Monday, December 31, 2007
the trip to phuket was good, but the predictable aftermath of the trip - sporting a mild fever and having a badly sunburnt body (from head to toe).
but nevertheless this didn't spoil the fun of the trip at all.
some sights and scenes from the trip:
the typical ang-moh dabor in phuket with a thai zhabor. these 2 have just walked down from an inn. nosey it might be but this was a notable observation there. many angmoh dabor were there alone or in group, for a purpose. and the thai version of SPGs were always ready to be pounced on. (the picture was distorted to prevent any unwanted complications)
hastily taken shots of the 'people-who-were-once-men-like-you-and-i', to escape their eager advancement on us. this was taken in a bar where all the 'girls' dancing were 'once-men'. i must say some of them are really pretty (tall, hourglass figure, skimpily dressed, and do not even have a single spot of cellulite seen on their thighs). but even so, their zeal and enthusiasm to invite you for dances and phot0-taking was enough to leave a massive gap between them and a watching crowd. it is notable that one badly wasted angmor dabor (probably too drunk to be conscious of what he was doing) jumped onto one of the dancing stands and started grinding the girls, in the event getting his willy touched and carressed by a few of them. and not long later, he pulled off the undergarment of one of the girls and revealed his/her silicon boobs before his hands did his stuffs on them. let's hope that he woke up the next day without any incling of what he did.
bangla street (where all the nightclubs are) in the day and night. see the difference.
and now...to the beach...
holiday-makers sun-tanning on the beach, and a thai hawker trying to get some business.
and more shots from the beach...where my attempt to suntan caused a much unwanted sunburn. where we saw many many many many ladies baring it all. this reminds me of a forum i read about tioman, where a debate went on about whether angmoh zhabor should be allowed to suntan half-naked or go skinny dipping. but apparently, despite the fact that mainstream thais are still pretty conservative (except those in the cities, from what i observed), nobody bothers when they are in holiday mode.
and that's me, and my two counterparts. 3 asian holiday-makers, a rare sight i must say for the rest who were there. note the lady to the back and right of myself in the picture.
a good trip it was, and i think it's a good year to look ahead to as well.
happy new year!
disturbed you at 5:57 PM
Thursday, December 27, 2007
my exploits to grow my money have gone awry of late.
120 dollars a month as the final threshold. but is there anything called a disciplined gambler?
is it time to stop? i can't decide.
disturbed you at 1:03 AM
Sunday, December 23, 2007
i shall not spend my time on worthless stuffs anymore.
disturbed you at 6:37 PM
in a rare occasion, i followed my family to the temple in toa payoh to give our offerings for blessings. the trip kinda sparked some thoughts.
truth be told, my understanding of buddhism is nothing more than shallow. i have been asking endless questions like "why am I praying", "who am I praying to" and "how many buddhas are there" etc., but have never found time and put up any sustained effort to read through the thousands of pages of historical facts about the religion itself.
but i think i am proud that i am, at the very least, asking questions about my historical roots. i know the basic definitions of buddhas, nirvana etc., not very good but well, i know. and i am born into a buddhist family. from my greatparents to my generation, we are all part of the a buddhist family. being born into a religion gives me the purpose and drive to understand more about it. yet, i can safely say that many of us, to put it bluntly, care too little to spare even a thought for it.
i am not the best person to talk about this; my mum would be the one. but i think i can understand how parents (mostly chinese) feel when they see their children changing their faiths to others, often believing that they have chosen to be part of a 'greater faith'. or due to any other reasons, some of them as trivial as the 'company of friends' or even 'the allure of good music'. it is the kind of nonchalance and disinterest for their born faith that hurts. before they could even ask anything about their own background, they have chosen to paint their new backdrop.
before you start thinking that 'incense tickles my ultra-sensitive nostrils and pollutes the air', it is about time to give your historical roots a 'chance' of sorts. let's try to understand them, and should you ultimately choose to believe in another religion, let the reason be 'a greater spiritual journey', rather than 'good music' or 'meeting more friends'.
disturbed you at 4:26 PM
Friday, December 21, 2007
when you're too free you start thinking too much for your own good. unanswered and unanswerable questions like "what should i do when i after i ord" and "whether will i be successful next time" start cramming your brain and leave you teteering on the brink of insanity.
these questions are not exactly 'unanswerable' but i am too confused and too unsure right now to provide a good and sustained under for myself and others who ask. a few months ago i was so sure that i wanted to do medicine, so sure that that was the place i would find myself rightfully belong to and so sure that that was the place where i would find purpose and meaning in whatever i do. failing to achieve a place in med school kinda threw me into absolute uncertainty. truth be told, i don't really have many other interests. my interest in scientific research is worth nothing more than the occasional 'wows' at certain new inventions i read from the economist or the newspaper. neither do i possess a glib tongue for a lawyer nor a ambitious yet attractive personality good for doing business. needless to say, the creative juices for an engineering career are nowhere to be found within myself.
that leaves me with nothing much to choose from, or rather, nothing to choose from.
over the past few months this has become a worrying situation. i realised that eventually i have to work somewhere. undeniably, such desperate thoughts have made me consider the prospects of putting pen to paper for a military career but i was lucky enough to be calm and conscious enough not to do so.
therein lies the problem of uncertainty. when you're uncertain about something, you begin asking more questions that most of the time, unfortunately, only suffice to make you more confused. for example, in this case, you would start asking questions like "what if i don't like what i study halfway through the course" and "what if my wife earns more than me" and more often than not, there will not be answers readily available for them unless you have experienced them.
right now, i have kinda convinced myself that i wish to work in the healthcare/environment sector. i am quite (yeah...quite) convinced that that is where i will find most sense and purpose in what i do. much better than controlling aircraft in the circuit and conjuring new and better plans to kill people. at least that's where i can do my part for other people around me. an idealistic notion, but not a senseless one.
so dentistry? chemical engineering (biotechonology/environmental engineering)?
give me some more time, or perhaps fate can help me decide.
disturbed you at 12:30 AM
Monday, December 17, 2007
commissioning parade was awesome.
despite failing to complete a hormat properly and banging on the wrong leg on the final turn, the feelings and emotions just before the finale was kind of surreal.
despite being merely one out of five hundred on the parade square, i felt honoured. it's about time to learn that while I am not the best, I am among the best.
and it is time now to show just that to the rest of the people.
despite failing to complete a hormat properly and banging on the wrong leg on the final turn, the feelings and emotions just before the finale was kind of surreal.
despite being merely one out of five hundred on the parade square, i felt honoured. it's about time to learn that while I am not the best, I am among the best.
and it is time now to show just that to the rest of the people.
disturbed you at 2:16 AM
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
i am not a woman but i really want to know, one day, how it feels like to be under pre-menstrual stress.
it appeared like, whatever you said was replied with sheer annoyance. when a woman is suffering from PMS, making her the queen is barely sufficient.
she pushes the guy to the corner with every comment and leaves him with no room to move. even down-to-the-knees pacification will barely work. for the guy, escaping is not a choice either, because he loves her too much to just leave her alone. what can he do then?
being sarcastic is not what i want here. it's just that, it's really not easy when put in such a situation and it takes a lot for a guy to understand how a woman feels at this period of the month. so, the best way for the guy to learn is to be a woman, experience menstruation and PMS, and understand how it really feels like right? then, he can best empathize with the woman, and make things easier for both of them.
anyway, do you agree that 'all guys are horny bastards'?
i think it is undeniable that men are, innately, more drawn towards sexual pleasures, and that women, quite constrastingly, craves love more than sex (quoting you). while i have heard of some female friends who have had sexual relationships with several men, they all ended up devastated and ashamed of their acts, who all resulted from a possible lack of attention and love. men, however, as impression holds, could be very different. sex and sleaze could be everything they want (as impression tells you). afterall, how difficult is it to find a man in geylang, or desperate men at orchard towers?
however, consider the following situation, frequently depicted in chinese drama serials, which i think illustrates the kind of dilemma that men could face.
you work in ABC Corporation, as the budding Business Manager to be. You currently hold the position of Sales Manager, but you are touted to be promoted in the next year or so to the BM after putting in sheer hard work and achieving all sales targets for the past year. One day, you met your HR Manager (the person in charge of your promotion), and he asked you out together with other people from the upper echelons of the company for a get together at a KTV.
you know how things function in a KTV. hostesses, booze and sleaze. but you view your promotion as something too much to lose and rejecting the invitation will be tantamount to disrespect. unwillingly and doubtfully, you agree to attend the gathering.
so there you go. at the KTV, you pay $350 (like the rest of the managers), for many bottles of liquor, but more notably, 2 scantily-clad hostesses, who look like they were ready to devour you in one mouth, by your side. you felt uneasy, dirty, and guilty, for you have not told your girlfriend that you were going to a KTV, and worse still, not informing her that you have 2 hot-babes by your side. before you knew it, liquor started to fill the glasses, the girls started fondling you and the night soon became cloudy and hazy under the influence of booze and women.
what happens after that is unimportant now. whether or not the guy ends up waking up in the morning with 2 naked girls by his side, by the traditional Asian code-of-conduct, and the women's heart, he has already committed the greatest sin of all times.
the question is, will you allow yourself to end up like that? will you do the 'right' thing? will you risk your career for dignity and in some cases, chastity? will you tell your girlfriend?
will you?
ideally, you would do everything right. you would have rejected the invitation, and spent the night at your girlfriend's place cuddling her to sleep. you would have explained to your bosses that you are a clean man. you would have told them to fuck off and go fucking if they want, but leave you alone. but that's, if everything goes right.
i don't know what will happen to me, but i seriously hope that this does not happen to me. working in the healthcare sector will probably see me out of these troubles, but getting there, is a big big question.
sigh. being a guy also got problem. being a girl also got problem. do you face problems being a tranny?
disturbed you at 10:52 PM
Sunday, December 9, 2007
i was quite amazed that the airport security didn't chase us out of the terminal so that white men and women who have just touched down at CIA wouldn't be too shocked to terrrible social state of singapore.
i mean, we looked like 4 homlessless kids lying around on benches in Terminal 3 and eventually Terminal 2 who have fallen asleep after hours of begging for money.
the good thing was, nobody disturbed us as we struggled to find the most confortable positions to sleep. when we woke up at 6am, the place where we slept was already bustling with activities but nobody took real notice of us. either singaporeans have become less nosey, or have become to selfish to check if anyone of us are still alive.
welcome to the lives of 4 boring young men (ok maybe, only one, and that's me) who find things more interesting at changi airport than getting themselves wasted and oggling bikini-clad babes at siloso beach.
disturbed you at 4:53 PM
Friday, December 7, 2007
my pay will not come in this weekend like what i have been hoping for so it's gonna be quite tight for me this time round, again.
had a chat over roti prata breakfast with one of the cadets here and after glancing over his shoulders at the service-term cadets, he heaved a sigh of disappointment and pointed out a pretty valid point of incompetent officers-to-be.
not that i am exceptionally good or whatsoever, but i really do think that each and everyone of us lack the oomph and 'seh-ness' that are part of the qualities that our predecessors possessed.(like my uncles, the 2 colonels and dar's dad).
Allow me to present you 2 case scenarios:
PSP-yielding Officers-to-be
looking at the way things go, i think it's good time that ess-eh-eff replaces the aging M16S1 rifles with a gadget that will strike the hearts of all recruits - the Playstation Portable, affectionally known as the PSP.
almost everyone around me in my wing seems to have one. if i walk around now, i can easily find a handful of them gathering in one's bunk playing their beloved 'Monster Hunter'.
i have absolutely nothing against the PSP as a form of entertainment. after all, different people has different ways of entertaining themselves. i prefer to save my money and use the computer to read up on news etc., while these people might just have a different set of ideas from mine.
but when everything you talk about in daily conversations is about how to kill monsters in a virtual world, and when there are more pertinent issues to solve, things are going overboard and ess-eh-eff is on the way down. down down down.
it disappoints me more to see our numero uno, the sortof-honour (sorta like sword of honour) lying on his bed playing his PSP everytime i walk past his bunk, which is like, almost every 15 mins because of my ultra-active bladder.
at the rate things go, seeing the PSP being distributed as part of the SAF issued item is no longer a distant reality.
'Awwww Boo Hoo Hoo, I can't be the first to eat lunch!'
A: '(giggle giggle). Eh let's go to the cookhouse first so that we can eat lunch first! (giggle giggle)'
B: 'but...Donkey wing is the OIC today. we gotta go 30 mins later so that we will not jam up the place'
A: '(starting to look stern). Ahhhhhhhhhh Don't Be Dumb lar, who cares? we just go there and makan faster chao then can oledy'
B: 'don't want la...the Army guys have something on in the afternoon, it's better if we let them eat first'
A: '(starting to get angry)Eh you, screwed up sia. i don't care i'm going already. eh guys let's go!'
B: 'eh wait wait wait!'
At this time, A and gang are already on their way in their own group moving towards the cookhouse, while the rest, the more obedient ones, stay behind.
all my efforts to try to make this a humourous scenario might have failed, but really, it's not funny at all. what i really want to say here, is the prevalent 'heck care' attitude that a huge majority of us have.
what difference does 30 minutes make when you have the entire half of the afternoon to sleep when our other counterparts are busy working? anyhow, the extra time you get will be wasted spent playing PSP, right?
i've seen more than enough. slipshod efforts in preparing the daily ops briefs, infantile cries of wanting to leave the classroom first, convenient shirks of responsibilities and incessant complains when 'endowed' with simple tasks by the instructors. and so much more.
i know i am guily of some of the abovementioned offences, but i know too that 95% of the time, i aspire to do whatever i need to do to the best of my abilities, and present the best results whenever possible.
what happened to 'I must excel in everything that I do?'
what happened to 'I will overcome adversity with courage, fortitude and determination?'
what happened?
____________________________________________________________
i might sound like a huge proponent of good officership in the ess-eh-eff but that's not the key underlying point that i want to present here. it is the clear lack of willingness to do everything and anything, initiative, and industry that worries me as an individual and as a up-and-coming member of the ess-eh-eff officer corp.
when i see this, i aspire to be different from these people. i hope i can really do so.
disturbed you at 2:03 PM
Thursday, December 6, 2007
recently, while helping yan ling and the MINDS residents in their anniversary dance performance, i came across this song that i initially thought was awful creation but found it quite meaningful in the end.
it goes "in my pace, i'll be there".
look at yourself now. how sure are you that you are not doing certain things because the people around you are also doing them as well. how sure are you that you've not ended up following the pace that other people are setting, losing steam and losing YOURSELF in the end?
life has become a race that all of us, including myself, don't know when to drop out and start walking my own pace to catch our breath and enjoy the simplest of things around us.
disturbed you at 9:42 PM
i seem to have developed some i-disagree-with-everything-all-you-bastards-are-saying-syndrome lately.
but i don't know whether should I blame myself because sometimes these bastards, some over 20 years of age, are acting with childlike demeanours.
however, in front of them, to maintain a harmonious relationship, i put on a smiley and tell myself that i have not managed to sustain a conversation with anyone in ocs for days and it's about time to change some perspectives, or tolerate some behaviours. do that in case i end up having no friends at all.
sad to say, my entire stint in national service has left me only with only a few people i can talk to but no one i can relate personally to. and even more sadly, nothing to smile about, even after achieving an award.
but I know too that i don't smile much all the time anyway. so to all those people who have made me smile along the way, or have approached me to start conversations and relationships, thank you.