heng sia.....

i managed an amazing feat...by my slack standards at least. i actually woke up at 7am this morning after going to bed at like 3.45 last night. i guess when one's pushed to the point of desperation, anything goes. i had a shocking revealation last night when i visited the somewhat UQ Australs website with a somewhat reader unfriendly layout that i somehow booked air tickets two days before the commencement of the tourney! i was staring into the prospects of having to pay for an extra 2 days accomodation outta my own pocket in Brisbane, wasting 2 days there just to wait for the tourney to start, and incur an opportunity cost of 2 days of holidays in singapore. so there i was, waking up in an unearthly hour by my standards, waiting for my father to wake up, waiting to break the news to him, and getting ready to brave his wrath. i tried to play down the situation by cocking up some ultra lame story about how the organising committee were forced into delay the start of the competition cos' all hotels in the city are overbooked cos' of the Australian Uni games which will be held in brisbane too (the truth is, the uni games will only start somewhere in august i think) and that they only sent a last minute email to inform everyone. it certainly is bad enough for my dad to start on the usual rantings on the lack of a sense of responsibility etc etc....but it certainly isn't as bad as letting him know what a stupid cockster i was to actually book the wrong dates for the tickets. while i listened to his rantings, i actually came to realise that perhaps i am really too flippant with things, too unaware about wat the fuck is going on and simply being a blur and lazy fucker. i mean, if my dad, my housemates and everyone else think that's the case and i'm the only one who thinks otherwise, then i'm probably very deluded. i wouldn't envy my dad having a son like me. arghh...i'm 22 but i still fucking act and think like a teenager.

anyway, i could never convince myself to spend the next two days in solitude wallowing in the queensland winter so i decided to give it a shot to try and change the air ticket. very very fortunately, i managed to squeeze myself into one of two vacancies on another flight on the night of the 2nd. the first time i called, i was told that i was supposed to either forfeit the mileage or to pay a charge of 75 USD for changing flights under 24hrs before departure. and after sizing up my options and calling a 2nd time to decide, i was pleasantly surprised to be told that 'it was more than 24hrs so they won't be charging me at all'. not that i'm very interested in the intricasies of SIA corporate policies, but a penny saved is a penny earned.

WHAT THE FUCK WAS I THINKING!!! SELF-SNOOK!!!

FUCK!!! KNNBCCB!!! Ho Gao Kan liao!!!!!!!!!!

i'm kinda tipsy now after mambo, but i've just fucking realised that i copped out on myself!!! KNN!!! the Australs will only start on the 3rd of July....and i am bloody HORRIFIED to just realise that i had in fact booked air tickets on the 1st of July!!! WTF WAS I THINKING WHEN I BOOKED THE TICKETS!!!!!!! i just wasted 2 fucking precious days in singapore!!!!! i fucking can't believe it...i must have been drunk when i was teling my dad to book the tickets over the phone.. THIS IS SO FUCKING STUPID!!!!!!! WTF am i gonna do for the extra 2 days?????????????? SIBEH KAM GONG!!!!!!!!!!!

why yearbooks are evil

hehe...this is evil.

i was at daniel place yesterday to pick him up after dropping my dad off and while waiting for him to shower, i chanced upon an old 1992 year book belonging to his sister who also happened to be from the same sec school as little miss drinkalot. browsing year books is a teenage habit that most guys never grew up since their teens, and i remember when i was in lower sec, there'll be a corner in our library with the yearbooks from the various sister schools and u can be assured that at any one time there'll at least be one person reading any given yearbook - though it's usually 1 person flipping the pages with the another 5 - 10 providing the accompanying critical commentaries on the various faces eternalised in each yearbook either for being super chio, or simply super nerdy.

unfortunately, the less-than-aesthetic uniform, combined with more than a decade of stylistic evolution, and compounded by the fact that the yearbook in question was that of one of the more cheena kong conservative sec schs - hence further regression in stylistic chronology by another decade - meant that there were rather few chiobus that could be eternalised BUT plenty of the other other group would could stake their claim into the etchment into the eternal memory of every reader of that yearbook. as i flipped on, i chanced upon the class of 91' graduation photos. i did some math and reckoned that LMD is definitely somewhere between the pages. it was rather wasn't really that easy to find considering that i was looking at the chinese names and that there're quite a number of classes in the class of 91. but it was worth the wait...hahaha. that photo is priceless. if u need a visual imagery of how LMD looked like @ 16, just imagine a much slimmer lydia sum, complete with the puffy hair that extends horizontally, AND the rectangularish glasses. at the risk of getting my cuticles or watever sensitive part of the nail cut off, sliced and defiled tonight....come, everybody follow me *points finger at LMD* NERD NERD... NERDY NERDY NERD!

like what i told LMD, at least she wasn't the nerdiest one. she was outshone by the one who stood like 3 slots beside her in the same row, and a 'lydia sum lookalike' simply pales in comparison. why? just imagine a girl who looks exactly like the hongkong actor 刘兆铭, the guy who acted as the villan in 金枕头.........

a much needed respite for a tortured liver

i realised that my original post was too wordy so i kinda decided to split it into 2 separate entries instead.

sunday was family day, and the lure of my grandma's cuisine was more than enuf to persuade me outta bed to head to my wai gong's place for lunch. it was nice meeting up my 3 adorable baby cousins after a long time though my gallant offer play the nice big brother by taking the three of them to watch Madagascar was miscalculated cos' this was the last day of their june holidays and they start the new term tml. i can't help but to feel outta touch when i see the three girls (11, 9 and 5 respectively)surfing on my uncle-in-law's laptop watching videoclips of barbie perform 'opps i did it again' on barbie.com and chatting away on some website which function as an irc specifically for children. speaking of which i FUCKING SURE THAT there's some motherfucking balding sick old paedophile lurking behind a computer screen in that chatroom. shit, i can't remember the website, but it's something like an rpg game which each member profile taking on a full body avatar and the kids can then choose to go to either a party, the beach etc etc where they can interact by chatting with other avatars. ok, for a start, the IRC is supposedly kid-friendly as unlike MIRC which allows any typed response, the website only allows the kids to choose the construction of their dialogue from a list of prescribed sentences. For example, when at a fren's party, one avatar can choose to start a sentence with 1) How Are You Today 2) Do you like to 3) Hello, people etc, and then another list of choices on the subject matter of what the kids intend to talk about like based on the first choice of opening sentence such so a choice of 'Do you like to' will be followed by another list of choice of words like 'go to the beach' or 'read fairytales' etc. this is in fact a pretty brilliant idea, and though uncomprehensive, it allows kids to interact in a relatively controlled and secured enviroment as mentioned by my uncle-in-law. However, what gives away the fact that there are still sick fucks lurking around is the name of the handle which each member chooses. i was rather horrified to see my the 3 of them crowding in front of the screen chatting to someone with also a female avatar with the handle 's.exgurl'..WTF! i dun mean to generalise nor nitpick simply on the basis of one's choice of online pseudonyms...but to call oneself 's.exgurl' on a kiddy chat site is just plain WRONG though there might be a remote possibility that it might well be just another bona fide kiddy 8-yr -old pseudo-sex-kitten-wannabe-in-the-making who just chose the name to look cool. so with the latter in mind, the relatively safe nature at which the interaction takes place (since there's no way to exchange personal information with the prescibed dialogue) and not the least, my guilt about giving them false hopes by promising to take them to watch Madagascar which i'm wanted to watch anyway, i decided not to bao-toh the incident to my uncle-in-law lest he over-reacts and ban them from using the comp which will only make me doubly guilty.

i spent the entire afternoon meeting up BQ before he leaves for melbourne on tuesday morning. it seems bingquan is doing really well in his foundation course, getting one high distinctions two distinctions and a credit for his first semester. it may sound unimpressive to most, but for an ITE graduate with only an N level cert before that, it's no mean feat at all and i'm really glad he's since matured from the slacker, overspending cheehong-kia who gets cheated of a 1000 bucks LV bag and his emotions to at least a hardworking undergrad-to-be. ok, maybe he's still a chao cheehong cos' the fucker bang sare me at night just to attend some random girl's birthday party in some ultra ulu part of bukit panjang. you good! weigh charboh heavier than brother.

not intending to waste my evening just becos' of a cheehong kia, i decided to shift forward one of the must-do itinaries of this holidays - pay the long-awaited vist back to the Ark Music cafe (木船民歌餐庭) for a healthy dosage of cheena-kong serenading.

(YES! i'm going to fetch dad from office to West Coast now! Which means i'll have the car to myself today!! whahahaha...gotta go take a crap before driving if not scully half tabohleh tahan. continue story sometime later)

end of the great prohibition

holidays have been good so far, have yet to kenna any major reprimanding from parents so far which i suspect has more to do with 1) the fact that my results are not out yet and 2) they've yet to ask for me to submit my budget for the next semester's allowance which will probably be an eventuality when i continue to procrastinate till i ask them to buy a bank draft only a day before i leave like the previous few times.

friday was supposed to be wala's nite with the uwa guys, until the queue was so prohibitively long that me and daniel eventually for drinking at tango with joel and his 1/2 dozen frens who seemed to have an unspoken objection for our intrusion into what was supposed to be a farewell gathering for one of their buddies who will be migrating to melbourne the next day. u know u are out of touch with singapore happenings when 1) u are surprised at the fact that u now have to pre-order a drink and queue up for a chop before u can enter wala wala and 2) when ur instinctive response to being served a pint by a waiter is 'cheers mate', which was exactly what joel and daniel did. now since i'm on the topic of instinctive lingo, my housemate tom had the misfortune to be on the receiving end of some racial slurring on our day of departure from perth. he was doing some last minute shopping in the city carrying lots of shopping bags in his two hands when 5 drunk ang mohs went to behind his back to give him a scare. that of course gave tom a shock, which probably made the drunken horde laugh at him in bemusement. one of them then pointed at tom and called him a 'stupid chink'. and according to tom, in his anger, the first instinctive reaction was to deliver an tirade of 'KANNINA NABEH CHAO CHEE BYE' albeit in an antagonistic tone. it only hit upon him after saying that, that the rednecks had no fucking idea of what he meant which only served further fueling their bemusement and made them laugh even louder. it was only then that he put down his shopping bag and delivered a more diplomatic challenge of 'FUCK YOU, U RACIST ASSHOLE, U WANNA FIGHT, COME!' complete with the unequivocal finger pointing. fortunately for tom, the other four rednecks who were probably less drunk apologised to him and held back the one who shouted 'stupid chink' who even in his stupor was still rather zealous in picking up tom's gaunlet while deliver a continuation of the usual hanson-esque slurring telling tom to go back to his own country yada yada yada, until the security guards at the old commonwealth bank building came to settle things. when recounting the events, tom was actually rather shocked at his foolish courage to challenge five angmohs who he claimed were 1/2 a head taller than him on the day when he was supposed to fly home into the sweet embrace of his darling eunice. it was the thought of eunice that made him thankful for the avoidance of a asymmetical physical showdown, and his foolhardiness. now who says love is irrational? but as for the overarching moral of the story? you can take a singaporean outta singapore, but u can't the singaporean outta him.

now back to friday nite. it was as though the reaffirmation of eternal brotherhood in tango was not enuf for joel's frens and they promptly sought to further entrench their migrant buddy (and perhaps the pseudo aussie joel) in the singaporean ways by getting more drinks at the coffeeshop in holland v. make no mistake, it was only Tiger this time round, neither the lychee martinis nor erdingers from just now are acceptable in this alternative attempt at national education. and fortunately for me and daniel, adrian and his gf who were inside wala earlier came to join us at a seperate table as we proceeded with our own way of reaffirming our nationality by tucking into the nicest and indeed cheapest seafood horfun we've had in perhaps months while indulging in the cheap thrill of the schadenfreude hearing adrian complain how the Unexpected Band in wala's was somehow unexpectedly bad that night and me and daniel didn't miss out much. well it couldn't have been much of a cheap thrill it was a heartfelt pity since the lead singer for the Unexpected Band was so cute, and hearing her doing a female rendition of About a Girl and Desperado the last time i was there was more than enough to made me feel genuine regret for not going there earlier. but singaporean food and singaporean beer is never enuf for the prodigal sons, and we eventually managed to convince joel and rachael to hasten their goodbyes to their migrant buddy and head down with us for our pilgramage to the mecca of singapore bengdom - boat quay.

it was backrow bengland boat quay this time, whose vibrance kinda surprised a homeward bound mountain tortoise like me with the revival of the backrow bengland. we then head down to a bar called Colors which i realised was in fact just a couple of units down the highly publicised Hideout which - being the mountain tortoise that i am - never realised was in boat quay. kudos to adrian who had excellent foresight to carry an adidas sports water bottle filled with vodka in his bag, we enjoyed much more than what the 2 jars of vodka redbull offered which were also generously blanja-ed by adrian. later on we were joined by 2 foreign frens of adrian's gf, elaine and jeff who were born in hongkong and taiwan respectively. apparantly jeff was due to fly back to taipei the following day to serve his military conscription and once again i found myself stuck in the middle of what was essentially yet another farewell occasion. jeff and elaine were much friendlier and we soon found ourselves discussing about 1. the credibility or the lack thereof of chen shui bian, 2. how military conscription is more meaningful in the context of taiwan, 3. how on earth did a cigarette end up in our bowl of peanuts, 4. how it is apparantly true that the platoon commander of the taiwanese bmt platoon will hold the hand of the soldier while he throws the grenade cos' before that an entire platoon was killed when a certain soldier threw the grenade backwards to his horrified buddies who where all sitting cross-legged behind the throwing bay, and 5. about how elaine and jeff who both studied in the new york before working in singapore agrees that having spent their formative years in their respective place of birth, they can never truly call somewhere other than hongkong or taiwan their home - all while dowing a tequila shot each and 3 other jars of gin and tonic, and other nameless brownish, orangey stuff, courtesy of recruit-to-be jeff. and it wasn't long before we had to scull everything on the table cos' jeff ordered the drinks barely 30 minutes before the bar closes at 3 and me finding myself recite some random chinese poetry to jeff while proposing a toast to his imminent enlistment that went like '..醉卧沙场君莫笑, 古来征战几人回' just becos' that was the only pseudo poetic thing among all other more disgraceful stuff that i know which links drinking to the army. and in hindsight, asking a recruit-to-be a rhetoric question that 'how many of those who brave the warfront live to return' wasn't exactly the most appropriate to do. so eventually the night ended with each of us sincerly declaring how much we enjoyed one another's company, exchanging msn contacts with our new frens and promising to host each other whenever we pop by each other's city even when we both know that it'll be at least 1 1/2 yrs before he finishes his conscription and at least 2 till i return to singapore permanently.

i spent the earlier part of saturday meeting up xander and the 2005 gong jiao dictators to enjoy what left of their june holidays over an xbox gaming session in douby ghaut. it's an awesome feeling seeing these kids blossoming from blur sec 2s, to the ultra-obnoxious sec 3s during their first debating season and finally to the mad/retarded/hardworking/closely-knit sec 4 team of 2005, and having known that both fengyao and kenneth have made it through the direct schools admissions interview into vjc, i actually find it hard to believe that our little dictators are actually soon-to-be jc students. at the risk of sounding like a pervert -michael jackson style- i must say, for me and xander, coaching the dictators was perhaps our the closest experience we have to fatherhood thus far. and like every well meaning, nagging father, i can't resist but to offer some age old adages telling them to study hard for Os and they shldn't just relak jack just cos' they're assured a place in vjc. to which kenneth kang while tucking single-handledly into the 5 x swensens lime sherbet simply replied 'conz-phirmz'.kids will always be kids...

was a timely reunion for the Marlboro Gang when i went down to ECP to attend Bodyguard's birthday BBQ. it's awesome to catch up with old friends, not having to feel awkward at gatecrashing other people's gatherings and simply not giving two hoot to any social decorum. (which is something that i'm kinda embarrassed to say cos' i not only puked in two separate grasspatches in ECP at the area around the lighthouse, and i also peed into the bush beside the cycling track in my lethargy to walk to the nearest toilet...)Bodyguard, who has just gotten overthe a nasty breakup with his long time poly sweetheart, Sister Bear who decided instead to forsake the warm embrace of the Bodyguard for a fat and married chef, has lost quite alot of weight and is more yandao now. i'm really glad that Bodyguard is finally gotten over her and is ready to rejuvenate his lovelife. CQ made the interesting observation that the entire Marlboro Gang seems pretty hopeless in love since David Gan (nickname of one of our dudes, not that sissified hairdresser) has also recently broke up with his uni gf in the hope of patching up with his JC sweetheart, only to be horrified at the knowledge that his JC sweetheart is already attached to someone else and that he was in fact being led on by her renewed frenship with him, and the only hope of the Marlboro Gang getting a wedding invitation anytime soon seem to rest on Teeko Shen who's still very stable with his longtime gf. and David Gan then started a debate as to whether CQ's ex, DB was responsible for playing the two-headed snake instigating Sister Bear to breakup with Bodyguard. Sigh, with matters of the heart too complicated to marr a perfect brotherhood reunion, we opted to venture into the happier side of our collective nostalgia and opened the bottle of Chivas we bought as a 'gift' for Bodyguard even though he spent the better part of the evening at the pit preparing food for everyone and shuffling between us and his pri sch frens. it has always been a Marlboro Gang tradition to give an ang pow to the birthday boy from the other frens. and from past birthdays, in the absence of any red packets, we've improvised using items that varied from normal envelopes to putting cash inside some dodgy unmentionable vcd sleeves - and of course the vcd is part of the birthday gift too. this time round, mutu came up with the original idea of putting the cash inside an empty cigarette box and then offering Bodyguard a smoke even when Bodyguard is a non-smoker. we had to remind Bodyguard NOT to throw away the box lest he really thought it was garbage. as the chivas grew lesser and lesser, and the empty cans of Chang Beer piled up, the louder our laughter grew and soon we found ourselves singing in the middle of ECP. it wasn't too long before we finished the bottle of Chivas which we so jealously guarded from his pri sch frens among 6 of us who were not driving. the concoction of Chang Beer and Chivas proved too much for me and hence the reason of my embarrassment as mentioned above. It was one of the best gatherings we had in quite a well, and we rounded it all up by singing Ai Dao Chai Zhi Tong, Shao Nian Ying Xiong and other random hokkien songs en route to the carpark and promised to all fall-in in our endorsed prata shop soon before Tiko Shen and I leave.

衣锦还乡.... 衣紧还乡

as of 2 hrs ago i am emancipated. and since the MA paper all but confirmed my consignation to mediocre grades, the only glory i have in returning home is not the least that i'll be 衣紧还乡 -weeks of self-imposed isolation in my room surely has contributed to sartorial misfit, though this might also be mitagated by weeks of having consistently balanced diet consisting of an equal mix of Indomee and Nissin. having said that, in 6 hours time...singapore will be painted RED!! hell yeah

my carthasis

you may have heard this acronym from watching Young and Dangerous when Shu Qi said this to Chen Hao Nan:

MARLBORO =

Men
Always
Remember
Love
Because
Of
Romance
Only

or you may have heard another version of it:

MARLBORO =

Men
Always
Remember
Ladies
Because
Of
Reverberating
Orgasms

but you can never appreciate this until to try to mug half of the an entire semester's syllabus within the span of little more than 24 hrs to the exams...

MARLBORO =

Management
Accounting -
Really
Lazy
Bastards
Ought-to-be
Resigned to an
Onslaught

if all else fails, i could perhaps attempt to seduce the unit coordinator and get a decent grade if i:

Do
Undress
Nicely
Hope
It
Lasts
Longer

unfortunately he's a guy and i doubt he's gay. so it's back to the road most travelled. tak che eh ginna pah buay toh


my carthasis - have u had yours today?


'一个人孤单的时候, 没有朋友只有香烟, 那支名字香烟的就叫Marlboro.
口里含着支Marlboro, 手里拿着只 Zippo....'


the pantry is running low...the 4 cartons on the right are empty

the prisoners' dilemma

tio beh beo liao lor...just when i thought the i eluded the traffic fine i incurred when i rented the car while shawn and ruth were in town, in comes the summon for the $150 infringement. u see techinically i wasn't the one who committed the fine since it was ruth who was behind the wheel at that fateful moment. so i could conceivably elect to defend this infringement as stated on the summon my seeking either to view the photograph or to 'fill up a statement nominating the driver at the time of this offence' ie Bao Toh ruth. with these two options in mind, i can conceivable attempt a construct a payoff matrix with whatever little knowledge gathered from econs ala john nash.
1. If i do not challenge the infringement,

i. i will have to pay $150, and possibly incur a 3 point demerit point to my license (which i guess is a legal grey area since i have yet convert my singapore license for an aussie one).

2. If challenge the infringement, i will have to 'nominate' (the more palatable euphemism for bao toh-ing) ruth as the driver at time of the offence, and justify it with the photo, there can be several possible eventualities.

ii. i reveal ruth's details, and she gets either fined, a demerit, or both. but will only occur on the presumption that there's some centralised system monitoring offences between singapore and australia - a possiblity which i find implausible, though not impossible. the payoff for me would be that i'll not have to pay the fine, at her expense and earn a stain on my credibility since i've already promised her then that she won't pay the fine even when she offered to pay for it.

iii. i reveal ruth's details, and she get's nothing cos' there's not way the WA traffic police can hang her balls, while i get off the hook with no fine. and the case is left hanging. this is conceivably the optimal payoff for either parties though this is an unlikely outcome since there's probably gonna be some communication between the TP and the car rental agency.

iv. i reveal ruth's details, and she gets nothing, but the fine gets back to the car rental agency who would then possibly claim that i am still liable to pay for the fine since i was the only elected driver when i rented the car (since it cost more to add more drivers to the list) and by letting ruth drive was in fact a contravention of the contract on my part. while i've already gotten a refund of the 400 deposite i placed with the rental agency, i cannot be sure if they could jusfiably debit my credit details unilaterally on those grounds. the absolute worst case scenario then would be that i would have to pay for breaking the contract, and pay up the fine as well.



according to daniel who did some finance and biz law unit, 'when a lease is being made, the leaser incurs liability to the actions of the leasee and would hence assume the risk of having to pay for certain damages that the leasee caused using the item under lease' - on the book at least. so theoratically even if it boils down to iv, they're obligated to pay for my fine, while i play the bastard feigning ignorance about the fine claiming that ruth drove without telling me, and that ruth would probably will not have to pay since i feel it would be reasonable to assume that the WA TP and Singapore TP dun talk (i mean if it took years for the JB TP to come out with a system to monitor singaporean car traffic fines incurred in JB, surely it's less likey for the former to take place). but would this perceived most likely outcome hold water?

i've got till 20th of july to decide. and this brings another dimension to the dilemma since i'll be flying home in about 3 days time and more importantly 2 more exams coming up so i can't be bothered to give two hoot to this now. should i leave this summon hanging, would it in anyway affect my immigration procedure or worse, my student visa? or perhaps i could possibly elect to pay or to challenge the infringement only after return since i'll have a leeway of about 3 days between my arrival date and the deadline. sigh...responsibilities.... better go watch A Beautiful Mind Again for advice - not before i survive my calculus paper tomorrow and that ever-so trepidating management accounting exam.

my moral check and balance

it's really difficult trying to readapt my mindset back to studying the more mathematical subjects as i tread ever closer to dealing that elusive coup de grace to this wretched semester. not the least when my first two papers - microecons & philo - are more writing and content-based as compared to the remaining two - calculus and management accounting - which are more solution based. this seemed especially so for philosophy and calculus which are scheldule in succession, most unfortunately. yet interestingly so, in the course of mugging for philo, i've come to realise that there appears to be many techniques used in maths (especially so in statistical hypothesis testing) which are very similar to those employed in argument evaluation. such as a method of a provisionally assuming a statement to be true in order to test its validity, called modus poens where If statement P is true, then C will happen. Since P is true, therefore C must be true. the same method is employed in hypothesis testing where we the validity of a second hypothesis is tested by first assuming the contigent initial hypothesis to be provisionally true and then going on to test it. so it's probably not surprising that the ancient greek civilisation could produce thinkers like plato and pythagoras.

this semester was a total disaster, not the least for my philo and calculus module. failure for both modules is a very realistic possibility. in hindsight, i could probably try and offer mitigation and self-denial that it was the early morning lecture schedule for both that prompted me to miss a good 1/3 of the lectures. but procrastination is procrastination. something's gotta give, whether it's my irregular sleeping habits, or that ever-so tempting super nintendo emulator on my hard disk. i'll be in yr 2 next sem, and every score will count towards my majors. i can't afford to fuck up anymore.

it's is times like this of self-loathe, self-evaluation, and affirmation that i really wished i was still residing in trinity college. staying off-campus has its perks - cheaper rent, own choice of food etc. but what it does not account for is that sense of communal interaction which college provides. i've got great housemates in the bach pad, but i've come to realise that the nature of our interaction is basically just somewhat functional. we gather about twice a day only when we do our cooking in the kitchen, or when we approach each other to ask questions about exam stuff, and beyond that, we pretty much keep within the constraints of our own rooms. it's just rather different in college, and that's probably becos' of jeremy.

jem lives 2 rooms down the aisle when i was staying in trinity, and i could say he's the most unassumming and down-to-earth fellow i've ever met. since jem always works late, and me trying to catch up with all the work i missed, i would always pop over to his room to disturb him outta boredom or to just cook noodles together and talk cock. jeremy is my source of moral check and balance whenever i need some affirmation as to why i should so fucking fooling around and get serious work done not the least cos' i think he's embodies many virtuous traits which i find sorely lacking in myself. for a start, he's 2 yrs older than most of the other singaporean guys cos' he actually worked his way after army to save up for his own overseas education. i recall that in the midst of the smacking winter cold last semester, jem was the only one who refused to buy a heater cos' he 'din want to splurge unneccessrily' and only relented after he fell ill from the winter chill. jem's always been the consistent hardworker, and amicable mr nice guy, so much so that he's often taken advantaged of. there was once when i was stealing a quick cig break outside the courtyard at around 3am in between rushing an essay, i saw jem rushing to the lab in uni. apparantly his project mate left him for dead, and jem had to do take over and do that fuckhead proj mate's share of work even when he had a major test coming up 2 days later. and he did so with hardly much complain, it was only when we reasoned it out with him that he strengthened his resolve to report his fuckhead proj mate's dearth in academic integrity to the unit coordinator.

jem shares a similar story with many other poly graduates studying overseas who were unable to secure a place in our local universities as a result of the high entrance requirements levied on poly grads. it wasn't the case that jem had crappy grades, on the contrary he was among the top 15 percent of his polythenic's cohort as he said. yet it wasn't even good enough for him to enter NTU engineering. when i see people like me who despite getting crap results for A levels and even an E in physics being offered a place in NTU engineering by virtue of the fact that we took the A level route; while arguably more capable poly students like Jem are deprived of a place in local universities, i seriously question our government's ingenuity in tertiary education policy. do they serious trust someone like me, who barely understood what i was taught for 2 yrs in physics to be an structural engineer more than a poly graduate with a decent score like jem? with that in mind, perhaps the nicole highway tragedy wouldn't come as such a shock after all....



me and jem: even a terrorist needs some moral affirmation from time to time

the great prohibition

to neverland, soon i will
frolicking with the green fairies upon the hill

battling captain cook with an orange screwdriver
and plunge into the teeming waterfall - though i'm no diver

then i'll set this car afire, even though it's wrong
not before i savour the sunrise till it's dawn

so await me, my faithful friends, jim, jack and johnny!
while i banish to the graveyard, these last strands of my insanity

modus operandi: precisely the deprivation of it

1st ORD anniversary / he who is without pubic hair

timeless mantra from the SAF:

'i just wanna lead an ORDdinary life'

'Sergeant: Oei recruit! How do u spell record?!
Recruit: R-E-C....'
Sergeant: THAT'S YOU!
Recruit: ...O-R-D
Sergeant: That's for me! (whahahaha *evil grin*)'

emancipation one year on - a year since my ORD. 12th of June 2004. 120604. it's not a difficult date to remember consider 1206 is perhaps one of the most eternalised jargon in the SAF culture (it is the name of the form u sign when u pay for stores which u've either lost or damaged when u're in the SAF).

when one's in the army, these 3 letters, an O, a R and a D is the biggest thing that dominates the collective psyche of every NSF soldier. (not to mention a huge source of parody too: ORD= Officers R Dickheads, Orgy Ravished Dick, Only Recruits Don't, Orgasmic Release Day...) it's the ultimate goal, that sacrosanct 3 lettered abbreviation synonymous to liberation, to civility, to the end of persecution. yet strangely, this time a year ago, joy wasn't exactly the only thing weighing on my mind then. there was a slight sense of loss, of nostagia, and ambivalence. for the first time in 2 and a half years, no one's gonna plan out your itinerary of the day, no more routine orders, no one to tell u what to do, or not to do. this long awaited 'freedom', or so we thought was never truly something that we're bestowed upon. rather quite simply, it's just a return to the status-quo before enlistment. and when his reality hit upon u, the joy is pretty much diminished. we're to some extent domesticated to accept this relinquishment of freedom, just as how a runaway pet will eventually return to the familiar though constrainted embrace of his owner's home. it is for this reason, that there are many who choose to sign on as a regular after ORD.
this sense of loss and nostalgia is compounded by the fact that a part of you will be left behind, the people whom you share this collective persecution together, those whom u call ur brothers. much as u promise to keep in contact with one another, u just know deep down that 'a promise to keep in contact' is nothing more than a euphemism highlighting the fact that we'll all be aheading in our own way. this is especially so since my reservist call-ups will in most likelihood be off-sync with the rest of the coy.

for some reason, i seem to remember the people more than the experiences during army.
one of those who really stand out is PTE Aylwin. yes, it's spelt A-y-l-w-i-n and pronounced as 'Aw-win'. when enquired about why he's called Aylwin and not Alywin or Alwin his classic reply was a vindictive 'Dei! my mother give me my name dah. are u saying that my mother is uneducated??!'. Aylwin is the favourite son of Bravo Coy, almost a legend with the many amazing annecdotes he's in. He's known by many names,
'Kun-Ji Mai-Ri E-leh' (tamil for: 'he who is without pubic hair'), and 'Dopu-leh E-leh' (tamil for: 'he who is without a belly button'). and the best thing is, both are absolute accurate descriptions of his physical attributes and not random taunts - he admitted to shaving his pubes after being caught by the toilet cleaners who were pissed off at having to clean up the hair that was blocking the drainage hole and he has an artifically reconstructed belly button after an accident in army .
but what really made him famous through out the company was his antics on the first day of his enlistment. according to all the guys who were from ptp platoon 1 during the mono intake for Bravo coy, on the first night of ptp, aylwin was making funny noises and his bed was shaking and creeking. when chong (aylwin's buddy) asked him what the fuck he was doing, aylwin responded with a curt 'shuddup lah' and continued with his deed. the next morning, during an informal bunk inspection (since it was after all the 2nd day only), the sect com found a couple of stains on aylwin's bed and on his blanket. with a raised eyebrow, the sarge asked aylwin what the hell did he do and whether he was wanking. aylwin denied it initially. unsatisfied or perhaps intrigued, the sect com went on to conduct stand-by-bed inspection for aylwin's bunk during every morning till the end of ptp with extra emphasis on aylwin's bed. now that really pissed off the entire bunk, and only after some intense probing (and i suspected that they tickled him since after that the PTP1 guys in almond platoon always loved to hold aylwin down and tickle him whenever they suspected him of lying), did aylwin admit to his self-loving gesture....

initially, aylwin's bold deeds was only known to PTP platoon 1. whenever ppl made fun of his self-loving gesture, aylwin would respond with 'Dei! can u don't talk about it or not?' and when the persistent suan-ing really rattles him, he'll say 'I tell you ONE TIME TWO TIME NOT ENOUGH ISSIT'. what really established him as the most horny bastard in bravo coy was a song that was wrote by jessel, bravo's resident mat rocker that was decidicated in honour of aylwin and performed during the OC evening.

This is how the song went, complete with the musical notes:

The Aylwin Song


I tell you...
1 2 3
One time two time, one time two time, one time two time ...
4 4 1 1 4 4 1 1 4 4 1 1 4
(read out: Dei! CAN YOU NOT TALK ABOUT IT OR NOT!)
There was a man. His Name is Aylwin
1 2 3 4 4 4 6 (1)(1)
And He is from Platoon One
(1) (2) (2) (2) (1) 6 (1)
He loves to, wank on his bed
6 5 4 6 5 5 4
He just loves to masturbate
4 4 4 4 2 4 4
On enlistment day, first day of P-T-P
(2) (2)(2)(2) (1) (1) 6 4 5 5 66
Aylwin was there, masturbating
(2)(2) (2) (2) (3)(4) (3) 6
And when we ask him what was his fantasy
6 (2) (2) (2) (2) (1) 6 4 5 5 66
He said it was his 'Tan-ge-chi'
5 4 4 4 4 6 5 4 4

(repeat 'I tell u....' x1 )
PS: Brackets mean higher octave eg. (1) = Do 1 octave higher
'Tangechi' means younger sister in Tamil.

While masturbation in camp is technically a chargeable offence in SAF, i seriously think no one has ever been officially charged with this, for the simple reason it's probably just gonna embarrass the unit big time. just imagine if aylwin was sent to the detention barracks with the follow conversation happened:

Detainee A: Oei, why u kenna DB?
Detainee B: I AWOLed.
Detainee A: Or...I come in cos' i whacked the living daylights outta my PC
Detainee B: Wah, damn hiong
Detainee A (to Aylwin): Then u leh, why u kenna DB?
Aylwin: ...becos' i masturbated in camp...
Detainee A&B: ............

it is prolly for this reason that the OC just laughed along of everyone else...and fortunately for Aylwin, he was spared the dubious honour of being the first to be charged for masturbating in camp. The song became such a hit that we even sang it during our 2nd year's 24k route march after we turned operational. yet unfortunately, Aylwin wasn't there to march and perhaps sing it along with us, cos' he was downgraded for his belly button injury, which is another epic in itself for another day.


almond platoon, claymore 03 @ kanchanaburi, thailand. bravo ginna pah buay toh!!!

reminiscing the wet gap (not THAT kind of wet gap)

a man, is but a man.
his existence stemming from his non-existence
his worth valuated by his expediency
his pride, a measure of how much others could deride
'what art thee?'- the bishop asked the pawn
'i'm but another accessory to this extravagent pomp'
where dreams are forgotten
individuality, downtrodden
collective security, or so they said
freedom - the price paid, in the most farcial way.


circa july-august 2002
location: wet gap, seletar east camp.
modus operandi: one full water bottle, many many many pushups, and several times of semula-ing stores and a couple of wayang antics observed


dreadful nights and tasteless mornings
the only ripples in this melacholic monotony
a two year mourning
grief over youthful pleasures lost and fading humanity too.
and that cyniccal realism which you otherwise would have never known
glimpse at your fate, a prelude to your darkest fearss
for it's just an entity devoid of all this you hold dear.

100702, slipway, seletar east camp
after 1-3-1 raft construction

Barcelona

facades of bliss
illusions of euphoria
surreal? perhaps
forgotten? likely
out goes worldly concerns
in comes worldy desires
mind the lights though
it's glaring to the mind
it's balm to the tortured body
but calm to the restless soul
revel in this nirvana - while it lasts
for this transient purgatory
will be just another day in hell

140702, barcelona @ robertson walk
modus operandi: a magarita, 2 bombay martinis before that (@ aphrodisiac),
plus 2 minus 2 after booking out

'a pleasant surprise from my old army notebook. its so interesting to see how perception can be so different when one's in a situation, and when one looks at it in hindsight... what would i not give just to be in bravo coy, to be whacked and tekkaned all over again'

end of a saga...

so this is how it all ends. a collective psyche of nail bitting anticipation spanning over 28 years and 2 generations of mesmerised adolescents just ended in may 2005. the epic moment that etches anakin skywalker into movieland folklore eternity. the birth of darth vader. there can't possibly be better curtain call than this to end what's been truly a quinessential epic by every standards. and it better be. i am not exactly looking forward to an entire conveyor belt of cheesy starwars expanded universe (EU) movie franchise. that would be sacriligious. and for the followers of the force, the purists among us will deem any attempts to film the EU sequels (or worse, old republic pre-prequels) nothing less a blasphemy. it's more than a franchise, it's a religion. well ok, maybe we could compromise on the thrawn trilogy. if not, what else is there to look forward to?






the original trilogies. a sci-fi background with medival theme of the chivalry of the jedis and the struggle between good and evil. that's what makes it so amazing even 20 odd years later


it all started for me back in about sec 2. sure, i've watched the original star wars on channel 5 when i was a kid - too young to comprehend the complexities of inter-galactic politics. i do remember receiving a couple of hand-me-downs SW action figures for christmas when i was 8 (obiwan kenobi, leia in mask and a couple of ewoks). i was truly converted when i was introduced to the opiate known as star wars customizable card game, thanks to xander. yes, it's an opiate considering i blew all my ang pow stash and my allowance on the countless packs of star war cards. at $3.80 a pack for the newer expansions and a whooping $5-$6 bucks (depending on where u buy) for the black border premiere series. it was an obsession. there were 5 of us in class who were always looking score a hit afterschool at world of JJ in bishan mrt. me, xander, sow chen, kevin and alywin. man, buying ccgs is truly a good gauge of one's character. ok this is how it works: there're many expasions to the CCG and it's usually named after a location or planet in the star wars movies (like hoth, dagobah, cloud city etc) and in every pack of about 8-12 cards there's only one rare card (which can either be a character card, or most frustratingly an 'interupt' or 'effect' card) and outta these rare cards, most are crap with the exception of about 3-4 ultra rare cards (which are either character cards or spaceships cards which we collectively coin as 'mains'). legend has it that there's only one main in each carton of packs so if someone tio the main from that box, the rest is probably crap. that was the source of a lotta tension among the 5 of us. whenever someone scores a main, the rest of the five just become damn du lan. this is especially if one of us bought 10 packs for the same box and got nothing but crap cards and the next person goes on to score a main by buying only one pack. it happened a few times when shawn tio-ed his Millenium Falcon and when i tio-ed my Boba Fett. and initially the stupid auntie at JJs simply refuses reopen a new box even when a main is taken until sometime later when we bought so many packs from her that we finally have the collective leverage to get her to open new cartons. tearing up and throwing cards which we already have into dustbins, kicking the mrt pillars and bins outta sheer frustration - we've all done that at one point or another. perhaps gambling would have been a better way to describe the situation. we were spurlging on the all the crap cards and feeding our pent up frustration only to await the emotional high of tio-ing mains. at the height of SWCCG craze, it even overtook Magic: the Gathering as the most popular card game for sometime until pokemon took over. those days, a black border(limited edition) main like Darth Vader can fetch as high as 55 USD.






if you watched the prequels before the original trilogy, well...i guess you could be forgiven for thinking of star wars as a somewhat space-themed adaptation of Macbeth

beside being collectible items, the card game in itself is addictively fun as well. we get to customise our own decks of 60 cards and battle it out. there's a gaming room in serene centre back then where we always hung out. we're the absolute disgrace there. really. u see, there're actually quite a few working adults playing SWCCG there and boy do they really have an arsenal of mains that will kick our ass flat. they've like 3 obiwans, 3 lukes, 3 hans and 3 leias all in each fucking deck, and they also have another configured deck with another 3 obiwans, 3 lukes etc in it. so it was no surprise that we always get thrashed. then alywin came out with a ingenious (back then, but very sia-suay in hindsight) idea to bridge this divide. he got us to pool all our mains together and colour photostat the cards and then cut the photocopies out and paste it onto the crappy cards so we could use it like real mains. this was of course, not tournament legal. and when we actually used the cards against the older ppl we kenna suan only. it was quite embarrassing. all in all, the older guys are really quite friendly in general. they mainly guys in their 30s who were the 1st generation starwars fans who watched the initial trilogy in cinemas. there's one of them called aldrin or something who was even kind enough to swap his extra mains for a few moderately rare cards with us.



i only collected the cards from the original trilogy expansions. character-wise, the 2 biggest cards missing from my mains collecion are these two - the Millenium Falcon and Emperor Palpatine.

the beauty of the CCG is that not an frame of the entire trilogy is left unaddressed. the makers of the CCG (Decipher) took up the unenviable task of name or providing a 'lore' - an introduction brief for each character that appeared in the movie- for each card. there're so many minor minor characters that only appeared for a brief milliseconds in the movie and they all have that tiny bit of history attributed to them. did you know that the monkey-like alien that feeds on Jabba the Hutt's leftovers is called Salacious Crumbs? or that the disfigured guy in the tatooine cantina is called Dr Evazan and his fren who got his arm chopped off by Obiwan, Ponda Baba? they're all too familar to us, if only because these are the crappy cards that we'll hate to tio when we buy.

like the movie itself, the awesome CCG eventually succumbed to the empire - the tyranny of rich conglomerates like Wizards of the Coast that is. somewhere in 2000 or 2001 Wizards of the Coast (also makers of Magic: The Gathering) - the biggest rivals of Decipher bought over the rights from George Lucas to produce Star Wars themed card games. to distinguish their new asset from their more distinguished predeccessors, WOTC named it the Star Wars TCG. (although Decipher probably struck a deal by getting WOTC to lay their hands off the Lord of the Rings CCG -which they eventually acquired- in return). The TCG is absolute crap. the design of the card juvenile, and as for the gameplay...well, i've never played the TCG but judging from the fanfare, the CCG still seemd by far to be the more popular game. the greatest irony of it all, with Decipher unable to produce new cards, a group of SWCCG fanatics took it upon themselves to perpetuate the game - not unlike the rebel alliance against the empire - by dis-ambiguating the convulated CCG rules, changing the texts of the older cards and even producing new cards from what they call the virtual expansion series. they even hold annual world tournaments etc. they've become the de facto authority for the remnants of the SWCCG players. u can check the cards out at their websiteit's been a long long time since i last played a SWCCG and i've managed to convince sow chen and hopefully xander as well to play the game for old times sake when i get back.

Then there was this time in JC2, when i was representing my college for PESA and i had to come out with a short speech of any topic of my choice. i was told to speak about something that i was passionate about and it wasn't too hard to decide on star wars. the night came, and it was held in the ymca auditorium. i was one of the last few to deliver my prepared speech i think. from what i could recall, the almost all of the others participants were talking about some serious shit like philosophy of life, angsts of a teenager with a guy from TPJC being a notable exception. he delivered a really funny speech about unisex toilets or something.

in hindsight, my speech was really really cheesy. it started like this: 'From the east to the west, from Bollywood to Hollywood. There was never an epic as worthy as that of the Star Wars Trilogy'...WTF! I then went on to talk about the reasons behind star wars' popularity. in fact my entire speech was crap. first there was something i said about star wars being family entertainment

'unless you exclude the possibility of the dubious applications of yoda's gimmer stick, which i shan't elaborate'

or about how star wars is so popular in asia cos of the ostensibly heroic factors
about the jedi teachings = bushido and how dimminutive yoda, despite his shortness

'...stands as a beacon of hope to all asian men. that Size (index finger raised and slowly curling)...MATTERS NOT (looking at my own crotch) '.

i dun think many people got that joke cos' there was nothing save for a few isolated giggles in from the crowd. the toastmaster judges were certainly not laughing either. then i spoke about how Star Wars also had elements of asian colloquailisms in it:

'...in the epic duel between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker in the Empire Strikes Back, those five famous words where Vader declared his fatherhood to Luke - 'I am you father' is widely perceived by asian linguists to be a allusion to a certain hokkien phrase that is commonly used within the context of a confrontation - a phrase which for propriety's sake that i shan't mention'

there was no reaction from the audience either. all in all, my speech just came across as, well...kinda random. i guess it just wasn't within my ability to do justice to such a superb subject matter. the conclusion from PESA, that i am not a master-debater, and neither am i a cunning-linguist. well at least i tried to evangelise my religion.

May the Force be with me....i need it for my exams desperately. quick quick! i need more mitochlorians!

(say, while we're on the subject of religion. apparantly anakin skywalker was 'conceived by the force' and din have a biological father. and at the same time he was prophesies as the One to bring balance to the force. could it have been george lucas' intention to allude Anakin Skywalker to the messiah, to one born of immaculate birth, to that of ...Jesus Christ?)