Sunday 24 June 2007

Just a week into school and I had my first test on friday. I have a group of jolly mates. Lessons started getting dry. We've got 2 more quizzes to go and 3 projects to hand in (which is semi-madness for a 5-week course). Jonathan's the gym-freak and heartless romantic, interesting fella. First week of school summarised there.

And I've been studying hard man. I've been going out just to get my reading done before I attend lessons and doing my assignments. Yesterday, Zhiquan, Leon and I talked about JC days and how stupid we were to not have worked harder and hence suffer so painfully as the final exams drew closer. Of opening up your notes to find blank space after blank space of undone examples and thus having virtually nothing to refer to and study.

SMUgging here I come, way before the actual school term starts.

What do you do when you miss someone you love? You decide to head downtown somewhere near where she resides for a bit, on the premise of getting some air and having some reading done, but also providing room for other 'partly due to' reasons like trying your luck for a bump. And then you have a drink by yourself just below where she says she is for awhile, and then going home because the phone's silent and so you think she's probably busy and don't wanna disturb her.

She may not know it, but Kee provides timely reminders of my propensity to be silly. :]




It is the nail that sticks out that gets hammered.

Today's Listenables:
Within Temptation - Bittersweet

Tuesday 19 June 2007

First day of school yesterday!

Marketing is a very interesting subject. I don't say that because I can't find a better word to describe it or something. It is really interesting. Maybe it's my professor, whom I thought was good though he's from India and his accent might pose an issue. Maybe it's interesting so far because we were doing some case studies. Did you know that the symbolic image of Santa Claus in a red and white coat was created by Coca Cola in 1930? Or that companies like IBM actually hold official corporate meetings in the virtual world of Second Life?

Met some not so interesting people, formed a group with one fellow NSman Special-Termer called Irving and three SMU old-timers, of which 2 are ladies. The laojiao guy dispensed some interesting tips about SMU-first-day-must-dos, one of which is that when you go to class for the first time, spot the chiobu and immediately sit as close to her as possible, if not beside her. This is because usually the more good looking, charismatic and, thus, confident guys would try to sit near her too to get to know her, and they'd eventually make better groupmates for projects than the quiet loner ones sitting at the corners so you end up sitting near them too and can eventually establish better connections as early as possible.

Went to SMU today though I had no lessons cos I wanted to study my text (crazy huh), and ended up meeting Leon for dinner. And Leon said something funny.

Actually Irving yesterday mentioned about the locally-flavoured proverbial '2 years of not using your brains in the army'. I'm fucking sick of hearing this because it's quite nothing more than some stupid excuse most people like to use for zoning out during NS. I have to assume that such a statement is made out of a need to complain (cos if it isn't objectively so then it's sadder in my opinion), which leads me to think that if it really pained anyone to have their brains rot in the army, they could have easily done something to prevent it. Nobody stopped anyone from bringing books to camp to read during those admin times in bunk rather than do anything and everything else that was unproductive and then bitch about it.

I personally made it a point to capitalise on the learning freedom (with regards to mental stimulus in this sense because there wasn't anything else you needed to cram your mind with, although as a specialist and sea soldier I had a shitload of SOPs to familiarise myself with) to read up on things I won't bore you with and worked on some other stuff such as art during my free time. It just kinda pisses me off to hear someone else whine about how stupid the army has made him, simply because he let it.

Maybe being a 2SG platoon sergeant purely out of responsibility (with no extra pay) gave me work that enabled my mind to leverage on to prevent itself from idling too much, but I suppose I'll never know what a 'man' (as in soldier man, non-commander) really thinks of. This notorious 'man mentality' that people talk about.

So Leon was telling me about a stupid colleague (whom I had the pleasure of bumping into and immediately developing a disliking for) and I said that maybe he really has that 'man mentality'. Then Leon exclaimed, "please, he has ULTRAMAN MENTALITY!"

Haha!

We both later wondered why nobody has ever thought of such a term and decided that if either one of us had thought of it during NS, it might've become a part of fond army lingo.




The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.

Today's Listenables:
Breaking Benjamin - The Diary Of Jane

Sunday 17 June 2007

I am actually starting school next monday, but it sure doesn't quite feel anything like what I think I'm supposed to feel when I'm about to commence university. Maybe it's because it's just special term and supplementary stuff but that's probably a somewhat negated and diluted explanation too. Gone are my days of expressive avant-garde-esque fervour in the light of new (but anticipated) experiences.

To sum up over a month of attempted esoteric pursuits, I:

1) Learnt a meagre amount of Spanish (harder than I thought!)
2) Read Life of Pi and am halfway through Prozac Nation
3) Learnt about the scientific and philosophical relationships between (possibly spiritual) consciousness and quantum physics
4) Did and am still doing freelance sub-editing
5) Quite successfully set up my Bric Brac d'Art custom arts venture website
6) Joined two soccer tournaments

I've spruced up the Bric Brac d'Art site quite a bit and am pretty pleased with the outcome of the layout revamp. Honestly, I used to get pissed off seeing the site because it really lacked a definitive touch to it.

It's been an interesting week for the family because my mom found work and my dad had to take up the chores in a reversal of roles, which gave my brother and him more opportunities to be together. I thought that'd really do the both of them good.

The other day my dad and I suddenly started talking about shares and market investments. I think we've come a long way since those secondary school days where we just couldn't exchange a word that didn't spell trouble. I suppose his being unemployed and staying at home gave him time to sober up a little too.

One thing I didn't get to do was to pick up percussions. Since I'm gonna have some allowance anyway, I'm thinking of using the money I'm earning from sub-editing to get myself a small electronic percussion set. The capability of muting the system is a necessity.




Attack life, it's going to kill you anyway.

Today's Listenables:
Kill Hannah - Kennedy

Monday 11 June 2007

In the dark, I grabbed my popcorn box and felt what I thought was a rubberband until it started wriggling like a madfuck that I realised it was a house lizard and threw it reflexively, making me feel quite gay thereafter. But it sure proves the adage that sometimes, the less you try to get something, the easier it comes to you.

The Lifestyle paper on Sunday had an unfuckinbelievable (UFB) article about the two girls with 16k friends from Friendster and Myspace. What was more UFB was the girl who said "who only has 1000 friends? [sic]". I'm not really questioning the possibility of their acquisition of 16000 'friends' and I think there has been more than enough commentary from the rest of the world pertaining to what's quite ostensibly wrong with the picture. But damn, for the Lifestyle section of our national paper! Is there such dire desperation for a frontpage angle?

One of the sisters even goes on to say that she once spent a whole week staying at home all day surfing Friendster. It is so mind-boggling that I am quite stumped by the incredulity of it all, and not by anything specific in particular. I suppose you could say they're Xiaxue's saving graces. Haha. Oh well as it goes, publicity, good or bad, still is publicity afterall.

Here's a little pointer to add to Friendster 101 that I somehow came up with while talking to Richard:

If you are at a girl's profile and there is a picture of her and her friend as her default picture and you do not know which one of them in the photo is her, chances are the better looking one is. *note: generic statement ahead* A girl would rather die than put up an unglam and, quite possibly, inferior photo of herself especially when she is in the company of other females in the same picture.

The folks are back, the crazy's been sobered up and everything's back to routine once again. It can be nice. I can't quite recall significantly what I've been up to this week, other than remembering the rather random meetups throughout the week with Nat, Richard, Ahmad, Dudley and Leon which summed up to be rather mediocre in terms of any specific developments in particular. There was a more interesting meet up involving Nat, Maxi and Cherene where I had my virgin trip to Minds Cafe and the game of Taboo (where Nat and I formed a very formidable partnership that saw us busting really insane words I can't quite put a finger to at the moment), but otherwise I guess I'm mostly waiting for school to start next monday, whether I'm consciously aware of it or not.

In the background of my daily routines I've been doing quite a fair bit of reading, mostly online. I saw a message posted on a forum thread in Funkygrad that pretty much hit the nail on the head:
"I looked through NUS's and NTU programs and I think both instuitions offer pretty adequate courses. But NTU's career aspect page on psychology seems rather narrow-minded. It's really more than just counseling individuals. This is the most loathed stereotype in the field of psychology. Much like how people think that mechanical engineering majors must know how to replace a connecting rod in a IC engine."

Other read ups:
Quantum physics and consciousness (I'd love to elaborate on this but another time)
Singapore as described in WikiTravel (every true blue red-dotter must read this!)Investments/stocks/etc (BLEAH.)
Movie analyses (namely Superman, The Skeleton Key and The Princess Blade)

And well... A little bit of 300 too but in a much less serious sense:

300 Will Transcend Pop Culture (taken from format.me)

“I haven’t seen 300 yet because I was banned from my cineplex. We had all lined up in front of the theater for about 30 minutes, and then they brought us in. I had to stand right beside these two fat, horse-faced lesbians eating each other’s tongues like they were making a political statement or something. So, like 30 minutes later, we end up shuffling in the theater and these fucking bitches start bitching about having to wait when the movie is about to start, mind you, it was 11 and it was a midnight showing. It turns out they were going to see that stupid Jim Carrey movie 23 and they were missing it. So, the ugliest of the two bitches just exclaims like no one’s there “This is the wrong fucking movie!” I just had to do what I did next. I shouted at the top of my lungs “This is SPARTA!!” and kicked her in the chest, causing her to fall down about 8 steps to the floor. Some were shocked, but about 80% of the theater started to cheer, and I was forcibly thrown out by 2 officers. Charges are going to be pressed against me apparently, but it was worth it.” (this is a very popular anecdote that is widely circulated on the internet now)

“My girlfriend entered the room 10 minutes after the movie was over and asked me where are we going to eat. THAT IS REALLY BAD LUCK! you know what happened. I basically went crazy smashing a chair to the wall and yelling TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELL!!!. A small amount of saliva on the corner of my mouth and the mad-man look completed this gruesome scene to the point that she started to cry asking wheter she did something wrong.”

And this from Likoon and Mr Brown:

Officer, in a dignified manner: "NS men!! Enjoy your breakfast, for tonight, we dine in hell!!!!!!"
NS man with the typical Singaporean uncle accent: "Sir, you mean cookhouse ah?"

ROFL.




Youth is wasted on the young.- George Bernard Shaw

Today's Listenables:
Within Temptation - Forgiven

Saturday 2 June 2007

Just came home from a soccer tournament organised by Melvin and Toa Payoh Methodist Church. I'm gonna cut a long story short. Melvin used to be some big time beng from Zhonghua Sec but I've been talking to him recently, unhampered by the fact that he stays very near me and he's really such a changed person now. A whole deal more mature. We were on the way home on the same bus and he was just ranting away at how much time he wasted in secondary school and that it was so stupid now that he has to waste money trying for SIM and is still struggling to find a place to further his tertiary education. Kept reiterating the virtues of studies and self discipline. Interesting.

Anyway, he's not a christian, but the church invites him to play for their soccer team cos he's good, and he had the task of organising a street soccer tournament and invited me. So I called the usual guys down. As expected due to who the organiser is, there were a great deal of his brother's ZHSS classmates who went down, and it was a total bunch of unholy guys playing street soccer under the name of a holy place. Those kids, though a year younger only, still looked terribly like little kids since those days back in secondary school when they were on a dead trip to cause all kinds of childish trouble. Fuckin' lost to them in the semis. Chester said he can't take it already and wants to eat zai (vegetarian) for a week to ease out the ill shit.

4th day of my total freedom, cos the folks and bro are in China now, and I feel like I'm not utilising it well at all. I haven't done anything semi-extreme (note: semi, no sneaking outta the country shit, no whatever) and I've been going home earlier than when my dad's at home to scold me for coming home late. This doesn't quite make sense. Well. It doesn't help when everyone else isn't quite available.

I did bring the car out for a spin when Kee came over though. Haha (not funny to those who don't get it, but my dad still forbids me from driving without his guidance. G4y). And I've got a CD of the music I wanna hear when driving by myself.




I got my hair highlighted, 'cause I thought some strands were more important than others.

Today's Listenables:
Skillet - Rebirthing