5 things of the present

1.
i haven’t been blogging at all. there was this spam comment here that lasted for a week, advertising a site that could help “save your marriage”. it may come in useful in future, but nah, i’ve deleted it without a second thought. maybe that spammer’s son, a spammee, can come advertise for that site again in future when i really need it. but nope, useless to me now.

2.
aviva ironman 70.3 is in 2 weeks time, and i’ve been training like a mentally unstable dog of late. fell off my bike again yesterday on the wet, wet roads. lucky the traffic lights were red. if they weren’t i would have painted it permanently red. but oh well nothing’s happened so far so i’m happy.

3.
since my last entry, 3 teeth have been extracted from my mouth. and 3 teeth = ~10 days of medical leave. i didn’t want them to hurt like a bitch (like that last one did) so just extracted them without a second thought.

4.
You know it feels like crap to be invited to someone’s 21st birthday, and you have to reject them because of your own problems and schedules. There’s a certain majesty that comes along with being 21 years of age, and it’s a kinda expensive majesty too, no doubt. And then it has to be hyped up and everything and adds stress to everyone. But i guess that’s the price of really enjoying this fleetingly exciting coming-of-age. The very next morning, do they go, “is that it?”

5.
I kinda dislike Terminal 3 now. People fly, fly, fly away. No matter how well it went, guests would have to leave after a dinner, and it’s either we meet them again in the streets of life, or they just disappear into nothingness forever and ever.

The one about the new year

Today marks the start of the Chinese Lunar New Year. And i just realised i haven’t been posting since the new year started. Bad. especially when one of my resolutions are to make sure i blog more often, for my dear precious few readers.

I keep reading news about 2009 being a bad year. Well, that didn’t come as much of a surprise with all the news about recessions. Of course that’s what everyone and their fortune teller would say lah. Like this i also can predict lor. Anyway, the year of the Earth Ox will be one filled with hard work and industry, so i guess that means it’s a good thing that i can enter school only in July so i would only need to work hard for like 5 months. Fine, fine. Just hope the one month odd to ORD would be smooth sailing in all senses of that expression ie no more choppy seas which translates to wet uniforms.

Nowadays i’m just immersing myself in poker addiction on facebook. Well, i’m doing okay there, but i’m still an addict i guess. But it does have benefits. I stepped into a library (many libraries, actually. Bishan, Bedok, National, Toa Payoh) to source for good poker literature that would improve my game in any way possible. It’s the first time since ‘A’ Levels that i’ve stepped into one. Anyway, the collection at the libraries are okay to say the least. They do have a specialised section under ‘Hobbies’, but it’s usually only of about 8 or 9 books, of which only 2 or 3 are really interesting to me. But at least there are books about them so i’m not complaining. There are actually poker stars in Singapore, to my amazement. I do vaguely remember one Singaporean who won some tournament in Macau a few years back, but that’s about it. Now after doing a little research i found out he’s a certain Ivan Tan, and we have up-and-coming star Bryan Huang. quite interesting. But then again Singapore contradicts itself by having plans for Integrated Resorts while disallowing the Asian Poker Tour to have one of its stops here in Singapore. Oh well.

Anyway i’m also trying to organise outings during this period. Close friends are flying off sooner than i expected. You know, those people who are going overseas keep saying about it, and yet i just assume it’s not gonna be soon, not gonna be soon. Procrastinating in a way. And then when it’s finally nearing, nearing, and there, you start to ask yourself, why didn’t you try to make the best of the times you had? Okay, maybe it’s not as bad as i’ve portrayed, but it really is going to come sooner or later. It’s sort of like ORD dates. You know it’s gonna happen some day, but sometimes you think it’s so, so far away, that when it really comes, you won’t know what to do. And when that day reaches, you are just lost. I’m starting to fret now. Did i spend my NS life wisely? Could i have used the time off from school better? Hmm.

I’m trying to think of better ways to spend my remaining duties at camp. Don’t want to just stone around doing unproductive things. I want to be besting myself. The “My Japanese Coach” on my DS has been rotting there for like 34873264 duties now. The only saving grace is that i DO, i repeat, i DO use my “My Word Coach” which lets me learn a few words a day. Well the hard part is actually remembering those words the next day, but oh well at least i learnt some words right.

okay i’ve gotten pretty much everything that i need now.
mahjong table + tiles (gambler item #1)
poker chips (gambler item #2)
bicycle repaired (ironman item #1)
ugly black specs to appease certain nit-picky epaulet-donning he-who-shall-not-be-named-or-i-may-be-charged
new clothing (always a bloody bother to buy)

ok time to go sleep. i wish you all an exciting year ahead, but not so exciting that you lose all your money or something. remember that once you think you’re beat, just fold and go on to the next hand. ok that’s nonsense to non poker players. do enjoy yourselves in the midst of the economic crisis. remember that money doesn’t always guarantee fun, but it always adds to the fun of it ok that was nonsense too. but oh well most of you won’t read up till here anyway right haha good night

The one about the trial triathlon

I more or less shudder every time i receive notice that i have to be at Hendon Camp for any so-and-so, this-or-that trial. The word “trial” usually alludes to a *physical fitness* kind of trial, which means that i’m in for some xiong physical training whenever i go for such “trials”. And now i realise why people fear going to Hendon Camp, Home of the Commandos.

Anyway, i did my first ever triathlon on 5th July. The difference between a biathlon and a triathlon is the cycling segment, a whole whopping 40 kilometres of it. This distance is short enough to be done by anyone, really; yet long enough for that anyone to go buy a four-figure road- or tri-bike instead of relying on his trusty ol’ mountain bike for the duration. It is a distance that will seriously take its toll on the leg muscles. And maybe your brain muscles too, once you reach a specific point of exhaustion which they in the army identify as “shack cannot think” point. “shack” actually means “tired”, its origin still unknown to me as of today. But it’s catchy so i still use it. Like how i like to say “how’s it going?” with no real idea what “it” really is, or where the last mentioned “it” is gonna go to.

And the other new thing is, of course, the bike-run transition. Ah, the oh-so-lovely bike-run transition. This was new to me, and probably something unheard of to some people. Now, transitions are difficult because you have to firstly be immune to the “shack cannot think” epidemic. For ages people have been debating whether this is a natural or nurtured immunity — i believe it’s the latter, but who cares, right? Anyway, the key thing is that one must be able to think clearly, because there are like so many things that you need to do. In the swim-run transition (in biathlons), one has to wash off the seawater on his body with some clean water, then proceed to dab dry and clear his feet of any sand or debris (one small sand stone can cause a 50¢ blister. trust me on this from experience), and then wear his running socks and shoes, singlet, and run off. That’s quite a lot to do after a 1.5km swim because you would be slow(er) in both body and mind. Imagine this: You have just swam 750 metres of non-stop freestyle in the sea, and you suddenly realise there’s a hovercraft coming to kill you. What do you do? Don your running gear and scram, right? Like, duh? But then you realise that you have to first swim back in a big frenzy (that’s a total of 30 laps in the plebeian swimming pool for you math failures). Once on shore, you realise your physical environment is no longer what it used to be like in the last 30 minutes. It’s now steaming and glaring. The sun seems to smiling at you sinisterly, hoping he can generate enough heat to knock you out, or at least induce a fatigue level in you so that the hovercraft can easily catch you and start making ‘bak chor mee’ out of you. You look ahead and find out that the only hiding place you can hide at (eg. a trench? bomb shelter? i don’t know, man. use your imagination) is 10 km down the road. Are you up to it?

Now i want you to imagine that you have a bike there. Much better, right? Sadly for you, the trench is now 40 killer km away. If your bike was a 15 kg mountain bike, good luck to you, you who didn’t want to spare some more money to prepare for the absolutely-rare-yet-still-theoretically-possible situation of the hovercraft’s appearance. The thing is that, once you reach the stupid trench, you realise it’s actually a bloody mirage because it’s so hot nowadays, and because the sun was trying to play tricks on you with his sinister smile yet again. Damn the sun, eh? In anger, you crush your bike, then realise that was the single stupidest thing you’ve ever done in your life, because the hovercraft is still chasing after you. Oh my god! So you start running away, the same arduous journey of 10 km, step by step. Take into account the fact that your leg muscles are probably screwed by then, and the sun is still blazing down on you. That’s when you realise, oh man, how the hell am i going to do this? That’s when you realise you have other army sayings to rely on: to suck thumb, to wake up your idea, and to start running faster that your sergeant’s grandmother.

The transitions are really agony in its truest, most blatant form. The sudden change in muscle groups to be used is extremely distressful, especially when so many of your leg muscles have to be utilised to their fullest extents.

Anyway, i must say that i was really tired at one point, so much so that i skidded and fell off my bike on a straight road. Got 4 superficial cuts, nothing too serious, fortunately. The horrifying thing is that i got that my-whole-life-flashed-past-me feeling. Well, except that it’s only a few parts of my life. Now i know that it doesn’t only happen to people who have died, though i could have when that stupid car zoomed past a few metres away, totally oblivious to the fact that i was lying there injured. The ironic thing is that i would also have that kind of attitude if i were the driver of that car. Know why? Because it was at Tanah Merah Coast Road, the way out towards the PIE. The driver was either a Changi Naval Base or Air Base personnel booking out. And there’s no better feeling than booking out of camp. Seriously. But, oh well, it’s still funny in retrospect.

My bike was in bad shape after that, but it was still working so it’s cool. The guys at Cycleworx also helped me to adjust my bike a little so that it’s now in working condition yet again. Another fortunate thing for me is that this Cycleworx shop is damn near to my house, like a 10 minute walk away. Damn professional shop. I knew it the moment they told me i should get a $5000 bike, which i of course rejected after saying some mild vulgarities in my head in shock. i’m a 19-year-old leisure cyclist (who did not sign on), man. i don’t have five freaking thousand to spare yet. Maybe in future lah, haha.

I got home, muscles all sore and cuts still oozing a little, albeit manageable. I had completed a triathlon, half of it with those cuts and bruises on my body. Try to beat that!

Next stop : OSIM Triathlon on 13th July ^^

short update

1. i’m joining the Passion Run @ East Coast Park on 8 June 2008
2. i’m joining the Singapore Bay Run for the second consecutive year on 24 Aug 2008 (if the upper management allows it)
3. i’m joining the Aviva Ironman 70.3

they’re ranked from 1 to 3 in order from ‘i’m afraid’ to ‘i’m bloody freaking afraid’.
fyi, ironman70.3 = swim 1.9km, cycle 91km, run 21.1km
yes, the magnitude of such distances is enough to make my balls shrink. but to me it’s a kind of challenge. i doubt i’ll ever have another period of time when i can just dedicate to trying to keep fit and stuff. so might as well take on the giants while i’m at it, right?

anyway, these days i’m trying to curb my mahjong habit. it’s becoming part and parcel of my life now, and not all parcels are good (ie. some contain anthrax or bombs or whatever). reading and exercising, because i’m afraid. i’m afraid. brrrrrrrrrr.. mahjong is making me lose a lot of money cos i suck so badly at it. oh well. i will treat it as only a social game from now on, and stop taking it so seriously. 20¢-40¢ is the max i will go to. any further than that and i will have to exercise my right to say ‘no’.

Nice Guys vs nice guys omg finally someone decides to reveal a piece of insight into the female psyche omg not that it will help the fact that i still have very few female friends but oh that’s not the case it’s still better to be fully prepared before tackling any subject and not end up like that first time you took an Economics test to find out you don’t have an inkling of what the hell is going on. so? read. haha.

mounting again. 20 more duty cycles left. hopefully we’ll get to use the P226 pistol for ops in the near future (aka before ORD).

my passing passion for piquant pasta on my palate

For some odd reason, i’ve had this same dream 2 times in the past week.

i was in the kitchen, chopping garlic. I was using one of those big knives that butchers use, but somehow i was skilled enough to chop garlic till it was in small bits, like the sand you find at your local playground.

Olive oil in the pan. After sizzling a little, add the garlic bits until golden brown. The garlic bits in my dream were golden brown, though i remember leaving them down on the pan for an awfully long time. Don’t do that in real life. It would probably turn black or something.

During that aforementioned awfully long time, i was slicing and dicing salmon and a mushroom. A fat chunk of salmon and a wonderfully big mushroom. Sliced into bite-sized strips. Lay them into the frying pan (with the golden brown bits still there, still golden brown).

Poured in some pasta. I’m not sure what kind it is cos i’m no specialist — i’m just a private. It looked like sea shells. Oddly i didn’t remember cooking the pasta, but they were in a pot already, pre-cooked. I later sprinkled parmesan cheese from one of those packets you can purchase at a Shop’N'Save near you. I used like 3 big packets i think, but it seemed just right for me lol. I saw the cheese melt and melt.

And then… Bloody hell, i woke up without getting to taste my own creation. Damn.

Some random thoughts after a while

my father just arrived home from Manila and i’m using his laptop to blog now.

The only semblance to flowers i gave out on Valentine’s Day was Pokka Chrysanthemum Tea cartons.
I was working on that day. Just like many other girlfriend-less boys.
Note to myself: This must NOT happen in university.

Attempting to work 11 hours each day for one whole week is not cool at all.
Especially if you are working at places at the other end of Singapore, eg. Marine Parade.
Reject all job opportunities if you have to take two hours just to get there, eg. at Marine Parade NTUC. It’s not worth it.
I thought i could never get through one whole week of not using the internet. But i did, but only because the computer broke down and i was tired everyday after work.
So the job was probably a good thing after all. The silver lining to a dark, dark period.

It’s funny how everyone has their own different version of saying “omg you failed the basic theory test?”
1. “you damn stupid can?”
2. “hey, can you listen to me for a minute? I have a very important question to ask you. Can you please teach me how to fail my basic theory test?”
3. “hi basic theory failure”

The one about recent events part 1

So, so much had happened in the past few days that it seems impossible to think of it as only 4 weeks since the official end of my ‘A’ levels 2006. Maybe it’s because of my life before that was too boring and monotonous, that, after all that sweet sorrow, i’m fully able to immerse myself in whatever fun that i deprived myself of during that period of melancholic mugging. And as Mr. Bean once said, “Oh look! Oh, how Time flies when you’re enjoying yourselves.” I know he said it under a different context, but you get the drift.

Okay let me try to summarise the whole series of events that i went through in the past 4 weeks in the following few entries. Please read it only if (1) you’re really, really bored, (2) you have nothing else to do, (3) you want to know more about my life. All of the Above? Read on. This entry will hopefully be something like “A Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson — a book that i’m trying hard to read, because words suddenly seem rather foreign to me now. Basically it is a really thick book that chronicles what had happened since the absolute dawn of time. The point when “t=0″ in scientific terms. So far i’ve read the first chapter, which is on how the hell Earth formed out of everything, and it also tells me how lucky i am to be here, being able to be alive on this very planet in the whole bloody universe out there. I like that book because it writes a lot of things that i can visualise, and i’ve also learnt many things from the first chapter itself. Hmm, that sentence sounds like something straight out of one of my primary school Book Reviews. Just that i truly mean it now.

But i digress. I always try my best not to digress, but always succeed in failing to notice that i have digressed. And there, i digress again. Okay now back to business.

The very moment i was asked to put down my pens for the penultimate examination (Lit paper 8 ), my heart was already flittering off to the outing i had with my former study group. I was also wondering whether “Put down your pens” was a correct sentence. Shouldn’t it be “Put your pen down” instead? A change in arrangement of words, and the subtraction of the “s” in “pens”? Then i immediately thought, “why the hell are you even thinking about english grammar right now?” So i made my way to grab my bag, made some small talk with the guys from my Lit class, promised to meet up sometime, and skipped off. I didn’t really skip off, because that would look pretty dumb and gay, but i did have the intention of doing so. I just walked off to the bus stop, skipping only in my mind, as i secretly smiled at the thought of me skipping my way to the bus stop. Then i thought about what would happen if some people were to suddenly walk by and see me grinning to myself.

small kid:”mummy, why is that boy smiling to himself?”
his mum:”shh.. don’t care about him. come, walk faster. away from him.”

I later arrived at Cafe Cartel at Plaza Singapura and had an unctuous portion of grilled ribs, their house specialty. I specially used the word “unctuous”, because it was really oily and fatty, but i helped myself to every bit possible. I was transported to Heaven. Not that i was dead from all that cholesterol and fat that could have triggered some massive heart attack, but because it tasted heavenly. We gone on to take some pictures, play some pool and later walked around Orchard for a while. There’s a shop selling girly stuff at the second storey of the building beside OG, opened by a former nyjc-ian! Anyway i was quite happy that no one was discussing about their final paper (aka my third last paper), Chem paper 1.

Later, i pangseh-ed them to meet up with some old secondary school friends at Starbucks Suntec, talked about recent events as we sat down, chatted as we sipped on our coffees, and mused about JC and Poly lives while walking to the MRT Station on our way home. In other words, we were talking cock all the way home. And i remember sleeping soundly that night.

the lack of updates

I’m so, so tired every night when i reach home. that will probably be what i will say when i start working sometime soon. But for now, it’s because i’ve been going out far too much, playing far too much, eating far too much and basically spending far too much, recouping what i had missed in those few months of intensive study.

To say the past few days had been a “whirlwind of events” would be rather apt. A whirlwind, a tornado, a hurricane, that so violently sucks away every ounce of energy, and money too. But it’s something you get attracted to, something you know that you won’t see again soon, so you walk right into it and willingly get sucked into it. In the tornado you get blown around in circles, circles, circles. The experience is something like that at theme parks, where you just vomit after going on one too many rides, but after that you still want to go on the rides to make your ticket worth it. Just one more. Just one more. Just one… ARRRRRRRGRUUWUQQUQUAA (that is the sound of you vomiting, but i don’t really know how to spell it, so i guess that should do.)

Okay, gotta prepare to go for work now. Haha, that sentence seems to have so much gravity.
will update soon!

sigh

bored with studying

i felt kinda dejected when i saw nyjc’s statistics for results. then i look at my results slip and feel even worse.
didn’t get above 40 percentile in everything.
zzzzzzzzzz
and i thought i did well for lit!
GRRR

“Perseverance” has been the “virtue of the month” for 24 months already, so i guess it is something that everyone should learn.
but i’m guessing the admin are just lazy to change that “virtue of the month” haha

full-time studying for me now. gogogo

sparklers

just the other day i was on my way to icekimo, some icecream parlour, to meet a warcraft friend who had such a sacrosanct idea of friendship that he decided to fork out some time out of his busy medicine-at-NUS studies to come help me out. i guess getting an ‘O’ for chemistry in prelims really gave him a bloody rude shock that he willingly wanted to help me. or maybe it’s just because i was whining and disturbing him ever so frequently on msn that he just decided, “ok. let’s get this over once and for all so i can get this fat boy to stfu.”

but i digress.
anyway it was lantern festival that day, and i saw a few families gathering at grass patches, playing with their sparklers and munching their mooncakes, though there were some kids who were oddly playing with their mooncakes and munching on their sparklers. Hmm.

sparklers are such poetic toys.

to a small kid, it represents a bright, shiny stick with fire, unleashing the primitive instincts in him to see the beauty of a lit stick, experiencing the same joy of our ancestors, of holding that one stick of flame, of power and of outstanding iridescence. i remember loving these sparklers when i was younger (i use “youngER” cos i’m still young okay!). i remember thinking, “hey i have fire in my hands now. i can finally taste how heavenly cooked chocolate is.” i had a childish innocence, a happy time for me. ignorance is blissful, allowing you to easily appreciate the small things in life as you haven’t seen the real big things, the superficially “more important things”. indeed, how many adults do you see playing with the sparklers along with his child, skipping and running around like mad cavemen chasing imaginary squirrels?

then there is the meaning encapsulated wordlessly into a single sparkler stick (woo alliteration! sibilance!).
that everpresent fascination
that few burning moments
that true sense of elation

how short-lived
how transitory
how temporary
how volatile
how…
fleeting
it is
all
?
(i’m just trying too hard to sound sophisticated and profound, okay?)