WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!

finally, the curse of being the perennial bridesmaid is finally broken! catholic high has finally won some silverware! in spite of the fact that not all the sec sch teams in contention of the JG championships took part (read: MGS), nevertheless, this does not undermine the quality of the VJC invitationals. i mean with motions that discuss the precedence of universal values over local beliefs, or require a sec 3 team to come up with a case proving why the WTO is obsolete, the levels of debating and arguments are THERE . this is the first time, FIRST time i must stress that cat high had ever won any debate championship. we had endured far too many shattered dreams....Runners-up in Julia Gabriels' 1999, 2001. Runners-up SPH-Hwa Chong: 2000. Semi-finalists: 2003......and finally, we can be proud to annouce CHAMPIONS: VJC invitationals 2003 = Catholic High School! this is the beginning, it has to be, it can't just end here. This was a far cry from the CH team 2 in JGs early this year. From the technically weak team with a poor setup with bad rebuttals, to the VJC invitational champions, full credit to xander, the kids have certainly come of age. Kuek, from a totally clueless first speaker to someone who can hold his ground and list out the fundamental flaws of the opponents. Mark, a young promising debater who posesses nothing more than hardwork and potential then, to the best debater of the series now. or Amoz, from the second speaker who hardly understood his own case then to a 3rd who can identify issues that resolves the debate, and today the best speaker in the final......catholic high has what it takes to shine on the stage of the JG championships. do not be distracted GUYS! have the self-belief, the thirst for success. let not the success in one competition detrack the focus away on the real deal. we have to achieve it. accomplish what we never achieved, vindicate our deepest regrets. do not short-change yourselves. be etched into eternity, get the championship!!!!!

'WE........ come from the greatest school we come from CHS,
we are the members of a great, great school.
We fight for the victory, we fight for the glory,
we fight with a spirit never seen before
UP WITH CHS, DOWN WITH ALL THE REST
CH, CH CLEARLY BEST, YOU CAN ALL TAKE A REST.
GONG JIAO!!! OEI!!!! GONG JIAO!!!! OEI!!! GONG JIAO!!!! EH BAH!!!!!!!!~~~~ '

final answer?

Ah! juz came back from duty. met up with trev, xander and sow chen on tues night, the night before my duty. sow chen picked me up on his dad's car, a red lexus. it feels kinda weird, i mean it wasn't the first time i sat in a fren's car, but for sow chen, a buddy who has such an immature disposition (unlike xander in his kek seh way =), it's really hard to imagine that happening, it's not really the driving, but really the reality that we have all in our own way, insidiously spawned into adulthood. then we met trev and xander. on a quasi-melacholic note, that might be the last few times the four of us can really get together in a long time. trev's leaving for new zealand somewhere in late jan, xander might still go overseas if he can fucking make up his mind and not change again and again. and i might go britain too if i can fucking stop procrastinating and hand up the bloody ucas. sow chen would probably stay home. four buddies, four different places. sigh..... would true friendship and brotherhood stay thick without constant gatherings? or would it be blanded by the tides of time? and btw, trevor completed his AIOC and finished second in class, an outstanding feat considering that he's an nsf and the only 2lt among the top 3, the other 2 are cpt. that's the trevor we know, a natural leader, full of confidence, focused, and nothing can detrack him from his goals if he puts his heart and soul to it. xander. always altering his life values at various stages of his life. may appear flippant, but still is a go-getter and has a general direction in life. shawn. un-ambitious, does not seek immense success but instead seek personal fulfillment. he once said that his dream is to learn forever. airy-fairy maybe, but nevertheless, at peace with himself and is slowly but surely moving towards his dreams. what about me? i'm not sure what i want to do with my life, unsure if what i choose might be suitable for me, ambivalent about what's gonna happen in the next few years. hell, i can't forsee anything in the forseeable future. i have doubts with myself, i never forsee myself succeeding in anything. i would want to pursue my dream and spiritual fulfillment over financial success, but it begs the question that i've problems answering too. what is the fucking dream that i have? or what is the fulfillment i need? i am totally ambivalent of the goals i have in life, that is if they even existed. perhaps that's what they would consider an existentialist....the sad beings who live life just becos they were conceived as a by-product of a moment of pleasure.....i sort of given up on my life since 16. i hate to use success as a yardstick to measure the self-worth of an individual, but unfortunately, i cannot convince myself to acquit me of my self-judgement, that of a useless under-achieving, procrastinating bum .... simply on the basis of my academic failures.... maybe i could someday....someday.

arsenal 1 - 0 blackburn (bergkamp)

great, the gunners are top of the table now. catholic high too, big guns blasting into the vjc invitationals semi-finals with an amazing 110 odd points difference! saturday was a long day. woke up at seven thirty (on a saturday mind u!) and made way to vjc. it was to be my first time judging debates at inter-sch level. not an enviable task at all. i've always detested judges who are unable to justify decisions, or justify it with lame reasons or are just simply biased, met a couple myself during the sec 4 campaign, olive goh, vickram nair.... and at the end of that day, i'm proud to say that i did not dissent for either of the 2 debates i judged. yeah! the first was pretty much a clear-cut victory, 'THBT conscription has outlived its usefulness', ri vs swing team, then its was a slightly less obvious result for the debate between ri and anglican high..'THBT teenage romance should be discouraged', arguments aside - both were pepetually assuming, ri came off sounding dead serious as the opp, agreeing teenage romance is bad, but dun think discouraging it's gonna help. ahs were at the other end of the spectrum, too sexually-charged. 1st prop disagreed with pre-'martial' sex (who doesn't unless u're into S&M), 3rd prop (a female) suggests having sex in front of parents if opp wants teens to have an above-board relationship.....youngsters nowadays ah...sigh..... even my vice-chancellor's shield policy of chemical castration and state-sponsored genocide of homosexuals to prevent them from adopting appear to have been outdone by these promising youngsters..... the passion for debating is probably still in me, my tongue may be blunt, my brains may have rusted, but that passion, however subdued, still burns inside me. and i guess it all boils down to the unfulfilled dream......oh yes, and in between the 2 debates i judged was the great bishan derby, prep round. THBT universal values should take precedence over local beliefs. RI prop, CH opp. CH WON! unanimously (albeit by a very very tight margin per judge), with Mark coming in as best speaker. it was a good tactical switch with mark being the second and amoz third. and if amoz can improve more, the unfulfilled dream might not yet be that unattainable after all. Xander's the man! kao4 ni3 le4!
the whole thingy ended around six, then took a cab to town to meet bq before murali's birthday function at room full of blues. it was a pretty decent place though their rendition of bourbon coke tasted weird. then we had the free jamming portion where bq, murali and kurt went up to play about 2 songs, with or without you and wonderwall. then was the cake-cutting, luckily swensens dun close so early, if not it would have been a carrefour instead.....then unfortunately, murali got drunk and me and bq sent him home first, not exactly the best way to end one's 21st birthday, sigh.... that can be a qian2 che2 zhi2 jian4 to me. after making sure murali's safe, we then bia cab back to prinsep and played some pool.....then me wilson, teo and bq went to the prata shop near my house for supper.....what a long long day......siong sia, clear off also so siong.... what to do, that's how civilian life's gonna be, and with barely 6 months more, i might as well get used to it!

percepting perception

i am appeased. just a couple of days ago i was kao-beh-ing about SBS transit's plan to change the 103 route so that commuters will maximise the usage of the NEL. yet now, 4 days after the change, i have finally adapted to it and quite frankly it is in fact more convenient. lesson? first impressions can be wrong. before tonight, i toyed with the idea of rejecting aboluteism. i thought (although i may not practise it) that the world is made up of a myriad of perceptions each individual has towards the world. moral qualms, value-systems are but a device created by the group of individuals who has the greatest numbers or the sheer power in an attempt to force their will and ideologies on everyone else. it is therefore my belief that everyone has the right, to think, to speech, to do anything even at the expense of violating others rights (if they are capable of that), and those on the receiving end too has every right and justification to do the same to anyone else. it is a near-anarchist ideology, with ability to exact superseding the justification to exact. after all, the moral codes and value-systems aren't 'truth' in the first place, they are but rules set up by the people who dictate the game, or rather the world. should the people who set such rules a long long time ago had thought that incest is okay and paedophalia is applaudable, we the blind follwers of this 'moral code' would probably be practising the above mentioned nochalently. i sort of rejected in the notion of truth, believing that anyone who can impress his perception on issues on majority of the world, what he says becomes the truth (so for example, if hitler could convince the allies, and everyone else in the world that genocide is correct and that he has the means to carry out this, then the whole human race could collectively deem the jews as an affliction and that they deserved to die by this new collective 'moral paradigm'.) nothing then really matters, except what you perceive. cos the world means differently to every different person. the pope may be a nice guy, but if i perceive of him to be a closet paedophile despite having overwhelming evidence that points against this, it doesn't matter who he really is, but just what i think of it. in short, sheer bigotry rules, objectivity out of the window. yet apparantly the who idea of having perception dominate objectivity is totally contradictory to the doctrine that justifies the reason to be perceptive in the first place cos it is in fact that there are different sides to any issues that it is neccessary to weigh it up first.....i've indeed lost it as a debater..... so anyway, having gone through all these spontaneously typed nonsense which probably don't make sense to anyone from their perspective or even the perceptive of me in the future (that's another whole stupid idea for some other time) , the point is that i was probably wrong about sarah aka former crush of bq, present crush of kurt, closest fren of murali and formerly known as bitch in the world perceived by me. at around 2200 yesterday, the thrashing out session between sarah, murali, kurt, bq and surprisingly me commenced. i'm too lazy to relate everything so let's just say it's about backstabbing, two-heading (as in two-headed snake), rumour-mongering and pain from an unreciprocated heart. i attended the session, in a confrontational mode, wanting to give sarah the-then bitch-to-my-perception a 1 x jialat jialat scolding. that was my perception then, it disregarded firstly her perception, and that how bq, murali, kurt and others' perception may have inaccurately shaped my perception, how my first impression may have been wrongly perceived and the possible existence of a simple truth to the entire fracas. well we talked, she explained and somehow i had a revelation that perhaps, no in fact, i had made a pre-judgement on her, much as i hated to pre-judge others. whether she is a bitch or not, it is not up to me to label her with that given our shallow acquaitanceship and how that hasty pre-judgement was largely based on 3rd party accounts on what happened when i wasn't around to witness that. i had become the bitch myself, bitching so much about everyone else. just look at the blog entries below, and see how much i bitched about 2lt piece of shit....and to be fair to 2lt p.o.s, he may have a quasi-justifiable reason to do whatever he did on me....... fuck. i may have made everything seem reasonable, resolved the misunderstandings between kurt, murali, bq and sarah. but to sarah, i gave a largely, hate-me-if-you-want, i-dun-care-how-u-feel-but-that-is-what-i-think-of-you attitude in response to the alleged rumour-mongering. i even sort of smoked out on a techinicality saying that discussing her personality only with people that had met her before and who echo similar pre-judgements about her in the first place isn't considered rumour-mongering......there has to be a truth to everything, or a least this issue. i made have smooth talked it out and made it sound so reasonable....but i dun think i could live with it. calling someone names, making quasi-substatiated comments on one's personality regardless of not-wanting her to know about it in the first place, is truly morally (notice i used this word), and even by the standards of my perception, abhorable. i apologised. i dun think it was actually a pacifist gesture, although i'm still largely ambivalent as to why i'm eating my words now.....there has to be the existence of a conscience that's common to all people...well non-psychosis patients that is. and that is eating on me. i had been so foolish. i could have lived my life knowing that i told a girl smack in her face that i told vicious stuff about her and indirectly questioned her 'so what', but how would that feel? i've always prided myself about my keeness to explore the redeeming factors in frens and ppl whom i had formerly disliked such as li qinlong, ah beng whom eventually became pretty good frens in camp. yet this time round, i failed my own litmus test on the consistensy of my paradigm. dun think i felt this disgusted by myself in quite a while....sort of a present me hating past me sort of shit. oh what the hell, confucius probably sums up the concept and standards for morality in possibly the least ambiguous way, dispelling (maybe not to that extent, but reducing instead) the need for individual perception. ji2 suo3 bu2 yu4, wu4 shi2 yu2 ren2 : Do not do to others what you do not wish to happen on yourself

summation speech 081203

well what do you know, it's been almost a week since i last blogged..so anyway let's see. first there was the debate camp i went to last thurs, and watched a debate between cat high and rgs. rgs is certainly down and out... they lack the decorum to even quiet when their opponents are making a speech (not to mention that they are butt ugly), certainly not what you would expect from a sch that produced so many national debaters. amos and mark have both made significant improvements, esp mark. he's probably the only glimmer of hope for any chances of success next yr. sigh....it would probably be quite some time before we even see cat high challenging the honours again. then, later that day i went to toyz bar with the ord gang. it was eventually revealed that that was in fact gaya's birthday, so how can we let him go home sober? well unfortunately our wallets aren't as thick as the stack of 1206 forms in CO's office and so we were unable to make him as pissed as the ord bbq haha. dad and mum flew off on fri. dun really think that that makes much difference to my liberty cos at the same time, gu ma is there to provide the checks and balances....all time debaters' fav jargon... and to think that i was supposed to be taking care of her. went karaoke on fri nite and that was smashing until kurt decided to ask sarah 'formerly de BQ' to join us....damn sian, not like i gave a damn though, still continued singing hokkein songs and cantopop, it was that same fateful night where first, i witnessed the most expensive pool punch in my entire life so far - a grand total of $84 ++ for 2 pool tables chalking a total of 7 hrs play time!! that's about $12.80 an hour. WTF. to put things in perspective, mechmasters charges $2 - 3++ and even Poolworld charges like only $4-5....and the second thing that fateful night was witnessing the aftermath of an accident where a mercedes crashed right into the side of the pavement opposite wheel lock's place. like all callous singaporeans, i temporarily fell prey to temptation and uttered out loudly 'Oei! ai buay ho bey mai?'....oblivious to the fact that apparently the family of the perpetrator of the accident was like 3 m away from me....how mean....well anyway for the record the car's number's 3228, and i did eventually place the bet on behalf of teo and bq, and just deserts upon us...we won as much money as wycombe wanderers won league titles. saturday, played pool and did some catching up with jialong and sam...sigh, they are about one of the few jc frens that i constantly keep in touch and that was like our first meeting in so long.. sunday, went to xander's house for debate meeting, initially it was thought that there was something major to discuss about cat high debates' future....it turned out to be a fun PS II session. met up with ben and some other juniors....time sure flies.... hansel and jonny's batch are enlisting soon and ben's getting married somewhere in 2005...i'm really feeling older now. so that's where it went, chit chat, talking cock, but one thing that ben said did make me do some thinking. he commented that he feels that he is unable to continue coaching due to his inability to remain bi-partisan about any issues. he feels a need to take a stand, moral or subjective on any issues. 'it comes with age' he asserts. what would mine be? i have totally no values in life, totally ambivalent, and i just can't visualise my life beyond next june much less core values....would that, then consitute a personality crisis? what about not wanting to have any values, any stand on anything? i half-suspect that that might jolly well be my stand. the path of cowardice trodded by the average ambivalent post-teenager. expediency, whatever allows me to lead a comfortable life, i believe in it. xander shares this philosophy too. that's the product of the average gen y, born and breed in first world singapore, unable to appreciate the less materialistic aspects of life much as we try to...but just how far can this pursuit sustain? whatever, let's just worry about getting the goods first and not what to do with 'em.

old soldiers never die, they just fade away

i can't believe it's all coming to an end. almost 2 yrs on, and it's time to say goodbye. had our ord parade yesterday....well not exactly 'ours' as in mine but the mono guys. it all started early in the morning at seven plus. the ord guys proceeded with their rehearsals and we the corporals started the long long day launching an assault boat into the wet gap. then it was the setting up of the comet stage, and damn it had to be crouching balls who was in charged. but in retrospect, the burning displeasure towards crouching balls has kinda reduced, i must say he has toned down a little...either that or it's that the fire within has blown towards the piece of shit. anyway, after that, for some weird reasons they needed ppl to jaga the assault boat...not like the boat's gonna float to malaysia or something (and not that the latter never happened before!), it's the WET GAP for christ sake! lan lan, so me hai soon pcb and tianfa hung around the wet gap till the parade began. so the parade went on and ended with a resounding 'ORD LOH!' we the CPLs only looked from afar, no one went up to offer congratulations nor anyone wanted to join in the photo-taking except me. sigh....suan or no suan, these are my brothers. we have been through hell all together and the parade is testament to their survival. thinking that this might really be the last few times i'm ever gonna meet them, i felt i must at least go up and offer some words. but hell was i at a loss for words. then i saw xiaoyang with the ops flag that was newly bestowed upon alpha, without a thought, i borrowed the flag from him and ran near the slipway where the guys were taking group photos. 'CHOTOMATE!' i shouted and to my relieve the photo session ain't ended yet. and i joined in the photo holding the flag, if not for the fact that the No. 4 i was wearing din have my rank sewn on (chargable offence mind you), i would have appeared to be odd one out haha. fuck it la, nothing to be pai seh of, after all CPLs are also part of bravo coy, but sadly it appears the other CPLs dun seem to think that way anymore. then it was the much much less anticipated moment - unloading of bbq stores and again the having crouching balls co-ordinate the whole thing was not helped by the fact that almond were arrowed solely to do the unloading....u can call that the 'sai kang persecution complex (s.k.p.c)'...whereby everyone thinks they did the most sai kang. it was sweet revenge as almond turned on the the 'attitude' mode dumping the GS tables and benches loudly, with no one doing it better than toh kian chong.
the CPLs all sat one corner resting, we were really pretty shagged (wonder what's the real spelling of the word in the non-sexual context), but looking at some of the guys who are gonna be civilians in barely 4 days time sweat it out, i can't help but to feel something hitting my platoon integrity so me and hai soon went to help. then party began, there were karaoke and winning eleven competitions, pretty creative stuff by SAF entertainment standards. food was decent, curry, otak, taiwan sausage, chicken steaks, satays and even durians! not to mention the many many many many Tigers placed rather distastefully inside SAF rubbish bins filled with ice (albeit clean ones from QM) and for the first time in my life i tried the lethal mix of beer with durians against the advice by murali and eugene. it was divine. well what can i say, at least i lived to type this so far, but i'm not so ready to dispel this age old advice as pure urban legend though. then again i might be down to the fact that i drank in moderation with the sheer scale of the post party sai kang detering me from getting wasted. gaya and eugene however din quite think that way. gaya got really pissed by about nine and had to be dragged back by murali. a real pity on their part considering what lies ahead in the hangar.......and the party officially ended, the big fucks left and so did alpha, na beh chee bye. trust them to let old soldiers do such a tua zhong sai kang. they are supposed to be the OPS COY now....and being 1st Bridge Coy means being the first to be arrowed. times have changed....oh well, it's back to the S.K.P.C (refer above). we were about half way into the cleaning up when we were told to fall-in. haha, is that a joke? ord men falling-in? but we did. it was OC who gave a farewell speech to the guys. we were each 'issued' with a can of beer a la water parade. somewhere in between his speech, i was divinely inspired to raise hell, and after jio-ing jessel, we spread the msg telling everyone to shake the can. it feels real good to be a ringleader this time. and when OC kinda ended his speech with 'all the best', ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE. we sprayed all our beer on him. there was no disrespect. and for the benefit of all you wusses who have yet to serve national service, that was a mark of real respect, sorta like the way when stone cold steve austin offers someone beer. men only do that to commanders they like, which is why no one bothered to talk to the piece of shit, much less waste our precious on the turd. anyway, OC was sporting enough to launch a counter-offensive and too ran around holding beer cans. the skirmish almost immediately spread to the rest of the coy and it was no-holds-barred. we got pontoon real wet and even tham and crouching weren't spared either. perhaps only fangzheng got away dry, and that's only becos it ain't coke! Asia Pacific Breweries should have filmed the entire thing, that would have made a hit commercial. we were literally bathing in beer, now how many of you could claim to have done that =p! a took a good 30 mins at least to actually calm things down. then LTA Cliff appeared! as far as almond pl is concerned, we only had 2 PCs, and Cliff is THE man having held the helm since bmt till end of BPC. everyone was pretty glad he came. it's just so weird, even almost a yr and a half after he left for OCS, and almond still seem pretty much to be in awe of him, now THAT's the mark of an acomplished PC. (beat that, piece of shit, disgrace to the sword of merit) as usual he gave the ord speech and hell, he's half an ord personnel himself after perhaps swayed by NSFs like us bitching whole day about the SAF, he decided not to continue his bond which ends in august. not wanting to let the chance to go by, we all each gave him a hug rubbing our beer-soaked No.4 on him. we then gave him a few tosses and fortunately, the alcohol have yet to affect our motor co-ordination and we safely caught him and he bid us farewell on his motorbike. it's either the ord mood or the alcohol, bravo coy hit inspired form. even marcus and chun siang were damn garang about the cleaning up. and apparantly alcohol can unleash creativity too. to clean up the beer on the hangar ground, candace guys used the camou net as a 1 x gigantic mop to mop the floor, now that's a true Engineer core value personified. and so after 30 ++ GS tables, 40++ GS benches, countless rubbish bags and 130 + student chairs, the job is done. i went back to bunk, only to see gaya
and eugene totally wasted. from what i heard from murali, it appears that eugene called up his gf and talked to her thinking it was her ex.....now that's one hell of an explanation. so after bathing a gave murali a hand. together we looked after gaya, endured his whims and fancies...bringing him to toilet only to bring him back when his bladder decided against the better advice from his head, washing his face, helping him unbutton his pants etc. i wonder when shall be the next time, almond platoon can have such a great time, getting wasted, talking cock altogether. sure we will definitely meet together someday, but how similar would that be? i hate to sound pessimistic but affinity and brudderhood in the army is shaped by the collective psyche and common experience we shared. years on in the civilian world, can this fabric of memory hold our bond together? sure i believe that some of the closer brothers would stay on as life long frens, but how many of us will actually remember the pornstar who arty bombarded the wrong site? or the concoction in crouching balls' cocktail? or the dopuleh who wanked off on the first day of enlistment and got impaled by OPH pins causing him to surgically reconstruct his belly-button? or Qinghui's and his 7-ton exploits in Crescendo? or even the names of our buddies who slept beside us? Eternity lives on, not in the memory of every intricate detail, but in the fondness of rememberance of the happy times we spent in Bravo Company, the shitty times in Bravo Company and the bittersweet times of leaving this place that we called home for 2 yrs. So even if you should forget my name, deleted my no from your phonebook, or not see me for the rest of your life, just remember that you hailed from the portals of Bravo Coy, Almond platoon and that itself, in each and every way to each and every one of us, is our way of achieving eternity. after all, old soldiers never die, they just fade away.