Friday, July 25, 2008

the alarm clock that wakes everyone up except the setter himself

Not as xiong as had anticipated; only a 6.4km run on Monday and a 8km today, where Wednesday's run was cancelled because there was no safety rover coverage. [The above statement is to let everyone know that our military views safety as a top priority!]

The National Education trip on Thursday, could well by far be one of the most interesting, if not the most interesting, excursions I ever had. The trip took us to the Singapore Crocodile Farm and the temple opposite it, as part of explanation of the history of Serangoon and the economy status of olden day Singapore.

The trip also took us to the Japanese cemetery, where the tomb of the man all grandfathers and grandmothers hated and war memorials for Japanese soldiers who died during and after the war were located. Actually I do wonder if the Japanese soldiers had been glorified for all that they had done, but I suppose one can put oneself in a German's shoes and wonder why the Allied soldiers were glorified after they had killed so many German soldiers, many his friends and brothers.

The last part of the half-day trip took us for a look at our sand stockpile, where the construction industry tapped into after Indonesia banned sand exports to us a couple of years back. As the tour guide said, Singapore is probably the only country in the world to stockpile sand. Actually there was really nothing much to see other than sand and more sand, but that was just about the only time in my life that I could physically be in there.

Unfortunately just like all other National Education trips this one was laced with heavy propaganda and brainwashing, saying how important it is to defend our country blah blah. I think I have enough of that.

Kiwi - the substance one turns to for turning anything black, everything black. From boots to rifles to helmets to vehicle tracks.

As preparations for the one big wayang show continues, this week saw us kiwi-ing our vehicle tracks, which were too, full of dried mud from Sapper Trail and could not be washed off, so the entire company was activated, with kiwi cans and brushes the size of my handphone [yes you guessed it; my handphone is in front of me and I am not a geek.] in hand, and turned the brown tracks into black.

Together with the new coat of paints the drivers gave to the vehicles earlier on, now they really looked as if they were brand new.

Early book out today for platoon cohesion! After the 8km run the entire platoon went down to 湘城酒楼 for a rather expensive lunch dim sum buffet! Food was good, though we underestimated the small size of the various foods and ordered a little too much haha. Ended the day with a walk around Funan IT Mall and Marina Square.

If there is one thing that Microsoft's products does better than open source products, it will be compatibility with Microsoft's Windows >.<. There were two instances this week where OpenOffice gave weird problems I have never seen before; I couldn't solve them even if I wanted to.

Careless me stepped on one side of my earphones one fine day and broke the external shell, although it still worked because the wiring was still intact. Today I bought a new pair of earphones which I thought was the exact same model as the pair I broke, only to realise when I returned home that it wasn't. Worse, the sound quality of the new pair doesn't match up to the broken pair. So now I am getting my father to glue the broken shells back together. I am blaming Creative for making all earphones and their packaging look so similar to each other, and also myself for buying without making sure first.

Haix.

Upcoming next week: more runs, more preparations for the one big wayang show, and keeping ourselves 'on the ball' as the green flashing man draws near.

No comments: