Armed and Dangerous! 不畏！不恐！不惧！

mouxiao.blogspot.com 同志永垂不朽,高山仰止！

2010-06-26T20:08:00.002+08:00

An eulogy to mouxiao.blogspot.com.

You have been armed and dangerous all these years, a stalwart and loyal companion in my times of darkness and hardship. You have always been the strong but silent type, enduring all the pains of my life and patiently, graciously, stoically accepting all of my bitter prose into your yielding bosom.

Together, you and I, we've fought the good fight, struggled against the tyranny that hammered against my sanity, and enjoyed the honey-coated bliss that stroked us with her soft and seductive touch. But like everything, these too shall pass.

You've been a veteran of my life and sadly the life that you recorded have progressed on to the next chapter. Noble endeavors, emo rantings, philosophical discourses, travel records, passionate bitching and self-righteous exhortations! The gods of blogging salute thee! Let the darkness and storm clouds come and pass and may the sound of silence atone for your sins!

Rest in peace, comrade. Long live the revolution!

And may your spirit be with your successor: www.savethepeasants.wordpress.com.

save gaia leh.

2010-01-17T11:50:00.002+08:00

I was bored.

anyway, anyone interested in joining the enmazing race executive committee as part of the National Youth Environmental Challenge? join my team as a medical/safety officer. Yunzhou, come join leh. your CPR l33t skillz will be most useful hahaha.

the first words of 2010 better be good, i tell you....

2010-01-13T00:02:00.001+08:00

With great exuberance I leapt over the hurdles of last year. The feeling of 2010- it is great! The sense of liberation, and of wings growing out of my shoulderblades! No more spouting sardonic bullshit like “You tell me to jump, I say how high!” in cynical approximations of grudging respect!

I've arrived at a year that I can finally call my own. 2009 symbolized the end of a period of mental incarceration, yet it was also a great journey of self-discovery. 09 was like a trebuchet hurling rocks at my mental fortress- experiences challenged my assumptions and led me to walk the tight rope between moral choices, all in varying shades of grey. It was not an easy year- it forced me to face up to my fears and vulnerabilities and brought a mirror to all my flaws.

In retrospection it's a year of doing community service, of being in the service industry. I don't recall much of military training; what I remember are the times I sat down with people in the dead of night and discussed with them their problems, their insecurities, their future, and what to do about them. One thing I realized is that many people didn't really need me to give them help; they just needed me to give them hope.

This year is a challenge; what I used to tell my trainees now I must now remember and remind myself; for I have returned to my position as a young trainee on the starting steps of a new journey.

Everything is possible; it just depends on how hungry we are.

Not everybody believes this, but I do. I spent the last 2 years progressing from washing toilets to scolding people for not walking properly. For this year maybe its time I progressed onwards to something better.

The end of 2009 saw me reaching the bottom of the valley. I can see what lies ahead; but its for me to make my own road. Whatever path I take, there's but nowhere to go but up.

random thoughts about Avatar

2009-12-23T21:37:00.002+08:00

I went to watch Avatar, and in short it's Studio Ghibli's Princess Mononoke, with chainguns.

Most environmental films I've watched involve nature driving back encroaching human aggressors and ends with nature as the victor. But what happens afterwards? There's no resolute conclusion, for despite the temporary victory human nature essentially remains the same: greedy, selfish, invasive and prone to violent resolutions.

And they will be back; and back with a vengeance. it seems every movie that sets out to pit nature against humans unconsciously has this phantom message drifting through as the credits start to roll by.

Phuket and Prejudice

2009-12-21T16:32:00.003+08:00

As much as I would like to appear the caricature of refinement and class, there's only so much culture a guy like me can take. Cambodia had pumped me so full of culture and history it was gushing out of my ears, so for the next trip I decided to have some brainless himbotic adrenaline-riddled adventure instead. So off I went and looked for the cheapest, dirtiest, seediest and most fun place I could find.

And, I found Phuket.

The first thing that attracted my attention in Phuket was the overabundance of Law firms offering their services like some 711 convenience store by the roadside. There's more law firms than clinics in Patong beach; and by the economic principles of demand and supply I can only assume there's a higher demand for legal assistance than for medical aid.

We can hence imagine groups of law-abiding tourists going about their civilised and unobtrusive visit to a jewel off the Andaman Coast taking in nothing but beautiful scenery- that would be Krabi; not Patong beach of Phuket. In Phuket, hell, I would expect a crack team of suited lawyers to come rappelling through the shattered skylights of a pub the moment some fat angmoh tourist lays his totally perverted (but rich) hands on the precious booty of a local thaiboy, all armed and ready to sue with contracts and documents at the ready.

So as we travelled to our hostel at Patong beach the comforting sights of so many legal firms just waiting for us to get into trouble and helping us claim insurance boosted our confidence tenfold and gave us the courage enough to embark on (by Siangapore standards) dangerous activities. Like go karting, snorkelling, parasailing, jet skiing, wakeboarding, cable skiing, and ad hoc, that-rock-looks-nice-i'm-going-to-climb-it rock climbing.

All of them were awesome. But there's a world of difference. In Siangapore we use the word awesome to describe...kite-flying and teh-bing. At Patong, awesome is reserved for weaving a jet ski all jumping and hurtling through the waves around sailboats, crushing over innocent jellyfish and doing crazy drifts that tilts half the craft and your pillion-riding friend into the sea. Awesome is reserved for doing wakeboarding and cableskiing and being so noob at it that the pros were doing wakeboard 360 flips over me as I crashed and burned and fumbled to land.

And after i've subjected my body to such punishment, I and my friends come to the conclusion that, crushing sadness, none of these activities would ever translate to Singapore. Given our overwhelming desire to keep people safe from themselves, the most hardcore stuff we have at our pristine beaches is...kayaking. Limited to a lagoon. “Don't we get it?” I whined all bitchy-like to my sunburnt friends. “Life is inherently dangerous- why inhibit the experiences that life wants to throw at us? Siangapore- We should live hard, die young!”

And as the sun baked my delicious skin to a nice crisp we pondered such thoughtful questions, occasionally aided in our philosophical discourse by visiting Thai luminaries trying to rent us beach chairs or sell us coconuts. By the time we were offered enough massage sessions to melt our bones we decided we were hungry enough, so we went off in search of Thai cuisine.

Gastronomic Gayness
There's a legend in patong beach, that speaks of a restaurant that sells such luscious and mouth-watering Thai food that food critics could only think of one word to describe it:

Gay.

The Sea Hag is the most flavourful restaurant i've ever visited. Maybe for the fact that all of their waiters and managers are gay. Maybe because they attract french gay couples who smooch at the counter. Maybe its the rainbow flag proudly erect over the second-floor balcony, gleaming with gay pride and homosexuality. But let's not be prejudicial towards sexuality- to each his own, I believe.

The food is good. Along a stretch of beach already bleached clear of tradition and culture by the swarm of Macdonalds, (a country can have nothing- no order, government, infrastructure. But god willing, it will have a Macdonald's. Sniff.) it's really rare to find a restaurant that still bothers to retain a bit of cultural sensibility and sell genuine Thai food, uncompromising to western palates and tourist expectations, yet having good service and conversational English.

And well as i've said they were gay. And this manager dude kept on winking at me and trying to chat me up, giving our table free soup, vegetables and fruits. I still don't know whether I should be creeped out or honoured. Faith says I should be touched; gays have high tastes. I shall be an optimistic tourist and oblige to the latter.

At night is where the modern thai culture shows. The beachfront is very happening at night and we chanced upon a festival to celebrate to start of tourist high season, and along the beach very splendid and talented live bands were waxing lyrical, singing such classical Patong beach songs like “my American boyfriend rented me for 500 baht” and “this Change Beer comes with a free Thai Boy.”

Along the streets it was pretty obvious many angmoh dignitaries came here to enjoy the voluptious company of Thai people. Colonial times of white men taking away our asian land, resources and women were supposed to have long past, but apparently white men are still following the honourable traditions of their forefathers. Only now, it's not just the women they are taking. It's the men too!

It's a drunken shame that walking around the steets at midnight made me witness to so many scenes of intoxicated pot-bellied westerners trying to solicit the questional services of unwilling(!!!) thaiboys and transvestites. Its a curious thing, however, to think that not many asian men would in turn go to a western country and with such shameless cockiness hire a white female escort.

And to visit the bookstores I chanced upon sarong party girl-esque exposes written in French. Satire or not, it's a shitty enough thing to have white men boasting abut their asian conquests in print, but its a realization of Asian's subconscious subserviant nature that Asian countries allow such books to be sold in her own land. Or, the Thais could be just open-minded enough and are comfortable with this type of tourism.

But let's not bother ourselves too much with what other countries view themselves. Phuket is a great place to go travelling, if for nothing else but the people, like my hostel manager who exchanged conspiratory glances with me every time some angmoh brings a thai escort down from his room. Its fun, its cheap, and for a budget trip where I went to just get my adrenaline fix, for 600 dollars it's kind of worth it.

this post is rated R(21) for ultraviolence, coarse language, bad role models and poor English.

2009-12-10T23:48:00.004+08:00

After NS i excavated the old novel i was trying to write and blew the dust off it. Nah, i thought, it was bullshit. So i rewrote it with a new perspective, and i present to you a sample, edited extract.

*

THE FIRST THING ABOUT SPACE TRAVEL

Juh entered Fat Dragon Inn, wet and muddy and with just enough credits on him to buy a mug of beer. That was exactly what he did, and while he waited he looked at the iron visage of the bartender, a fierce and stoic man of indiscernible age with deeply scarred forearms and a gaze like tempered steel right off the anvil.

“So, let me guess what you're here for, hobo.” The bartender, voice rolling like a drum, stared right back at Juh as he slid a mug of beer across the counter. “If you be looking for powder, I don't have it. If you're looking for someone, however, ask. I keep my eye on everything moves.”

Juh felt the potent pause gathering charge in the air.

“...And my eyes are on you.” Continued the bartender, cutting one forearm across the countertop. “What you here for? Where you from?”

Juh peered up into the wrought-iron countenance.

“Just a bartender's curiousity. Answer if you want, bullshit me if you like.”

“I came from home.” Juh replied, tasting the sour mix of blood and beer on his lips.

“And where's home?”

“Tommy's Outhouse Facility of Environmental Hygiene.”

The granite visage cracked into a smile. “Tommy! So what you doing with that little flowerpicker?”

“I stay there. He's my uncle. I work for him.”

“As a toilet cleaner, hurh? And you live in a toilet. Inspiring job. You do need a beer.” The bartender wiped his forearms on a rag and threw it at Juh. “Well here's my sympathies. Wipe your blood and clean yourself up.”

The rag through years of quiet hospitality had accumulated almost enough parasitic hosts to have a life of its own. Juh whimpered and stared intently at his mug. “I have a question.”

“Well? The question's not going to ask itself.”

Juh pondered the statement a while before realizing what it was. “Eh, I came here to look for a old human male-”

“Old human male? For companionship?” the bartender let out a guffaw that cleaned a layer of dust off the ceiling.

“He goes by the name of December Niner.”

The bartender stopped laughing and burnt Juh with a sidelong glance. “Oh?”

“Eh yes. December Niner. I saw an ad in the newspapers. The ads says he was looking for an inexperienced youth to go on a galactic adventure with him. Actually I have it just here. Eh its ok I think i'll go look for him myself, thanks for the help-” Juh was about to move away when a hand collided with his shoulder, and he peered back up into that indomitable stone facade.

“I am December Niner.” Said the bartender, his facial muscles twitching spasmodically as he grinned. “So you be the 'adventurous youth' huh. Well, go get yourself the hardest pipe you can find and crack it up my jewels, but you look pretty much the little sissyboy just like your old Tommy. So, tell me. What good you do?”

So what's so good about him? Juh found it a very good question.

“Well...”

“Well, I don't suppose one who had spent a lifetime discerning wisdom from the depths of a toilet bowl has much interesting things to say.” The bartender finished for him. “Sorry, punk, good try, goodbye. My little crusade, well I ain't going to pick flowers for your sister. It's going to be armed and dangerous, so-”

And just at this moment, LTA Torin chose to barge in.

Preternatural reflexes on the part of the bartender saved Juh's life. As the door broke off its hinges and the first trooper charged in the bartender grabbed Juh with one arm and hurled him over the tabletop. By the time the first nerve gas canister hit the racks of bottles behind the counter and shattered them into a rain of glass and alcohol the two of them had squeezed themselves under the counter.

Thunderous bursts of gunfire numbed his senses, and as the world shuddered around him Juh found himself staring at a wheelchair and the bartender on it, bending down low and snarling at him. “Well trippy sky fairies! Who sent you?”

It was an effort to vehemently protest, but the bartender's hands around his throat proved inspirational enough. Juh could not help but noticing, as bullets punched furniture into wood shavings and the dying cries of patrons mingled with the stench of gunpowder, that December Niner had lost both his legs and had all the while been perched on his wheelchair, his body ending in 2 stumps with the scars coarsely sewn with fisherman wire. It was the most horrible day of his life- to be clutched in a deathgrip by a crippled man-golem with self-administered amputations in a small and dusty tavern while trigger-happy troopers yelled warcries and pumped everyone around them full of lead.

“This is the most horrible day of my life...” Somewhere deep within him Juh mustered the heroic energy to complain.

“And nigger's nipples, it's going to get a hell lot worse!” December Niner said, grabbing a surviving bottle of vodka and taking a swig.

The firing had died down, and a trooper approached the counter and leaned over to examine it. A thick muscular hand shot out and grabbed him by the throat, and as fingers snapped his neck he was thrown full-bodied into what remained of the liquor rack behind, shattering more glass and toppling the neon sign that fell in an explosion of sparks.

Through the glare of sparks and the razor hailstorm of shattered glass Juh saw the bartender with the trooper's submachine gun in his hands. December Niner suddenly straightened up and Juh found himself back in his familiar position at a receiving end of a chokehold.

“You guys know him?” Asked the bartender.

The remaining troopers turned around and were unanimously puzzled. LTA Torin lifted his weapon to fire-

But December Niner was a trigger faster. He was a bad shot and he had no intention to aim, but in such tight confines finesse gave way to unadulterated brutality.

The smoke cleared and the bartender threw the burning gun and Juh down onto the floor. “Hell's bells. Life's good when somebody starts shooting at me. Brings the blood back to my old bones.”

He grinned at Juh, who was pretty much the only surviving patron left in the tavern. Juh thought it polite to grin back. “So, you little douchebag. Well I'm a holy man; and I believe in divine intervention, so I believe, nobody sent you but The Prophet sent you. I don't care if you believe it or not, looks like you'll just have to do. We're leaving now. Pick up that last bottle of Absolut Vodka will you? Let's go.”

December Niner was surprisingly nimble on his wheelchair, and Juh struggled to keep up as they navigated through the broken wreckage of the tavern and left by the main door, sunlight shafting through the bullet holes and making the scene of destruction seem old and preserved.

“Wait! I've got to ask you! Who are you exactly? Where are we going? Are we coming back?”

December Niner turned his head and said in ambivalent nonchalance, “You'll know me as December Niner until I decide you need to know more. We'll find a pilot and get out of here. Going first to Starport Seven, pick up some supplies of mine. My little crusade..it starts here..and ends there.” He pointed at the ground, then at the sky.

“For you, that will depend on your own ingenuity, intelligence, and luck.” He looked at Juh with a conspiratory glint in his eyes. “Well He's sure been taking care of you so far. Let's see how far your luck holds, boy.”

Almost as an afterthought, December Niner barked, “Boy! What's your name!”

“Everyone calls me Juh.” Said Juh, jogging beside the wheelchair. “Though I'm not sure if its my parent's idea.”

“Well if it's my idea you'd be called- oh never mind. Come on then, let me tell you something about space travel. The first thing about space travel...”

一将功成万骨枯

2009-12-01T22:32:00.008+08:00

I came back from Cambodia for quite some time now, but there's a certain reluctance to write about it. As much as I would like to regal you with stout-hearted tales of adventurers trudging through perilous tropical jungles uncovering lost ruins while fighting off drunken zombie hordes and drinking prodigious amounts of beer around a crackling fire at night, alas all I actually beheld with my shining orbs were wondrous towers of stone.

Cambodia is known, to my knowledge, for 3 things: 1- Her quarrel with Thailand; 2 – Angkow Wat, and 3 – Landmines. BBC News can elaborate on the first; I shall do warped justice to the unfortunate others.

Old temples and vine-covered rocks aren't usually associated with those adventurous and wondrous things that turn people on. When I told people I'd be going to Cambodia to see Angkow Wat, a worrysome percentage replied me with Angkow Whhaaat???, and their sheer ignorance grabbed me by the jewels much worse than what Angkow Wat did to my artistic appreciation after what followed to be 2 hardcore days of intensive temple staring.

Oh well, I suppose these pictures would help explain things a bit.

Let me explain the history of Angkow Wat, and in likeness it would explain the histories of just about any ancient wonder you might care to name. A long time ago some rich, insecure dude was born into the right family at the right time. His country was awesome, his dad was dying, and before he even knew which drawer kept his clean underwear he found himself king. Very soon he realized he was good for nothing except ordering people around, and with no great deeds to his name he decided, hey, I shall build myself a temple/monument/tomb/sculpture/garden/wall instead. Since its not exactly him building it and the economic fallout and great social upheavals that would follow such considerable drain on the country's resources would most likely follow with his death, he would suffer none the worst for it.

So let's go build this temple/tomb/garden/shyte, dudes! As I would imagine him having said in so much self- righteous pompous dignity.

The great thing is, the vanity and pride of their ancestors is exactly what's giving their modern offsprings their livelihood hundreds of years later. It's totally unintentional, but it's these by today's standards selfish and inhumane slave drivers who doesn't mind a genocide or two who churn out the most beautiful and lasting human creations. Beauty through mass suffering? No one in their right minds now would seriously contemplate this notion, but then again when those monuments were being built labour laws were written with the lashings of a whip and worker welfare was pretty much a proud loincloth fluttering in the breeze.

Anyway that's about all the history I can tell you about Angkow What, condensed from half an hour of bumpy reading of Lonely Planet Cambodia.

The other thing is landmines. And when people talk about landmines, I think back to Aki Ra. He's totally awesome, one of the unsung heroes of our time. When we tried blowing up a claymore when I was a cadet we hid behind some thick concrete slab a hundred meters away; this guy clears a landmine with a pocket knife and an on-the-spot deadfall trap I learnt in OAC. Just watching the video of him defusing mines made me grew another..nvm.

Oh just enjoy the pictures. They tell much more beautiful stories.

the food god

2009-11-18T20:53:00.002+08:00

A short story i wrote to get used to my laptop's keyboard.

mouxiao.blogspot.com presents to you... a supernatural-horror-historical-chick flick-epic-thriller drama-

The Food God.

“ ...This! This is wonderful ! Light and delicate on the palate with just that nuanced fruity aroma of dried fruits and nuts. Come, smell it- feel it, diffusing through you- full bodied, with the aftertaste leaving just the dreamy thickness of hot cocoa and the musty earthiness of the Brunei swamps...”

Algo waited for his master to finish his impassioned monologue. He was patient; he had all the time in the world. And when his master was done, he looked down at his share and spoke his mind.

“I don't appreciate the tropical flavours.” Curt and succinct independent opinions were viewed by the fiercely proud and egocentric Master through his widely fluctuating moods as between the two ends of irritation and insubordination.

“Appreciate what you're given! We're just in season! Now's September, the time when the herds have just came back from Brunei; their meat lean and the toxins washed away. You'll be begging for more before the gates are closed.”

Algo glanced skeptically at the prey on the ground. Master had got him as he came by the old forsaken well to drink; it did not took as long as he imagined to prepare their meal- a brief scream from the unlucky sod and the flavours flooded in.

“Is there anything else on the menu tonight?” Asked Algo. He didn't like the taste of the cadet. After their jungle survival course the smell of earth and mud lingered in their essence and reminded Algo of the feeling of chewing sand in his noodles.

“Well there's recruits, not much taste. Unless you eat it raw, then it'll take a good chef to prepare, and you have to eat it with sauce...The meat is fresh, though not much on the nutrition. I'd prefer the late night joggers. I like spicy dishes.”

“So what other choices we have here? The old man we saw just now?”

“That's an encik, his' all salty and tough. Nothing much, these part of the jungle. ”

Master till now has displayed an near omniscient knowledge of the surroundings- hunting grounds, he liked to call it. Algo could not help but ask.

“Just how long have you been here?”

Master grinned as he finished his meal and both of them waved an invisible goodbye to the unseeing cadet as the cadet came to and stumbled away back towards the track. “Not long enough, that's all I can say. When I arrived the herds were already gossiping about our kind. Our seniors did a good job, that's all I can say; they fertilized them up good. Oh, you got to try this!”

It was another column of soldiers trudging through the trees. Master told Algo he liked to season his dishes; he prided himself on his patience and dedication. A few furtive shadows glancing through the trees, just within the peripherals of their vision; a naughty flirt with a hand through an impossible angle among the leaves; playful taps on the shoulder and a climax that even Algo was admit was good- it left them with another meal lying against a tree.

“Now how would you like your special forces? Well done? Medium rare? Rare? I personally like it rare. Now you cut into their consciousness right here- you see how I let the fear lightly poach just the skin? Now you must have the insides tender to retain the flavour. Once these guys lose their minds the human flavour is gone- what a waste, they'd taste just like chicken, then I might as well go possess one...”

Algo crossed his arms behind his back and observed his Master at work. He was new to these sort of thing, and as his master said, was still very much human. He meant it as a crude joke; but ironically Algo found the thought comforting. His master viewed himself as the spirit equivalent of a celebrity Iron Chef and a connoisseur and expected to be treated like one; Algo simply found the jarring leap from prey to predator very culturally disconcerting and surreal.

Master looked up from his skinning of the subconscious. “It's always the same with you rookies. You are afraid of who you've become, only because you've not fully realized what you've become. What do we always say when we're alive? Come, refresh me with your still fresh human memory-”

“What we fear is not fear itself, we are only afraid of things we do not know.” Muttered Algo, remembering a casual quote he learned back in literature class.

“Exactly! And if this guy here know just what we are and what we can't do, then he would not be fearful would he?”

Algo thought about it. “Yes, that's right.”

“Then he would not be tasty, would he?”

The first days of feeding had his conscience screaming the uproarious words of cannibal and monster at his mind, complete with a generous dose of theatrics and exclaimation marks at the end. By the awe-inspiring powers of adaptation Algo had gotten over most of it however. “You're quite right.”

“Then we would starve to death would we not?”

“Aren't we already dead?”

Master didn't bother to clarify; Algo was young and he had a lot of time to learn the ropes. He thought back to his own illustrious history: he learnt the art of spectre ambush on unsuspecting Malaysian fishermen, then practiced scalping on patrolling Japanese soldiers, taught himself cooking with illegal immigrants and finally perfected his own art of fine dining with the modern batches of national servicemen. It was a good existence; much better than the unfulfilling one he had spent living.

He was a chef; he didn't have to bother about the meaning of life when he had conveniently shoved it out of his way. His job was to indulge in gastronomic delights- and hell he was proud of his work.

“Algo, shut up and observe me tender his fear to just the right temperature. Afterwards come here and eat your dessert. Now for special forces, they have very special herbal qualities and you must be careful to contain them within their pysche..."

咱不打行吗。

2009-11-06T16:45:00.002+08:00

当兵让我认识到很多人生深刻大道理，当中最为浅薄的是：我不适合当兵。

咋吗啦？你说，当兵被人虐待啦？答：今年有一点。当兵太辛苦啦？废话。当兵浪费神圣时间宝贵生命？非也，非也。当兵经历大家差不多都一样，只是观念的不同。我总觉得当兵经历其实挺充实挺精彩的，虽然迷彩世界中的种种考验暴露了人性最黑暗最阴险的一面，虽然部队中不少有小人，霸君，见了面总想让我不断问候他家人的三教九流之辈。。。当然世界非纯黑纯白（说过了，迷彩吗），印象更为深刻的是那些（狠狠地）感化了开导了教育了我的师傅们。至今他们传授给我的粗话还有人生价值观仍在耳边回荡。

当兵其实不难-并不是应为我身为过来人才这么说的。因为当兵并不要求你努力，不要求你拼了老命地去达到什么成就。不像上学，咱非得得个全优上个剑桥要不然向屈原叔叔学习什么的。当兵你不行也没太大后果-当兵我才必有用- 部队照样有事儿让你干。不会打仗总会打文件吧？扛不动枪总扛得动咖啡壶吧？唯一失去的仅为官衔或是那披星戴月风风雨雨的日子那种经历罢了，可当你对从军又毫无兴趣时，有个官，有个玩泥巴的机会，又有多重要？

最折磨人的就是我这一类人- 本来心就不在兵，可虚荣心又非要尽力而为，混个官当当的反动派。最后是当上了个少尉，不过那是我在军官学院中尊敬的长官们循循善诱，耐心教诲的功劳。得感谢这些长官们- 当学员是很郁闷的，心里天气预报天天从阴转云，云转雨，雨转雷电交加。。。可现在回想起来他们是我这两年来的亮点- 是他们唤起了我的责任感，告诉了我作个有原则有良心的人的道理。最后当上了排长，时常还想起他们的经典教诲，突然意气风发心血来潮，续传授给我受苦受难的弟兄们。

其实我当军官是场注定的悲剧。我性格如下：能说服我，我会上刀山下火海在所不辞。我做事不愿被规则拘束。我不愿被人使唤，不相信“军令如山”这种军规。可碰巧军队关系到分分秒秒都是生死一线的生意，军规不严酷不行。这点如果我司令讲道理我也会心服口服地混日子了，可又碰巧我被分配到一位感情用事，仗势欺人，横行霸道却又没什么真实胆量，盲目服从条规的小人手里。

看到那观念上的冲突吗？肯定我哪天受够了去硬碰硬。鲁迅大哥说过，不是在沉默中爆发就是在沉默中灭亡。我经验告诉我是，能爆发，随即灭亡。

妈说我就我这性格要是我出生在巴勒斯坦我早就成恐怖分子光荣牺牲了，我也这么认为。

刚当上了官得意忘形，有点独步青云，大道如青天唯我独出的感觉，后被上级虐待，为人做牛做马，虽对自尊心有所打击，可对心理成长倒也好，让我变得更坚强，更稳定，更厚脸皮。也让我认识到当官也并非全是风流倜傥的光辉形象-幕后的辛苦，辛苦了又不受认可，工作时又无缘无故挨骂，挨骂又被骂得像畜牲一样。。。辛酸苦辣，除了变坚强以外，换得的又是什么。
我说军队充实，因为友情真实，因为朋友不是酒肉朋友，而是同经沧桑的难友。训练辛苦，老板流氓，这些苦涩的经历却又像骨头补钙似的，是巩固友情的重要原料。所以说，能有今日那么多好同志，还得感谢一下我的老板。俺以后在街上看到他打招呼时就在他名字后加个“爷”的尊称吧。我猜部队中的这类纯洁的友情今后难找- 一帮人，三教九流之辈，却又同一个世界同一个梦想，每人关注的同样是那些鸡毛蒜皮儿的小事。。。整天只想着今后当完兵的日子，周末去泡美眉的遐想，为下午的训练郁闷，为早餐的质量而悲伤。。。

像刘大哥唱得一样，朋友一生一起走，这些日子不再有。。。过后的曲子，自己唱吧。

能说我后悔当兵选择的路吗？回想一下当官兵的历程，我得说，这经历是用钱买不到的，获益无法衡量。当芝麻官管人，我悟出的最重要的一点是：有责任跟有责任感，很不一样。

在部队中最引人注目的是两种人：高官敷衍了事，怠慢无能；小官励精图治，默默奉献。前者有责任无责任感，官再大也无人尊敬。后者小责任却有无穷的责任感，人人佩服。

我带我的排，自有一套方法。不一定是最好的；不一定是人人喜欢的。不过我对得起良心。手下被人欺负，我为他主持公道。班长们有怨言，我帮着去说去。化解暴力纠纷，劝人不要自杀。。。朋友常说，尽本分就好了。不知一个排长的本分在哪里停止，不过至少我能很肯定地告诉自己-自己尽力了，也没亏待良心。两年后达到的这两点，我猜也够好了。

嘴巴最好给我放干净一点！

2009-10-25T15:33:00.002+08:00

Excuse my french, but there's one hell of a goddamned reason why we cuss so much.

6 Days of October

2009-10-24T23:48:00.000+08:00

To placate my unquenchable thirst for bloodshed and chaos and to give a satisfactory answer to my tribal warrior sensibilities, I am, in all sweet awesome destiny, has been kenna arrowed to conduct fieldcamp once again. Lamentable last burst of fire or whatever, destiny is just totally Boomz.

I've arrived to the twilight of ORD. And I suppose it will be pretty anticlimactic when I do reach it. It's 6 working days away(6!!!), and when I and my friends toast to the occasion "Cheers to ORD…" we're all wondering the same thing- where do we go from then on? Life goes on, but yet after 2 years of such a structured and regimental life somehow I've failed to plan ahead, to actually take charge of my own god forsaken life once again.

A week long leave doing something useful just made me realize just how irrelevant and thuggish the management style back in army is; it’s a kind of management style that can only exist in its own impregnable, opague bubble; power corrupts, hell yeah. And it corrupts even further when no one dares oppose what's wrong. Maybe it's about the individual and its just my luck; but hell, one is too many.

It's a good thing I'm leaving. The system has not inspired me, and its time I hug the good things I learnt from the army to my bosom and draw the deep dark resolute line with a butcher's knife from the rest. Don't get me wrong; there's lots of inspiring people and things happening and till this day the words and deeds of my instructors from my recruit and cadet days still inspire and motivate me; but conversely I'll never forget the bullshit, tyranny and injustice in a lot of things.

Perhaps this post is a bit too early in coming; considering that there's 1 more fieldcamp to go; but its time to heave these mental baggage out of the way and clear some space for the more refined and civilized things to come. I won't miss the life, I realized long ago I'm not meant for the military life; but I will remember.

Its 6 more days to go, let it come, let it go, and I'll wake up to a day without the need to distribute pushups and having to fake respect to people who've done nothing to earn my respect. And what a great day it'll be, what a great day.

and let's bring it on, with icecream and cocktails and everything nice!

2009-10-01T12:25:00.000+08:00

Let's go find a sweet little corner and cry, men.

2009-09-27T20:47:00.001+08:00

Random Episodic Thoughts, but toally Rad, all the same.

*

Last week I got myself a sweet little ass whoopin' by him again, and it was again nothing short of humiliating. It was a mistake I made, and I would have felt sorry for it, but once he clobbered me upside down with his pompous sense of self-righteousness and arrogant tyranny, I don't feel so repentant and apologetic anymore.

I felt vengeful and wrathful and at the same time totally helpless and fucked up.

One of my good friends asked me, Why I let myself get bullied.

I asked him, if he's in my shoes, what will he do, what can he do.

He thought about it, and he replied with a lowered head and silent eyes.

Silence is the constant reply, silence is the universal plight, in a world where rank overpowers reason.

*

I realize I'm very offended by people telling me to do things because its good for the group, when I've always been doing it in the first place. I fear it’s my hidden ego angry that my efforts are not recognized, but curiously when I did those things in the first place I was not seeking for recognition, but only because I was discontent with myself simply sitting idly by while others worked.

*

I stepped out of OCS a freshly minted officer with a lot of hopes and aspirations and plans in my head on how to lead my recruits.

I entered my company and very soon my inspiration leeched and fizzled and evaporated into a cold ambivalent and cynical seeing but unmoving stone. No motivation to go the extra mile. I can't even find the voice within me when I want to talk to the platoon about things that once mattered, like a man's principles, like moral courage, like care and compassion, like esprit de corps. Maybe I've lost faith, maybe my own courage is failing me.

It's a good thing that when the fire was still burning I managed to accomplish with my recruits all the things I wanted to do when I first stepped onto the island. To inspire. To lead. To actually do something I'm proud of, to do something other's would be proud of, before my dignity and hope were stomped and pummeled into the dirt.

Its disheartening to realize that many of the things I learnt in this year was a direct result of pain and punishment; I think most deeply and thoughtfully when shit happens. And its just as poignant that the refinement to my character done this year was a direct result of my efforts to be completely opposite the examples I was supposed to learn from.

Prove to the world you're still worth a damn

2009-09-06T00:01:00.001+08:00

Every time before I blog I tell myself I must try to write about happy and trippy stuff with a smile on my face, so years from now when I reread my ponderous blog I at least won't disintegrate into a self-effacing puddle of tears by the end of it. But rawr. No. I must scream and yell at the bullshit that comes pelting down. And years from now, a more placid and reserved Mou would look back and think, what an emo boy I once was.

So, without further ado, let's now begin on another furious tirade.

*

Throughout my 3 batches I've taken gangsters and the one common thing I've noticed is that they never dare to face up to their mistakes. Play punk, mess up things, provoke commanders and play big bully in bunk? Yes. Dare to face the consequences of their actions? I suppose in a mental landscape driven purely by the 800horsepower engine of Id they react so fast and furious there's no time to think about the consequences.

So in these 7 weeks 2 guys tried to play the hard punk in my platoon. Acted like they had the biggest pairs of balls dangling between their legs and it afforded them the right to push around those smaller, those quieter. Terrorized the meek, Strong-armed the silent. And well just their luck, behind those meek and silent stands me, and I do not tolerate such bullshit and nonsense.

Now I might have written about something entirely else in this post (e.g. marshmallows.) if these two champions did something else apart from bullying. But one thing I can't stand in my platoon is the subjugation of the weak. 弱肉强食- but if one uses his strengths for nothing but to overpower the will of others, then it’s the most despicable of character, revealing nothing but a deeply rotten core and a void of conscience or morality.

Something deep and powerful shifted inside me when I confronted them and they gave their excuses, their reasons. They never dare to own up to their deeds- deep down they know its wrong, it’s unacceptable, but in their act they chose to do it anyway. Never own up, never repent- instead they bristle with childish, illogical defiance and accuse me of mounting personal attacks on them.

It’s a recurrent trait among them that they will seldom if ever look within themselves for the source of their punishment, just like they will never look me in the eye when confronted with their mistakes.

The test of strength of character and moral fiber is not so much as not making mistakes but rather admitting to it- and they, irrevocably and undeniably in the wrong, hides from the shame and self-reflection that must come before self improvement is made and instead in their obtuse and opaque minds sink into self-pity and scornful rage.

In their self pity they blame me for the punishments. And in realizing the severity of the punishments, they reveal themselves, weak, a lack of confidence, irresponsible and immature.

They called. Pleaded and gave excuses. Teary and pitiful over the phone. Their parents called. To plead for their sons. Told me it's hard enough on them to just serve army, told me they were just playful. Asked if they can be forgiven, just let it be. I replied, 家有家规，军有军法。Tried to trivialize bullying; told me it's just playing. I told her, think about the victim, a month long of suffering, and you expect me to do nothing. If it's your family who's bullied, would you still like it if I did nothing about it.

Asked me if I was their same age. Yes. Asked me if I had been naughty and playful once, expected me to reply, yes, I was just like them. Expected me to through my own history of mistakes, empathize.

I was playful and naughty when I was young and for a time was bullied and marginalized. I know the pains of a bully victim, hence I do not bully, and I will never tolerate bullying. And you, as family of such disastrous offspring, expect me to show tolerance and empathy towards such despicable acts.

Family.

If I behaved like such, I suppose my family would disown me. What a disappointment to the family – already a young adult yet so immature, so foolish, so irresponsible and without any inner strength to tide him over hardships. Still so emotionally weak and childish. reliant on others to solve their own problems for them,. Yet these families- they bargain and they argue and they yell at me. Take a step back and think- your son or brother got what's coming because of things he did. Don't waste your time trying to reduce the punishment for your son, instead bring him home and teach him some things.

I can only say to these gangstas, go grow some balls and own up to your punishment like a man. 20 years of age, its time to hold some responsibility for your own actions. All the lame excuses, the obvious lies, the shifty glances- look in the mirror and ask yourself- what must I do to have at least a bit of integrity and self respect? Stand by your principles and face the music.

If you want to do something, you better be able to take what's coming. Or else, don't do it at all. Don't come crying to me asking for forgiveness, don't try to ask your parents to help you out. Have some moral courage. Have some integrity. All the tough talk and all the insolence- it's all a façade that comes tumbling down.

So make yourself actually worth a damn. There's no rules to follow in your life, but only your principles. So go, and temper yourself some self-respect.

you cupcakes better SMILE :D before i kill you all.

2009-08-22T22:27:00.004+08:00

Allright boys and girls, so we arrive at the most auspicious time of FC once again.

There's a deep-set feeling of fervent anticipation ironically mixed with a world weary ambivalence that's rattling down deep down inside. Its not fear- I'm not so much afraid of cockups as much as I'm afraid of unpredictable temperaments trampling all over me like some half-drunk Mongol horseman of the apocalypse. I'm not bothered too much by the fatigue waving at me from the bus stops of tomorrow till Thursday- not my first time conducting FC anyway and I'm made of sterner stuff. I feel excited- because somehow, this batch, the culture among the leadership has changed.

There's the much discussed social symptom of long time convicts suddenly released from prison and, inundated and overwhelmed by the massive deluge of freeedddooomm!!!, is struck down by just how helpless and aimless he is in a society and world that's suddenly so strange and alien and often unaccommodating to him. Have you watched Shawshank Redemption? One of the most touching parts of that movie dealt with the release of such a prisoner, and suddenly I for some obscene reason, empathizes with what he felt. What do I do with power that rightfully belonged to me but has for so long have been deprived from? Why do I irrationally feel that there must be unsavory repercussions to independent thought? The nightmare of life in bondage haunts the prisoner just released. And I suppose in a very centralized management style, when the top brass suddenly opens up, those below him would feel pretty much the same way.

Then again, I might just be entertaining bubblegum dreams that chews on the elasticity of hope and optimism.江山易改，本性难移。 It might all turn out to be just the same, any way.

*

This is also my last time conducting FC. By my preparation I feel it will be my best ever yet- experiences condensed and crystallized from past mistakes and lessons learnt- but I with cynical eyebrows and detached wisdom teeth dare not entertain hope. After my first ever fc I felt a deep sense of satisfaction, that I've actually indeed accomplished something. After the second one I felt like I was just like the shit the Indian boy dropped into in Slumdog. It was traumatic and unequivocally painful l- I left a piece of my soul back in those forests and at the end of it all, something died within me.

After the third one- my last one- my this one- how would I feel? I hate ambivalent and placid endings, and I hope it ends with me shouting "NO MORE FC LOH :D" at the end of it all.

Oh don't think so much. Too many unforeseeable variables. The only thing I'm certain of is me digging shitholes and trenches and pitching humongous tents and loading goddamned jerry cans onto goddamned trucks in the middle of the goddamned night. And for some reason, thinking of the saikang to be, simple, efficient, honest labour- it calms me. For to me, organizer of this camp, the simple tasks are always good respites from all the second guessing and meticulous plans and hard choices I'll have to make.

Steady on, steady on. 船到桥头自然直。

Are you Chap Enough.

2009-08-09T23:11:00.003+08:00

On national day I tried to open my TV to see just how awesome the parade would be, only to realize that I had deactivated the cable in my living room and the nearest TV with reception was a room away. Way too lazy, and suddenly overcome by the tragic realization that It has been goddamned years since I watched TV at home, I gave up and went back to eating 3 days old pizza for dinner instead.

Does my patriotism not make you go weak in the knees.

It seems most ironic (and with an equal share of disappointment) that 1 year and 8 months of national service has so far failed entirely to cultivate any sense of unyielding patriotic fervor within my soldierly heart. What I felt about the country before enlistment, I feel the same now. It's strangely comforting that although one's perceptions about life change as one grows older; one's perception and attitude towards his country change very little.

We used to joke about the scenario of war- if there really is a war what would we do. With unwavering principles and their conscience clear some would announce their haul ass routes; and we would laugh about it. And only now, thinking back, do I realize that none of us actually said that we'd stay and fight.

Loving the country means different things to different people, and everyone has their own way of expressing it. But what I know, loving your country means supporting the things she does. If so little hype and excitement is generated over international events hosted by Singapore (how many medals did Singapore win during AYG? What's the route of the F1 race?), if we fail to express support and care when it really would matter, then really, why bother complaining about the number of flags hung outside HDBs during National Day.

To me loving a country is not about waving a flag or chanting a pledge at 2022hrs or singing patriotic songs that's sounding more and more like Coldplay one day each year. In a way we are all walking advertisements of the Singapore brand, to me its more about having your country in your heart and behaving as dignified, respectable individuals, and together heal the world, make it a better place.

Loving the country is about shutting the f* up when conditions overseas are worse off. Its about greeting guests with a smile when you're selling things. Its about gaining the respect of foreigners when you're overseas, earning the trust of children such they will want to grow up like you, its about walking to the corners of the earth and no-matter what you're doing, you can without hesitation tell them with pride about the land you come from.

Blindness

2009-07-19T23:17:00.001+08:00

You know what they all say about the army, that it’s the most incredible brain drain you'd (if you be a dude) ever go through, with all the route marches and days spent counting ants in the jungle acting as the greatest brain blender that reduces whatever you cultivated inside that iron husk on top of your shoulders at the end of JC into a putrid pile of juice.

I'm 3 quarters of my way through and somehow such iron prejudices melt away. Indeed I forgot all there is about studying; trigonometry and iambic pentameters melt away into the oblivion of ignorance, but it would be purely nostalgic to call it a loss.

What did I lose? The ability to study? Maybe, but knowing how to study is not the same as knowing how to think. I think clearer and more logically about things; troubles in life that once perturbed me now raise barely a flutter in my mind. My mind might have forgotten how to read and understand textbooks, but it has gotten better at reading and understanding life as it appears in all its problems and complexity.

I remember A levels; when I felt I was blind and missing on some things. Now in a odd reversal it’s ironically the same sense of de ja vu, though what I'm missing out doesn't seem so important anymore.

The skill of studying can be learnt again; but the sharpening of the mind's eye- lose the opportunity- and its gone, forever.

some jobs are Armed and Dangerous, but somebody's just got to do it.

2009-06-30T16:55:00.004+08:00

A great animation to inject a bit of warmth to that cold insolent rock in our chests.

Impossibly Cute. Partly Cloudy, by Pixar.

What i am about to say is **** Armed and Dangerous.

2009-06-29T22:56:00.002+08:00

I have in my NS life finally, goodness gracious me, reached the epitome of verbal communication; in between every sentence, there must be, as my great literacy genius decree, some awesome f*** or whatever that's fashionably vulgar these days.

I suppose a great deal of it came from the testosterone-charged psychological landscape where I come from – a primordial land where civility is reserved for sarcasm and higher ups (the same thing, sometimes), mercy is a dish on the menu but rarely ordered, and doing pushups is viewed as a wise and effective resolution to problems.

We take it that it's part of the culture. When in Rome, do as the Romans do; but are the Romans doing the right thing?

Shrugs. F*** Care.

And one thing of being vulgar at where I am now, it harbours no ill consequences whatsoever; like how giving up seats on public transport is viewed as a charitable and desirable behavior but never strictly disciplined nor bred into the public consciousness, being polite and watching what spews out of one's mouth is merely desired and when not meeting expectations, is at worse met with detached eyebrows or an ambivalent cynical nod that could be well translated as: well, army what, fucked up.

A look at the kind of recruits sometimes I take and it seems the grenade-lob of the indomitable F bomb is, at times, far more effective in expressing opinion to certain groups of listeners who are far more synchronized with such verbal hostilities anyway.

For instance, when appealing to a group of badassed hardcore unrepentant chao ah bengs falling in late:

A: Guys, I am deeply disappointed that you have betrayed my trust. You have the guts to disobey my orders, then you better have the courage to face up to your mistakes. Better hurry up, fall in now.

Or, B: well recruits, WHAT THE GODDAMNED F***?!! YOU CBS BETTER RUN! DON'T TRY TO F**** AROUND WITH ME. F-ING HELL IN FIVE SECONDS YOU WILL LAND YOURSELF ON THE FLOOR, IN A WORLD OF SHYTE.

I've tried both; sometimes together, sometimes separately. A appeals to reason and self-reflection and almost requires you to clench your fingers lotus palm position with your golden katanas of good karma impaling the shrouded eyes of those who've sinned; while B is pure intimidation and mental torture with your tongue of badass whipping them at the place where the nightingale never sings.

A would be the right choice, and I try to always use A first. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. And when it doesn't, I get f-ing angry, and when I'm f-ing angry, it's time for good ole' choice B. Summon up the right body language, tone of voice and atmosphere, it will work on just about anyone. Yes, even those chao ah bengs. They might not be too deeply affected, but nobody in their right mind likes a scolding and cutting into their precious admin time.

But I'm just finding pseudo-intelligent excuses. Being the good guy, all reasonable and patient, is ball-shrinking hard. Try to moralize every mistake people make and it will soon feel like you're in a Singapore court fighting against the death penalty for a drug lord – totally PWNed.

But the bad guy, spawned to just succumb to the dark side and be the asswipe you can be; it's fun, and sexy. And yes, surely your negative karma will transform into a caged chariot and plunge you into the pits of hell, but hey – sell your conscience for self-serving fun and ego-boosting tyranny, that's the devil offering you a deal you cannot refuse.

And when I go out on weekends and meet my far more refined friends I suddenly like my primary school grammar teacher censors and heavily edits what's spewing out of my gaping abyss. And you know what? Its all done subconsciously, without a single reminder to myself to be polite, be civilized, talk as though you're offering tea to the Queen.

Hypocrite. Damn.

Sir, where does gortex boots go when they die?

2009-06-07T16:50:00.001+08:00

There comes a time in every man's life when he would stop doing whatever shitty stuff he was doing and think: "God, I'm too old for this shyte."

And although it wouldn't be consciously directed to the Friday 2300 hrs fastcraft to Tekong or whoever your own deity might be, I always think that face in the clouds would patronize you with a raised eyebrow and a curt and succint: "You think?"

I'm almost done and through with my second batch. I thought them some stuff, the actual amount depending on if they spent less time bitching about us commanders or more time reflecting on their life, and they in turn taught me some stuff. I think they taught me more than I taught them. And despite all the troubles they graciously gave to me, I find a lot of them living a life more raw and courageous than many of us JC kids, lives that reflected through their words and in their eyes the bare fragilities and brittle imperfections of the human condition. They live a life complete with all the trials and tribulations that some we might never have to face in our entire lives; where else I until NS, lived through exams. There's a lot of difference.

Not that I envy them. Some of their troubles they brought it upon themselves, pure and simple. Some are oblivious to their mistakes and their errors and has no intention to improve; some are weak minded and aimless and I pity not them but their parents.

A conversation with one of my more problematic recruits went as thus, in his dingy spartan living room dark and musty with only the television flashing its incandescence-

"So are you going to carry on with your life just sitting in this living room watching TV every single day? Don't you want to pursue an education, go out to meet more people, grow up, learn to be around others…"

"No. I am scared."

"Scared of what? If you do nothing, you will always remain this way- 23 years old, sec sch education…have you done anything to help yourself? You must find the courage to meet people, to try new things. At least then there would be hope. If you stay here, then there's nothing."

"I don't think I can do it. I can't do it!"

"Look me in the eyes- XXX. Tell me what's stopping you. Is it fear? Is it crippling self doubt? What is it? What's stopping you. Don't ask yourself why, ask yourself why not. You don't have the luxury of time. Tell me, your parents are taking care of you now but how much longer do you want your parents to feed you? You are 23 years old! Yet you have achieved nothing! Nothing for the family, nothing for the society, nothing for yourself. Maybe its time you take up some responsibility and try to take care of your parents instead."

He watches TV.

*
And there's on the opposite end I see individuals who've woken up from their lifelong stupor and finally decided to do something about their lives. A life spent hard drinking, whoring and fighting is regretted; they ask me about retaking of O lvls and job prospects, they talk enthusiastically about being responsible for family, for themselves. In a very ironic and poignant way, my second batch reminds me of a Shakespeare quote.

Be not afraid of greatness:
some are born great,
some achieve greatness
and some have greatness thrust upon them.

Things i Learnt at the Age of 20.

2009-05-23T11:20:00.004+08:00

A few things i learnt by the age of 20.
With bad words censored, ideas unrepressed, and totally armed and dangerously badass.

1-今天的狂风暴雨明天的蜡烛都吹不灭。

Be thankful that shyte actually happens to you, all the time. it makes you a stronger person-no matter how gut wrenchingly abysmal you might feel during the shytstorm- wade through it and the next time when you go through the same shyte you'll endure it better. Hell, what doesn't break you, but pushes you all the way to the breaking point, will make you terminator strong. And the next time shyte happens, you have the guts and mindset to go laugh it off. 哈！

2-有我陪着你，你还怕什么？
Always help your friends. Big favours, small favours, if your friend asks you to do something, just do it. They trusted you, that's why they asked for your help. Cover your buddy's ass. and they will in turn return the favour and cover yours. What are friends for anyway? To criticize each other's girlfriends, comment on each other's epic failures and to save each other's asses, of course.

3- 己所不欲，勿施于人
Put your self in other people's shoes. Especially if you're in a position that commands others. Always empathize with other's troubles and other's pains. if you don't like something, don't do it to others. Would you like it if someone told you to seat down on the floor while he sits on a chair and scolds the living daylights out of you? No? Then don't do it to others.

4-你可以拿走我的一切，但不可以拿走我的尊严。

A man can take much punishment from others as long as he understands why. A man is willing to suffer and is willing to go through shyte as long as he knows, there's something to get out of it, that its worth fighting for. But there's never a reason to rob away a man's dignity, for nothing, for no reasons why. Time might allow me to forgive, but once my dignity is gone, once you throw my dignity like trash into the winds, i will never forget.

5-一笑了之 :D
Laugh things off. Life is too short to get angry. Always smile. When you smile, all the pain in your heart will go away. For a blissful moment, at least.

6-Never have a chiobu seat next to you on the MRT. They tend to slow your efficiency. If you are a focused and determined enough individual, when a chiobu comes to seat next to you on the mrt you will tell her with eyes of steel and a voice of unparalled intensity, "No! You shall not sit next to me you distracting creature! I must finish reading this book by the time i reach Clementi!" And afterwards you can grin in self satisfaction and congratulate yourself on being a Real Man all the way the rest of the horrible trip.

7- Always donate generously to mouxiao if you see him next time. And happy birthday! To myself.

press X-X-Y-Y-A-B on the controller to do 5BX.

2009-05-10T19:49:00.003+08:00

I was suddenly struck by a wave of unmanly, weak-balled, blood curdling nostalgia when I was trying to manhandle some gratifying pixels into my rear-kicking brick of a phone and chanced upon, in the depths of my equally mystifying computer pictures of an insouciant me a long time back. And I exclaimed from the depths of my heart, wah lao.

It's good to sometimes stand by, take a deep breathe, and have a bit of perspective on one's life. 退一步海阔天空。And its especially important to do that when I'm serving my soul-crushing national service. Sometimes its just too easy to let army life consume you. Same shyte, different day- wake up prepare training, tell some people to do pushups, sit down for some heart-to-heart, man-to-man talk with difficult/needy/emotionally unstable recruits, flirt with the cookhouse auntie and tick off another morose day off the calendar.

And its most important to get back a picture of who I really am. In the army most often than not rank defines who you are. And rank bestows great power, and great power corrupts. Maybe we're too long in the army and sometimes we forget that the responsibility of rank is to lead and not to dominate. And till now I find that leading is most effective if we can motivate those under us to achieve something by themselves rather than gripping them by the collar and yelling into the ears what exactly they must do.

If we think that the rank we wear gives us so much power to do as we please, then think again why we got the rank for. Just so we can play rank and throw our weight around? Or is it to make the army a better place? And outside of this small universe that you control, be it a section a platoon or a company, outside of your given sphere influence, would others listen to you? Would others respect you outside? Would anyone actually give you a red-hot damn if they saw you on the streets? outside of the rank that we now wear by our hearts, how exactly are we doing as a human being?

Its just sad, that so many times we subconsciously view those below us as machines and our rank as the remote control. Press the red button and press "PLAY" for the training of today….

Sometimes I use the carrot, sometimes I use the stick; sometimes I try using the carrot as the stick. Move, bitches! Move!

2009-05-03T20:54:00.000+08:00

In this whole bigoted world there's only 2 ways of getting reluctant people to do things- one; to instill heart-wrenching fear such that one does not dare face up to the beatific treatment of things being shoved up his ass if he does not do those things, and the other; to make people look forward to what they can achieve by doing those things.

So let me give you an example. Take a bowl of the galaxy's most epic ramen and I place it in front of you with the intention of inspiring you to eat it. I can ask you nicely, please taste this delicious bowl of the most luxurious and decadent noodles, that will make your blood churn with heavenly delight and massage your stomach with its soft milky finesse, and really do taste it, I have put a lot of effort into it.

You will most probably go, hey of course man! Nice ramen! I'll be a ball-less antisocial prick so I say no! Mmm the taste of good ramen!

Then again I can make you eat it in another way. Eat this noodle you gutless pussy! Eat it, or else I will make you into ramen! You better eat it now or I'll **** you upside down!

You will still do it. You will still eat it. But compared to the first treatment, how good would the ramen taste this time?
*

Tell me your definition of a leader. To me, given my job's context and its requirements, he better be one who can inspire others in a positive way. Because inspiration goes a long way. Heard of the multiplier effect? It’s the same with inspiration. The top inspires us to become better leaders and to work harder. Our actions in turn inspire our sargs to be better leaders, be more compassionate and empathetic, more hardworking and focused, and in turn result in better training for the men.

Wow what a fairy tale I'm proselytizing to you right now. I wish to see it; but no matter how I adjust my lens across a wide spectrum of viewpoints I Just. Don’t. See. It.

Right now I'm doing my job because always I'm being constantly reminded of a condescending pairs of horns ramming up my most fleshy and soft parts. I do not know why resort to this sort of management style for I'm self-motivated in the first place. When I first became officer I had a dream, I had a plan and I had a fire that consumed me with passion and hope. Now I have an ambivalent f*** It attitude, a sense of leadership inertia and threats of 7 extra duties. I do not even feel like a leader. I feel like a tool, made to achieve certain ends and all my efforts are not human and compassionate in nature, but rather to help achieve things like pass in fitness tests and to glorify shit on paper.

What about the importance of knowing our men, of seeing their viewpoints, of solving their problems, or making them feel like part of the team? All the painstaking effort my commanders put into forging a platoon into something soldierly and organized is slanted by an unreceptive and ambivalent eye. Your platoon is the worst! All the efforts of my commanders, swept away by the distant Almighty Hand.

If efforts go unrecognized at least I can excuse it to the slow-wrought finer workings of time, that things take time to happen. But how we are treated as commanders made me realize just why I'm a Dog of the Army. Dog days, really dog days, of me being made to play fetch and to sit down on the ground while people sit on a chair leaning over you yelling threats of charge into my ear. 像当街骂狗一样；骂狗的有种江湖英雄的豪气和威风；当狗的享尽了当畜牲的卑微。

But I'm not going to give in to such people, not about to pander to their rotund and epic egos by cowering under their antagonistic diatribes. They can be inglourious basterds for all I care; but I'm not going to let the inspiration multiplier take effect this time round. How people treat me is one thing; how I treat others is another plate of chapatti altogether.

Happy labour day. To celebrate all those who've put in effort but went away unrecognized, for those who did the right thing but still got punished, for those who dared to say what must be said, time and again, knowing full well the consequences, and yet did it anyway.

the worst kind of boss

2009-04-05T10:03:00.003+08:00

HAHA. i wouldn't mind having the last one:P

we didn't start the fire.

2009-04-04T11:14:00.001+08:00

I believed in hope and as an officer I had the power to change lives and to create something good, and in the process people would support me. And that was a long time ago.

I felt that I had the responsibility to do what was right and regardless of public opinion still carry on doing it. I did it and am still doing it and hell am I walking on a thin tightrope.

I feel all officers should spend their efforts more in training their guys and solving their problems, empathizing with them yet be bad enough dudes who'll kick their asses so hard it turns their day into night, rather than worrying more about audits and inspection reports and the font size of documentations and when is the best time to switch duties so one can take a longer leave. There's 50 asses that might need saving and all one cares about is saving his own.

I'm on into my second batch of recruits and it’s a whole different pot of curry than the previous one. Marginalized and deviant from mainstream society, my guys are the paint that colour all the more memorable characters in fiction and film- gangster bosses, drug lords, loansharks, playboys and wiseguys. Among them they have many stories to tell to a PC sitting in an air-conditioned room twirling his pen over an interview booklet, stories of gangland tactical ambushes, explanations of mixing the best dope, tales of lone wolfs in loanshark confrontations and of girlfriends throwing themselves around.

And with them I have to confront their fears and tribulations and in turn think of ways to solve them. Higher-ups respond to problems with the universal solution of charge, but it's up to me to examine machiam social professor exactly what inspires stupid bastards do stupid things. And in trying to handle other people's problems, sometimes there leaves little time for my commanders and I for problems of our own.

Brief glimpses at facebook reveal in scandalous detail all the havoc my civilian friends are up to. Tomorrow we go watch theatre and eat good shyte! Etc al and I vaguely recall seemingly from a time when policemen still wore RVHS white pants that I lived a life akin. For me tomorrow is settling financial aid day and doing training documents day and epic tedious proselytize day, most often a mix and match of the above sprinkled with a healthy dose of wholesome, delectable physical fun.

I take my job with agreeable contentment, since this is what I signed up for anyway. But what killed my fire is not the workload; it’s the response to my work. I could have stood idly by pretending there's nothing wrong with my group of guys, but I chose to put in effort in discovering the problems in my platoon and before I get around to resolve them I get doubted for my leadership skills, questioned on why there's so much problems in my platoon and was given a good tongue lashing on the importance of interacting more with recruits, doing more for them, listening to their problems. Which was exactly what we did, that allowed us to uncover all the problems in the first place. Getting fucked for doing my job- then what the fuck should I do then. I'm incredulous and felt wronged, and it took all my 9 months of OCS training to maintain that modicum of dignity in self control.

It seems nowadays that only my recruits can see with untarnished eyes what their commanders are really doing, the effort they are putting in. Think though; What use? They can't help me much.

wah this must be the most pedandic s@*% i've ever written

2009-03-11T17:37:00.001+08:00

Its the wet spongy kind of sianness plastered across the face in a thin misty sheet, that I had no time to say goodbye to my first batch of recruits; that their course ended on such an anticlimactic note, a day so monotonous and unfulfilling; a bookout like no other. And pah, march recruit-style to the ferry, no more Aloha Tekong loh.

I've always paid special attention to endings, though I never remember endings well. There's a need to sate my curiosity to see just where all my efforts lead- a lot of times it leads no where, a lot of times it leads to something gratifying and meaningful; but rarely if at all it leads to something wholly expected.

Life is guided by karma, and apparently quite a bit of my karma leads me to ever rejuvenating bouts of saikang, which might not be such a bad thing considering what new experiences saikang might actually (haha, the irony) enrich your life with.

For the last day of this batch I was encouraging parents over at the ferry terminal to board the right buses and appreciating feminine beauty; like how army is it massively dragged endlessly on and I failed to bring a proper closure to my platoon's BMTC course.

Oh well.

Life is a journey, what's important is the voyage rather than the destination. What we see, what we felt, what we did in the process is all that matters; the end is merely a culmination of all our efforts that, bulging mind in the sky be willing, led us to somewhere we roughly wanted. Like travel, do we remember the mountains and people we passed by and met, or do we most vividly recall the bus ride back home? Care not how it ends, but rather the paths and choices we took that lead to the end.

And the same, to my first batch of recruits- its just 7 weeks, but hopefully there was something to remember, something to learn and realize and something that made you a better man at the end. BMTC is not the end; it's just the beginning, and may all the efforts of yourself and your commanders helped you in becoming someone greater than when you first stepped in.

In the end its not about how good a soldier you are; but rather how good a friend and a colleague you become. The greatest challenge of army lies not in the mountains and the pumpings and the toilet cleaning; but rather how well one can work with the people around us. No one works alone; and in turn no one can accomplish things alone.

They say Pes C is easy and indeed it is; but that doesn't make you a lesser man in the army. Afterall its not the appointment that matters; but rather how much heart and effort we put into our given appointment. May we all be of some use to the people who'll depend on us now and later. Good luck, and insert clichéd farewell bullshit here.

Once upon a time in Tekong...

2009-03-08T00:32:00.003+08:00

(Adapted from email sent to all my EZOAC buddies. If you're my EZOAC buddy, you've read this so please carry on with surfing Facebook.)

Friends have asked me how am I doing, and I find it does not do my life justice to simply respond with "I'm fine. I am now a SAF Platoon Commander." Such patronizing pedestrian remarks only reveal 2 things: that my recruit has not yet thrown their grenade at me and I still do my job with enough aptitude to not warrant a decommission.

Rather the crux of the question (and what people really wanna know) lies in What am I doing, of which in it contains all the juicy bits.

*
This whole time, 1 whole bloody year, I have progressed from rec mou to cadet mou and now to some platitudinous-sounding 'sir' with often the exclamation mark at the back. Posture is better, lesser time to act the fool (still does, its in my blood), Hair has grown proportionally longer and self has grown steadfastly more pleasant smelling as my trainee life ends and my commander life begins, and essentially, with a year of digging tremendous holes in the ground and trudging through mountains of mud behind me, my NS life is getting better.

I am an officer training recruits. In shiny propaganda words I "train boys into men." In reality, at very slack times, I wake up at 7 am, drag my lazy behind to the officer mess to create trouble for the mess boys, then, at midnight with all the crazy constellations beaming starbeams down at me, go to the seaside to mud wrestle with crabs the size of my printer and scream (in a very manly, officer manner, of course) at seasnakes trying to coastal hook me.

But that's only when I'm waiting for a new batch of recruits. When my gang of shiny guys come in I'll rub the sleep from my eyes and start by telling them "I 'll be your brother sister uncle father mother best friend and worst enemy etc.." I am the conducting in charge of their fieldcamp and of their endurance trainings. During the latter I make them run till their tongues roll out and ask them how they're doing at the end, of which my recruits, god bless their steel-girdled manly parts, always respond with a feeble cry of OUTSTANDING!

I am also in charge of their fieldcamp, some 6 day stint in the jungle where I am responsible for everything under the sky. I scream into the phone yelling for logistics and transport, decide when to give my smokers their smoke break "do you, in all honesty speaking, think you deserve it?", filter all real injuries from fake injuries "all those with blisters and headaches go back and fall in!", ponder over how many bullets to indent, and plan out long and horrific soldierly stuff for my recruits to do.

It’s a very stressful and fast paced job and I'm coupled with a very demanding boss. Sometimes i work all night doing documents and lesson prep and only to walk out of the office to see my recruits falling in late. But it's also a very interesting and meaningful one. I inquire hot dancers regarding their dinner and the weather backstage during concert events for recruits, i scheme with my medic on finding the biggest needle to scare away chao keng recruits, and I walk to the center of a rotting wooden bridge to see island sunsets.

I get to meet exciting people, the sad, the strange, the screwed-up. A recruit of mine wanted to commit suicide on the second day and he took anti-depressant Xanax pills, with side effects of abnormal behaviour. It is the same pill some chimpanzee took before tearing off some girl's face. I also have recruits who backstab me by telling my boss one thing and me another, a gangsta who think that me talking nicely to him means I'm afraid of pissing his shriveled jewels off, national swimmers and a successful wine dealer as my entourage.

A life as a PC demands me to do many things. Sometimes I flirt with my recruit's concerned moms, try not to sacrifice myself when they throw their goddamned grenades, start to write my will when I think of the former, make people engage in wholesome and delectable physical activities, and go on in the eternal pursuit of trying to, as my co. vision goes, make boys into men. Or at least, with what I can do and dare to dream, make a difference, a positive change, in mine and their lives.

Love Power

2009-02-14T16:59:00.001+08:00

When I was still in my recruit days pondering over life over a toilet bowl I looked up at all the officers sauntering around as something insanely cool and awe-inspiring. They didn't have to wash toilets. They didn't have to knock it down. Hell, they were the ones skating by with the ice under their toes and fire grasped in their hands and they were the kings of Tekongland and, by god, I wanted to be one of them.

And now I am one of them. My senior once told me, "Chiong through the tough times of OCS for 9 months, then you can relax." With my (severely depleted) recruit mind back then I believed in his words and in a very (slack) way I was looking forward to finally some peace and quiet and relaxation after I did my patapon stint on the SAFTI MI parade square.

Hope, however, is a trivial and weightless thing. Life is never going to be easy, its never going to loosen up. But I still remember, all the way at the beginning, why exactly I wanted to be an officer. Because I liked the challenge, to see just how far I can go. And I still remember, during my cadet times, why I carried on with training. Because there are so many screwed-up commanders out there, I'm going to commission, and I'm going to be better than them.

I'm going to make a difference. I will be the agent of change.

For all the reasons and all the dreams, actually being an officer entails a lot of following orders and just sucking it up. Yessir yessir I will do it sir please scold me somemore sir- at times I feel like I'm back in my newly issued recruit boots, bowing my head down in shame and humiliation as superiors throw their shit upon me. But that's the way with the check and balances of life- there's always someone overpowering you, breathing fire down your collar, but when the fire passes down to you- the sky opens up- I have the choice, the choice of how to treat those under my power. I have no power to control the shit that lands on me, but I have the power to control the shit that lands on those below me.

And there's a few things I realized.

A test of character is not how i treat those above me, but how I treat those under me.

Do or Die- 人不助己，天诛地灭。

Expect of others what you expect of yourself. Before you command others to do stuff, make sure you know how to do it better.

I hate abusers of power. Those who just sit there swinging their legs and watch others work. Privileges of rank is just a sorry excuse.

And don't threaten just because you can.

Don't ask why- rather ask, why not?

And today's Valentine's Day. So happy Valentine's day, and spread some Love around. There's too little of it going round.

新年快乐- HUAT AH!

2009-01-25T11:21:00.002+08:00

大家快快乐乐过新年，到底是不是真的快乐你别来跟我说。我挺快乐- 网络坏了又好了。坏了的时候打给starhub叔叔，叔叔叫我上网报告网络圆寂了。网络暴毙了，要牟某上个什么网报个什么告？！不是逼我拿着枪对着电话走火吗？？郁闷。他****starhub的，也应该郁闷。

Anyway, 总觉得学了那么多年的唐诗宋词，却没能找个美眉来一起欣赏欣赏。不是听众眼神迷茫就是对方挑我的刺儿，在今世找位知己，还真是不容易。为了方便各位兄弟美眉的文化提升，我来帮您们翻译翻译我最欣赏的几首唐诗。

Lost in Translation: Decadent poems for the Chinese New Year.

Translator's note; all efforts have been put in to ensure the feel, style, tone, imagery, rhyme and rhythm, iambic pentameters and whatever highbrow literature uppercuts of the original poem are dutifully preserved.

李白
乐府·将进酒
君不见黄河之水天上来，奔流到海不复回。
君不见高堂明镜悲白发，朝如青丝暮成雪。
人生得意须尽欢，莫使金樽空对月。天生我材必有用，
千金散尽还复来。烹羊宰牛且为乐，会须一饮三百杯。
岑夫子，丹丘生，将进酒，杯莫停。与君歌一曲，
请君为我侧耳听。钟鼓馔玉不足贵，但愿长醉不愿醒。
古来圣贤皆寂寞，惟有饮者留其名。
陈王昔时宴平乐，斗酒十千恣欢谑。
主人何为言少钱，径须沽取对君酌。
五花马，千金裘，呼儿将出换美酒，与尔同销万古愁。

Let's drink! By Drunkard Lee.

Where did that bloody river come from? Oh there it goes! Into the sea!
What brand of dye they use on my hair? Morning still black night time white.
Live life happy; hey tiger girl, why my mug so empty?? Do u noe, who I am?
I'll pay you tomorrow, so give me some bak gua to eat lah. Come! Drink!
Chao Ah Beng! William! Don't you cockanathans stop drinking! Sing K Box with me
And take your freakin earplugs off. This recession, don't buy all the ex stuff lah, and man I see a monolithic hangover coming.
You know, great people are always lonely, only the drunkards gain infamy.
I know a guy, he damn havoc, whole day party flirt and drink.
Ay I tell you don't always ask me for money right? Go Ask Obama lah! Come, cheers!
Sell your clothes! Pawn your underwear! Buy more beer! Hells bells, I but drink too damn much.
*
我们是否应该向李白叔叔学习如何过新年，这点看个人的酒量性格。人为钱死，鸟为食亡- 这个新年还是省些钱吧。还是第一次觉得今年在军队度日子稳赚我的小钱，还不错。

the gentlemen's guide to mighty fine talking cock.

2009-01-18T20:16:00.001+08:00

In the mighty fine spirit of human relationships, the great guru Lim Yi Hong decided to write a most beautiful book, the contents coalesced from a grizzled and seasoned lifetime of interpersonal warfare and conflict and love. Through intense deliberation, chapter 2 of this mighty tome would be known as- "chicks dig wheels…but they dig tanks even more."

And presumably, following chapters would bear similar profound-sounding wells of wisdom, like "good girls dig bad boys" and "it's hard to find a girl who would dig a trench with you anymore."

*

I vividly recall a time back in China when we group of fine people would leap up onto some random hotel bed and YongKian would tell us in his infinite wisdom how love was like a plane on a runway. 起跑越长，起飞越稳。若是像直升机一般，那就只能自由落体。

And all of us would go tip over the precipice of ignorance and embrace the light of enlightenment, going to sleep with a grin in our eyes.

*
And now I book in again. No recruits yet, nothing much to do. Life is good, but I do miss those challenging times.

我的城门正打开

2009-01-04T21:08:00.004+08:00

I have friends who look upon the new year as a sort of definitive conclusion/beginning/symbolism for the year behind and the year ahead. I used to do it too- last year I celebrated the dawn of 08 by night cycling with OAC, and it kind of reflected on my passions for 07 and prophesied accurately the sort of life I'd be leading in 08. (Grimy, heart of darkness, saikang…)

And now we come to the year 09. A significant number welcomed 09 with cloudbursts of pyrotechnics burning into the retina of their eyes, many others welcomed 09 entwined in the embrace of significant others and I suppose given the social contact and abundance of alcohol there at Clark Quay a great deal of them woke up to 09 in somebody else's bed. And my buddies and I walked into 09, almost getting lost from one point to another. We hollanded from 08 to 09 –it speaks of aimless delinquents and uninspired slackers- but that's the way it was for 08. A year of aimlessness shrouded by a culpable soggy pancake of sianness that enveloped my general mood.

The whole year of 08 was army life through and through. The term culture shock that so many seniors have prophesied came not as a deluge but rather as a trickle of numbing helplessness as bits of pieces of my JC life was irrevocably twisted into the regimental cadence of army life. Looking back, dates that held so much meaning back in school now turn to mean so little in the monotonous daily grind of army life. It takes time, getting used to losing a part of yourself, giving up the past, putting all the historic baggage down so I can progress into 09.

08 is the year where my own interpretation of social interaction took a deeper turn. I believe in the positive attitude of yesman- ask your friends out, even if you haven't seen them in years, what's stopping you and who knows what might turn up? I don't believe in facebook- friendships are understood only through face to face interaction.

I believe in being hard and merciless at times. For many things polite conversation over a cup of tea doesn't really work out. I realize that of friends with different lifestyles, one might work and even live amicably with them for long periods, but ultimately once there's opportunity for separation, the distance will grow.

I've learnt that of many times there's no divine benevolent eye watching over me- and of overcoming adversity it is sometimes a very lonely thing. Hence I never forget the people who've helped me, one way or another. Without them I wouldn't be here, and without them helping me through I would have a much bleaker view of the world.

Thanks to lta koh weijie, the only officer who bothered to help me out a while when digging that goddamn firetrench by myself. Thanks to Paul and my buddy Marcus, for helping me to fill sandbags. Thanks to my section mates Louis and Martin for sharing my load when I was climbing that last Brunei knoll with that screwed-up fever. thanks to the doctor who sewed my whacked-up chin up and being so frank in telling me my love life is a goner. The actions might sound frivolous and mundane- sandbags? Wth? But in that moment where the last bit of hope and strength is squeezed out from my balls, any help will break my heart. Thanks to so many for making my 08 the way it was- bearable with good company, enjoyable in those short bursts of civilian epiphany, mesmerizing in the good scenery my army life brought me along to see.

Its not so bad, 08, but I only say so because I've been there done that. Try telling me that a few months back and I'd have told you something blasphemous.

It will be good, 09- but its up to me and you to make it so.

lessons from Oscar Charlie Sierra

2008-12-25T17:34:00.001+08:00

An old wise writer once said to me that to write a good book, one has to have reached a certain age, for only time allows for maturity to develop, and only then can we make sense of what we have experienced.

Kind of true, in regard to OCS, that only after a long decadent and mostly wasted break spent baking strawberry cheesecakes, dismantling moldy beds and getting grinded by fat bubbly ladies in Zouk do I start to feel the true impact of what exactly OCS has taught me.

The greatest lesson I learnt is the importance of shutting up. Everyone can talk but not everyone can listen. In ocs I've met quite a few people who are so engrossed in their own talk that it seems the sole purpose of you being there as a friend is to provide them with a listening ear. What I say are ignored and I find myself silenced off by a continuation of his rambling sagas, my reactions reduced to monosyllabic "yes" and "ahahs." Do not interrupt me! Just listen to my passionate diatribes and nod your head in muted agreement! In a while the conversation whittles down to a monologue and me going off to some more tranquil place for a bit of peace and quiet.

It reminds me of my preference of friends, and now I realize just why my good friends are such good buddies. Back in JC when we gathered round to talk, guys would go "you say first" when there were interruptions. People would pause to allow for others to speak. Such is the nature of conversation, respect the speaker by shutting up and in turn respect the listener by giving him the chance to share.

Dale Carnegie once said that to be a good speaker requires skill; a listener however requires character. My closest friends are good listeners- patient, understanding, and showing a genuine interest in whatever typhoons in my teacup I choose to disturb them with. Ask questions in the right moments, share your own experiences- a speaker who knows when to shut up and listen to the thoughts of others in turn gleams wisdom from what they hear, and gains much more from conversation than the release of one's own emotions.

Perhaps it's harder to become a good listener as we cadets progressed on from the lowest life form in the SAF to become officers, yet it becomes more important that we listen well and good. The transition from cadet to officer is too fast too furious- one day I'm still scrubbing toilets and the next I'm waddling into the officer mess for a mug of beer. Too new into my job, where rank bestows first responsibility and the prestige and privileges only comes later- it's time for some humility and to listen.

And after listening to others, I have to make decisions, and in doing so there's no pleasing everyone. Sometimes the only way to carry on forward is to stick by my own decision and push through- others might say its wrong and others might support it- most of the time those who opposes you will be in the light, making the most noise, while those who support you are in the shadows, just silently waiting for you to take the first step.

Everybody would want to be the nice guy, but 人善被人欺，我只想做个好人，只不过世态不允许。It's good to listen to other's opinions, but ultimately in making the final say, something has got to give. And I suppose to not screwup this officer job I have to recall back the tough guy alter ego I've forgotten.

Its much harder than you think, just pushing through with what you believe. The words "resolute" and "decisive" are desirable qualities only because they are so difficult to achieve. In the end it's all about how much confidence one has, but talk is talk- walking the walk requires a bit of guts to face the possibility of massively, irrevocably, screwing up.

It would not be so bad, screwups, if everyone could take things in a more light hearted manner. There's a very tense and chilly atmosphere in OCS when it comes to people making mistakes- directors of cockups are verbally hung drawn and quartered behind their backs, and every time someone bitches to me about someone else I have this nagging voice in me that asks the logical question: behind someone else, would he not bitch the same way about me?

面对自己或他人的错误，能一笑了之需要的是平和的气度. 像佛说的，要以慈悲为怀。不简单啊，这类人我屈指可数。

Christmas is over, and introspection gave me myself as a present to me.

Journey.

2008-12-21T21:22:00.002+08:00

travelled one year, from jungle to hills, through wind and storm, and i find myself back in tekong.
Shifted my home from SAFTI to Tekong, back to where it all began.

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.

-George Moore.

兵

2008-12-17T00:40:00.011+08:00

什么是兵？

去年前的今天，曾经想过服役时当个巡察也不错。走在街上，看到漂亮美眉闯红绿灯乱丢垃圾什么的，走上前去一把揪住，一脸忧伤满腔悲愤地说些 “对不起，我是警察。我只想做个好人。” 类似的壮语，随后拉回家亲自审问，每天活得多姿多彩，为民除害，培养感情。

后来接到通知，不是巡警而是兵，有些郁闷，想以后只能跟泥巴大树培养感情了，这就叫做“宿命”，牟某生下来就不是拿着银勺唑吧汤玩高雅的。餐风宿露，披星戴月，摸爬滚打，懒得刷牙忘了洗澡- 这才像样子。

当兵是种体验是种发现，深刻体验到的不是兵打仗，而是在你出外当兵数月与老朋友重逢，发现大家都在岔口选择了自己的路，有些翻过了山不见了，有些还在远处跟你挥手，还有些在道路崎岖中还能时时与一位忘了‘文明’两字啥意思的兄弟相见。

当兵是种发现，发现的不是自己能射多准能杀多少人，而是一种在水生火热中，在艰难困苦中，连神都帮不了你时，成与败全取决于一颗早已流干了热血却仍在跳动的心。在饥饿中寻找的是自己的原则，在寒冷中挑灯看你的是自己的良心。

什么是兵？

拾得折剑头，不知折之由。

一握青蛇尾，数寸碧峰头。

疑是斩鲸鲵，不然刺蛟虬。

缺落泥土中，委弃无人收。

我有鄙介性，好刚不好柔。

勿轻直折剑，犹胜曲全钩。

最后当上军官，花了一年洗厕所悟出人生意义的牟小兵成了希望能叫别人洗厕所帮人家悟出人生意义的牟少尉。是苦尽甘来？还是OCS 的unofficial motto- the worst is yet to be?

盼望的是前者，准备的是后者。

NO FLIGHT TO TANAKA

2008-12-08T18:00:00.004+08:00

Went for night cycling suffering from a heavy bout of flu. Slept all the way to monday, felt too miserable to go out, so sat down and wrote this story.

Aaron and puikit commanded me to update, so this story is dedicated to both my intellectual slave drivers. enjoy NO FLIGHT TO TANAKA, a post-modernist epic romance satirical political action-packed flu-ridden and weekend-burning space opera, delivered in 2 parts.

NO FLIGHT TO TANAKA

Yamato boarded Flight 317, departing from Beijing to Osaka, with a distinctly Japanese mood burning inside him, the rampaging fervor of his samurai ancestors lifting up their psychological samurai swords and hailing proud and mighty battle cries against airport security. It was by mere misfortune that centuries of mixed breeding and wanton disregard to fine and glorious traditions have all but diluted his mighty warrior heritage, and today all of that honorable history that remained in him was a bushy, thinly trimmed moustache and an international reputation as the CEO of the biggest whaling fleet in the history of Japan.

The air stewardess smiled her glossy plastic smile and Yamato with typical Japanese courtesy smiled back.

Masaka! Exhaled the elderly man.

*

The recent resurgence of Aum Shinrikyo whereby proclamations of Armageddon were simultaneously announced in a YouTube video connected to a Facebook account by one Shoko-san sent the security forces across 2 continents into fever mode. It was a detailed and comprehensive plan, involving elaborate political twists between China and Taiwan, The Korean peninsula, with the US pacific fleet a few nuclear warheads and a couple of Islamic fundamentalists thrown in for good measure. Airline security's hard-hitting response was to thoroughly investigate every orifice on an Asian body before letting them through.

And over the plane's intercom system, in a mix of placid English and Braille, the air stewardess's instructions on what to do in the event of a hijacking were simple, clear and succinct. Stay calm. Do not infuriate them. Try to communicate with them if you know Japanese. Keep your middle-finger well sheathed. Carefully remove the handgun hidden under every passenger seat. In the history of anti-terrorism it was a most violent doctrine- but conclusions drew from 911 was that it would be better to down the plane in noble acts of self-sacrifice than to say, have an airliner dive bomb Tiananmen Square with plastic bags of Sarin.

*
The young Korean man flipped through his magazine and watched as the world turned from brown to blue outside his window. He headed for the toilet, whereby he passed the Chinese steward, and once inside removed from his pocket a map of Japan. He sat down and waited for the time to pass.

Outside the steward removed from the inside fold of his jacket a small automatic pistol, grabbed a passing female colleague by the throat and at 30000 feet above sea level gave a most uplifting and adrenaline packed speech:

"THIS IS NOT A HIJACKING!" Introduced the young Chinese man, cubbing the girl's mouth and pointing the gun intermittently between his audience and his damsel in distress. "NO ONE WILL DIE IF EVERYONE COOPERATES!"

The Korean surreptitiously exited the toilet and had in his hands the same kind of handgun. A bit of stately persuasion with it allowed him to enter the cockpit and as the Chinese was still heralding his charges to stop screaming and to listen, a Korean voice boomed out over the intercom.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN THIS IS YOUR NEW CAPTAIN SPEAKING. CAN THE PASSENGER YAMATO PLEASE MAKE YOUR WAY TO THE COCKPIT."
*
"…And we are currently experiencing turbulence so can everyone please remain in their seats. Dinner will served shortly." A more composed member of the Hijacked Innocent Coalition (as they would later be known) muttered to the rather attractive female comrade seated beside. Somewhere behind a business-man type was muttering: "He's going to poison us all with melanine!" Everyone was fidgety, but an overexposure to news of terrorist atrocities have ingrained in them a subconscious expectation of such things to happen to themselves.

Perhaps more so, in the case of the Hollywood Action Hero onboard, seated in first class. He wiped sweat off his forehead and tried to cover his face in a newspaper article about himself. "MODERN DAY HERO" The headline lavishly exclaimed, bold and superscripted over a picture of explosions, flying arabs, and himself strolling composed and cool through it all, slick like an oil spill and steady like the West Bank wall.

The Chinese steward was right beside him, the pistol jerking erratically to and fro. In the movie "The Dragon Comes Rumbling Home" he was faced with roughly the same situation and he in an athletic leapt of selfless courage had body-slammed his cowardly adversary, kicked the gun away and cracked his hopelessly outmatched adversary's skull on his knee. It was brilliantly violent- and as he sat weak and paralyzed in his seat, brilliantly impossible.

The professor seated beside him looked at him expectantly, glancing from the article to him and to the steward. There was a scheming smile on his lips and a gaze full of idolizing expectancy.

"It's a bloody movie for god's sake! I don't even play my own fighting scenes!" He wanted to scream. Then again, as the showman in him took over, wouldn't it make good publicity, if he really stopped this hijacking? Only 1 of them here. He was fit and muscular and he knew it as well as any of his fans.

The steward was not looking at him. Carefully remove the handgun hidden under every passenger seat…

*
Yamato walked into the cockpit expecting his brains to be blown all over the floor. He prayed to Christ; even though he believed not in Christianity; he bowed to Allah, though he was no muslim; and just before he entered with deep reverence and respect he prayed for the benevolence and compassion of his captors.

"Tanaka, familiar?" Greeted the Korean man, seated casually on the navigator's seat, the original now slumped on the cramped cockpit floor. He jabbed at the Japan map sprayed on his lap, fingers tracing roughly around a group of islands off the Eastern coastline of Japan.

Tanaka. Of course Yamato was familiar! It was the port town where most of his whaling fleet was stationed.

"Why?"

"Very good. You'll be leading us there. There's no direct flight to Tanaka, you see, and we have certain business to attend to there. We follow our conscience, you understand, not like you Mr Yamato. Nice meeting you, by the way. We volunteers at Whalepeace have spent considerable efforts in tracking you down."

*

Weeks later investigators would file a report on the two hijackers, one Chinese national named Guo Jing and a Korean national dubiously named Kim. Both were volunteers of the eco-terrorist group Whalepeace that had started out in the mid 1980s as a small fishing community who had the gifted talent of entangling their fishing nets in the propellers of Japanese whaling ships. GuoJing was bred up in the Yantze delta and accounts reveal that he was particularly affected by the pollution of the river and the subsequent extinction of the Baiji dolphin. Attempts to sabotage the hydroelectric dam upstream resulted in miserable failure and an overseas scholarship introduced him to Whalepeace operatives.

The motivations of the Korean however were more complex, with no discernible nor reliable source according for his background and history. Some ex-Whalepeace members testify that Kim was a North Korean defector who tried to paddle to South Korea on a small wooden boat, whereby the boat capsized and he was rescued by a pod of overenthusiastic and exuberant dolphins who with perfect navigation and a smooth comfortable ride delivered him to South Korea. Other less mythical accounts describe him as an environmental extremist who joined Greenpeace to "show those Capitalist Pigs the consequence of not signing the Kyoto agreement", who later left when he felt the methods used were not "expressive and forceful enough."

Whatever the background of these two men, authorities are still puzzled over how both could have successfully gone through Air Marshal training and succeeded in legitimately bringing their firearms aboard.

*

Yamato, as he stood in the middle of the cockpit feeling like a miserable old man, had no inkling of what the hijack had to do with him. All his career he had been harpooning cetaceans and selling tasty whale burgers to flocks of hungry Japanese and that was about the worst he had done. And it is for scientific research- he had boldly proclaimed in lectures, arms outstretched messiah-like on the podium. Thousands of Japanese engage in rigorous scientific research through the culinary tasting of whale sashimi.

And what is different- said Yamato- about eating whales and eating pigs? Both are sources of nutrition- only one appears more majestic than the other. Sure killing whales seem more inhuman compared to the industrialized and systematic slaughtering of pigs, but ultimately it all ends up as a "positive net influence on human society."

Kim, straddling the navigator's chair, recited Yamato's most recent lecture by heart, a thin laser smile flickering in the midst of a wide expanse of white pale skin.

"Sure we could have chosen other ways of doing about this. Say, lodge a complaint to Greenpeace, to the foreign embassy of Japan. But it's like killing whales and killing pigs, Mr Yamato. One is more bloody than the first, but we can accept some sacrifice. After all, more bloodshed, more sympathy… it bears a stronger statement. Mr Yamato, no airline flies to Tanaka, so you will bring us there."

***

to be continued.

Death by Bookout.

2008-11-16T19:03:00.001+08:00

Now I finally realize in a gleam of rapturous empowerment the true meaning of bookout. Nah it's not for a soldier to go to the magnanimous auntie at Beach Road to buy zip locks- though every soldier will set off on this holy pilgrimage sooner or later. Neither is it meant for food, though often our stomachs, long weary of the siege against the cookhouse crusaders of half-baked reservist cooks(* ref. Land of Tango) with treasonous intentions and questionable talent, assuages violently the need for better grub.

It is, the assertive and noisy voice majestically proclaim, like a politician on the verge of sending other people's sons to war, to allow me to rediscover the ability to speak normally like a civilized guy again. To rediscover my social skills, that in times of filling sandbags and cleaning rifles was crystallized into a single F***ing word.

When that word in army would suffice for all situations and all emotions, I book out and remembered that not so long ago I once sheathed within me an expansive vocabulary. When in my camouflaged and dirt-laden world social skills meant just the few things (girls, guns, grub and game.) Book out, meet up with friends, and the world outside opens up. Conversations ebb and flow and takes me around the world; I realize how much I don't know, how much I missed out, how much more there is to life, the things yet pursued the dreams yet unrealized.

Book in again and the world shrinks back into the black hole, where the immediacy of everyday soldierly concerns once again takes over. Time for RO! Fall in now! Clean rifle scrub toilet polish boots!

And I keep marching on, towards the next bookout, where there are wider vistas to behold.

Tango

2008-11-09T11:33:00.003+08:00

Back when I was still trudging through the Promised Land of foot rot and fever that goes by the name of Bravo, free time was diluted to an incredible 4-6 hours of sleeping time every night. The pace was as frenetic as the sheets of rain that gushed down the roof and there was little time to think amidst all the sweat and rain and mud, often indiscernible from each. The whole experience reminded me of the saying: there's no atheist in foxholes.

the diabolical jungles of Bravo.

Then come to the next overseas “holiday” and it was almost the antithesis of the first. If the first filled me with dread and mental rigor mortis, the second was refreshing and in the context, stretched obscenely into the realm of fun. So fun, some of the parts- like R and R- it's all encapsulated by the other saying: there's no philosophers in nightclubs.

My lover pressed her cool icy existence against me, flesh against flesh, and I could feel her rounded, hardened nuts pressing against my steaming love handles. My heart burned with an everlasting radiance that blinded me to the world. She grew harder and heavier as I heaved us to my feet, and a cataclysmic whiff of her incense scent pierced the abyss of my soul. I shouldn't have rubbed her so much, lubricated her with so much oil, and now her essence entwined forever with mine.

I squirmed with monumental effort, her tendrils leathery and biting into my quacking shoulders, the throes of passion lifting her telescopic sights into my chin, chewing the softness of my flesh. Every ponderous step I took drove her deeper into exuberant fiery, rocking her stocky butt against my gut. Every contusion of her body etched into the crevices of mine; I struggled halfheartedly and in ultimate vain.

7 hours it lasted, from dusk till dawn. A raging storm of intense desire, wondering when it would ever end. Never! Whispered my demon lover, her peach-like mouth small and delicate, a mere 7.62mm. You will carry me to the ends of the Earth! You and me! Forever as one!

doing soldierly stuff.

Carrying ponderous weapons all trying to make my life difficult with hundreds of rounds dangling off my shoulder while running up hills and after all that, beholding breathtaking mountain scenery kind of sums up my training, but that's mere accoutrement to the experience. For army things I try not to focus too much on the army aspect- in 1 year's time I'll be out of the rabbit hole and going for civilian conversion course- might as well take remedial lessons as often as I can.

Training ended and 3 days of R & R meant a lifetime's worth of hardcore drinking, partying, eating all the rubbish at nightmarkets. There's cheese nuggets that melt in the mouth and giant pet spiders the ferocity of the one that tried to eat Frodo on sale, and there's nightclubs that we guys went to way too early, only to find ourselves, a platoon worth of horny and thirsty soldiers, the only customers there.

One of my buddies has a girlfriend who's head over tails over him and this time round actually went over to Taiwan to be with him during R and R. One of the compulsory tour locations was a theme park. Now I hate theme parks; I find the rides too artificial as thrills, when all one does is sit down on a plastic chair, strap yourself in and let somebody else create for you a semblance of excitement. Reminds me of all those electrocution chairs, only tune down the current. I prefer the kind of activity that requires some effort on my part to find the excitement; there's more of a sense of accomplishment in mountain biking than say, sitting on a Pirate ship yelling my breakfast out.

we got lost, so much ask for directions...

Partly also because my heart can't take the high Gs; In a place where the fiercest ride I can take is the escalator I was pretty much bored out of my skull. And here comes my buddy, asking me to accompany him and his girlfriend.

W.T.H. was my instantaneous reply. I didn't want to shine like a second sun. And what is his girlfriend doing here? Either she's the Epiphany of Love or the Guardian of Lust and Desperation; the line kind of blurs.

His request arose out of a fear that instructors would blame him and from a more complex human dynamic perception that it would be better off if it appeared that she joined us as a willing attachment, and not him detaching himself from the group and being with her. I, being a) bored anyway, and b) partly curious to see just what the girl would do to him, accepted the offer.

it's not a good experience and my readers, if any couple ask you to be bodyguard, resolutely decline. Like a rollercoaster ride, some of the nonsense that comes out of lover's mouth can breach my hardened intestinal walls and it send shivers cascading down my spine. One man's sweet honey is another's upchuck- ancient wisdom indeed.

3 weeks since I'm back and in retrospection, 21 days overseas and all the rare times of bookouts pretty much eradicated the social identity that you've built up all along. Economies tumble and America elects their first black man to president, and nothing much effects you. A soldier's struggle for survival means eating rations and ensuring his rifle is clean, talks politics and international affairs in highly imaginative terms of “red land forces” and “blue land forces”, and his social life is rock stable with no dynamic complexity whatsover, having the same 28 faces all around him every single in camp day. Book out of camp and, if one is lucky enough, outside friends are still in contact. There's little chance to further deepen friendships- there's little time to get together again to create meaningful experiences, to accomplish things together. For the past year I've been hanging on to the friends from my life past- there's a social trade deficit- friends are fading and losing contact faster than I am meeting new people, discounting all the buddies I know in army. All we do nowadays when we meet up are to eat some meals. Its a reflection of how empty my life has been this whole year till now. Ask me what I did last year and I can tell you lots of interesting things, of failure and success, of pain and gain. Ask me this year what have I done and I, thinking of all the road marches an infantry dude like me does, I can only deadpan and in summary, say, “i walk.”

But look beyond the clouds of gloom and I think of the lands of Tango and Bravo, and hell the days in them might have been, those were days when life was actually good, when whole new vistas opened up and pushed me raw. When the days actually meant something new and breathtaking and worth remembering, when from helmet to boot my essence was not just simply walking. Something more; something actually better than the civilian opportunities I might have missed If not for NS. And hey. Keep on walking then, further down the road to the next time when something like Tango comes up again.

invasion

2008-10-14T23:11:00.006+08:00

while mou has gone to invade the republic of china, he brought along his rich vocabulary and quick wit as well - something which he's proven that the army hasn't taken away from him, over the past few months.

he leaves behind this blog, and a half-illiterate firefighter to man it. probably so that readers can laugh at how much of a person's intelligence civil defence can do damage to.

from L to R: invader of this blog, invader of taiwan

this is leeheng from SCDF. fights fires once in a while, attends to traffic accidents sometimes, and responds to nonsense calls like unattended cooking all the time. used to speak only english, mandarin and cantonese. has since dropped english and took up broken english peppered with malay and hokkien vocabulary.

and so deeply honoured that mou still entrusted his blog in my hands anyway. let's see what i can do with it.

how about continuing star lores from where he left off?

no. not a good idea. he'll know that i haven't been reading it.

how about making up something in place of star lores and pretend it's just another installment?

no. it'll be worse than when 金庸 came back from his travels to find his guest writer 倪匡 having blinded his main female character.

let's just be cliche about it and put up whatever mou is best identified with - the communist poster. i've found a rather meaningful one:

Romeo Oscar Charlie

2008-10-06T21:32:00.004+08:00

When you have no inspiration no time and Taiwan coming in hours, this is what you get. Are you feeling good?

blog is now in the hands of guest bloggers for 21 days. No pressure on them, considering the illustrious and awe-inspiring amounts of crap the original writer puts up, this could only be an improvement. And considering all 3 are hot and sexy chiobus i expect this blog to be more popular than Jay Chou by the time i come back.

au revoir.

bobo shooter president inauguration speech

2008-09-29T17:43:00.004+08:00

I shall not be like a lot of pompous thriller writers, who think they can spin a deft deep and mesmerizing tale of jaw-shattering suspense and fervid second guessing and only to vomit out some very predictable and cheap resolution. So I shall start this blog post with the ending first:

I failed to get the marksmanship badge.

… goes the majority of my readers, half of whom are girls mugging their brains away and the other half who got posted to medic, firefighter, public safety specialist or other random SAF vocations that has nothing to do with shooting a gun.

And that was the same feeling I experienced throughout much of my shooting test (and subsequent retest, and further retests).

Mou can't shoot. It’s a simple, understated fact, there along with all the other simple understated facts like 1+1 = 2, apples grow on trees and that Singaporeans don't really bother about the F1 Race. And when I say Mou can't shoot, I meant that he is as handicapped as a shooter as a marathon runner without legs. I can't close my left eye; so I can't pretty much aim- each time I see through the scope the target board vivaciously divides itself into 2 and I'm left with the gratification of shooting somewhere in between them.

And when 2 target boards come up simultaneously, under certain conditions I can see 4 target boards and if my eye is feeling particularly expressive and ambitious at the moment 4 would further procreate into 6 and by then some colouful language (amen!) along with bullets would be flying through the air. Perhaps i would fare better if I just threw my rifle at the target board? In all retrospection good thing I'm not Cupid.

To say I went for the marksmanship test would be a bit of an insult to marksmen around the world. It implied that I have the potential of having the skills of a marksman. So to be brutally frank and do justice to accurate shooters I must say I went for missmanship test. It is a more accurate and positive reflection of my l33t haxxor shooting skillz, yo homyz. Bullets whizz through the air roar out blunt and realistic proclamations regarding my talent.

"LOSER."

"POINT YOUR OWN GUN TO YOUR HEAD AND YOU'LL MISS."

"WASTING TAXPAYERS MONEY! BULLETS NOT CHEAP SIA!"

For those who've never put their eyes through the scope of a gun they would never know the difficulty of shooting one. It takes a man with girdled die-cast balls of reinforced steel to hold a gun without the sights shaking; focusing on a target 300m away calls for nerves found in ER surgeons and trigger fingers demand the dexterity and fluidity of a piano player.

And since I fail in all the criteria mentioned above, I'm left helplessly despondent over any hope of a badge, and 3 days of shooting left me with nothing much in terms of satisfaction. But the mood was cheery and the spirit was relaxed; there's no compulsion nor expectation for myself to do well- certain limits (e.g. balls of…) are hard to transcend in mere days. Some more ambitious friends stare blankly at the sky enduring cascading waves of depression as they missed the marksmanship mark by 1; I stare at Maxim magazine whistling cheery tunes as I wait for my retest of the bobo shooter retest.

Life is not just about a badge.

And retest after retest I did, each time getting more and more in tune with the gun. Night blindness meant I can't see a quarter of the targets and drinking gratuitous amounts of tea before shooting failed in focusing eyes; I took all as simply training. And it was fun. People pay 2 bucks to shoot in arcades: other people pay lots of money so I can shoot. And in the future how many more times do I get the opportunity to fire?

And when the results came, it was a pleasant surprise. 2 marks to marksman. Man.

咫尺天涯.

how i learnt to kill people.

2008-09-21T18:28:00.002+08:00

i book in thinking of bookout, and i book out thinking of book in. this is what i think of life, NS life, in a nutshell. but sometimes i book out and go do more fun and interesting things and get my mind off all the learning to kill people, and yeah, i suddenly realize in a cloudburst of epiphany , life can be as vibrant as the picture above, and not just in 3 colour drabs of camouflage.

Friends fly off to their respective Promised Lands and Mou will never be there to send them off. The feeling is like you're stuck on the other side of an aquarium; those on the other side go on to view more exciting exhibits; i go on swimming in my self-contained little pool with all the other fishes.

And just today i received a most ironic letter from Cambridge: some 2 most friendly sounding people wrote to tell me they are my "mama" and "papa", writing in with such joy and anticipation that they "felt so glad i'll be joining them" and "we should meet for lunch sometimes in cambridge", to "get to know each other", and they would be most willing to "provide whatever assistance i need as seniors."

Sensational. Someone must have forgotten to tell them i got rejected. the feeling is like drinking a cocktail mixture of 90% LOL and 10% WTH- suddenly it makes me wonder: everything i've planned so far had cambridge in mind; now that that road is closed, its time to look around me and discover the other paths. the horizon stretches before my eyes- lost that laser focus and suddenly i could see more. not so much as sadness- it feels like a weight off my shoulders. A lvls f*cked up but that was already cast in stone; now i weigh in my hands everything i have. Its a fresh new start on a new racing track, and it means turning my head to see a whole horizon of new opportunities.

退一步海阔天空.

Juliet Charlie Charlie

2008-09-07T12:21:00.001+08:00

This is my story.

And it begins in an operation room, with the doctor peering down at the wound on my face with that unperturbed sense of cosmic enlightenment that only a few elite doctors who'd witnessed a few too many deaths and gruesome injuries have earned.

"You have a girlfriend?" He asked his smile not too shy to hide.

That was when I knew, to the flying heavens went my bright romantic future, donated graciously to the treacherous Borneo jungle. "Thanks a lot, pal," muttered I to the Brunei sky.

It was a slip onto my rifle. Muddy slope + treacherous ravine on one side * entangling roots on the other ^ epic radio set on my back makes for Olympian fits of balance, and down I slipped onto my rifle scope. A gash that tore off a bit of meat and left the guy behind me screaming in horror.

Not that bad a wound. 9 days in the jungle have sort of dulled my fear of mortality. When you're tired and hungry and left with nothing going for you but sheer willpower, force of habit and an overdose of optimism, wide gashes on your mouth seemed the least of your troubles. At least its not on my legs, I told the guy, blood dripping from chin to hand to rifle. Can still walk. And it's only 3 more km to the ending point.

And this is when my story really began. The past 7 days of hunger cold and solitude had merely been warm up. To sharpen the spirit, harden the nerves. Just so to prepare me for the hardest 200 m of my life.

It was by the second last hill that the boiler within me reached 37.6 and the pain of heat exhaustion caught up with me. But at that juncture, when all emotion has been drained out of me, pain and physical discomfort becomes purely scientific and statistical- to not collapse I just had to stay below a certain temperature range. Drink lots of water, bring the heat down, carry on. When I warm up again I stop to cool down. Rinse and repeat till I reach the Pearly gates or the camp gates- whichever comes first.

And when the gates did arrive and I stood on to hilltop looking down at the wide expanse of blue overlapping green with rolling blankets of white clouds in between- it felt like heaven, like I've left my mortal coils for good. The sense of bliss. And in that moment thinking back, I've never been more alive in those 9 days.

This is my story of 9 days, and this is how it began.

It begins on a cold stormy night, so typical of any story set in Brunei. I have no idea why a firefighter like Leeheng goes to Brunei, fires have no lifespans at all in the incessant Borneo rain. Giant moths flap up waterfalls of rain towards strobes of light and fall wet and miserable to their deaths. Some instructor briefs us on the next day, and I'm not listening. Once day turn into light I'll enter the Heart of Darkness.

This story is cold. Hungry. And Lonely. Out in the jungle its just 3 feelings. I shivered so hard on my self-made bed that my dilapidated, modernist-looking A frame shelter shook along on its own spin cycle. And sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night to sing myself a song. Most often than not it had a Mongolian tribal ring to it, but upbeat tunes makes the darkness and the dampness all so much more bearable. I dream of friends and of mom and dad and of everything that happened of consequence in my life, and when I woke up I realize many things bore no consequence at all.

Life is simple. Strip me down to nothing but my wits and my (rapidly shrinking) muscles and I desire only 3 things. Food, shelter and water. It all that we need to live. No mp3s no tvs no internet no Olympics- life goes on and becomes so simple and straightforward. Its not a bad life actually- monks spend their lives trying to attain this state of Zen, and we cadets experience a short burst of it in the jungle.

and when you come back out into civilisation and people ask you what you gleamed from all the mud and rain and hunger and stitches, I have only one thing to say:

Deforestation sometimes can be a good thing.

my beer and i are born as one, take my beer from me and my life is done!

2008-08-10T17:00:00.001+08:00

The last famous dude whom I could recall off the top of my head who went on a willing food-deprivation campaign was Gandhi. He did that for world peace. So I was thinking, instead of carrying signal sets and digging trenches and crawling in mud up hills over trees and under other cadets all day, I should do something constructive for the world for a change.

We all know what's happening in our world. If anyone bothered listening to our boss's NDP message, you'd know that the main gist of it was that: this year is balls, man! Conveniently, food prices are also going all the way up and i couldn't afford to eat anymore, so I'll be going off to Brunei to embark on a starvation tour to save some money and to do something of utmost national importance.

A few days of solitary confinement in the Brunei Jungle would be much like signing up for monkhood. Detach myself from the trite, transient superficialities of this goddamn world (which is balls, man!). All I'd be seeing would be jungle for 21 days. Missiles fly around the world and sportsmen go for gold; I'll be carving wooden fork and spoons in my little own pleasure dome, enfolding sunny shrouds of green.

Nowadays when I talk to friends the most common thing they say to me is “It's such a long time since I've seen you, Mou!” all I could do is shrug my shoulders. I'm a man trying to live through circumstances; no longer a guy of choice. And it's in the army, with such limited times for meeting up, do I come to realize who are the friends I really care about. Every weekend has resided into a smooth flow where I contact just the few groups of friends. Acquaintances fade and all that remains are those whom I care about.

So have a safe trip Wenhui, and happy birthday Hanyun!

Pengseng once told me that I need motivation to carry me on in times of sibeh fierce struggle. He suggested girls. The last time I asked a girl out, my buddy delivered me nonconstructive ways of attempting suicide from Clementi to Pasir Ris. So I suggest, in the spirit of the Olympics, the Olympics. If a crippled Sunni can dodge Shiite bullets and partake in Olympics archery, I don't see why I can't walk a few dozen km in an uncooperative jungle, build a shelter and maybe try not to eat my buddy next door.

Its Jungle Confidence Course after all. Have some confidence.

Half a grenade pear from the cookhouse.

2008-08-04T18:12:00.000+08:00

This week marks exactly the halfway mark of my OCS cadet term. Times have been hard- nobody has ever told me it'd be easy. Huixian and I were joking about how me digging trenches is just like scraping the surface off the 1^st layer of hell- like Dante I've still long long way to go, but this is no Divine Comedy; I'm living through it, day by day, piece by piece, step by step with a 30kg field pack sometimes on my back.

I've always joked that the only useful thing I learn from OCS is to know which tree is good to lean on and sleep, and maybe how to seduce cookhouse aunties into giving me more meat. Never bothered to bore people with the hearts of darkness sometimes I see during training's most excruciating times. The challenge of OCS has never been the training per se- rather the challenge is when I ask myself why I do what I do. Can I reply the voice in my heart confidently with every action I do?

An excerpt from the poem The Guy in the Glass:

…
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.

He's the feller to please, never mind all the rest,
For he's with you clear up to the end,
And you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.
…
.

It's the halfway mark. Look into the glass and I ask myself if I can trust him with my most desperate needs. There's too many times in army when it's been a case of got money got beer got brother, got nothing but shit to share, see nobody. Through the inaction of others I must spur myself into action. If I can pass the course or if I OOC due to injury or whatnot, I shrug my shoulders. This isn't a test to see if I can be a zai SAF officer.

This is a deeper test of who I am.

you can sleep peacefully at night because cadets are building A frames.

2008-07-27T16:38:00.004+08:00

a long time since i wrote anything fictional. anyway, a short clip about homeland security in a galaxy far far away.

Intel was wrong.

And it was the first thing sergeant realized when he and his boys thundered in armed and dangerous accompanied by a lot of flying smoke and sound and masonry into the small petite looking pub on a rainy Sunday afternoon, following their standard imperial law-enforcement procedure to deliver free of transportation costs some good ole' smokin' indiscriminate justice.

And amidst all the patrons ducking under tables and hanging portraits being relieved of their hanging and everyone having their days simultaneously darkened yet brightened by gunfire, sergeant could not see through his blinding muzzle of a ponderous submachine gun where his target was. Young human girl. Tall. Long smooth black hair. Last seen wearing pilot fatigues. Sandy-looking. Lots of tentacles flying everywhere, a few bits of fur and insectoid legs quivering under tables. No pink bipods. Not here.

Apart from a few brazen Huxae who were still sitting placidly by drinking their acidic brew, their titanium hides glowing pink with drunkenness, everyone else were either huddling under rapidly disintegrating furniture or melding into the many ravines of darkness in the pub. The few agitated lamps swayed amber on their vine-like wires dangling down from the peeling ceiling, cutting serrated worlds of yellow and black onto the bartop and the oh yes, very disgruntled and unimpressed bartender below.

The heavy metal stopped and the pub sound system, miraculously spared by gunfire but ravaged by age and rust, dutifully substituted in with a smooth flow of blues through a speaker half engulfed in mould. The lights stopped swaying and came to rest their namesake on the creased and sandy face behind the counter. 2 eyes glittered like jewels sharpened to a knife edge- the sergeant wondered for a split second why he joined the force.

"You seen this girl?" sergeant asked, flipping up a picture of his target. His men spread out, climbing over shattered things to ask those were still in roughly 1 coherent piece.

The bartender wiped the tabletop with one thick leathery hand and a cloth worn paper thin by a tradition of uncompromising thrifty living. The bartop shone smooth and proud again. A voice spoke, bronze and throaty like fine Thatdune roasted beer.

"Move your ass to the door." Uttered the bartender. "Because that's where it will be flying."

"Hur?" Sergeant was perplexed.

The submachine gun in sergeant's hands was equally perplexed, but it would perplex no longer when the bartender shot out a hand thick and hard as an oil pipe and lifted Sergeant off the ground and behind the counter. Barrels turned and pointed their inky darkness towards the bartender; but he was wearing the sergeant like a flak jacket.

"Bars closing." Again the gruff voice. "Pay up."

The submachine guns again roared into life; but the bartender ducked and pulled sergeant down along with him; what remained of the stoic glass bottle platoon on the racks gave their last warcry as bullets ricocheted off and around the bar counter. Sergearnt then realized that the bartender was legless; he was sitting on a barber seat attached at the bottom to 2 bicycle wheels. It looked like a strange postmodern piece of equipment, but apparently it worked. A flick of the bartender's meaty hands flicked a switch at the side and the seat sank deeper in;bullets roared past inches above their heads.

Another pull of the same swtich sprang the seat back up; using the momentum the bartender heaved sergeant at his nearest man. The two toppled down into a wall and with a diving roll the bartender lifted himself off his seat into the ungainly mass of imperial law enforcement on the ground. Muzzles swayed and hovered silent about the mass of bodies by the wall. Sergeant rolled off and up onto his feet, only to turn around to see the bartender's fingers groping the smooth salty iron of the machine gun trigger.

The bartender brushed the dirt off his sleeveless top and muttered ancient curses of disapproval. 6 imperial troopers lay unconscious on the floor, 3 haemorrhaging 2 concussed and the last one scared shitless.

It was bad business. He nodded curtly at the band of Huxae still drinking serenely their acidic brew by the only intact, survivalist table, swung his paper thin cloth over his shoulder and pushed open the door. The Huxae nodded back and uttered something in their native tongue, the meaning obscured by the pattering of the rain.

"Take it. It's all on me." The bartender replied. He stared into the sheets of rain billowing in, shrivelling his eyes to thin laser slits. Everything happens for a reason, he thought.

And Wasabi, you're too old for this shit.

He pushed his wheelchair into the rain. Yes the girl did visit his pub not so long ago. she left as hurriedly as she came, stopping only to ask for directions to the spaceport. He licked his lips and smiled inwardly to himself. 15 years ago and you were pulling at my moustache.15 years later and you're pulling the hair off the empire's balls. Nice one, lassy.

Not so old, old man. Wasabi grinned to himself. Never so old for another romp.

let me be thy shining light, yo!

2008-07-19T12:47:00.001+08:00

This is a no nonsense guide to how to be a no-nonsense, tough and badass guide for safti-visiting J1 peeps. Below is a rough sample of how one should conduct a tour the proper, standard-issue way.

Okay. Everyone please get seated in this 5 tonner, squeeze in a bit more all the way. Yes I know it smells of diesel, but relax, this standard-issue piece of military technological marvel is too tough to explode.

Can all the people at the back hear me? If yes please say Aye. Nah now that's a stupid thing to say. If you can't hear me at the back how the hell would you know to say Aye. Okay, driver, down the throttle and let this baby roll…which is at a furious 50km/h.

Now everybody look to your left, we're entering the camp soon.

OCS is a republic. She shares borders with the autocratic state of Burger King and the encroaching feudal kingdom of NTU. The state language is Armynese and the lingua fracas is F*ck. She has a population of approx 600/- cadets, with a healthy sex ratio of 99.5 guys to 0.5 girls. OCS has tropical weather and a slightly higher temperature than the surrounding states, mostly generated by the perpetually warmed-up (every sense of the word) cadets.

OCs has the most powerful military in the region and feuds a civilian army.

The economy of OCs lies stagnant with an annual GDP growth of 0%. The economy is principally supported by the Gift Shop, which recently has been labeled a Core National Asset by cadets.

The indigenous ecosystem consists of squirrels, snakes and outfield cadets. Look to the undergrowth to your right and you can spot all 3 trying to eat another. The state religion is called wanblearcbar, where every cadet must embark on a holy reverential road march to the Promised Land that takes them 9 bloody long months.

OCS has a vibrant, unique culture that has not been tainted by the civilianization so prevalent in the neighboring civilian states of NTU and Burger King. Her population embarks on a wide variety of traditional activities that includes road marches, knock it downs, endurance runs and sleeping outfield with weapons. The traditional costume is camouflaged fatigues and the national dance is the Changing Parade.

Than you for visiting OCS.

多喝牛奶，记得要补爱

2008-07-06T17:28:00.001+08:00

忘...

...就是心灵的死亡，

梦想的枯萎,

埋葬了自己的心，

留下的就是个

舞动的空颗罢了。

boom goes the service term

2008-06-29T11:50:00.004+08:00

A friend once asked me, after I had dug an antagonistic 2 man fire trench for 3 godforsaken days without much rest and practically zero sleep- “how did I do it?”

I searched long and hard for an answer, deep within and far above. It was not a very fruitful search, considering that whatever intellectually conductive fluids retained in my brain had been squeezed dry by all that 面朝黄土背朝天的千锤万凿出深山，烈火焚烧若等闲, 粉骨碎身全不怕只留清白在人间. I babbled incoherently a bit like a redeeming officer cadet, and could only come up with the plausible explanation of me simply being who I am.

It's exactly what my tight and iron-clad video buddy JianZhi once said. Don't give a roller coaster flying F*** about all the 流言蜚语 that swarms around every action you choose. Being in OCS is ultimately a test of being who you are trying to be and at the end of it, still knowing just who you are. Everyone has their own idea of who they want you to be. But only I myself can truly muster the character within me. In Ocs everyone has their own ideas, very strong ideas, about how things should be run, how peers should behave. But if you listen to the loud trumpet blows of everyone, when are you going to listen to the small whispering voice within? There's no appeasing everyone, but you can try to achieve what your conscience tells you to do.

Sometimes you grow stronger without you knowing it, and only after retrospection do you realize just how far you've come. 9 weeks of continuous training is like stumbling throughout a hazy dream. You wander off for 9 weeks, dig a few trenches hike a few kilometers shoot a few blank rounds run a bit talk a lot quarrel constantly gaze philosophically at the compass a few times, and you find yourself up on a hill in the wee hours of the morning, your body trying to maintain precarious balance while your mind thinks Freudian thoughts in that illustrious soldier's dreamland. And on came the 3 white bars and, holy mothership of compulsory national service pride, I'm a pro term cadet. Already.

Another term ends.

You think just how far you've come. You wobbled your tongue in shock when you heard about digging man-deep trenches as a pair back in Ophir and BMT, but when its my turn, when I had to dig it alone, it was suffering, but it lacked the nightmarish fear the softer me had back then. You never knew you could call up tour agencies and settle NE tours for the wing 2 minutes after a 8 km endurance run, and right after go on to take a navigation theory test and pass it without bringing any navigation reading tools. God must also be wiping me on his ass of destiny for burning me through the night for a monstrous video, and I found out that yes, indeed I was God's asswipe.

I never was enthusiastic. Before everything happened they loomed over me mighty and strong. But after, as the thunderstorm continues to fall heavier and faster, the horrors you've went through diminish in their impact as time drew its distance longer. The worst is always yet to be. And everything you've gone through, it's just a matter of how long it'll take, becomes 小case.

its impossible to have done all these by myself. It uplifts your spirit at times to know that there's always someone covering your overstretched uptight behind at the most tense and miserable times. You two lean against each other, back to sweaty back, ass to smelly ass, bitching about the shit that keeps on falling, but hey at least you're in it together, there's your good buddy to understand exactly how tired and gloomy you feel. I thank my buddy Gao Chong for filling 9 sandbags with me during the last few moments of trench digging, and I thank Jian Zhi for being my equally sleep-deprived video buddy. I've gotten my share of help and in turn I help out the best I can. Everyone sacrifices but everyone benefits with a better friend in the end. After all, what are friends for?

And so there goes the service term. How much more to go?

Many many more to go.

the army is Armed and Dangerous! (unsurprisingly..)

2008-06-18T09:46:00.002+08:00

it's been months since a guest blogger last set foot on this Armed and Dangerous blog. i'm here to fulfil a promise, to mou, that i'd guest blog for him. after reading this you might be thinking mou needs better guest bloggers, lol.

for those of you who've yet to see him, mou has ~~finally~~ abandoned his hairstyle like that of a shaolin monk. no more botak, and i'd say he looks quite cool with his new hairstyle. (oh well, the hair isn't very long, yet.) so date him if you would, just for a glimpse of an image of mou never seen before in the past 18 months =P

for a debut i don't have much to share, either because information is classified (eg. mou's sexual orientation, no. of spouses etc.) or because mou has shared it before. nor is it a good idea to guest blog when suffering from severe writer's block.

for those who are missing Star Lores sequels badly... oh well, you could wait for mou's ORD.

till then.

Have a Nice Day

2008-06-01T17:59:00.003+08:00

OAC had our bike hike yesterday, and as a responsible guardian of our holy land I was drinking milo in camp. As my batch was off somewhere in the darkness eating their way from point A to point B I was in turn reminded of the Good Old Days, when bike hike was literally a god damned hike with uncooperative bikes. Days of adventure, days of excitement.

I was an outdoor sports and adventure guy, but that was a long time ago. My birthdays the past few years were filled with excitement and adventure and stupidity courteously donated by myself, and it was all fun and laughter. Nowadays the days march by with the same rhythmic feel of a road march. If not for the congratulatory messages from friends I'd have forgotten the day, same old dreary day, was my birthday.

Now is a good time to ponder deeply and sleepily over future prospects, given that army is like a purgatory between two worlds. I put my kevlar-reinforced thinking cap on and squat in the rain; future profession, university courses, whether to turn gay...

I used to have the grand and noble ambition of opening a pirated DVD shop. Sitting by with slippers dangling on, wearing faded singlets and boxer shorts, pot belly wobbling in the wind... then I realized it needed a good law degree, at least from NUS.

I also entertained the notion of being a pimp, the kind who wears purple with bling and who sells his whole lot of guy friends as a discount package, buy 1 get thousands free. Then I realized it needed a degree in public relations. NTU. Maybe.

Then I thought of being a teacher. Relief. Going back to RV or HC. Teach e lit the RV way, pass on notes to the class chairperson and let him do the presentation while I take up my bag and scoot off home. Teach, nah- train- pt the OAC way. I'll get sacked, but I'll have fun. Maybe try a hand at all the naughty schools some of my friends came from, where netball girls try to forcefully castigate handsome guys into compromising acts and gangs have recruitment talks in the canteen speaker's corner.

my mom says i'm a romantic idealist. by her reasoning I'd give up everything to fight for what i believe in. No calculations, no hesitation, like a down and out drunkard at a watering hole.

By her vision, under different circumstances and in different times i would be a communist red guard in the 20s, an islamist suicide bomber if i'm muslim, and most probably would have demonstrated at Tiananmen Square if not for the inconvenient fact that i was in her womb being rushed to the hospital at that time.

So given my stellar track record, my aims of being a lawyer or media guy seems awfully mild to what destiny awaits. Maybe next time i'll lead a platoon armed with rocket launchers and parachute down to Yasukuni shrine, given what I'm training to be now.

Then I think of what the hell am I doing now. Welfare IC. Interesting and meaningful and constructive appointment, but a real, suffocating typhoon. Life turns into a curious hybrid of school, where now the lingua francai is not english but fuck, I take h2 geography and h3 vulgarity, and joins cross country, Tahan and student council. Really busy life, running into sir's office right after a day and night of outfield training, the aroma of jungle mud wafting in the air, demanding social nit plans to be approved.

Not a bad life actually. Rather busy than aimless.

Here Be Mike Oscar Uniform

2008-05-21T18:17:00.005+08:00

From now on Mou will be unable to blog about his OCS experience, since apparently blogging about SAF related stuff that everyone already knows about is such a threat to national security, it has elevated itself gloriously to a i-can-tell-you-but-i'll-have-to-kill-you status.

Booked out right after ** days of Oscar Foxtrot Charlie and realized that the world is now a different place. try staring at trees for a couple of weeks, without a single inkling what's happening outside. it almost feels like going for a J2 economics tutorial, with the same net effect of my brain turning into slush and feeling an epic sense of intellectual incarceration afterwards.

I once felt that Army turned me stupid. Not quite so nowadays. Life is more happenin in camp than when i don jeans and a t shirt, and these few days even when i book out I'm settling Army stuff. Does responsibilities in camp equate a sense of meaning to my Life? Like what my comrade said, every challenge rewards you only as much as what you yourself want to take out from it.

*

I've always marked the month of May as a sort of road marker, to see how far I've walked down the road I've chosen. To turn back and see my footsteps, to note where each step landed. How the road curves, how it sometimes fades into the undergrowth.

I'll see for myself the tracks I've made, soon enough.

Good Welfare for the Soul.

2008-05-01T16:58:00.002+08:00

This is the Way to the simple yet good life in OCS, and ye mortals beholde:

Lower expectations for the good and wonderful things, and

Raise expectations for the fatigue, the pain, and the Worst that are Yet to Come.

I'll turn out a happier man.

少一份期望,少一份失望.

today is for tomorrow

2008-04-27T16:31:00.003+08:00

This blog has been left in the lurch like a dumped and worn out reticent ex lover, so I shall spice up things a bit with excessive amounts of tales regarding sex vice gang fights hard drinking and other really badass content.

I've not been updating my blog much, nor have I been updating it with much passion, fervent drive, determination and other desirable manly qualities. That's because OCS makes me write a 4 page long journal entry each and every week. You try living through NS life, then having to recount each and every passing day in your journal all over again.

A typical journal entry would begin as follows “Today I stripped and cleaned my mighty big gun. It's so big and heavy if I carry it for road marches I'll split right down the middle. At least it doesn't cock up like my BMTC rifle, which handles like a MRT train on a roller coaster track. Then I cleaned it some more with my orange cloth. And A is for Airborne and I is for in the sky...”

That's not saying that OCS life is boring. There's not enough time for it to descend into the mythical land of boredom, which legends say is in Tekong. OCS is a blender of many things, the good, the bad, the downright horrible and the awe-inspiring. The Pts feel like MROC and food tastes better than hawker fare. The people are either very good leaders or I feel like squeezing their jewels. It's supposed to be the best of the best in the SAF, and I suppose it is- most of the time.

OCS made me think about a lot of things. Like how far my abilities really lie. Who's your friends, who you can trust. Who can take care of you in times of need and who 'll screw you up for the most insignificant bit of things. Take the following case for example:

I always believe in doing what I think should be done. It might not be right, but I don't go around trying to throw people like crispy chapati into hot curry, so it can't go too wrong. That night I was picking empty cartridges and there was guy A, yelling that there's a worm in the foxhole. Well, I thought, if you're scared of worms, then I'll do it. Typical me isn't it. In I went and the guy starts screaming at me, how I should shut up, how man I am, how I suddenly leapt into his hole and all that.

I have no idea what all the fuss was all about. Sometimes the most difficult part of argument is when you don't know why you're arguing in the first place. It reminded me of my primary school days when the simplest matters get blown out of proportion into cataclysmic doomsday scenarios. From then on this sort of conflict has never happened. Not in RV, not in HC, not in BMTC and I certainly did not expect such conflict here in OCS, where we sing "We are the Best in the SAF".

And off he went, he and his little gang, bitching about me and it was meant for me to hear. It was again something I'd never contemplated doing since I've never treated people like this in the first place. First, a) I'm can't remember ever being in a clique, b) if I have something to say, I say it in their face, its between him and me, on a level playing ground. That was what I wanted to tell him then. If there's a problem come tell me about it. Don't call me names, protected by your clique, in front of the whole platoon. That's cowardice. People do that when they're preparing for PSLE.

Let it be, the Voice told me. 不要一般见视. It wouldn't look very good. To kick up a whole lot of rock and roll in front of everyone for who should do saikang.

When you've never done something like that in your life and someone does that to you, it takes time to realize the whole impact. And for a split second you feel helpless. For a whole long period afterwards I questioned if I had done the right thing and finding no obvious fault could only attribute this episode to inexperience in the way of things. I've always been this way in this aspect and noone has ever complained, so if people cannot accept the way I am then so be it.

Though at times you really start to wonder- when should you start to change and how should you start to change? And who should begin the change? It's people who change the world, but it's the world that told them to change it first.

“The root of evil is that good men did nothing.”

2008-04-20T17:26:00.002+08:00

Today I saw my neighbourhood pervert again. He's the kind of veritable asshole who once had this very focused, indomitable and disciplined disposition to come peeping through my door with every passing opportunity. So screwed up, that I felt it was my religious duty to shove the insulting end of my ET blade up his where the sun never shines.

But talk is talk. I did little.

I walked passed him and our gaze locked. I held it, he held it. Recognition flickered under both our impassive facades. And he passed.

There was an urge to shove him down, a temptation to tell him to fuck off. I wonder why I don't do such satisfying things. At least there's an improvement. At the beginning I used to avoid him, as if I'm the pervert. Then in retrospection, I realized that if I continue to be silent and resigned to assholes like him, then I'm just encouraging him to continue being an asshole. Well done, noone stands up to you. Continue peeping through doors, and recover. Outstanding.

4 weeks inside and outside OCS and my world has changed. If there's one thing I learnt from army, its that keeping quiet and mere acceptance is going to get me nowhere. But why the silence and impassivity all this while? I've always realized that there's lots of uninspiring things around me, up close and personal. Seldom have I stood up and demanded for change. It's cowardly, but during each and every instance I had felt it was the simpler and less risky thing to do.

Kamalesh told me yesterday about how screwed up his JC GP teacher was. I had a screwed up econs teacher and a whole CLL department. The difference was that he dared to oppose while I kept largely silent.

There was too much at risk perhaps if I dared to oppose. Reputation. Consequences. Unwanted attention. Just to name a few. Yet why not? If opposing can change the state of things for the better, why care about the consequences? Perhaps I viewed myself, my own state of calm and peace, as more important than the state of affairs. Rebelling against the fixed order would disrupt the peace. How much courage do I need to step out of my secure zone, to stand up and fight?

Been trying to summon up the courage ever since JC2. Realized long time ago that being a very nice guy is only to give you lots of misery. Never give in to the unnecessary shit people throw at you- throw the shit back at them. Tried out this attitude with my JC class and during BMTC. Summoned up the confrontational me and utterly destroyed a few relationships. But it was also a test of friendship, of comradeship. It was the right but painful thing to do- either you bear with me and we live through it together and become better, or we can let our ideological differences split us apart.

Went into OCS and has been having lots of thinking about the value of leadership. A leader must learn to question why, then to do and maybe die. That's army, but it made me reflect on past events. Why was LEP so unproductive in the second year? Why were the sergeants in BMTC so unprofessional? Why should I take all the crap, why shouldn't I throw down all my insecurities and try to change it?

Been keeping relatively quiet in OCS these 4 weeks. Still observing. realize that a lot of my fellow cadets do question why and criticise, but we do little. that's the most tragic part. Does being a officer cadet gives us the power to pass caustic comments like nobody's business? Or does it thrusts upon us the need to go on being the change itself?

from now on you will call me officer cadet Mou.

2008-03-23T22:29:00.003+08:00

Yeah so on came the notice flickering on my screen and what remained of my brain was cleaved in two like a foot long Subway.

I got into OCS, and suddenly there was happiness, helplessness, pride and immense fear all simultaneously trying to squeeze into my already shriveled up peanut of a brain. Having 4 such powerful emotions wrecking around Godzilla-style inside you is much like having the 4 hungry horsemen of the Apocalypse barging into your room asking for tea; before you've even served them you're already drunk.

So now I must mentally prepare myself for the 3 weeks of hell. Already I can feel the hellfire licking at my sentosa sunburnt skin, and I can envision the upcoming 3 weeks:

Love, sleep and grow fat camp

So I've been told that right after I step foot into the fabled halls of ocs i'd drop everything and go for a 5 km run. Go for fieldcamps till my personal hygiene reaches such outstanding levels that I can breed a microscopic zoo on my back. Go for confidence jumps like paratroopers, such that next time when I try to commit vertical suicide I can't even die. Turn out for night physical trainings, such happenin' nocturnal lifestyle. Try to get a bar on my shoulders, try not to screw up. Smile.

I wonder why I was so inclined to go to OCS in the first place. It's not so much the allure- having a single bar on your shoulders is not going to turn me overnight into a walking phallic symbol. It's not going to attract the mei meis and its not going to help me cut queues next time I go back for Hwa Chong for a wake up dose of Xiao Mi Mi.

I don't even feel a desperate need to reaffirm my self worth by having people calling me Sir. If I turn out to be a screwed up sir they'd be calling me much less reaffirming things behind my back.

Yes the pay is good. The experience is solid. I suppose when I ticked yes to the express interest, I was thinking more about the latter than the former.

It reminds me of the time when I joined YLTC, of school, when I joined what my entire class viewed as a lame crap torture camp when everyone else could be better off slacking their asses off instead. To think about it NS is much like the Singapore Education System in many aspects.

Imagine the recruits as students, the sergeants as teachers, the platoon commanders as HODs and the OCs as principals. The OCs pass down their vision of the school 根扎传统，开创未来
,自强不息- to the platoon commanders, the platoon commanders pass it down to the sergeants and subsequently drown themselves in admin work, and the sargeants, hardworking teachers but always unhappy about the pay and overtime saikang, instill in us all the wonderful and uplifting morals lessons and other crap.

Hell, we even have curriculumn (only of a more violent and explosive variety), exams to go along with it, and after all that there's even streaming.

The “elite”ones get into special stream or OCS, the “better”ones get into express stream SISSPEC, and the rest go to neighborhood schools or in this case, assorted army vocations which are coincidentally spread out all around the neighborhood.

Of the people you'd meet in Basic Military School, there's the quiet and reserved kinds, hardworking and industrious, always looking out for fools and friends alike, and they don't get into ocs, like the kinds who do most for the class or cca often don't get recognized. Then there's the loud and frivolous; always at the right place and the right time appearing to be in the midst of action, eye-powering like some 23^rd century solar engine, and they get into command school. There's the wayangs; the ones who pranced round in the staffroom tugging at the heartstrings of teachers now hover around the sargeants. There's the slackers; while the rest of us try our utmost best to do our saikang there's the elite prestigious few who're simultaneously trying their utmost best to give others the chance for more backbreaking physical training.

Today is my last day, and accompanying it is a wave of sadness, hope and despair. Such ambivalent and complex feelings, made worse by the dream I had.

I was woken up this morning by this most peculiar dream sequence- there I was, squatting among the leaves, all muddy sweaty and soldierly in my no.4 fatigues, and somehow standing right beside me was my best female friend and she was also in no.4 fatigues. Now I have no idea why the hell she'd be in the army or what the hell happened to her sanity for her being there, holding a standard issue cocked-up rifle just like me, but lets not detract from the story.

So she was there and she was telling me how soon she'd be quitting the army. How there's so much more opportunities awaiting her outside. The hope, the dreams, the ambition, the life- it's all beyond the jungle. And I was still squatting there, thinking, oh, good for you then.

Good riddance! I thought. 50 cents an hour isn't the best job one could find.

And after which, instead of all the more exciting stuff she could have asked me, like if I was free for lunch after book out and maybe something more sociable afterwards, she was telling me that she remembered having injuries unreported, blah blah blah. In other words she was teaching me how to CHAO KENG.

Of all the things in the world the girl of my dreams must teach me, it is how to chaokeng! I've never chaokenged in my BMTC life and I hate slackers! One day before 21 days of mental MROC my mind is giving up on me! This is kickass bad for morale.

To make up for such a pussy(but strangely romantic dream), tonight I must dream a rambo dream. Of fireworks and manliness and SAR 21s. Of OCS, of me being part of it, of all the shit and pain and glory and honour and good food that accompanies it.

And when I wake up it won't be a dream. It'll be reality, and when it comes down to the most painful and gut wrenching moments there won't be anyone but me to endure in it.

But endure. What to do? Training is transient, but pain in all its forms, is forever.

blocks

2008-03-17T21:43:00.004+08:00

Once I considered life to be sibeh unfair, but after many many times of unfairness I realized that it's just life being random, with it slightly tilting towards the negative side of chance at worst.

Maybe sometimes later it'll tilt the other way round?

Then later I considered life to have tilted the other way round, with it being full of excitement, opportunities and challenges, but after many many adventures I realized that no way it's going to last forever, and it's only Life paying me back for all the times of meaningless boredom. It's not paying me back in instalments; it's throwing 18 years worth of exhilaration at me in one go. One day all that would remain of my blockbuster days would be pictures.

Now I consider life to be pretty much boring and meaningless (not in a suicidal way, sorry to say :P), and perhaps after many many times of boring and meaningless activities I would with rapidly changing perceptions find some meaning in the things I've been doing and what I'll be doing?

Perhaps. Now, I'd rather enjoy my block leave.

Block leave has been a time of decadence, procrastination, and frenzied rubbing of chin stubble till today. Like NS it's a grow fat camp, and I've spent the better half of it sleeping till my ass is blossoming with mushrooms, wandering around university campuses like a surveying terrorist, encouraging juniors not to study hard and kicking very horrible, skill-less soccer. In other words, life is now a seek for adventure, something I've lost since I shed one uniform for another.

There's this void of emotion when the topic of BMTC comes up. It's like a defence system- when you have platoon mates who ask you for your spectacle band to tie up his oozing blister, such horrid memories are best destroyed or locked up tighter than Houdini. Then again I make seriously good friends and the camaraderie feels like the best times of my life. All the K box road marches, sunrise to sundown waits, SAF standard issue tekan sessions, cook houses fruit bonanzas, midnight bitching sessions and toilet cleaning marathons, you don't want them to repeat, but yet you feel good just thinking about them.

I have no idea where they'll post me to. I'd prefer OCS, but you as the cynical, discerning reader can bet me dinner or lunch if you think otherwise:D

P.S.

what i gleamed from a single second of recognition in School.

2008-03-08T17:53:00.003+08:00

imagine someone giving you a piece of white paper and a pen, and tells you that now you'll draft out a whole new world, your vision of utopia, of shangri la, of the world that should be.

you start writing, and the first word you pen down seems mightily significant. It seems like a good start, a perfect start. you smile, put pen to paper, then the next word comes along, but when you look at it again it doesn't seem to fit in with the first word. it has deviated from the original message you wanted to convey, and suddenly the first word begins to lose its significance.

you try to twist your sentence back to the original vision encompassed by that first word, so you write a 3rd word. now both the first 2 words lose their significance as the 3rd word dominates the mindscape and creates its own brave new world with its interaction with its precedents.

you try to write more, and as the words accumulate their effect wears on you and you lose sight of the dream world you once had. It's not what you wanted to write anymore.The paper takes control of you.

*

Yunzhou said something entirely agreeable in his recent post.

Life is like vectors, you know. It has both direction and magnitude. You can push yourself to herculean distances but if your compass sways to a f*cked-up end, there's nothing at the end of it waiting for you. Same thing with direction- even if you can play out and magnify your life as if it's a google earth map, it's not going to help if you decide to be a procrastinating prick.

though i would say, direction is more important than magnitude. You'd go further with half a leopard crawl down the avenue paved with sunlight rather than 10 miles down the boulevard of broken dreams.

Thinking back i couldn't have expected what i only just realized now. Such helpnessness, i can only sigh, shake my head, and go back to Tekong.

*

week 6

2008-02-24T11:15:00.004+08:00

There's a sense of Zen amidst the incarceration of confinement- remember all the discovery channel showcases of bald-headed monks hidden in some misty refuge carrying pails of water washing clothes? now strip them(no!!!) and throw a mud-splattered no.4 uniform onto them and you have a rough picture of Orion platoon 4's confinees.

which includes me.

Now confinement might seem like a mountain of horror that can crush you with just its shadow, but i find confinement quite enjoyable, considering that it's a punishment. At least there's more time to interact with my fellow recruits. 2 weeks to BOP and we'd be distributed to the 4 winds- OCS, SISSPEC, men units. There's not much time left to mingle with such varied and interesting company- might as well confine together more to talk more cock, right?

I've ~~suffered~~ ~~survived~~ ~~endured~~ ~~persevered~~ worked through another week of NS. It's an interesting week- waiting from morning 8 to night 9 at the live range, shaving up phallic-looking wood carvings as the sun drifts lazily overhead, squeezing down combat rations as if those globs were miracle pills that would make me chio and sexy, sleeping under a bright and shiny moon ODAC style (which means no bloody bashas that feels like a sauna house to build!).

Sitest- It's a refreshing break from the monotony of standard training. For once i did something that actually required strategizing, thinking and creativity. The previous 6 weeks i spent the more memorable part of my life blaring out marching cadences like a constipated monkey while trampling my brain under approximately 568000 steps in road marches. In 2 days of situational outfield hands-on (and lots of legs on, brains on, belay off safety rope off just climb and secure up there lah) activities, the pressure lifted my battered and dusty brain off from the ashes of robotic foot drills, shook off the tekong mud, and squeezed it back under my helmet with the impenetrable aroma of sweat.

NS life can be enjoyable, everything is but a matter of perception. Always look on the bright side of life, dadumdadadeedum, so i always tell myself. though sometimes trying to squeeze out pleasure from torture is like squeezing reluctant recruits into the toilet to help you clean the pubic hairs from the drainage pipes, but gek my perception enough and there's always a shining over the rainbow.

Platoon mates complain about everything- the food, the waiting times, the hurrying to wait, waiting to hurry, the hardass commanders and the confinement- but in the end we can't do nothing about them. We are chao recruits, we OBEY ORDERS. The dogs in Tekong have a higher rank and even the pullup bar is higher than us. in such a state of existence nonchalance becomes a state of peace, a shield from the torrent of shit. 逆来顺受, 任劳任怨, 话少些手快些,当兵会快乐许多.

I'm on day 5 of my toilet cleaning marathon now. I've sought for a deeper reason for my deep and gratifying sense of relaxation and happiness whenever i'm outfield in the forests and swamps. At the beginning i attribute it to my prior ODAC experience- now i realize the deeper meaning. I don't have to scrub toilets. the 精髓behind washing toilet is this: 做给天看. toilets are never clean and we toilet I/Cs are a hard-boiled yet constantly 郁闷 lot. I've long learned to do prior arm stretching before the commanders do an area check- half-left downs in the toilet becomes a sort of closing ritual for a day in the life of a toiletman.

Like my sitest Assessor said, being tasked with saikang and shit is good training. good training, as in it builds in me a mental fortification. So all the team building team learning with the toilet bowl does serves some purpose afterall.

Camouflaged life.

2008-02-17T10:17:00.002+08:00

Now would be a good time to expound on Mou's 1^st principle of life:

the glorious pursuit of happiness is directly proportionate to the amount of good food that's available.

Hence till now in Pulau Tekong, the deepest pit of emotional abyss was dug when the canteen uncle rejected my polite request for a second serving and the most deliriously happy moment happened just a few days back, when I embarked on the most highly classified thing called a field camp.

Now before I smeared my manly camou onto my rugged face and bashed into the jungle a la Heart of Darkness, my friends fed me with ridiculously high expectations that mostly failed to materialize, pumping my adrenaline-addled mind with such hyperboles like “OPT FOR GUARD DUTY ON THE FIRST NIGHT! IT'S AN EXPERIENCE YOU'LL NEVER FORGET! ” and “THE SERGEANTS WILL COME IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT TO STEAL YOUR UNDERWEAR! ”

in the end field camp turned out to be much more relaxing and fun than I had hoped for. Tuning my mind for 6 days of mud-splattered existence with hand-caught frogs and worms for subsistence, sleeping in artillery craters and leopard-crawling up and down hills seemed to be over preparation for a camp that was mentally easier to tahan than YLTC and provided ration packs that was infinitely better than my OAC tuna and bread munching days.

there's 2 kinds of pain for me in army life. the physical and the mental. the mental pain scorches much worse than the physical, and simultaneously both are inversely proportionate to one another. Let's take 2 activities for example: digging firing holes in the ground and slacking when waiting for the next activity.

the first is considered by many to be the most exhausting of the field camp, but to me it was a very enriching experience. undoubtedly it was tiring but there's a sense of achievement and self-motivated pride when you finally get to lie down in your little coffin-shaped grave that gets flooded by friendly 6-legged neighbours at night. My hands still cannot fully open due to the blisters, but the pain aside, it was quite an enjoyable experience.

the second, slacking, holds no pressure on the physical but the wait is long and tedious. waiting has always been my most agonizing part of NS life (with the exception of queuing for food) and hell, it sucks to be a soldier with nothing to do.

Commanders told us that field camp would be a good time to realize the true nature of your platoon mates, whether they're really imba, really slow, or just indiscriminate throbbing pains in the thunder-clapping ass.

I suppose the success and effectiveness of a platoon is up to how well the majority can handle the few chao keng kias. How well the rest can help the few over-reliant procrastinators and to inspire them to do their own dirty work would determine how fast a platoon can move and how much things they can do.

I don't mind platoon mates being slow. Everyone reaches their own limits sometimes, and the spirit is in trying, not necessarily achieving. That's what a buddy is for- to provide the extra burst of strength when 2 hands is simply not enough. But a man's ability to procrastinate is as vast as the universe itself. Procrastination in field camp means heaping your work load on your unfortunate buddy and drowning him your own world of hell seems so hypocritical on the term “buddy”, but at least for every 1 slacker there's another 6 pairs of hands who's willing to throw in the extra shower of sweat.

Field camp- it evoked in my slivers of memory from my OBS, YLTC, OH saikang days and assorted land hikes. Good thing i like camping.

Motivation

2008-02-09T17:06:00.000+08:00

It was one of those brudder heart to heart talks, with our butts on a bench, with the all too friendly silence and emptiness permeating the familiar street on a festival night.

Dad a quite enriching and fulfilling talk with Gabriel and Weihong, with the 3 of us emoing over our sad and (currently) meaningless lives in Tekong. Walked home with this question recurring in my mind:

What is it that motivates me in life?

Another door i have to open this year, one door out of many doors.

I think i have the key, but i'll only know when i push it into the keyhole.

happy chinese new year!

2008-02-08T14:09:00.000+08:00

2008 年的新年贺词

洒家对2008年没有太多的期望. 一个人卡在小岛上从军, 军队又跟教育制度一样的死板, 我人都机械化了. 筋成了链带,心成了齿轮,灵魂成了个暗淡无光的油箱. 不过没有期望不等于绝望. 绝望的话我就该逃兵了, 在国际歌声中英勇地倒在长官的枪口下...

就像我曾经跟云兄说的, 今年是太多的等待,太少的答案. 2008年就是个转换车站-满面春风地跳下2007号车, 望尽天涯, 等着明天,明月,明年的车声.

当兵洗厕所已4个星期了, 从马桶中抬头一望发现TEKONG有人来舞狮了. 回家过新年, 一点过年的气氛也没有,脑海中回荡的仍旧是 training to be soldiers...等从军歌曲. 梦乡也图上了迷彩, 我没家去拜, 新年的热闹也消散在初一懒洋洋的午后, 被一份读者,一杯COFFEE BEAN 取代.

I've always believed in making my festivals worth celebrating. NS is 40% rushing between point A to point B, 30% of waiting, 10% of briefings and finally 20 % activities. Since NS now has near 100% occupancy of my life, it's immensely difficult to find celebration when I'm only effectively living 20% of my life.(unless, of course, if you find great satisfaction in the other 80%.)

I got struck down with a crashed up knee a week back and it has yet to heal. “STAY STRONG AS PIE, MICHAEL!”I told my knee, and silently it endured all the endurance runs, explosive sprints and leaps of faiths from assorted heights. And come 3 days back when I had to take my physical test. Michael might be the strong but silent type, but it's sore and whimpering and I was a coughing, belching, flu-riddled train.

The last time I took the test with only a flu and cough and I got a silver. I was wondering whether to drop out this time, but then I remembered what I told my bunk mate the previous time:

“Let me show you what a sick man can do!”

And for once in 4 weeks I felt proud of my accomplishment. A gold in the physical test. And it was a Chinese New Year worth celebrating.

A Whole New World.

2008-02-02T21:50:00.000+08:00

Enter into the 3^rd week of my vacation in tekong resort and I've transcended from a bemused, slightly excited mood of fervid anticipation into a placid sense of acceptance and boredom, as if time has shaved off the ferocity of the turbulent waves off tekong as it rushes in eternal waves into my heart.

Till this point in time NS has posed no serious obstacles to me. Occasionally there's balls-crushingly painful and "my-whole-body-is-on-fire!” out-of-body fatigue experiences, but it's more due to my body, not the training. 3 weeks into BMT and I've suffered, recovered, still suffering and recovering from flu cough knee injuries headache and just about everything in between. It's sian, to be sick and never able to fully recover- but it's bearable. Pain is transient.

You know they all say that NS would make you a man and other such inspirational stuff that appeals to us guys innate macho ego. 3 weeks into it and I would like to clarify: it's bullshit.

SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS

There's no such thing as NS teaching me to be a man. It does not provide sergeants who knock me down and shove manhood down my throat with the abusive end of an assault rifle; NS merely provides me the opportunity to train myself to behave like a man. All the pts and road marches that test our endurance to the breaking point- it's all windows for us to break down our mental barriers to up an level. All the doing situps on carpets of bird shits and leopard crawling in jungles under torrential rain- it all tries to crack the softness within us.

But I'm pretty sure it's entirely possible to go through NS with our innocuous boyhood intact. There's lots of loopholes in the NS system- it doesn't take a genius to chao keng, but it takes serious mental fortitude to push myself to my limits. Push the mental wall, then break it down, then move on to the next sturdier wall, and push harder.

If the above line seems to make NS sound like a long and dreary affair, don't worry anymore; it is. Confirm plus chop. That's why I must find things to amuse myself with. Nowadays whenever I double down to do morning PT I stare up into the 5am sky and always I think of this:

弯月是蓝天的微笑.

(the sky has the crescent moon as her smile.)

it makes me feel a tranquil sense of bliss, for reasons I don't know why.

Washing toilets also, strangely enough, provides the same above mentioned effect. Did I mention that I dio toilet I/C? All the saikang in JC seemed to left a residue on my fate and nowadays somewhere in Tekong I would be squatting over a tragically choked toilet bowl, starting out feeling dejected and resigned, then as time goes by I'd feel all high and excited- I'm afraid my destiny is all paved out in mag-lev tracks in front of me now- either I become a bicycle repairman or a toilet cleaner. I get so upbeat cleaning toilets, It's demoralizing.

the good thing about NS is that it allows me to realize just what kind of people I trully detest or greatly admire. I'd elaborate on just one characteristic:

A guy shouldn't whine. Every guy complains- we all make our injuries and pains known, but when one starts to whine and whimper about giving up and of suffering unbearable pains my impression of them plummets.

We all are innately lonely in our physical and mental suffering for no one else can truly fell our pain- so accept it, shut up and since we can't escape the training, carry on. If we as guys can't even overcome our own suffering, how can we even begin to try to heal others of theirs? And we call ourselves bloody soldiers. Whimpering to me and leaning on other's shoulder would not lessen the pain- it would however, spread the exhaustion and lower the morale...

which is already at a very shaky level at best. Consider this conversation my wonderful PC had with us:

PC:ORION RECRUITS WHY ARE YOU ALL SO QUIET? I WANT YOUR MORALE TO BE HIGH UNDERSTAND ME!?

Recruits:...

PC: IF YOUR MORALE IS NOT HIGH I CAN MAKE YOU KISS THE FLOOR YOU UNDERSTAND ME!

Recruits: YESSIR!

PC: TONIGHT'S DEBRIEF IS BY ME, SO I CAN MAKE IT VERY LONG OR VERY SHORT, SO GET YOUR MORALE HIGH OR YOU ALL WILL SUFFER, UNDERSTAND ME!?

Recruits:YESSIR!

did that elevate your morale to mind-dazzling heights? I hope it did. On a side note, for us recruits the debrief ended at 1045 that night.

up next next week:

天为枕,地为地,餐风露宿,批星戴月.

And tonight we shall dine in Tekong!

2008-01-27T21:25:00.000+08:00

DISCLAIMER:
YOU WILL NEVER PRY ONE WORD FROM MY MANLY, TIGHTLY CLENCHED LIPS OF STEEL! DUE THE THE HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL AND CLASSIFIED NATURE OF NS LIFE, EVERYTHING WRITTEN HERE CONCERNS NATIONAL SECURITY. YOU CAN READ THIS POST, BUT I'LL HAVE TO KILL YOU AFTERWARDS.

"Don't play play, my biceps are now the size of small elephants!"- recruit A to recruit B.

after 2 weeks of absence I'm back from Tekong, more or less still the same. No one noticed any remarkable difference in my style and substance and even if they probed deep enough, right down there they were still gratified (or horrified) with the same old me- hard or brittle, loud or obnoxious, comical or lame, a bit gekking a bit overzealous and undeniably armed and dangerous.

in a sense it's very true. i feel roughly the same as 2 weeks back. Not a hell lot stronger as some fellow recruits have felt, never felt the deep and rude culture shock some had to recover from, and i never really experienced the sudden roller-coaster jolt from my civilian slumber into the rough and tough world of Singapore's version of a star wars droid factory.

i suppose the only meaningful thing these 2 weeks that i could reflect back on was my interaction with people. A hell lot of different people, each trying to be a soldier or trying to be a better soldier, some lovable, some annoying, some admirable and some just detestable, each strong and fragile in their own eccentric, quintessential ways.

There's people who would do endurance runs with 38 degree fevers, slackers who skip training for nose bleeding and shameless oafs who asked for my spectacle band to cover his blisters. No matter, the night is still damn young. As often the case, those that i don't appreciate now might become my bosom buddies in times to come and those that i hold in high regard today might disappoint during strategic moments. There's 50 people and i have only 1 pair of eyes; a limited horizon and my gaze isn't deep. All i know is, soon enough i would assimilate seamlessly into the core entity known as Orion platoon 4, and damn in just 2 weeks we're already one hell of a platoon.

"There's flying cars outside now!"-Jiayi, on his report of the outside world.

the first thing i felt when i stepped out of Tekong and onto the mainland was a sudden light-headed, ethereal feeling. it's something called intellectual paralysis, and it happens to you when you get stuck on a little island isolated from the mainland, where newspapers are meant for scrubbing toilet mirrors and the only broadcasts are your sergeant's melodic voice to KNOCK IT DOWN. i suppose if China went on to liberate Taiwan or Malaysia decided to cut off water supplies the reverberations would rebound off our kevlar not-for-cooking pot-usage helmets and we chao recruits would continue to deliriously gorge on our nightsnacks like a scene from a starving refugee camp.

in 17 days my brain cells packed up and mass seppuku-ed and i am now bereft of intelligence nor wit. If you asked me what's the sum to 1+1, most probably i'd answer you New Zealand or something. So excuse this post, if there seems a heart-pounding drop in literacy standards.

"So.. what is the speed of light?" - Sergeant to another.

Many of my friends have explicitly stated to me their inspiring dreams of me doing manly and heroic stuff in the army, like mowing down rainforests and killing Viet Cong and swimming off to Yasukuni Shrine and the like. I suppose it's due to all my previous posts of my adventures in OAC. Then again, NS life is so much more different.(as in more sian, but shh.... later sergeant read then i must knock it down.) It's too early to tell whether I'm made out to be a Rambo or one of those uniformed extras who get blown to bits Saving Private Ryan style. Anyway, it's back to my scenic resort tomorrow, and the cold wind blows.

early in the morning run
with a field pack on my back
with the aching in my heart
and my vest is full of sweat.

*
P.S

all guest bloggers are actively encouraged to blog when Mou is gone. this time Mou might be gone for donno how long, for the platoon sergeant has subtly hinted of frequent confinements and guard duties during the weekend.

redefined life in tekong

2008-01-20T16:49:00.000+08:00

this post is written by a guest blogger currently living on biscuits and water on the less treacherous and menacing part of Singapore a.k.a the Mainland.

it has been long since Private Mou has left for Pulau Tekong to further his training to be a true man. life should be much easier for him, considering that he can do away paying $2 for a haircut. oh by the way, the haircut ambience is just awesome i heard.

you will be in army boxers. just the boxers. then your hair will drop by huge proportions right in front of your platoon mates who are enjoying your sexy body as they sit on the cold hard floor. i'm fine with that. maybe that's because i dont have a huge belly or boobs to show. it's like boys school all over again.
(where *PDA is perfectly legal)
*public display of affection

extremely sick jokes can fill up the entire continent of Africa. welcome to boys camp.

all boys with gross disgusting hair everywhere? bored and deprived? you can actually bring along your PSP and PS2 and what else the world can invent these days, to camp. barbie dolls are perfectly fine so long as their mini-closet has a camo theme. those are the common items. you dont expect people undergoing manly training to bring Twister, just to name one social game. and how long can anyone possibly put up with a deck of cards? why not try Strip Poker? to spice it up a lil? (:

and for Twister? if you wanna have your mates' sweat and skin rubbing against your body, be all means dont stop yourself please. plan B would be inviting the female officers from School 2 to each wear a skirt and camo beret if they wish to join you for the game. hur hur.

anyway, i think NS life is rather interesting.
way more than what is life on the Mainland.

oh and i just found out that Zouk organises lesbian events. so practically for that one night, it is an all girls-only event. well, most of the MEN in the age range of 18-22 are busy populating Tekong so i'm assuming the girls just want to have some 'clean' yet safe fun during the weekdays. hey. girls have needs too.

though i have no explanation for Zouk gay events.

P.S. Private Mou, i want a hot female officer wearing a camo tank top and hot pants delivered to me. Please also enclosed a fully-loaded SAR21 and a kevlar vest so i can rob the OCBC bank this coming CNY. Leave them outside my house, the long bench next to the plants. thanks.

attached below is an army joke:
be warned that army jokes are not for everyone.

Three sisters wanted to get married, but their parents couldn't afford it so they had all of them on the same day. They also couldn't afford to go on a honeymoon so they all stayed home with their new hubbies. That night the mother got up because she couldn't sleep. When she went past her oldest daughter's room she heard screaming. Then she went to her second daughters room and she heard laughing. Then she went to her youngest daughter's room and she couldn't hear anything.

The next morning when the men left the mother asked her oldest daughter,
"Why were you screaming last night?"
The daughter replied "Mom you always told me if something hurt I should scream."
"That's true."

She looked at her second daughter.
"Why were you laughing so much last night?"
The daughter replied "Mom you always said that if something tickled you should laugh."
"That's also true."

Then the mother looked at her youngest daughter.
"Why was it so quiet in your room last night?"
The youngest daughter replied "Mom you always told me I should never talk with my mouth full."

Mou is on hiatus. But this blog shall live on.

2008-01-08T22:21:00.000+08:00

Allright.

An elite few armed and dangerous guest bloggers would be replacing mou as your favourite writer for the next 2 weeks, so that they with their distinctive styles might inject some really really exciting and cool stuff into this armed and dangerous, hot and sexy and soon to be very manly blog.

I'll be buying souvenirs for them in Tekong. Grenades and SAR 21s, anyone?

明天会更好!

这是第一个斗争,团结起来到明天.

army is armed and dangerous, for real this time!

2008-01-07T22:21:00.000+08:00

first, some wonderful war illustrations.

and now, we can continue to more armed and dangerous stuff, which is what this blog is mostly about anyway.

i'll be entering national service in 2 days time.

Yes, i know it requires supreme, epic effort on your creativity, but just try imagining me bald and muddy and doing very outdoors stuff with explosives hanging around my neck, trying to figure out how not to blow myself up while eating dirt for breakfast rainwater for lunch and myself for dinner, while the rest of you (mostly girl readers, by then) would be living highly sophisticated, cultured lives.

While you girls(and some guys) go out shopping for frilly things at taka, i'd be marinating in mud in Tekong grabbing insect grubs for supper. So when you people start gorging on good food, remember to pray for recruit Z.X. Mou who's most probably gekking his eyeballs through his solid, very toot-looking specs.

NS-It's almost enough to squirt out tears from my manly eyes and destroy my 100% Flower Power camouflage paint job, but it's almost, not quite. A brief look at a brief selection of what the OAC girls have written would explain things very clearly:

haha 如果觉得不够HIONG, just tell the officer! 他们一定超喜欢你!

translation:
On first glance you must think that Xinyi thinks that I'm a sadomasochist or something. But if we tune our sensitive souls to the LEP frequency, it would actually mean that she thinks i'm damn man and macho and....weird. Very weird. That advice sent shivers down my Pes B spine each and every time i stare at it.

hey sister mou!
blah blah blah have fun in NS and come out a better man!

translation:
junhua only wrote approx 40 words, but in that short span she expects an awe-inspiring transformation on a colossal scale, to turn me from a (ahem)chiobu into not just a man, but a better man. to quote from the song,

Send someone to love me
I need to rest in arms
Keep me safe from harm
In pouring rain

it would undeniably mean that i'm gold-medalist wussy material. Apparently certain land chiefs believe that NS equates to sex change operations that work better than those supplied in Thailand. Oh well, 2 years to see madame butterfly becoming Rambo.

Frankly speaking, with all the joking aside, i have a strange sense of emptiness within me as i step into the next manly phrase of my life. There's a void of anticipation- curiously thinking of what's about to happen, I'm bored of it before it even began. I have no idea why so. perhaps the lack of choice and the concrete nature of the next 2 years made the future such a placid affair that the excitement seems drained out of it.

they say NS makes you a man. i don't know what it means exactly by that. What's the real difference between a boy and a man? responsibility? maturity? courage? If a soldier stint makes one a man, then what experience would make a girl a woman?

So there i go. see you people again, in 2 weeks time. Happy days.

2008

2008-01-01T20:50:00.001+08:00

2007年来无影去无踪, 人生如梦,就是这感觉. 还没想明白1月份的事情12月已经过去了, 还没尝到2007的风味2008年已经洗锅了, 就这样迷迷糊糊又醉生梦死了一年.

步入2007年时我是满怀憧憬与期望. 从06 到07 是进入高中生涯中最精彩刺激的阶段, 是最后一次能在学校中干点什么的机会. 当时是充满了活力和热情, 一月份一头栽进种种责任的汪洋,A LVL后才浮出了水面, 喘一口气, 四周张望, 看看自己从岸边究竟是游了多远. 今天问我究竟干了些什麽, 我也一时说不清. 是好是坏, 是冷漠的是热心的, 是宽宏大量的是心胸狭窄的,是违背良心的是充满正义的,是为人民服务的是保全自己的- 我好汉无赖英雄小痞子差不多都当过了几回.

性格还没有定型, 应该是永远也不会定型. 要我从档案中选出一个最能代表2007年的我的照片,有些不可能. 照片中的笑脸不代表永久的快乐更不能取代一个能流血流泪, 能让人流血流泪的我. 要为2007年盖棺定论,我得在我自己这面镜子中看到朋友们对我的世界的影响.

2007年是深蓝色的,也是...

蓝色代表了平静,又附带着琢磨不透的神秘. 平静,因为知道背后站着一群可以依赖的志友,信得过,靠得着. 神秘,因为当中很多我信赖的朋友都很神秘. 有时与朋友来往常常有踏在浮冰上的感觉, 生怕熟悉的表面被蹋破了, 会坠入一片游不出的寒冷. 不过蹋破了也就真的游不出了吗? 朋友不就是要能体谅对方的不同吗. 认识了云舟, 李横LEP OAC SOCCER 等兄弟,把他们融进了我的生活. 以下就是献给他们了, 他们就是2007的色彩.

2008年又会是什麽颜色?

投名状

2007-12-28T23:20:00.000+08:00

I just came back from watching The Warlords with Siying and YunZhou. Despite the abundance of comical improbabilities regarding Jet Li and Andy Lau's vitality and their unwillingness to just die and get it over with, I must say it was a truly touching and thought-provoking movie that left me with a very muffled, subtle emotional impact. Throw in a thunderstorm of dismembering and flying limbs, Siying giggling throughout it all like a sadistic First Aider and finally YunZhou giving a snide sarcastic commentary like a football commentator, and you get a really atmospheric introduction to 18^th century war-torn China.

But most importantly, the 3 main characters are in a sense a mirror of 3 directions of life . Each of the 3 main characters, lets call them 大哥, ANDY and 小K to not spoil anything, represents entirely different Ways of Life. The beautiful thing is that all 3 does the same things, for entirely different reasons, even views their 投名状 differently but despite the transient successes, all meet with the same ultimate fate in the end.

人终有一死,死或重如泰山或轻如鸿毛

okay brief summary: 3 dudes in armour goes around killing people a la 水浒传. 三人签投名状,不求同日生,只求同日死, 大哥搞上ANDY的妞, 小k四处张望,不知所措. A处理B, C解决A, 三人行,必在黄泉路上见.

the Villain

to know what defines a villain, one has to understand what defines a hero. Strip it down, and there's roughly 8 defining characteristics:

仁-compassion

义-righteousness

忠-loyalty

孝-filial

信-trust

尊-honour

礼-respect

勇.courage

大哥 is the quintessential villain. In him there's simply courage- without the heart, morality and conscience, he's simply an efficient killing machine. His ultimate aim? Political magnificence. So off he goes backstabbing brothers, killing thousands of surrendered troops and giving hypocritical speeches during horrid weather and fighting like Jet Li even with spears and knives poking through his shoulder.

He chose the decidedly evil path, but not that he's purely evil. He's very grey- His evil deeds are more driven by circumstances than out of sheer brutality. Courage, honour, and even compassion sometimes shows. His evil arises more out a need for self promotion than the desire to hurt- given the same circumstances in a war torn land, consider what you would do in a warlord's shoes. 兵不厌诈- it's a pragmatic, bare-boned need for survival.

It's like saying that a Palestinian bomber is evil: given the same circumstances of poverty, desperation and suppression, a normally nice guy in peaceful Singapore might be driven to do the same “martyrdom is great”thing.

The 投名状 to him doesn't hold much meaning. There's an emotion bond with his brothers, but his attitude of急功近利,不惜一切代价 meant that brothers ultimately meant less to him than a governor post. If he's evil, then his evil stemmed from a self-centered core that could mutate everything to suit his needs.

大哥 epitomizes the self-serving need that characterizes many individuals today. We might have the same philosophy as 大哥, but our circumstances has never been so dire as to force us to reveal just how deep our circumstantial evil is.

the Hero

要为别人而活着- ANDY has this life philosophy. I suppose the most impressive thing is that he has loyalty. I find loyalty extremely hard to come by. Its too common to hear scandalous or deprecatory remarks about friends when they're out of earshot, and the most depressing thing is that seldom do I hear people who are supposed to be good friends come to the victim's rescue. Is it group pressure, that when we're in a group it's uneasy to speak opposite? Or is a numb indifference, where its 司空见惯?

A sense of selflessness is actually a common trait in all of us. Its such that the magnitude of it differs- some of us live more for others than we live for ourselves. Don't think that things like CIP and SL reflects much about selflessness- to me real selflessness comes when there's absolutely no benefit or even harm to myself. Cip gives my CIP hours. SL makes my testimonial looks damn zhai. So how often do you come across true heroism in our times of tranquility and peace? 乱世出英雄-在逆境才能突现一个人的伟大.

I admire ANDY's sense of comradeship and honour. Even when he and 大哥was under great moral conflict ANDY still came to his supposed “rescue”. Would I do the same if I and a good friend have conflicting moralistic viewpoints? Would I then continue to even view this friend as a friend?

the Follower

小K is the follower. Tragically he doesn't really have a mind of his own, and even when he does, he makes the most atrocious, stupid, meaningless mistakes...like killing Andy's wife. Most of the time he just stares with those wobbling doleful eyes and repeats like an elevator electronic notice chants like “大哥是对的!”.

The follower is never truly aware of his situation, always playing second fiddle to powers above him. Mindless and powerless, he's relegated to passive roles, 只能逆来顺受.

He doesn't consciously lean towards good or evil- rather he entirely modifiable. Sometimes he listens to 大哥, sometimes he sympathizes with ANDY.

Even his view of the 投名状 is shallow at best. Unable to see that the code was made by humans who themselves are prone to changes, his fierce loyalty to it leaves no room for logical reasoning. He's a tool without a mind nor soul- its very tragic that he's never been fully in charge of his own life at any one point of time. Most of the time he's just following the idealistic leader.

what's fascinating is that ultimately, whatever philosophy or position one takes, as self-serving asshole or as noble hero or as simple follower, it all leads to a bloody death for all 3 of them. Such different attitudes towards life, yet all are unable to escape from bloody, gruesome ends. Each and all lacked the power, a power to transcend the overarching turmoil and political turmoil of the times. 谋事在人,成事在天. 像老大所说的, “我一生脚踏薄冰,不知我是否能走到对岸?”看是走不到了.

memorable quotes:

抢粮!抢钱!抢娘们!

大哥总是对的!

A Nameless Piece

2007-12-25T22:33:00.000+08:00

I just came back from China, and the massive radioactive dose of horrible engrish has left me with an indelible impression that has scorched upon my fragile brain a new level of eloquence to join my already impressive repertoire. (buangseh, Namly slope, surdiya, etc.) Excuse my english, as always, if you so please.

perhaps it's time I clarify. Many people, up till this moment, still have indexed in their history files that Mou is going off to Tibet. Well sadly no. Unforeseen circumstances breed unexpected changes and the gust of fate still prevails over one and all.

I went back for a funeral. A funeral reveals how we interpret a death. There's all kinds of funerals and all kinds of deaths, but not every death matches with their correct interpretation nor garner the right amount of attention, respect and awe it deserves.

I'm simply happy that at least my grandmother died a quick, clean and dignified death without complications and the funeral was carried off simple and modest, like how my grandmother would have liked it.

We are all like scattered leaves floating in a pond. When one sinks, it sends out a ripple that forces the rest into action.

Death in that unavoidable instant must have been easy on the victim. Spared the dilemma of choice, what suffering in life ends right then. In a sense it must have been a kind of liberation from suffering. All the sickness all the pain, death seems the ultimate “cure”. Heard that on the eve my grandmother was still shouting to neighbors from the 3^rd storey balcony about the weather, vibrant and exuberant, so whatever death must have felt like, at least she was spared the horrors of dreadful anticipation that accompanies so many deaths.

Then death passes on the baton to the rest of us. Funeral proceedings, the emotional burden, the transition from shock to horror to grief to sorrow to acceptance.

Never believed in the purpose of grand and lavish funerals. All the decorations and resplendence and fanciful things one does in the name of the face on the altar- the dead is oblivious while only the living looks on. Does a grand funeral pay respect and homage to the one in the coffin? Maybe to the living. But funerals are akin to a hip and happening party for say an Olympic champion, only that the champion himself is locked elsewhere.

Why not spend more time and love when she's alive rather than money when she's dead?

if i die i do not need your pity;
for my face holds not tears by the cheeks
when i lie in eternal rest.

if i die i do not need your regret;
for you've done what you could
as friend family or foe

so when its time you die
the rest will have smiles on their lips,
remember,
cherish,
and
live
on.

1

2007-12-11T21:11:00.000+08:00

Okay so it has been a long time since my last update. I've been writing something else, something deeper and more, shall we say, more ambitious. It's written in an entirely different style and with darker undertones, so there you go, draft 10, first chapter, of Star Lores. Which by the way, is a story with a familiar name, but with entirely different stories each time i get back to it.

*

Somewhere over the desert drooped a forgettable city, and somewhere in the more excitable parts of this small city flickered a bent and jagged road lamp, and just beyond its feeble pool of influence crouched one small pub. It had exactly 3 portholes each the size of a squashed dinner plate to allow the rancid air within to diffuse out into the blistering heat outside and the burning acrid air outside to pour back into the dark and low pleasure dome within, and in certain weather conditions small plumes of air would gush out and the pub would be trembling in shadow, like it was a dormant monster half buried in the sand, heaving and swelling in it's seething anger.

Patrons of all space-faring races visited this pub, for it served the best Golden Beer in the entire galaxy. The bartender, an old human male of indecipherable age and a face wrecked by a tempest of scars and twisted layers of skin, sat on his paddle-operated wheelchair, a rust-wrecked, rugged and formidable steel beast that was as robust and hard as the man whose legs it replaced. He and he alone served and could serve the best Golden Beer, and no one- not even the most reckless of salty space pirates- dared to offend him. Legend has it that he was once a Pirate King himself- rivaling the might of the Empire, until the emperor lay a mighty curse on him and struck him down.

Now he sat, sullen and earthly on his wheelchair, spinning around nimbly with alcoholic drinks fizzling and bubbling in his calloused, weathered palms, shaking up mighty concoctions that left his patrons with psychedelic stupors that turned darkness into light and earth into air. Here he drifted his wheelchair, in the narrow confine between the counter and the beer shelves, curtly nodding to frequent patrons and wiping dirt, grime, spilled beer and coins off the shiny bar counter.

“You.”He said, pouring out half a glass of a light crystal blue liquid. “ Have a strange new face.”

The young man at the counter unplugged his head from the tabletop and wiped a thick clump of hair away from his face, revealing a pair of dazed, yet penetrating eyes that seemed to draw a slow but wildly wavering bead on the bartender, with bullets loaded hidden and deadly somewhere behind the glittering gaze. “So. Your best shot.”He slurred. His head swayed towards the table again, but a sharp heroic tug of the shoulders snapped the head back upright. “Your strongest. Double shot.”

“The strongest is only for Thuyleians. For safety reasons, I reserve the weakest for humans.”

The young man looked up and suddenly the eyes glowed with a pale yellowish light, like cosmic tunnels that bounced light forever within them. “Never said I'm human. Don't worry. No harm will come to you if I die.”

The bartender shrugged his shoulders and turned nonchalantly back to the beer rack. He had to turn around- sweat droplets were pooling on his forehead. Swift and subtle movements wiped his forehead clean again, and when he turned back he was once again the stone-cold bartender with the silent, deadly shroud of enigma forming an impregnable mist over him.

He knew the young man, his old weathered eyes could not lie. The face in front of him swelled up his heart and in it gushed the blood that thousands wanted to see bleed dry. Hundreds of planets and half a galaxy and millennium later, and still the hunter catches up with the prey. But the prey has evolved and learned to mask its scent. The bartender smiled surreptitiously, his talents well cloaked by the two stumps that became sacrifice to a man's survival instinct. In his hands shook the cocktail mixer; in his mind shook the tremors of vengeance.

The young man finished his cup with a single gulp. His face paled, his shoulders drooped, and shifting his rifle to one side he removed a single ring from his pocket and rolled it between his fingers.

Amidst the cacophony of the pub the ring resonated a slight tangible hum. Not everyone could hear it- the young man could not, nor could any other patron- but the bartender's ears froze as he heard the hymns of a religion long gone. The young man motioned for another round and he turned round again. He smiled inwardly, and the creaking of the wheelchair laughed for him.

“Raise up your drink.”Said the bartender, his cloth hovering over the counter. “I'm closing. Unless you want to help me clean up.” The young man obliged and a thin trail of liquid slid down his throat. He rolled the light metal in his hands and felt it clink against the table. He slotted it back into his pockets, slung his rifle over his shoulder, let fall a few coins and left.

The bartender dragged the cloth against the counter with deliberate slowness and with a slight flourish raised it up. From the folds of the cloth dropped a single ring. He smiled again, jagged creases cutting deep ravines in his face. The bar was clearing up- in the gathering silence he blew against the ring and moved it close to his face. The ring sung a soft crystal note- he closed his eyes and listened with a mind he had tried so hard to deafen.

Some things never die, however.

The ring hummed again. “A bartender now eh? Where did all your spirit go?”

The bartender grinned again, this time to an empty bar. Even the fossilized drunkards had vacated, leaving behind nothing but the cold night air. “It's all in the legs, master, It's all down there.”

He clicked off the light, and the pub plunged into darkness.

THE ARMED AND DANGEROUS GUIDE 3: HOW TO BE ARMED AND DANGEROUS FOR PROOOM!

2007-12-03T19:54:00.000+08:00

You know the most important day of my glamorous life is fast approaching. Tomorrow is the groundbreaking day when the face of fortune and the visage of fame shall smile down with their radioactive radiance upon me and bath me in a golden orb of wondrous beauty.

Well if I was vain, bimbotic and gay, and who floods his blog posts with “XD” signs, then maybe the above would be genuine reflections. XD.

Prom basically serves as a wonderful social function. It's the last official school event because it provides the much needed opportunity for everyone to to shed off that beauty-restricting thing called a uniform and dress like wonderful, beautiful, glamorous chiobus and yandaos who can finally show to the world just how they truly look. It's a night when you meet to talk, eat, and drip curry all over your bling, party, then carry on with your lives. It's like a class dinner. Only more expensive and people dress better.

I vaguely recall the last time I attended some prom function. That time I suffered from a paralyzing bout of throat failure that reduced my voice to a gruff, manly baritone. It might have been overwhelmingly sexy, but when all the ladies could hear was a series of rumbling noises that sounded like construction works on the Circle Line, it did not add much plus points to my charisma.

So this time round, I reflected, genuflected, pondered and contemplated, and in the end decided on ~~suicide~~ another Armed and Dangerous Guide:

bell chimes, wolf whistles, trumpet blows and drum roll please:

THE ARMED AND DANGEROUS GUIDE 3:

HOW TO BE ARMED AND DANGEROUS FOR PROOOM!

First, you must understand that prom is all about VANITY.

VANITY means being PWETTY. Being pwetty means putting on lots and lots of bling and gel and perfume to mask your true looks. You know they say real chiobus and yandaos would look good under all circumstances? Well that is a lie! That explains how even already handsome people can burn 100s of bucks on shirts and shit that they only wear once in their entire lives, in exchange for a few hours of guaranteed good-looking suaveness and coolness.

You see, coolness is priceless. Prom is pretty much the last chance any opinion a large portion of the school would form about you. It's very important you make a good name for yourself on this last social gathering, okay???

(for marketing purposes, paragraph here has been removed. To read original, please finish this post then read appendix A.)

Now that you know all about the true meaning of Life.. I mean, prom, you must now learn how to become COOL AND SEXY.

Being cool and sexy means finding an answer to this timeless enigma that has puzzled philosophers for centuries:

“You may talk the talk....but do you.... walk the walk???”

part 2:

SOUL SHOPPING

To walk the walk down the carpet of eternal fame and glory one must embrace the Tao of Retail Therapy. To fully understand this most complex and profound idea, one must realize this fundamental thing about clothes.

Dressing up for Prom is a matter of the Soul. No point rummaging through your dad's drawer and picking out the first shirt you see. The shirt didn't choose you, and it won't suit you.

You must choose your shirt, and so must the shirt choose you. Real shopping is a bit like soul-searching- there's this special affinity to the special one bobbing on its hanger amidst an ocean of imposter's clamouring for your attention. The Special One calls to you- and you in turn must respond to its siren call. This is holy unification- this is the birth of a fashion hero.

So choose carefully. And pimp thyself well.

Below are a few examples of successful soul-shopping.

Pimp thy shoes:

Pimp thy hair:

I don't have hair. Doesn't mean I can't cut it EVEN SHORTER.

Pimp thy middle costume:

secsay, i say.

Pimp thy ride:

you can carry your whole class!

No way you're gonna ride something like a bicycle or a donkey to prom. We're not in Beijing, where I cycled from home to Tiananmen. You need something cool. Like riding on a sleigh pulled by a team of Hollywood superstars. Hohoho, imagine the festive mood! Imagine stepping off a designer vehicle then swaying your hair as you step out into the hotel lobby. That would crumble Shangri la to its roots.

The problem is, you might have the entire arsenal of fashion fireworks dangling all over you. But you might still end up as a fashion star destroyer. An impressive-looking body is vital, unless of course you want to come in an astronaut suit.Perhaps 1 day from Prom is a bit late to try to achieve the perfect body, but perhaps, drinking this would help.

appendix A.

If you're hoping that you can create a good, lasting impression through prom, you are 2 years late. A good impression might be formed during prom, but that's about your dress sense and makeup abilities. We all know how you look (chio, shuai, plain, ugly, anything in between) when you are at your most unassuming and plain- in a school uniform. A impression based on prom isn't very deep and meaningful anyway- no matter how dazzling you are, prom has never been an event to focus on who you truly are. In fact its one of the few school events where you can hide your true character and flaws and allow your fashion sense and the more superficial side to reign triumphant. Its too late to create a lasting impression or to enlarge a social circle- the chances were in j1 and in j2. Prom is more of an occasion to celebrate the social life you've already established in your JC life.

So let down your hair and party till dawn. Noone will really care about who you are during Prom anyway. It's like the medieval Masques- everyone wears party masks to cover their faces and can get off with all those indecent things. Same thing here- all the bling, all the fanciful dresses- prom is a superficially created shangri la, to end 2 years of jc life on a good note, where everyone looks good and smiles happily at the camera.

editor's note.

I know this is way too late for any loyal reader to follow the instructions given. (loyal reader: got instructions one meh??) But it must just prove the inspiration of ruin for all those who are still confounded over prom. Happy prom days, to all JC frens and sec 4 juniors.

writer's note:

this is the blog entry about prom, 1 day in advance.

Armed and Dangerous A lvls!

2007-11-28T21:02:00.000+08:00

Would some smart reader please enlighten me, what should a cool dude like me do once A levels is over?

Oh the joy, you say. Oh, da bliss! Can you not hear the birds twittering like silver chimes in the air, all plastic and vast like an intellectual wind???

Of course not. All I can hear is the huge tank-armour thick SAT book thumping up and down on my table, wailing for my attention like its my demon lover. You thought mugging would end? Such naive hallucinations! Mugging steams on and on like a coal-guzzling freight train man, there will never be an end! And with A levels dragging on for months on end, it felt like a mental Long March- no end in sight, and when it's all over I'm already too numb and sian to whoop in a joyful, high pitched voice.

I was clearing my room the other day and when I've piled up all my notes in one stack a shiver dripped down my spine. Only now do I realize I been surreptitiously breeding a monster in my room. I feel like I've bred my own Frankenstein, and a single lightning bolt from Cambridge would spark this phallic tower of notes into unholy animation. If that huge pile of...knowledge was to come cascading down over me, I would drown in a messy amalgam of complex numbers, monopolistic competition and emo, tea-drinking poets from both sides of the Pacific.

That's the most horrible death I could think off. Dying from mugging. Muggicide.

Okay now we can put A levels to rest, R.I.P, and my notes can be the papier mache headstone. So back to the main point of this blog entry. (Alert Reader: “blog entry got point one meh?”)

Back then I thought that after A levels would be mindless fun and games. Maybe I would play com games till my eyeballs melt off or my hands disintegrate into bits, then I'll replace them with bionic ones and continue till the sun goes up and sinks down and ad infinitum. Then A levels ends, and instead of slowing down life picks up.

The curious thing is that no one accelerates my life for me. Only I can step on the gas paddle. I define what my post A level schedule would be. I could, theoretically, play com games till I die of geekiness. But that choice would only be enticing given the right conditions- specifically- a life devoid of social possibilities, where everyday all I had was my textbooks. That sort of claustrophobic, sedentary life naturally led to an inclination towards pawning noobs in virtual reality.

But after As and the world opens up, and all the things you've dropped when you delved into the hot steaming pool of mug comes rushing back at you like an epic tsunami. You want to catch up with your life, reclaim those days lost, rediscover lost passions and renew moldy friendships, grow bigger stronger tougher... heck, You are only 18 once. And for guys there's only 4 more weeks to go. Time seems equally pressing now- back then we counted down to A lvl, now we guys are counting down to NS. Holidays doesn't mean a wide expanse of time to roll around in bed until the sun bakes you a nice crispy brown. For me it means too many things, too little time. And there's even a bit of fear and resigned melancholy, at just how fast I've shed my uniform for the one last time.

At times I ask myself about what school has actually taught me these 6+4+2=13 12 years. Algebra? Wonderful. How to do comprehension and reduce long boring passages to 120words? Awe-inspiring. Already i'm forgetting everything I've learned in classrooms. Official education is such a transient thing- the only thing I persistently learn from it is how to endure the process, never anything from it. Mugging does not make me smarter- ironically I felt my brain shrinking to unprecedented levels of insignificance the more I stay home and mug- but through the process of trying to avoid “education”, I learn much more useful things:

Like time management- Choosing the right lessons to bon in order to spend the time much more constructively by eating delicious lunch at Nanyang high.

Like human resource- do homework the quick way, by knowing the right muggers.

Like smart finance- nobody bothers to check the class fund- immoral enough, the treasurer can, theoretically, pocket everything by year's end, if he/she colludes with the chairperson etc.

Like public relations- pay attention and observe the nifty footwork of the pros, as they suck their way to the top.

Like... etc, etc, and more etc. Everyone has their own road of learning. Even by experiencing the same things we learn different things from it. And from these very individualized experiences we gain our own perception of the world. Singapore education system? Who defines it? There's no unified system, but we're all education systems unto ourselves. i suppose the only common point is that a few years down the road all the lecture stuff would be forgotten and school in our memories would crystallize into everything, everything but mugging.

Armed and Dangerous priated dvd review!

2007-11-18T19:03:00.000+08:00

Writer's word of caution on this AnD Guide:

This is an armed and dangerous pirated dvd review, where the before mentioned adjectives are for once not used in a cliched fashion, but are to be taken literally. This post will be so full of spoilers, it will crawl out of your computer screen and spoil your dinner too.

Okay. This is actually a 3 quarters pirated dvd review, partly because the pirated dvd I watched had the last quarter jamming up my wonderful computer and I couldn't watch one blood-soaked second of it.

So now, on to this most fabulous review.

FULL METAL JACKET by STANLEY KUBRICK.

What you need to know but don't know:

First a little nugget of history for you people. A decade ago Singapore made a movie called Army Daze. It was lame, corny and faggoty but of course it was fun. That's why before YLTC, EZOAC sat down and watched that inspiring piece, hoping to gain enlightenment and become professional instructors who can curdle the bloods of juniors with single utterances. We learnt quotes revolving around ducks falling into ponds and becoming fish, and that didn't help much.

Then yesterday night I watched FULL METAL JACKET and suddenly I just realized just how a hard boiled place army can be. Basically the film is set in the Vietnam war. It depicts this bunch of befuddled dudes joining the great capitalist machine, the American Army, and goes through 45 minutes of rock-hard training, where they sing hip and happen'in marching cadences with lyrics like “Ho Chi Minh is a son-of-a-bitch!” and generally sprays the m18 rating draping over it with a whole firework display of live ammunition, sexual innuendos and foul language. Then they pass out and go to the Vietnam war, and yes, in the true spirit of good war movies, lots and lots of people die in very unheroic, unflattering ways.

The chim stuff:

But then again, such uncensored depiction of war and its recruitment makes it so engaging. Better than that picturesque Army Daze where not a single F is heard, this is the movie that shows the real deal. Now you might have the impression that this is a very solemn and tragic war movie, but actually it damn funny in an very poignant(and dirty minded) way. It makes the whole deal very human- no superheroes, no iron resolve, no overwhelming patriotic fervor nor pure and wonderful romantic epics. Just a bunch of lame birds that as the movie goes by reminds you of your dearest friends. (or not. Depends on your kind of friends lah.)

Lots of inspiring insults are immortalized (You're so ugly you could be a modern art masterpiece! ... Move it, move it! Private Pyle, whatever you do, don't fall down! That would break my f***ing heart! ), and there's the narrator bargaining with a Vietnam prostitute who gives the most catchy sales pick up lines EVER. Then juxtapose these scenes with the brutality of war and it leaves me unsure whether to cry or to laugh. Or cry with laughter? Whatever man.

Faces you have to see(like it or not) for 120 minutes:

what we do have for protagonists are psychotic soldiers who shoot their own drill instructors and black grunts who makes self-deprecatory remarks like “a nigger behind the trigger!”. Then we have this nerd-looking narrator who thinks that “A day without blood is like a day without sunshine” and who came to war cause he “wanted to see exotic Vietnam... the crown jewel of Southeast Asia. I wanted to meet interesting and stimulating people of an ancient culture... and kill them. I wanted to be the first kid on my block to get a confirmed kill!”

Amazing dude. Sounds almost like... never mind, he'll kill me if he sees his name here.

So there you go, a wonderfulignicent movie that is coarse, brutal, yet deeply contemplative at the same time. It's good timing for all jc2 dudes- we're all going into NS soon. Some cinematic exposure would do good. So go watch ¾ of it. Or if you manage to watch the whole thing, lend it to me. I love you long time.

even walking is armed and dangerous!

2007-11-16T21:11:00.000+08:00

You know sometimes when you've mugged just so damn hard, all that's left in your mind is this turbulent vortex of suicidal tendencies? It's almost like a washing machine full of knives put on spin cycle, forgetting the softener.

So when you've reached this state of Zen, the only thing to do is to play a game. I played this game many times in my midst of steaming mugging, and it ended me up in the middle of lots of wonderful places. To ALL MY NON OAC FRIENDS this would be regarded as a VERY OAC thing to do, but then to them, most things i do seem very stereotypically OAC. Like flipping over fences and climbing rooftops and other random misadventures of the knee-breaking kind.

Ahem. So this game goes like this:

you walk out of your house. It's an outdoors game, of course. You mean you still want to fossilize indoors? My arse is cramping from all the downward pressure my bubbling brain juice is acting on me.

You pick up anything that can can point to a direction e.g. Stick, key, girlfriend, and throw it into the air. See where it lands and points to.

Start walking. all obstacles are to be traversed. That includes expressways, garbage trucks, old aunties and chiobus.

The main draw of this game is it's so agonizingly simple. You don't need anything. All you need is the patience to walk. Start walking, and suddenly you just realize how small but saturated the world is.

Of course I would not notice such obscure things like there's 12 mama shops in a 10 min walking time circumference around my house if I was in a normal sane state of mind. You only notice all the tiny details and have the mind to start exploring when you've nothing better to do. In my A level addled state of mind, I, of course, do have better things to do. Just that I don't feel like doing them.

I don't really know how far this game will lead me when A level finally draws to a close next next Monday. The furthest I've walked so far is to west coast park- till I can't walk anymore, literally.

maybe if I still had a bicycle i'd have cycled all the way to Queenstown. I think I need the exercise, considering how static my sedentary lifestyle is.

Mugger Pride

2007-11-07T22:39:00.000+08:00

yes sure literature is tomorrow, so as practice, and to appease the vehement threats of readers who should be mugging but came to this blog instead and went away depressed time after time (a.k.a yunzhou), i shall update after a 20day hiatus on a very brief, very cock, summary on what i've been up to these past few weeks. months.

* some of what you'll read below doesn't really apply to me. Like the dota part. But whatever. Lit students can try your ~~smoking~~ prac crit skillz on my poem.

life is full of Levels

*adapted from Ozymandius.

I met a mugger from Hwa Chong

Who haven't slept since prelims and looked so stoned

mugging in the library, damn the cold!

clobbered drunk by MOE, whose PW

And wrinkled CIP and sneer of cold H3

Tell the mugger, you're GG.

But he yet survived! That lifeless cow!

Smokin' GP and leaving stats to destiny!

fraggin' noobs in DOTA and ponnin' class

And in that holy night these words appear:

My name is A levels, horror of horrors!

Look on the TYS, ye muggers, and despair!”

Nothing remained of the mugger, round his white hair

sprouting from his colossal mind, his mug steamin',

and Cambridge, mighty teabags, dangles a desert of As.

post not completed. stay tuned.

A Armed and Dangerous Visit

2007-10-21T18:28:00.000+08:00

today has been a most auspiciously armed and dangerous day.

At 8 am i flipped open my suicide-inducing CLL note on flying fox of the Snowy Mountain, and decided again to waste another irrevocable portion of my 18th year.

大好光阴,就这么的没了! 苗若兰cried in pity.

I was about to reply on how 1 dimensional she was when, lo! and behold!

This melodic thunderstorm brewed up in the void deck under my flat. the last time anything brewed up from that hellpit was two weeks back, when someone decided to get married close to midnight and turned the entire 1st storey into a K box (K, make that a K-void deck). Back then i almost wanted to trudge down and in a maelstrom of righteous fury kick their holy matrimony to kingdom come. But suddenly, i heard what they were trying to sing. Jay Chou's 菊花台.

So, in this crazy A level-induced world Jay Chou's songs are fashionable wedding songs. I thought they used to sing 刀狼's 祝酒歌 or something.

They must be gay gangsters. Only gay gangsters listen to such homoerotic trashy songs. I weighed my chances, and locked myself in my room to level-up on my tolerance meter instead.

This morning some MC with a voice like exploding land mines shouted a cheery, ironic good morning to just about the entire clementi, and again i wondered how the hell could- 1) amplifiers be so powerful, and 2) they must be deaf or something. or they soon will be. I couldn't even hear my radio sing 菊花台.

Unable to do my fav thing, i stared out the window to do what Jackie Chan or Bruce Lee would do. But before i could test if Flying Fox really could fly and silence an MC from a 19th storey window, i remembered what the bloody concert thing was for.

All the police.

It happened that there was a minister coming to visit Clementi and her charming yellow HDBs today. Not just any minister- but yes, it's Mr Lee Hsien Loong himself!!!! I can imagine you readers throwing up your keyboards in shock and awe and screaming "YOU SURE!!!???", but then again, i don't imagine, for this is SINGAPORE, man. No way you guys would do that.

SINGAPORE, man. The land of a thousand smiles. Where, on a Sunday, by the infinite wisdom of yihong, in libraries, there are more muggers than books and chiobus combined. Singapore, where there are also more politically-insensitive people than there are newspapers in circulation.

from my window it is apparent that there was just a dismal amount of people eagerly anticipating the arrival of our Prime Minister, if you minus off all the plain-clothes police wandering around. Half were old aunties with fish wobbling fresh from the market, or moms grabbing on equally slippery toddlers, suffering permanent ear damage from the military-grade amplifiers, so powerful they must have been made by God himself. I know what they were waiting for. Q and A session with the Big Man himself? yeah, and maybe the Free goodie bags and lucky draw prizes.

Well if this was America people would have flooded the area, throwing scathing questions the minister's way. "When are you intending to attack Iran? don't lie!" "Is your son in Iraq too? Why did you not send him when you support the war?!"

And if this was Pakistan there'd be thousands upon thousands of supporters dancing around. Most probably a terrorist in their midst too.

And if it's Japan he'd be going to the Yasukuni Shrine and there'd (better) be throngs of protesters lining the streets. Most probably i'd be in it too.

The point is, it's amazing how politically insensitive we all are. I wonder what Mr Lee feels when he goes on stage and see the usual Sunday morning market throng ogling at him?

Maybe i should go throw him some intellectually-stimulating, political questions, to do my part as a honourable, independent, knowledgeable, concerned youth. I stuffed my notes into my 为人民服务bag and trudged down. But i walked on past the concert. It was too noisy. Maybe i'll come back and deliver my scathing question afterwards, but of course- i need to find a quiet place to mug, and I've yet to tell 苗若兰 how 1 dimensional she is.

* to all my lep readers: 大家都心知肚明, 咱们LEP只能靠自己了. 读错误,能参考这个. 看来南洋笔记是从这里抄的. 抄也没抄全.