Its been more than a month since I last posted an entry on this site, and for that, I apologize to everyone who'd wasted two seconds of their life visiting an online space overgrown with virtual shrubs and weeds.

Most memorably I have to mention the entire motley crew who left camp on a Wednesday night in the first week of May and descended upon Clarke Quay together for a successful operation :D

Last Friday the first batch of people reaching their ORD in June received their Cert of Service and Testimonials. Fortunately there was nothing wrong this time unlike in May when I had to trouble people to return to camp on Election Day just to amend the error in the system.

SPDS Section 3 mounted their last Change of Guards Ceremony last weekend and SS turned on the spectacular with his inventive solo routine.



Will miss the whole lot of them when they leave in August. I had made quite a few good friends there and it will definitely make life in camp less exciting for the remaining four months once University starts for them.

Maplestory has proved to be a great place for networking (if you minus away the lag, the hackers, the immature kids screaming all over the place and the next-to useless GMs) for people in our unit. It proved to be an excellent place for people to bitch with abandon about everything under the sun - though mostly on work issues.

Anyway, many platoons took the chance to visit the PC Show for their platoon cohesions last Friday.. Lol. Creative use of time.

Things to do this week.

Hopefully I will not have to endure another meeting spanning 8.5 hours as Boss is not in office.

- Meet up with friends over the weekend. This week is the lepak week for those on shift duty and this it is paramount that we get together once more. *looks at Aaron* (:

- Become an architect in addition to the many unofficial portfolios I'd accumulated (mostly unwillingly) at work. I am charged with converting technical building plans into something more convenient to the eye. Think this is more suited to Jontay actually.

- My colleague will be leaving on Tuesday. As such we'll have to ensure that everything is passed down to his two understudies by then. However due to their unfortunate involvement in the trooping of colours on SAF Day, I will have to juggle the jobs of three people every alternate day. Cool.

- Finish up the monthly report and also the Orbat chart which I'd dragged my foot over for three months.

- Clear the theory practices when Bar and SS go for their BTT on Tuesday. Maybe will meet up with Quek and WM for dinner as well [note to self]

- Transfer all my documents into the iMac from my laptop which is on the verge of committing suicide anytime soon.

- Usher the people through ORD out-processing on Tuesday and Wednesday. Then its time to start chasing after everyone via email for the transcripts and testimonials for the August batch.


That's all for me from today. It proved to be more difficult for me to regain my touch and feel for blogging than I'd imagined. If you still have time to spare, why not check out Aaron and Tiantian's travel diary here - a much more interesting work of photo-journalism than anything I'd ever attempted admittedly. Enjoy! :D

Credits to Quek for the photo (:

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Seven months left before liberation D:

I shall save any thoughts on the election for a later post. Although those who know me should probably know where I stand on this matter. Both incumbent and opposition aren't exactly angels contrary to what their supporters may feel. Quite a lot of infectious anger on the net especially that is clouding judgments aplenty. Will be quite intriguing come 7 May to see how it turns out.

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Work has been very busy so far, especially coming up with workable WITS ideas (we now have, by happy coincidence and a willingness by seemingly everyone to pump ideas to my team, a total of 5 projects out of 4). I think we'll be the only group in the whole Command to exceed the quota if nothing goes wrong.

One of our particularly ambitious ideas calls for a 24-hr camping in the office rushing the programming for a prototype database based on OpenOffice. Its definitely not me who'll be plugging away at the terminal. How I wish that we have an Aaron, SS or William here to anchor the coding. And I was constantly reminded why I never considered anything to do with Computing after hearing all about data flow diagrams, scripts, layers, UI (?) so on so forth.

Yesterday I went over to HR and I discovered what 'Concatenate', 'Countif' and conditional formatting mean in OO. Today I found out that an individual who's both a citizen and the PR of a foreign country is not cleared to hold an ISAC Card, thus making him a rather useless ASA who can't be deployed to anywhere useful. ^^


Exams coming up for those in NUS / NTU
All the best to everyone, especially people who'd tried (and partially succeeded) in isolating themselves from social networking sites.

And best of luck to all my friends who're applying for University courses this year..

Just want to express my gratitude towards Aaron, SY+SL and Jontay for supporting me during on 030411 during the COG Ceremony (: Thank you all for the nice photos and words of encouragement. Sorry I couldn't meet you guys for dinner after our bus got delayed by almost an hour.

A word of Congratulations to Samuel, Yunfeng and all the people I knew who commissioned as Officers last Saturday as well under the grey skies and slight drizzle. WY got misty-eyed as he witnessed them tossing their peak caps. Perhaps that's why SY did not go with us to the parade. And Linyi got chased out for wearing flip-flops in. Lol. Oh wells.

Things to do in the next week -
1. Edit / look through all the transcripts and testimonials for June
2. Finish up the monthly report
3. Get people to update the system version for all the computers
4. Photo-taking for one of the WITS projects. 70 people = no joke. Lol.
5. Go some way towards finishing up that prototype
6. Get to Level 120 during the weekends. Probably try Zak with the guild.
7. Complimentary Singapore Flyer tickets + discounts on Food Trail?/R Aaron please take note ^^
8. A four-day work week even without me taking Off on Monday,
9. Write-ups for the Command newsletter. I almost forgot about that. ^^
10. If the new ASA cannot do anything much / slack too much - Pass him the bus log sheet burden and other sai kang.

TGIF, Cheers :D

Whatever doesn't kill you, will definitely try again only make you stronger.
Pick your mentality.
HAVE FAITH (:

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I thought I'd gotten over it.

Then just a day or two ago I received a stark reminder of how vulnerable my friendships are. So what if all your supposed friends go out without as much as dropping you a notice? And then just leave you waiting like a dumb fuck for hours on end?

I'm tired of trying to initiate stuff. Maybe once a week's too much. And that everyone else probably have a more colorful and eventful life than me. How wonderful.

Probably its a curse then.
That I am somehow unable to maintain friendships beyond a certain amount of time. Its (almost) always been the case so far.

And the nightmares come every night relentlessly. Along with the regrets that almost inevitably tags along for a ride.

How colorful and eventful is that? Very, it seems. Resplendent in its full array of hues and tones when I shut my eyes.

When will we ever be friends again like before?

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Apologies. I'd been on a rather long hiatus - though it is most probably due to the rediscovery of MS as a rather playable game (even if my account was hacked sometime in 2010).

COG on the first Sunday of the month, managed to meet up with so many familiar faces. So in a way it was a fruitful trip. And the double jumbos were cool.

Last Saturday night's retreat at Timbre @ The Substation was immensely satisfying, facilitated by the Happy Hour promotions that we took full advantage of.

In the past two weeks I'd completed my monthly report, prepared a proposal for confirmation during the weekly meeting, replied and forwarded random emails to Aaron, Jontan and sY, fought for computer terminals with so many people (I was so glad all of them were down for parade rehearsal on Thursday..) etc etc.

Best of all, I find myself extremely overjoyed to be straddled with four WITs projects that my team of of five have to submit in two months.

Its just like PW all over again (multiplied by four). All complete with nice dainty presentations (including, surprise surprise, the 'fish-bone' diagram which we first encountered in sec school) and prototypes. It should actually just be called PW in line with the latest fad to encourage individuals to think, or nicely put it, to brainstorm. It also rather nicely eliminates the need for that seemingly useless fish-bone of a diagram. And of course WITs/PW is so indispensable in our relentless pursuit towards the ultimate goal of evolving into a 4G organisation - it accords us the rare opportunity to attempt saying 'Just Say No!' to the downward trend our intelligence seemed to be heading from the moment we step off the penguin onto Maple Island to begin our training.

Alright, enough of ramblings.

Time to start off yet another week.
Chief-of-Army Change-of-Command Parade coming up this Friday. Good luck to all of us ^^

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If it is any consolation I managed to spend my Friday evening with a pretty solid group of friends. Our quest for the proverbial watering hole brought us meandering from City Hall all the way up to Helipad at Clarke Quay.

First time up there, and I'm sure it won't be the last. A great hangout for emo people to just stare blankly into the fantastically lit up skyline while drowning their sorrows with martinis and cocktails et al. Well, except the Virgin Mary (drink, not religious symbol) which, did you know, can be used to treat hangovers - given that it contains chilli, tabasco and other unspeakable ingredients.

A glass of Chardonnay followed up with a martini is a quick-fire way to get drunk and knocked out. I can testify for its near-lethal potency firsthand. Let's just say I was pretty lucky to get home in one piece that night.

There's no denying that it served as a timely painkiller though. Martin Solveig may have sang 'L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N' but so far, its still not working.

One thing's for sure though, my external hard drive has already moved on. Along with all the priceless documents I'd accumulated as a legacy from those sec sch days.

A tough week coming up. I'll officially have a new boss wef Tuesday.
Friday's an off day though.. ^^

Hopefully we'll be able to go Timbre this time round after so many failed attempts by us on separate occasions - the most recent being two evenings ago.

We're just skirting about the issue hoping that time will buy us some breathing space. I don't think it works that way with me, sadly

Meanwhile, all the best to those having papers this week. Here's wishing that all those mugging sessions either in isolation or with a special buddy pays off. >)

Lastly, something for all of us to ponder about given that its the start of yet another week in the office..

Once there were four managers. Their names were: Somebody, Everybody, Anybody, and Nobody. They were very busy people, but whenever there was an important job to be done, Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did. When Nobody did it, Everybody got angry because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought that Somebody would do it, but Nobody realized that Nobody would do it. So consequently Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done in the first place.

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Found myself in a very delicate situation here.
And we are all trying not to breach that tabooed subject in our conversations.

A very uncomfortable status quo indeed.

**

Judy told me she had a hunch. And her intuition's are usually spot on. The 'should' is always redundant.

It was not a very surprising conclusion anyways.

In any case Facebook statuses ain't coughing up much. And the wall privacy settings are a pain in the ass.

As always, only one person will know the truth (besides God, and Facebook ^^).
The rest of us will perhaps just be clutching at straws. Some more sturdier than others though.

A friend of mine told me I should be grateful instead for in retrospect,
We will probably have drifted far apart over the past year (with so many things to occupy us elsewhere) - if we had not kept in touch that frequently.

Seemed like I had merely postponed the estrangement.
Well, at least we're still on talking terms somewhat. Not acquaintances, just yet.

Though I'm left with more questions than answers
A thousand question marks fill my mind when I close my eyes

Busy week ahead. I should be able to clear my off on a random weekday (preferably Thursday). So I will most likely be free one of these days to simply chillax somewhere and start emo-ing like a quintessential emo pok.

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Don't tell me I'm dreaming,
Cause if I've been dreaming,
I don't ever want to wake up,
So in love with this feeling,
Tonight I'll be sleeping
Sleeping with my eyes wide shut,

How blind I was, to not see past the obvious truth.
Always the obtuse one in terms of words.
I guess it all showed through tonight.

Jiaying left for NZ earlier this evening and will only be back in November when its time for the summer hols. Well Chai, if you visit this site still.. Just want to wish you all the best (: Take care and do keep in touch And please come back and still remember us (along with lots of goodies)

Not a lot of people were there to send her off personally though - what a shame >.< Well, there was only Jason (who had to rush home to book into a little offshore island), Judy and Cyn there, along with the horn seniors and A LOT of her church/classmates/primary school friends clogging up the whole departure hall. And she ended shuttling between groups of friends the whole time.

That being said, it's always a sad occasion to see friends leave for overseas for a few years at a stretch. Sometimes they leave permanently never to return.. Like a secondary school classmate of mine.

Time flies, yes. Don't we always wonder how College days ended so quickly and abruptly.

Anyways, I just came off a rather impromptu phone call with Josie after my phone started flashing ominous red warning lights as it ran out of battery. (I'd left the charger at work over the weekend)

And then Josie encouraged me, sort of, to pick up smoking so that I can be an ultimate loser summing up all these years of rejection and hurt when it comes to friendships. Let's go try it someday, I sponsor the pack :D Whee. Do you dig menthol lite?

Hopefully I can be back on Tuesday night. Yes, dear God pretty please help me pass..

Finally, just a disclaimer - I'm actually more emotionally unstable than I'm portraying myself to be in this post.

To all my friends - Please tag on my tagboard when you pass by. It is not infected by any virus. ^^

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