Checkpoint!

Since the new year is coming, I figured I should have some sort of a resolution-thingy done. It's not exactly a resolution as I probably won't stick to just one or a couple of them for the entire year. Besides, I lose sight of it if the duration spans 365 days.

So what I'm going to do, is to start a new practice of having a checkpoint entry every month. The check point entry will detail what I aim to do each month, or over a couple of months and also track the changes of these tasks I set out to accomplish. Tasks might be scrapped, accomplished, failed, or even readjusted.

The following are detailed for Dec 08:

1. Print my photos
2. Decorate my room
   
3. Register for National Vertical Marathon
4. Register for Adidas Sundown Marathon
   
5. Clear my Class 2b license.
6. Start on driving.
   
7. Marksman
8. IPPT Gold
9. Start training for NVM and ASM.

Happy New Year everyone!

Merry Christmas Peeps

Yea I spent my Christmas countdown in the guardroom. Sucks to be doing duty on eve of holidays but someone's got to do it.

Blissful news from Jonathan(my host in Australia). It's been 6 months and apparently Jon has been up to quite alot lately. He's gone on his South-America trip that he's been planning for so long and he married Yoko! To top it off, he is going to be a father soon! I hope I can visit them sometime soon next year when I get my leave. Congratulations to Jonathan once again.

On a side note, the taxi driver was friendly today.

Home Alone

Home alone after confinement. It's all quiet and still. Mum, brother and sister all went to Vietnam. Dad's out as well. The sound's all bouncing off the walls and all I'm hearing is me me and myself. I need some noise other than those coming from me. Boo. What am I saying.

Pardon the long absence...

as I have been busy with the preparation for the upcoming audit. Luckily I still managed to squeeze in a couple of hours for myself.

Last Friday was a half-day as we had S4 Branch cohesion after that. And so we had quite a good time at the Minds Cafe with everyone including LTA Ricky and CPT Lim. Looks can be deceiving they say, and all was revealed during the playing of games during that Friday. Both officers showed that they had no regard for their status or image whatsoever and indulged in the games wholeheartedly. LTA Ricky also bought some very-expensive-$120 cupcakes for us and mentioned that 'we were worth that much'. He meant that we were worth him buying $120 cupcakes but everyone had a good laugh intepreting it as the 30+ of us were only worth $120 in value. Lol. Hope that we'll have a good 1.5 years with them in the brigade.

Saturday was spent OT-ing touching up the vehicles and whatever remaining tasks that are to be done. Then I went to meet Zhen Ling, Casper and the rest of the SAC gang for dinner. Guess what - dinner's at Minds! Most of us weren't really in the mood for games and soon decided to chiong for the free entrance at Double O. Place was full of NSFs, some bapohs and a couple of the mature crowd around. The rest is pretty much the normal routine - drink, talk cock, dance followed by more drinks. What's to expect? The drinks were REALLY cheap. The day ended at around 5+ am when I reached home in a cab.

Until now the effects of alcohol and exhaustion are still hanging upon me. I should probably cut down on such long days cause I feel so easily tired these days.

Friends and all please pity TC abit and try to engage in more easy-going activities. Haha.

Judgement day for US

Today is judgment day for our Uncle Sam. Of course we are all very excited about the US. Outcomes of the election will no doubt influence stock market fluctuations, international ties, the ongoing war efforts and most importantly the US economy itself.

I wouldn't say I have been following up very closely on the whole campaigning efforts of both parties but the recent news has been bombarding us with the status of the campaigns extensively. I certainly do not know both candidates very well, however, I have a slight inclination towards Obama.

Obama has been the cool, motivational and charismatic candidate of the election more than McCain has. While many has been harping on his heritage and also inexperience, with his motivation and vision, Obama might be the energy that US needs.

McCain, on the other hand, while so-called more 'experienced' and known to deliver sound judgment, has failed on several fronts. His leadership skills have shown through the organising and running of his campaigns. Often disorganised and haphazard, his campaigns have failed to shone through. Few would disagree that he does not understand the state of the economy well, given the collapse of the financial world, coming soon after he commented that 'US economy has good fundamentals'. What is most obvious to all his is judgment, having chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. I believe there is no need to elaborate on the 'genius' that Palin has shown herself to be. McCain needs nothing short of a miracle to turn the elections around.

There has been skepticism about Obama's victory and talk of a comeback for McCain. While I highly doubt that, Obama might just need to put in a little more effort to convince any undecided last minute voters to ensure his victory. All shall be revealed tomorrow. God Bless.

have a break, have a little laugh

Back to the embrace of civilisation again, though only for a few hours. There was this small incident that even I got quite amused myself.

I was reading a book when I came across this description 'trapped in a tank with a banshee'. The first image that came to mind was literally a tank - an amoured one. Now there was absolutely nothing wrong with that, except the story was set in medieval times, where the most advanced form of weaponry was probably the crossbow. For that short moment I failed to fathom why the story had tanks in it. It soon dawned on me that the tank used in the story was a storage tank, as opposed to the armoured tank I was visualising.

I had quite a laugh at myself. Corruption of the mind by SAF, or perhaps retardation.

movie, dinner, pool, coffee

So it was another ordinary weekend. The party was different though - DD, Drk, Ceed, Guang and Tommy.

First up was the movie - The Coffin. I was never a fan of horror movies but since the group wanted to watch it I just tagged along. Sad as it was, horror movie have failed to do what it was supposed to do, to me. They were either too boring or too amusing. The Coffin is based on a true ritual in Thailand where people enter the coffins in an attempt to cheat death. What they didn't know is that bad karma can't be gotten rid of and comes back to haunt them. Overall the show is disconnected throughout and plot is predictable. Attempts to scare were pathetic and I managed, barely, to keep awake because of the loudness of the speakers.
Rating: Not a movie worth watching at the cinema.

We had Omu Rice by Ajisen, recommended by Ceed. Abit on the pricey side for the amount available, but food quality was manageable. I can't say I will eat it again though. Following dinner, we went for a short walk and thereafter abandoned by Ceed, Tommy and Guang.

Drk, DD and me went for some pool and settled for coffee at Starbucks. CJ joined us shortly after for a short chat. Due to the nature of participants involved, it seemed that no matter what we spoke of, the topic inevitably revolved around NS. Hard to blame, since we were NSFs or soon-to-be NSFs. CJ was rather worried for his field camp, an all too natural reaction. I had the jitters when I was just about to have my field camp as well. It will come to pass, no point worrying, cause when it comes to it, you just have to go through it.

On a side note, when people keep telling me 2 years pass by very fast, it kind of annoys me. When you are going through it, you have no idea how agonisingly slow it can be. For now I'll take it 1 week at a time.

dinner with mr ker

Turns out it could be a good thing that I rank low among the hierarchy of the army. Less responsibilities, less work, less expectations, less attention attributed. Of course the downside of all this irrefutably results in lower pay. But who needs money when you can have the freedom?
Since Time = Money, therefore Low Pay + More Time = More Money! LOL. While I'm not everyone would agree with me, at least I would like to keep myself happy with this formula. Haha.

It's been ages since I've met Mr Ker. Thanks Mr Ker for forking out the time and even bothering to meet me for dinner. Despite me not being a good friend, he has, through his gestures shown that I'm always remembered. It felt really good talking to Mr Ker, we would go on and on about anything and everything. As usual, Mr Ker is entertaining and his words were thought-provoking as well. I definitely look forward to more meals with Mr Ker. It's not everyday you get to communicate with someone of the same frequency.

Thanks Mr Ker for the present as well! Truly a case of thought that counts.

MAJOR update

In case you have been wondering what chau has been up to, here's the quick rundown:

1) Worked various jobs after graduation.
2) Visited Melbourne.
3) Enlisted in July.
4) Posted to HQ 4 SAB(Singapore Armour Brigade).
5) Currently on course at 42 SAR(Singapore Armour Regiment).
6) My current vocation is AFV OPR - BX(Some sort of tank-like-vehicle driver).
7) Has lived on this earth for 7311 days/175464 hours/10527840minutes.

I won't elaborate on the events that transpired during the army as most would probably start snoozing off.


This week has been largely uneventful(whats new?) now that the driving course is coming to an end. Earlier we had spotted rats scrambling about, but we didn't expect rats in our bunk. Yes, right in our bunk. So one very bored YongZen decided to do something about it. He picked up the rat trap which had been idling about in front of our bunk and decided to put it to use. And so he set up the bait with a piece of cake and left it in our room.

I was quite skeptical that it would work since there were no obvious places that the rats could stay in our bunk. We went on with our usual read, eat and slack routine. Twank! went the rat trap, and lo and behold, we got a small one in the cage.

YZ was very disappointed, for he expected a much bigger one, like the one he had seen. As the initial excitement about the efficiency of the rat trap died down, YZ asked, "What should we do with it?". I couldn't come up with anything good and reminded YZ of his idea to flush it down the toilet bowl. Crazy YZ picked up the trap and proceeded towards the toilet. Now for the amazing part - The rat refused to be flushed down despite us trying to flush it into oblivion with a pail of water and the toilet bowl flush combined. Thus, we left the furry fellow hopping and swimming about in the toilet bowl and went back to bunk.

Determined to try again, YZ set up the trap again. Just slightly after midnight, the trap was activated again. In the darkness I could make out the long tail and the body of a larger rat. The rat started screeching loudly and I was amazed that YZ managed to sleep through that. Not giving a shit I went back to sleep.

It turned out there were 2 rats in the trap when we had a closer look the following morning. YZ decided to keep the rat in an empty cupboard and fed it with the cake we had. Funny how he had tried to flush 1 down the toilet bowl just the day before and now he was keeping 2 as pets.

Oh and by the way, the rat in the toilet bowl was no longer there. We wondered if the rat was rescued or flushed down by another one of us. For now we hope our bunk is now free of rats(save for the 2 belonging to YZ).

This is what happens when you're bored and have absolutely nothing to do except twang(in other words, zuo bo lan) and sleep in the army.

to felix

Chau has been away. Missed? Maaaaybe.

Felix has been complaining about the disappearance of the teh bing uncle lately. He will be disappointed though, for teh-bing.blogspot.com will not be making a return. The Chau Chronicles has been set up instead.

Previous attempts to blog has been largely hindered by lack of content and lack of motivation on my part. Not like the posts were really meaningful or important. Chau chronicles is a brand new start and a place for jotting down the impromptu. In anycase I have a now-dusty travel blog here if you want to read about it. When I have more time I will update on my Australia trip(Yes, I know it is loooooooong overdue).