully they did... the newspapers did not reveal which faculty she was from, nor her name, just that she was yet another victim in this type of sleazy pictures controversy thingamajig. Well, like what I posted on my Facebook status updates, this is indeed true: Until something happens to someone you know/close to you, then the reality of it strikes true. Otherwise it'd just seem like a faraway event, a statistic...

Signing off to get more bored.

Provenance of Intransigence

The posting layout for blogspot seems to have become screwed up. I have no idea why, but it just doesn't work on Firefox nor IE8.

Anyway, on to the title and all. No inspiration for any particular title except "Days go by..." which seemed to be part of a trance song thingy I remember hearing on the radio in secondary school. I believe I have used it before already, so, nada. Then these words popped in slowly, and they sounded okay, so there you go. Why the heck am I giving reasons for titling my posts huh? Damnit.

To continue on from the last post, I have already spent a week lounging about at home mostly and being a 宅男. On impulse (partially hoping to get a photoshoot out of this) I went down to (Black Tactical near Bedok Interchange -> that's the shop) purchase a replica FN Herstal P90 (it's a toy, with light and sound but I took out the batteries - don't need them) and started to mod it a little bit. I want to add a scope/sight on to it but the cost is stopping me a bit. It's a bit wasteful to spend on these kind of stuff that will probably fulfil only my desires for attention and narcissitic tendencies. So I'm still undecided as to whether to go all the way... but I really do want that photoshoot for kicks.

After watching 20th Century Boys Chapter One: The Beginning of the End (in Japanese: 20世紀少年第一章：終わりの始まり, ni-jyuu seiki shounen dai ichi shou: owari no hajimari), I got hooked onto the series (heard of it before, but only decided to watch it now and stuff) so I went to read the manga. Spent two days rushing through it. It's awesome stuff, and I like the way Urasawa Naoki handles the suspense and story development. And revisiting memories like the characters do is something close to me. The art is good, but the ending felt a bit rushed. (SPOILER ALERT: I thought that the reasons for both of the "Friend"(s) to do evil and all were a little... weak, especially the second guy.) It's the little bit of manga/anime I've been looking at, just not in the mood to follow any other things, not even Haruhi rebroadcast + new content (although I did watch the Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody episode).

So, yes. Apart from catching up on my hobbies I have not been doing anything productive.

Read through the whole thread at Hardwarezone about PSB Academy courses but only a few of my questions were answered. I fear a lot for the first year, especially for Mathematics which I need to face again, and the new battlefields of Economics and Accounting. Very worrying indeed.

Chillout time!

So this week I'm officially done and not tied down with much things. No work, AYG finished, so I got the time to chill out at home, spent on Wikipedia, Youtube, returning to that frustrating Silent Hunter 4 (not too bad now that I have the 5 incher and 40mms on my sub), and discovering what caramelldansen is all about, among others. Did I mention that I watched Transformers with Jason and gang the week before? If no, it's because it is too insignificant to talk about. American military hardware porn, loud and noisy. I thought the 'bots looked more alive this time round though, great work on the animation for their eyes...

I got accepted into the Bachelor of Communications course offered by University of Newcastle, but it's a conditional offer and I need to pass Year 1 at PSB Academy first. This means returning to my greatest enemy, Mathematics. The euphoria of finally being given a stab at a degree kinda died down once reality kicked in. So I really need to work hard this time round, for Phase II of my plan to come to fruition: to complete the final year on-campus in Newcastle, Australia itself. Ganbatte watashi! Meanwhile, at least a candle has now been lit in the once-dark room, where my dreams and occasional fantasy/scenario setting can have a wee bit more colour than before. Is good.

I went back to SYOGOC on Wednesday for the CAN! Click briefing which got pushed forward without my knowledge. So I stuck around to chat and say my final final goodbyes, and helped out San San with some phone calls to volunteers after being hinted at multiple times by Radha. Kekekeke. :P Thursday was dinner with Jason, two of his buddies from the Army, and Matheus whom I have not seen in ages since BMT ended, this muscleman is now studying in Australia and having a whale of a time there. Awesome shit, dude.

Friday was AYG Volunteer Appreciation, which I thought would be kinda party-like. Was itching to do caramelldansen live. :P But it was not to be. We collected our certificates and limited edition Frasia plushie, and then sat through thank-you speeches by Mr Ng Ser Miang and Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean. Then they treated us to Stefanie Sun's concert - which means we got to preview her concert on Friday for free unlike those who bought tickets to her real concert the next day. Some of her fans from Hong Kong managed to 'infiltrate' the scene, but Hong Jun tells me some tickets are usually set aside for fan clubs so they can send people in to show support for their idols.

While I am not a Stefanie Sun fan (although I believe her First Day is a must-have for every concert -> makes people high), I think her singing is pretty good! Assuming no on-scene microphone editing and whatnot, she sounds as good live as from the radio/CDs. Sadly, I thought that the experience for our non-Chinese friends was marred, because Stefanie was more comfortable speaking and singing in Mandarin, (she did do an English song, and Nathan Hartono did two as well). I noticed some people leaving halfway, making the Indoor Stadium even emptier. Those who stayed made the best out of what they had. I saw some Malays getting high and pumped up by songs like First Day. A bunch sitting behind me were rather irritating since they were being rather obnoxious. They didn't leave, but made comments like "Lady Gaga poser!!" (I understand where that came from -> her first appearance was in a blonde wig) and things like that throughout.

Well, at least I got a free concert. Will upload the photos when I feel like it. :)

->Twice in two weeks I go into the Indoor Stadium to sit. It's like, the first time to the Indoor Stadium in my entire life! Hehe.

And there was Saturday! Being free and all, I signed up for the CAN! Event (CAN! Click this time round, theme is Digital Media, with the preview of the Virtual World and all) to help out (already decided to do so in my last days at SYOGOC). My assignment kinda got messed up, but Ephraim got me to help out with postcard sticking, which I did after helping Adrian preload the Flash game submissions. For the majority of the event, however, I was at the Coke booth with volunteers from NYP like Linda, and MSP's Joyce (! :). I never had so much fun giving out Coke and Sprite bottles especially towards the end where we leh-longed them all to clear stock. :) Kekeke. Stayed back to help pack up, take photos and sent the CEP people off squeezing in Daniel's rented van. An awesome display of team spirit came when the Communications and Media people (Amanda and co.) realised they hadn't made a backup of a file on a laptop they had used. All the 40 laptops had been consolidated, so all of us jumped in to boot them ALL up to hunt for that elusive Excel spreadsheet. Someone announced a bounty of $5 for the file, which I thought I found (but it wasn't it), but ended up with the lappie Sharmayne picked. This is teamwork, I tell you!

And today, while going home from Takashimaya, I walked past a bunch of people who were drumming up a beat (with 4 models - 3 female 1 male sashaying in front) to create attention for Orchard Central (new mall?). The beat was awesome, and they were high, reminded me of what we interns did for Volunteer Day.

And so ends my observations for this week. Already filled it in and accepted their offer, will be sending it in tomorrow. Jiayu, signing off now.

AYG Action (Part 2 of 2)

On to my AYG volunteering experience. I was the Results Distribution Manager for Shooting (@SAFRA Yishun's Indoor Air Weapons Range, upgraded to be fully electronic), so that put me in the field of play where I could catch the action up close (in fact, I stepped into the control room for the first time in my life!) What I had to do, was to send copies of the results out to my runners after every event for distribution, as well as making sure that the results were entered into the Games Management System. Under my charge were a few kids from Yishun Town Secondary, good work to you guys (Dao Long, Wei Tao, Esther, Grace, Karin and er... didn't get her name. Last two were detached to me from their duties as runners for the Competition Manager who didn't seem to have work for them to do. :))

Apart from some (in my opinion) overboard and double-standard security measures that I chafed under, I generally encountered no problems in my work. I enjoyed watching the shooters, and got the job done with my runners. This was basically an independent operation with no real chain of command to worry about unless serious shit stirred up, but since that did not happen, then all was good. Made several friends over the past 4 days, chatting and stuff. Of note were the people from Sius Ascor (the scoring people): the friendly Martin, and the temperamental and flirtacious (but well-versed in his work) Michael; the one I clicked easily with because we were both Star Wars fans: Emanuel from MSL (the sub-contractor for timing and scoring), and the other Spanish dude who was quieter most of the time. Last but not least, the frienly jury, especially the grandfatherly Dr. Auchai Kanjanapitak! :) Also the SSC staffers Grace and Jeanine and Emilia who were awesome, hardworking people.

To enjoy watching shooting it is really about the state of mind that you have to put yourself into. I am rifle-biased, so the rifle events were more interesting for me. Every moment spent in the control room though, was rather tense, especially during the top 8 shootoff placing between Singapore and Thailand (we lost by 0.1 there, sadly, but good work Jia Yi!), the rifle women's junior finals, and the nail biting rifle men's junior finals, where our very own Abel Lim Wen Yi clinched 3rd place with his last shot to overcome his opponent for the bronze. I pumped my fists in the air as I saw the score. And you could see the look of relief and joy on his face as he ended! This is all so beautiful...

Betting with Jun Hong on who to win the matches was an exciting business too. We used the collar pins from the various countries as our 'currency'. I tell you, even if Singapore was not in the finals at least I had someone to root for! :P I won one and lost a bet for the rifle events, so I had to get for him one from China's shooting association.

I also got to experience and understand the level of strictness at these highest levels of sports. There was a motion to deduct points for Iran (I think) for reporting late, which did not go through, but the fact that they wanted to do it shows us all the discipline we should have as sportspeople. Chinese Taipei was also awarded a 0 for releasing an empty shot during the Air Rifle Men's Junior. A protest to reshoot that shot was overturned. Definitely, the quality of the athletes, and respect for the rules is clearly evident and very important at these levels.

China did not manage to sweep all the golds for shooting, the pistol golds all going to South Korea. I spotted the Chinese girl and the Koreans crying after the final, but ones were tears of joy, the Chinese, heartbroken at her defeat I guess. Still, this is life. I noticed during the victory ceremony for Air Rfle Men's Junior, that the Chinese athletes shook hands with the others before going to receive the medal, thus making the VIP (President of the Olympic Council of Asia) wait on them before being able to present the medal. Which makes me wonder, while the sportsmanship to congratulate your fellow opponents is good, should it wait till later, because allowing an important figure to wait on you is rather like a protocol issue, and not too good?

For Team Singapore, Abel is surprisingly easy to get along with even though I did not know him before (nor any of our youth teams shooters, for that matter). Nice guy to talk to and stuff, although I missed out on a photo op with him and the medal. I did commend the rifle girls on their good showing hours after their events, but that came out weird. They must be thinking why a random volunteer would come up and talk to them, or something? I don't know. Sorry if it was awkward, girls!

Also finally had to chance to meet with and talk to the staff at the range whom I've been seeing around over the years. The Malay dude (still serving NS, I ORD LOH HAHAHA) and Matthew, the Chief Range Officer this time round, also the short and cute girl who's still working there since I saw her from JC1 onwards (how long has this been, 5 years?), among others.

Not to forget the SYOGOC Technology Division people Yvon, Jiaren, Michael, and so on, who were there to observe, and iron out issues with Sius as well as those who were with Broadcast. 你们受够Michael J. 的气了！See you guys next year!

And now a combined shoutout to SYOGOC, whom I've been with the past four months, and the AYG volunteers and staff that I've met including Multilingual Switchboard, now that shooting is over (ended on Saturday, actually): TAKE CARE, ALL OF YOU GUYS, WE'LL SEE EACH OTHER AROUND! :)

This is the awesome.

Signing off, methinks.

Last Day at SYOGOC (Part 1 of 2)

Tuesday marked the end of my internship at the Singapore Youth Olympic Games Organising Committee. I spent the day organising my stuff and uploading all relevant data to the network server, and preparing to hand over physical documents to dear Gilberto. I bid my Multilingual Switchboard volunteers and fellow Language Services interns farewell, although those that I really wanted to see weren't there. Then I went to the Technology Division to return my laptop, to discover to my horror that the large sticker I pasted on the cover needed to be removed. So I spent the next hour plucking out the sticker, and erasing the sticky base away. Would have taken a lot longer if my colleague Mandy did not come to my help halfway through. So I basically said bye to everyone I knew and saw... and met Mr Eric Tan, the Chief Operating Officer (and ex-Village Director) in the lift twice or thrice that day.

Well, all things must come to an end and while I pulled long hours, the experience there was generally fun and enriching. I'm committed to be a volunteer anyway, so I will be back. :) As I left the office at 7-ish, I took one last photo of the empty YOV Division... photos should be up on Facebook someday. Heh. But I never completed my clearance thanks to the laptop.

So after volunteering at the Asian Youth Games the next day (Wednesday), I rushed back down to complete the rest of it. I met our CEO, Mr, Goh Kee Nguan for the second time that day (first was when he came down to the shooting range earlier), what a coincidence. With him was Mr Essar Gabriel, IOC-appointed Head of the Youth Olympic Games. A real tall man... Once again said my "see-you-agains" to those I didn't say yesterday. Hehe! So that was it, the final moments of my time as SYOGOC staff, spread over two days by circumstance. I was actually missing it already, had I not had AYG volunteering to busy myself with I might have been emo, at least for Wednesday. Teeheehee.

1st Asian Youth Games 2009 Opening Ceremony

I need to get this out of my head before it starts to fade away.

Firstly, kudos to the Organising Committee for everything, from planning, operational simulation, client flows, etc etc, stage managing and all.

Credit also given to the performers who have rehearsed so much and done pretty well under the tutelage of their trainers/choreographers.

And the volunteers who helped out everywhere.

And to anyone else who I missed (yes, very general). You all must be pleased that things went pretty well! Job well done. Transport was coordinated enough that the NOCs weren't delayed and all, so that's good.

As SYOG-staff (my final moments), I'm sure we have taken away many learning points, both the good to repeat and make better for our own Opening Ceremony next year, and the mistakes to correct as well.

From here on, all my comments shall be made in the capacity of a private citizen, a Singaporean who is 4 months away from his right to franchise (Franchise generally means a right or privilege. It may refer to suffrage; the civil right to vote).

Lets see: Minor confusion in where to enter to get to our seats but resolved once we followed directions given by staffers. Okay. My first time to the Singapore Indoor Stadium, and sitting inside, ever! 21 years and I've only gone to the National Stadium... so this is pretty amazing for suaku ol' me. Saw several Civil Defence Cadet Corps' cadets being deployed for crowd control... okay. Got into our seats.

Performance starts. Now I am not trained to pick up nuances or the higher-level inferences from performances, and I was too busy taking photos (badly taken on camera phone, also a bad habit!) to really watch the movements (must have missed some fine ones), but this is what I have to say. It was a literaly youth-spammage, since the performers were all like, primary schoolkids or teenagers. Okay, got nothing against that. But it's their energy. Their vibrancy, their energy, that I could sense. Which was good. I may be all emo and dead and stuff, but this I can feel, this is IT, man! I guess everything went well with only a few minor hitches here and there. We've got quite some talent! Even the theme song sounded good for once. :) Also, some tricks were brought over from previous National Day Parades: changing colour of costumes mid-performance (with the velcro thingy), and remote controlled kites for example.

I can has national pride? Rising to welcome our Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, and singing Majulah Singapura, I felt my heart swell with pride. Must have been the loudest anthem I've sung in a while, and the best-feeling of those. Perhaps it was because my fellow Mexican intern Gilberto was beside me, and Alexander and Konstantin, one a Russian intern and the other a volunteer, were behind me, which made me want to sing it all out loud and just show them. A true display of patriotic spirit. HELL YEAH! Awesome shit.

Then came the Athletes' Parade. Afghanistan and Timor-Leste only had a flag-bearer each that looked like volunteers. Checking the AYG website, I found that they weren't in the medal tally list. I think they must have not sent any delegation down at all... oh well. There was a bottleneck towards the middle of the parade where the various teams got choked as they paraded half the performance area to return to their holding point. From what I saw, there was little space to move because the performers were not cleared away. Other than that, quite epic already to see the flags of all the countries and the athletes. Team Singapore got the loudest cheers, of course. I spotted the shooters.

Flag-raising of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) flag, during which Gilberto spotted the Afghanistan (? - think so, one of the first few) country placard-holder faint. She was brought out by medics. Must be the 'parade syndrome', which is probably caused by fatigue, lack of hydration, or food... Spied on Taiwanese athletes taking pictures with our placard holders too (all of them were female, and rather nice-looking. DAMN YOU CHINESE TAIPEI! lol :P)

+ speeches in between

Then the cauldron was lighted with the three torches held by Tao Li, Remy Ong and Jasmine Ser. Singsongs, and it was finished. With music blasting and athletes dispersing, the performers started dancing themselves and did choo-choo trains, holding on to each others' shoulders and runing around. It must be the post-performance buzz, and the fact that "IT'S ALL OVER!" for them. I am really impressed by their energy.

A lot of audience seats weren't filled up though. Some tickets not sold, I presume. And that's about it, a post about the opening ceremony.

Dispersed out of the area with Aaron.

Source of ticket shall not be named to protect identity lol. Met some of our volunteers there too.

I can has DHS pride? Ng Ser Miang! Anyway, all in all, quite high lah. That about sums it all up.

Signing off. Last day at work tomorrow *sob!*

Take A Breather

The action this week is a lot less, and I get to have some breathing space. I wonder if I will ever be suited to office work after all...

I still owe an article to a colleague of mine, will get down to doing it tomorrow perhaps. Other than this, the entire week has been pretty unremarkable for me. the Multilingual Switchboard is all set and ready and we have survived a few days of operations. With AYG heating up, I wonder if our volunteers will finally get busy. Amongst them was a Korean girl from DHS, and a DHS alumni. Way to go Dunman! :) The world is small indeed. The volunteers we have had thus far were pretty nice people, and we've had Russian students as young as 14 to Singaporeans as old as 50+. And *gasp!* a fellow Dragon baby! Have chitchatted with them over meals for the past few days, and also with our new interns, Gilberto Orozco from Mexico and Alexander Agenosov from Russia. Gil's a nice dude to talk to, and Alex reminds me of Vladimir Putin. Hehehehe!

That said, it was quite shocking to receive the news that the King of Pop, Michael Jackson died. Where were you when he died? When news broke at 5.24am, I was still asleep. I heard some whispers of it at work but I never really paid attention until 1pm when I browsed Channel NewsAsia's website during lunch. Then reality hit. That was when I discovered that Farah Fawcett lost her battle against anal cancer. One a talented musician who never seemed to grow up, and trying to make a comeback, the other an angel who went from small-time actress to pin-up and an icon of her time. Adding Ed McMahon (I don't know him, Americans should know him better) we have 3 celebrities who have been claimed by Death this week.

MJ's death certainly had an impact across the world as news sites, Google, Wikipedia and places like Youtube all saw net users swarming related pages for more information/memorials. Page views spiked massively on that day. News stations all ran broadcasts about his death, as did radio stations, playing his songs in tribute. Outpourings of grief came from his fans all over the world. And... his album sales jumped in the aftermath of his death.

I am not a fan of him personally, but I thought his songs that I have heard, like "Beat It", "Billie Jean" and "Rock My World" were pretty nice. And lets not forget his slick moves like the moonwalk (he didn't invent it, but he popularised it - I tried to do it but it turned out too stiff. lol)

*sighs* He seemed pretty troubled, after all...

Lastly, I totally agree with what the Vatican's newspaper, the Osservatore Romano had printed about his death. Here is the relevant excerpt, quoted from The Sunday Times today: "...no accusation, however serious or shameful, is enough to tarnish his myth among his millions of fans throughout the entire world".

May he, Farah, and Ed rest in eternal peace. Is death deliverance, I ask?

Signing off.

Busiest week yet

Last week I put in enough OT to last me at least an extra one to two working days (+2 to 3 hours each day - is this a precursor to real working life?), heh. Was busy helping to organise and schedule the volunteers for the Asian Youth Games' Multilingual Switchboard (a service we're providing to them, also to net some data for our own use). I have since realised that searching for, then managing volunteers isn't so easy after all, especially when you have need to maximise the coverage that your volunteers can provide.

Since the week before, I have been making phone calls and emails and hopefully the schedule is more or less locked in. My supervisor, the new Mexican intern and I blasted till 10pm on Friday night to try and settle things. It's a very valuable insight that I have gotten from this and I now have new-found respect for the peeps over at Volunteer Management who will have their work cut out for them in engaging and scheduling volunteer workforce come Games time. So far they seem to be doing a good job though. :)

Many of the interns in my... "cohort" (can't find a better term) had their last day of work on Friday. So less people to say hi to each day. :P Last week was totally peaceful because there were fewer people in the office. We've had a lot of staffers being deployed to observe or help out at AYG. Speaking of AYG, I went for the shooting dry run at Yishun SAFRA on Saturday. Everything seems to be going well, and the electronic range is really freaking awesome to see in operation. I have finally witnessed a true rifle 10.9 as well, which was like, woah (I may have hit a few back in VJ, but those were 10.9s by eye, and not machine). Awesome is the word. The fellow volunteers I spoke to were deployed here instead of having a choice (if I had blindly followed my assignment I would have been deployed at the airport), and, having to sit through even 30 minutes of qualifiers and 15 minutes of finals simulation, they found it rather boring. *shrugs* Like I have been saying, air weapons competitions are all about the state of mind, for participant and spectator alike. I'm glad I managed to find myself a spot for shooting. Hope the 4 days I'll be involved in will be fun, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and no H1N1. Hehe! (I've been deployed as a Results Distribution Manager, by the way).

After the dry run, I headed all the way down to the National Stadium to collect my AYG Volunteer uniform. Due to issues with workmanship, they have decided not to issue the bermudas to us at all. How... disappointing. o.o Anyway, AYG has already started with football and stuff, so we all need to see this event to its culmination.

I spent a dollar today buying cone ice-cream from a roadside stall (y'know, those on bicycles/motorbikes with those fatherly vendors...) on impulse. Haven't done so in years, I used to bug my parents for them when I was a kid. My occasional craves for ice cream in cones nowadays have been satisfied by refrigerated stuff at convenience stores, or shopping centres, so it felt really good to go back to this. Yup. But it's all so ephemeral, so transient, so fleeting...

And I met Jacqueline (I'll always remember her as CYY more than Jac :P) at Paya Lebar MRT. That's twice within a weeks' span (previously at Volunteers' Day, check previous post) - Meeting friends unexpectedly is always a good thing.

Oh, and here's a funny observation on my MRT ride home today. There I was, exiting from City Hall on the North-South line, being pushed along with the mass exodus of people who usually do so, and them rushing for the East-West train that had happened to arrive as well. I wasn't in a hurry, but I was being pushed and that was annoying. That's not my point, anyway. I boarded the next train, and came face-to-face with this short, busty girl (doesn't look like a local to me) for a fleeting moment, before she got surrounded by a bunch of old men all of a sudden. Seriously. They probably wanted to perv at her tits. I blinked and o.o-ed, being displaced from the local volume of space-time by this unexpected mass anomaly, and just went off to find a better place to stand. Kekekekekeke!

Mmm, busy busy busy days ahead still...

Signing off.

(Singapore) Youth Olympic Games 2010 Volunteers' Day: The Adventures of Vernon (eh? WTF?)

Prologue

People from Volunteer Management (VOM) came over and took a video of my colleague Martin. Thought nothing of it at first, didn't know what it was for. Received a notification about Volunteers' Day approximately 3 weeks ago, when Samantha asked for the interns to come together and try to brainstorm for ideas on what to do for that day. Did not attend first two brainstorming sessions due to work committments.

The skirmish.

Stayed in the loop because I really wanted to do something. Heard it was a performance. Received Volunteers' Day invitation at around the same time because I signed up as a volunteer too, did not RSVP because I knew I would be there anyway (I did so only at a later date). At the same time, internal emails asking for people to fill up staffing roles on that day came out, and slowly but surely, my colleagues signed up (once they realised they had to go for it, and help out?). I was pretty on the ball about this.

It was decided that we would be putting up some simple Brazillian ensemble drumming, or Batucada as it is called (I think). The practices came hard and fast for we had little time (our instructors from THOH Studios (did I get this right?) were very nice, patient and passionate people -> thank Alan Chen for his contact with Alan! :)) It clashed with work at times, especially me handling AYG Volunteer stuff for Language Services. Stressed me a bit, and I was worried. But still, I sought the approval of my supervisors, and carried on with the rest of the team in practices. It was beginning to sound good! I somehow never bothered to really memorise the beat because it seemed to come naturally during practice once I warmed up (more like, after practice it was deleted from memory :P). It was good, clean fun though.

The full dress rehearsal ended super late on Friday (9+ pm), I went home, and hit office to send out some emails. Thanks Jonathan for accompanying me after being with your missus. Supper was awesome. :)

I fought the battles, now it's time to win the war!

I was very much looking forward to the day (yesterday). Rushed down to Expo in the morning (late! :\), hung around my booth abit, then went for dry runs. We couldn't practice on our recycled water drums (which were our drums), due to sound considerations so we resorted to slapping our thighs (which was more tiring than drumming, IMO, for the same amount of time). All in all, I was trying to drum up the high I would need to do something crazy while managing the queue a bit a my booth, and mingling with volunteers who turned up. Saw some familiar faces, and some whom I thought were familiar (so embarrassing! But still managed to strike up a conversation with them). I was high, but not 100%. I think I pulled the craziest stunts back in VJC, yesterday I was a tad muted.

Tried out my own booth too. Made me dizzy... but kinda fun. The performances were pretty good too. Gotta love my CEO and COO. :)

Guest-of-Honour was Minister of Community Development, Youth and Sports, Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan. So we performed our drumming (I actually felt a little bit of stage fright, but I quashed it and everything went rather flawlessly. 90% accuracy! :)) after a long wait, and did the YOG cheer thing. The emcees were pretty good, they managed to get everybody to join in and do their thing, and Dr. Balakrishnan as well, yes.

We were ushered to meet the Minister himself later on, where he did his minister thing (no comment, don't want trouble). We had a photo op with him after that. The event slowly died down as the volunteers went home, and then some of my buddies from 3 Signal popped by! That was an unexpected surprise. I stayed behind together with Kelda to help 'escort' our drums back to office, where we met up with the VOM peeps to unload.

I tell you, despite the event having some hiccups, yesterday was a damned fucking awesome day. I LOVE YOU, TEAM! It's my last month here though, so I won't be seeing you guys this much.

Epilogue

As night fell, the residual iotas of energy seeped away from me, and fatigue set in. I felt a little lost and empty now that the event was over, but Radha, head of VOM reminded me that there were stuff to look forward to as well, like the CAN! Events and the One Year Countdown. I had dinner with the VOM people after that. Was reminded again of how cruel the world can be. Today, I'm still a little melancholic, but the beat stayed with me. I actually did it on my way to the MRT station today. And that's it for today. Work next week. Eeee...

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/random files

This is a short passage about four girls.

One is sassy, free-spirited, and vivacious. She knows the right moves to persuade men, and she exudes confidence in speech and action. Actually, somebody to be wary about if you are her co-worker. She has the quite the body, and shows it off only subtly. She is Victor.

Two is quite the 阳光女孩. Positive, and energetic, the perfect counterbalance to an otherwise dead and empty shell. The shell fears it may become a burden though, whether she has the patience to see it through is another matter. Pretty is the word, a refreshing sight on an otherwise dreary day (actually, applies to all). But somehow, underneath it, there seems to be a measure of caution that opens a gulf between her and an unfamiliar. She is Sierra.

Three's creativity never fails to impress at every turn. She is mature, and has an allure to her; the way she moves, the way she speaks... But she may be just too good yet. Something about 癞蛤蟆想吃天鹅肉? She is Romeo.

Four is a mystery. Cute in an impish sort of way, what is seen seems to be just the surface. The challenge is to tease out her inner self, something which opens her up, beyond just the social facade. Cute and mysterious, she is Kilo.

That's it for today. Pictures probably be uploaded to Facebook.

Shameless plug :)

Read all about it here!

Lets make this a good one, guys! Thanks Clarissa for my 17 words of fame! xD

Two weeks of firsts.

The past two weeks have been really busy, perhaps sickeningly so. I only left office on time for I think one or two days, the rest probably later. Volunteer's Day is coming up, and it took a while for me to get clearance to perform with some of the other interns (and with that, rehearsals and all). Caught two movies in a row in two weeks with my colleagues and stuff. Angels and Demons (typical Dan Brown-ish with twists in plot and stuff) with fellow Villagers, and just recently, Night at the Museum (2): Battle at the Smithsonian (funny family movie, gotta love how over-dramatic the villain and Octavius were) for which SYOGOC booked the whole of Lido 3, and had our Chief Operating Officer make a little speech before the movie started. Yup.

In between, went for an appreciation dinner of sorts (more for the foreign embassies and other parties who collaborated with the CEP people on the event) for the CAN! Event that I helped out in in April, and - for the first (and maybe last) time in my life, I chatted with our Deputy CEO, Francis Chong, about... anime! How often do you even talk to your boss or senior management about such things? Awesome, really.

Got my AYG volunteer deployment settled, all I need to do is settle my accreditation pass (a long story that brought about my present predicament, which is too troublesome to talk about here - contact me if you ever want details). Another first was me catching Lost my Music (Haruhi Suzumiya Insert) and Ash Like Snow (Gundam 00 OP2) at Taka's MOS Burger today. How's that for music? Nobody was really listening to it anyway, it was too noisy in there. But I heard it. :)

And SIM-UOW rejected my application. That took the fire out of me for a long while, yes, but I'm going to try for PSB Academy-UoN now... or something. Lost I have become, once again. It will be a busy month for me though, this time.

Vernon, signing off. (christened so by my colleagues, again. Heh. Not sure if I want to use it seriously.)

Your existences complete mine, my friends, Love ya'all. :)

Condolences to the family of those who died aboard Air France 447. It'f really freaky to have it disappear off radar, and from we have, it probably broke up in the air. That's a really shitty way to die... Bless you all.

私にできる事...

Yet another week flies by, and the date nears. June 16th is the day SIM will send the letter to me, and I hope to hell it's an offer. Praying fucking hard. Is the most worrying thing on my mind now and I won't drop it till I see the letter.

May have made a couple of faux pas(ses) at work the past week, I hope all were taken in good stead. Well, as long as I keep delivering the deliverables on time... Happy Hour was fun. Although I was involved in only a minor part of organising it, it still was fun. :) Refereed Bishi Bashi, and had my ears ringing 'cos the girls from CEP (especially) screamed in my ear everytime they cheered for their teammates. Despite some teething problems with machine power and stages, and scrapping some of the games played, (and perhaps controversial referee decisions? :P), the Happy Hour ran its course and finished with a blast. Oh yeah! But was a little nerve-wracking though.

Apologies if I failed any of the Villagers or offended you in the course of that event (did I?). We clearly set a very high standard (although the budget was high, too, heh) for it all, what with the help of electronic entertainment and all. :) I only hope there is one Happy Hour in June that I can attend, most likely not since there's AYG and stuff. Damnit.

I was too lazy to go see the License2Play thing over the weekend, mainly because it was Asiasoft(?)'s pluggingfest for Maple Story and whatnot. But I missed out on some good tech deals (cameras, etc?) and seeing Dawn of War 2 in action. Oh well.

The road to solving my hair problem has also begun with sessions as Jean Yip. Maybe I'll put off going bald for later.

This is Jamal/jiayou/Ben/random moniker, signing off on a short short post because he just wants to slack the rest of Sunday night away. :D

Oh, yes. Congratulations to the Singapore women's team on reaching Everest. Although I thought the paper printed Major Lee's rank wrongly... She was a Major when I encountered her in 3 Signal, but the papers wrote "army captain". (->online sources have it as "Major". Must be somebody's typo in the print edition...) Wonder if Zaobao wrote the same thing. Shocking also that former President of South Korea Roh Moo-hyun commited suicide yesterday. And the fight is over! The Tamil Tigers are no more. Looks like Prabhakaran really lived it up the past few years, fattening up so much. o.o Our Social Studies textbooks need updating.

Quickie

The humdrum of everyday office life. Girls to see, work to do. Repressed urges to cosplay and stuff. :) Putting in the best you can. People leaving. Must get contacts! University really changes the outlook of people. The SMU interns are so talented! There is much to learn.

Much to learn.

Signing off. 一个敷衍的post.

I'm proud of my friends.

Short post, 'cos I'm really supposed to be sleeping now. I went down to John and Rowell's scuba diving centre (51 SCUBAFEST or something like that, did I get the spelling right?) on Friday, and I'm quite surprised and amazed by the stuff they've done. Their new office, totally done up by themselves, was a pretty cosy place indeed. All of us ('us' meaning, apart from John and Rowell, the Student Councillors whom I never met after graduating - don't mistake me, I'm not a Councillor. Just belong to the group "Friends of the Student Council". LOL.) chatted, and caught up on the old days (even Mr Ho came! :) So yeah, it's pretty amazing.

And I've come to the realisation that even though I'm quite envious of what my pals are all doing right now, I'm actually proud to have met people like these. I'm proud of them all, and stuff like that. Hehehe! Let us all step into the future, and let SIM hurry up and reply me!

Saturday was spent sleeping (waking up midday), then dinner to combo celebrate Jinyu and Tracy's birthday. Saw Pei Xun, totally lost contact with her for DAMN long. And she's doing Law... awesome. The realisation dawns further on me.

Sunday, nothing much. Levelling Regnum, then 'housewarming' at my cousin's old new place, which my aunt and uncle bought but didnt like it so they sold it... we were there just to make use of the facilities first. :P I think I've mentioned this before, but I'm the most at ease, and at my zaniest when I'm with my cousins. Crude jokes, sexual innuendo, and all-round relaxation and talking cock... It's almost like I have two identities or something. Wahaha. :P Wait, did I let slip something?

Hope they uploaded them photos because I accidentally deleted them off my phone. Gotta run now.

Signing off!

May Day Weekend

A normal-ish start to the week, tempered by escalating alert levels in response to the swine flu, now known as Influenza A (H1N1) or whatever more scientific-sounding and less swine-offensive nomenclature. So confusing... just to be politically correct.

Then a weird Thursday where tensions were high, and daggers flew. Not too sure whether I did right on that day. Am I a team player as I believe myself to be, or a lone ranger? Did I prove myself on that day?

Bummed around on May Day, aka Labour Day or May the 1st. Drove down to office to send an email, and ended up staying for a rather long while just reading Wikipedia articles. The serene quietness of the office was addictive, in addition to the knowledge that there was probably no one else in the entire building save for the security guards (a salute to you!). Mmm...

Did not do much the rest of the day, although I helped Jing Yi out with the translation of her letter to the National Arts Council into the wee hours of the morning and stuff. All the best!

Watched X-Men Origins: Wolverine with Jason, Tan Wei Quan, Jian Feng, Wei Xuan and Huiping on Saturday. Never thought they'd become my movie buddies so much these days, lol. More fun to watch with people, 'cos you get to talk cock and about the movie after watching it instead of being left with your thoughts. Ate some Indian food at 9pm for dinner with the rest after the movie ended, got a rather bad case of stomachache (not the go-toilet kind of ache) almost immediately after. I suspect it contributed to my one case of diarrhoea this morning. Ahh, no matter. Might be the curry, which tasted rather nice anyway. :)

My comment about the movie? The action was good. 'Nuff said. Plot and others were just normal. The various appearances of Gambit (cool dude) and cameos by Stan Lee (didn't spot him), Patrick Stewart (right at the end), and younger versions of mutants like Storm, Toad (caught and imprisoned) were the little bits of candy and fluff. Although I heard there was more than one version of the after-credits ending scene. The existence of the scene was unknown, apparently, since the cinema emptied itself during the credits. Fortunately we stayed on...

The final fight between James (Wolverine) + Victor (later Sabretooth) and Weapon XI was awesome shitz.

Yeah. And I slept most of today away. Not much to chronicle, lazy to comment.

Here I shall end.

天冷就回来 (If There're Seasons...)

Here is the half-baked effort of mine to sum up my thoughts from last week.

I have been informed (assuming you are who you are, 'someone from ttp') that I would be informed if I were to be quoted. Still, political correctness is at hand. Jing Yi actually invited me to watch it on the debut night, since I had nothing to do so on that Friday, why not? Paid her for the ticket, and off we went. I must first declare that I am not an arts or theatre person, so I am not exactly trained to look for or perhaps appreciate properly a musical as such.

In my opinion, If There're Seasons (henceforth referred to as ITS) was awesome shit. It blew me away and took away some misconceptions I had about theatre productions as well. It isn't dry or anything...

Sing Chew Xin Huey of Project SuperStar's first batch, looked rather cute with the wig. As mentioned in the reviews in the various papers (ST Life!, mypaper and 早报 in general) her live singing is pretty good. For me, I was attracted to Joanna Dong's character. Her feline impersonation left a very deep impression on me. MEOW! ;) IMO her singing's quite good too, although some songs didnt really suit her (agreeing with the papers: she sounded nasal at points). It was a lively muscial, to say the least. Song, dance and script I won't comment, nothing much for me to say, I'm easily satisfied yes?

My mind kept focusing on the set changes, and design. They looked pretty good to me (早报 on Saturday - the reviewer did feel that the various settings e.g. Uncle Cheng's cafe and the bar the characters chill out in felt pretty nondescript and generic). I wondered though, why some set changes were right in front of the audience instead of dropping curtains. Was this deliberate? Why were some effects were set the way they were? I thought there was something weird about the Martin Luther King Jr. picture from where I was sitting, way back in the theatrette.

The mini autograph session for their musical CD was where I discovered Sing was wearing a wig because of her magically short hair, which I later correlated to the newspaper pictures. All in all, to a theatre noob like me, this ranks somewhere in the top few productions I've actually watched.

There you go, TTP. A post for you to quote from. :P Please quote from here, and nothingnegativeyouwantihope. :) Answer my questions, dont read the rest of the posts. :P I need to reiterate again that this is from an untrained observer's point of view, and, for fear of government hit squad reprisal I have sanitised this article.

And visit Jing Yi's blog (I'm plugging for you! :) For better stuff. Scroll down for linky.)

asfc2ingi3g3pqhjwgujg39-gy7qg913t19rn39r38t2tnt2t2-c,jch0hm35480hgc8ht348tghc3g3hg3

/random. Throughout the week many thoughts passed through my mind and I wanted to put them down on blog, but I never got around to doing it. Some other things, like a blow-by-blow, chapter-by-chapter account my life thus far were entertaining thoughts, but I did not have the guts to post it up yet.

So I have nothing to talk about today.

The insociable nerd doesn't know how to up his relationship meter with girls. But talking to some (clickability?) has made him happy more than once. :) Despite being a 电灯泡 once in a while. This dude probably should be less of that, yes?

Wanted to diss the local entertainment scene a bit, but not really inspired to at the moment too. Since it's Star Awards fever. Wonder what the papers have to say tomorrow...

Work was just... work-like.

For AYG latest news, you can read the Saturday papers.

Yeah.

Hmm. Signing off.

天冷了就回来 placeholder post + CAN! event

-might be quoted, political correctness is at hand
-invited to watch paid for tix, nothing to do so watch
-not an arts or theatre person, but hey why not?
-awesome shit, blew me away, took away some misconceptions i had about it? what miscons, though? Boring? Dominating by China Chinese talent?
-sing chew xin huey cute with the wig. her live singing is good!
-attracted to joanna dong's character. cat. meow. Not a bad singer too, although some songs didnt really suit her. good technique.
-lively musical. songs composed by some acclaimed singaporean that i never knew about = frog in the well.
-dance choreography wasn't too bad. not trained to appreciate.
-why they change set in front of audience?
-why some effects were set the way they were
-martin luther king jr pic.
-government intervention at the end - singapore songs? -> clarification
-originals plus covers are good
-mini autograph session for their musical cd. sing was wearing a wig!
-awesome
-high. but they can read my blog! :P please quote from here, and nothingnegative you want i hope. :) answer my questions, dont read the rest of the posts. :P
-like taking minutes
-amazing i can rmb what i wrote 4 hours after it.

-we don't need to produce international stars, i mean, what's the rush? being a hit locally is good too. i'm sure there are a ton of theatre actors in usa and other countries who do local. of course going onto international is the best, and the ultimate dream, yes... but still. Step by step eh?

I am lazy to string my up summaries into a coherent post, so I shall leave them here. Too bad if I am to get quoted. Anyway, I wonder if I'd be notified if I were really quoted. Maybe I will string them all up tomorrow.

Other than that, the CAN! Discover event on Saturday was damn fun! Although it was freakishly hot. I enjoyed walking around with those geeky huge framed glasses with clues for the Amazing Race teams they had for the event. Athough some of the teams were already eyeballing me and my fellow compatriots before the game started, I managed to extricate myself from them.

Got to know some very amazing secondary school/ITE volunteers. :) And also, interacted more with the folks from the Culture and Education Programme (CEP) Division as well as people from Communications and Media (?). Basically, SYOGOC staff outside of my own Division. It was a good Saturday, ruined by a parking ticket which wasn't entirely my fault. The warden must have missed the 1120 coupon I put when he charged me for it at 1124. I suspect URA wouldn't listen to my protests anyway, it's my word against the warden's anyway. *sighs*

But really, yesterday was a good day. Then today bum around :D Yays.

Signing off now. Tomorrow, perhaps?

The Gradual Slip into unhinged sanity.

The long weekend was good, but it's already ending! Tried unsuccessfully to ask Aneru out but I couldn't catch her at all. Anyway, got invited to Wen Xiang's mega-21st-birthday-bash yesterday. While it's heartening to see him surrounded by so many friends and family, a sense of melancholy struck me. Perhaps I am jealous, or that I know I wouldn't be able (wouldn't dare, perhaps?) to do something like this. Methinks I probably gather a few close friends and just talk cock or something. I got him something I thought was fun, and at the same time I was amazed at how many HCI people he knew, and at Kai Him, Ying Jie and gang's efforts to make him a present. Very very nice. Played cards (specifically, Dai Dee) with Kai Him, Jin Kai, Justin, Liow Wei Quan and Benjamin till we left. Unfortunately poor Wen Xiang was drunk and vomiting at that time, so we bade his parents goodbye and left. The drive home was peppered with interesting talk with Jin Kai.

On to other issues at hand:

-The Geylang Serai rojak food poisoning case is shocking, and rather serious. My condolences to the family of the two fatalities (as well as the lady who suffered a miscarriage), who succumbed to the infection they had gotten unknowingly eating what they liked. *sighs* Hygiene is very important in the F&B industry, yes? Made me reflect on what I did back at the Asteroids Cyber Bar back then. I don't think I did anything wrong back then, but the policy of keeping pastry until they get sold, or when fungus grows... isn't very nice, is it? It usually doesn't happen though, I only remember an isolated case or two.

-The ASEAN summit meeting at Pattaya got cancelled. Looks like protestors broke through the security column and nothing much could be done about it. Thailand hasn't been stable for quite a long while now, what with the unrest in the predominantly (am I right?) Muslim south, then these spates of civil unrest...

-DBS Group Holdings CEO Richard Stanley passes away after losing the fight against infection (yet again, the work of Death) at 48. That's pretty young, and hopefully it doesn't cause any problems up top at DBS.

-Piracy in Somalia. French commandos stormed a ship that was taken over by pirates. Hostages rescued, but one, the owner of the yacht himself, was killed, possibly by the commandos. This is a very delicate operation and it sucks that a fatality should occur like that. However, if we give in to the pirates (and pay ransom, for example), sea trade may be disrupted, and the growth of piracy would continue unabated, even becoming rampant in that area. Yet the good guys' hands are tied by rules of engagement and stuff. The Americans are pouring forces into the area but they can't do anything lest Captain Richard Philips gets hurt. I believe they couldn't do anything as well when Captain Philips tried to swim his way to freedom, but was recaptured. Thankfully though, the pirates never managed to send in reinforcements, and a separate group with more hostages failed to link up with them. Would have been trickier to handle, methinks.

-Facebook quizzes being mentioned in the papers, specifically the elite school one! How... interesting for it to gain publicity like that. The creator must be cumming in his pants now. But... what, the results can be faked, and simple quizzes like that, the logic to get the answers are kinda predictable, so wtf? STOP DOING QUIZZES AND PUBLISHING YOUR RESULTS PLZ?

Our lives are cloistered, yet the world is chaotic （世界很乱）. Oh, dear.

On another note, Felicia Chin's getup for the finals of Campus Superstar 2009 looked like a Nazi uniform, what with the hat and all. Hmm...

NB: Pretty girls look very pretty when they're asleep. The protective factor seems to just kick in or something. Heh. *sighs* Ah, the yin-yang imbalance...

And another 7 days pass.

Work was hectic yet rewarding once again, with the big thing being sitting in on Friday for a meeting between my manager Emma, and representatives from the translation company Transperfect. Boy, was the American aggressive! That's what I'd like to think, after ruminating over what was said at the meeting. Looks like they really want the deal, and the way he put it made people feel very comfortable, although like I said, he came off as a tad too aggressive at times, which Emma countered by telling him not to stress her out on a Friday. :P

Larissa and Jia Xin, the lao jiao interns have ORD-ed from the Village so now it's Sheryl (Chee) and me holding the fort, although we are supposed to have one more join us tomorrow. We were treated to a dinner to commemorate their farewell and thank them for their hard work (like, gokurosamadeshita sorta thing, hehehe).

Met up with Joel, my primary school classmate/schoolmate all the way through to JC. Talked about our fellow classmates in primary school among other stuff, and looks like he spammed friend suggestions on Facebook. Haha, it's been like so goddamn long since I've talked to some of them now, and Facebook is the platform that allows us to reconnect, I guess, and be aware of each other's continued existence and the like (sounds a little wrong, but that is how I'm putting it).

Apart from that it was EndWar pretty much all the way.

Gundam 00 has ended, and so has Toradora (haven't finished watching). Ah...

North Korean launched its satellite, but we have conflicting reports over whether it successfully made orbit or not. The United States and South Korea say no, Russia says yes. Well, IMO they wouldn't really dare to shoot it down unless it was on a ballistic flight path and not the spaceflight trajectory, I guess. It's too risky escalating the game of brinksmanship with North Korea...

That, among others that slip by my memory. I seem to want to rush through blogging theses days.

Signing off.