Earth Day

Its a day that was supposed to remind us to take care of our lovely Mother Earth, and this year's Earth Day seemed to have done its job pretty well, going by the extreme weathers that occurred in a short twenty-four hour period.

It was an extremely warm day today [and the previous few days too], and as the Sun sets, the 6.30pm news on television reported a heatwave in India. At night, there came a spectacular lightning show, after which, all of a sudden, a very, very strong gust of wind hit almost the entire Singapore.

While I closed all the windows I left a gap big enough for me to stick my head out and feel the gust of wind, which immediately blew dust particles into my eyes @#$%!. For a moment I wondered whether my living room windows were going to hold haha; of course they did, but one of the flowerpots outside my house was blown onto the floor by the wind. Luckily it didn't break.

I recall there were very strong winds at the start of the year too, but I don't remember one capable of bringing down my flowerpot. This gust of wind was epic, and very mysterious. It left a barrage of threads in the forums immediately, many forummers surprised by the occurrence.

Recently there were news reports about possible solar flares hitting Earth in 2012, which could potentially damage all our electrical and electronic equipment, throwing all of us back into Ice Age if we are not already dead.

True or not I don't know, although the year does tally with a whole range of prophecies and predictions that 2012 will be end of the world. One thing for sure is that we need to stop destroying our lovely Earth before its too late.

I quite like the wind though; cooling and smells good haha.

***********

Lately the food poisoning case that resulted in a hundred over people in hospitals threw food stalls and the cleanliness rating system into the limelight. So now there is the talk that food stalls should all aim to get A or B for their ratings, with a hint that customers should only buy food from those with As or Bs, and not from those with Cs or Ds. One letter to the local newspapers suggests converting all kopitiams to air-conditioned food courts, and the Health Minister says he doesn't mind paying abit more for the security [which I do].

You know, I have always loved the whole commercial area just opposite my house; the five kopitiams and one food court mean there is a large variety of food I can choose from.

But I, for one, have never bothered finding out what ratings those food stalls have. While I agree that basic hygiene and cleanliness are important, the ratings are not in my considerations when I buy my food. Trust in the stallholders, my own visual judgment, the cost, the quantity, and most importantly, what I want to eat, are what go through my mind when I decide which stall to buy from.

All these news came at a time where the Education Ministry decides to scrap examinations at Primary One and Primary Two levels so students will stop being obsessed with grades and results.

*************

I seriously wonder what the Thais want. Stability of the country by making a big mess out of it?

panorama

After reading an article on photo stitching in the latest issue of Digital Life I decided to try it out myself. During my Wallaby trip last year I had wanted to take panoramic photos of the various waterfronts I went to; but the camera I borrowed from my friend lacked the function. So all I did was take several photos of the places, and now I have the chance to stitch them together.

Tried out one of the recommended software in the papers, Hugin, which is free for download and use!

Had quite alot of photos in sequence, but many didn't turn out nice after the stitching.

[I have a feeling the panoramic images are going to screw up my blog layout.]


The most successful photo! Result of stitching four photos together. Place in question was Freshwater Bay, which was inside the restricted training area.


The second most successful; stitched five photos together. There's a small disconnection of the beach, otherwise it doesn't look too bad. Its a pity I don't have the photos to stitch to the left of the image. This was the beach in the small coastal town of Yeppoon. Great windy place!

Overall the software Hugin is rather easy to use, although it stumped me initially with some of the technical terms. I am quite impressed with the algorithms it uses to manipulate the images; hopefully one day I can learn how to do it hehe.

All these is making me yearn for a good camera; which I have been saying for ages but haven't got down to getting one. Haha. I bloody want a bloody camera!

叶子 - 阿桑

叶子　是不会飞翔的翅膀
翅膀　是落在天上的叶子
天堂　原来应该不是妄想
只是我早已经遗忘
当初怎么开始飞翔
孤单　是一个人的狂欢
狂欢　是一群人的孤单
爱情　原来的开始是陪伴
但我也渐渐地遗忘
当时是怎样有人陪伴
我一个人吃饭　旅行　到处走走停停
也一个人看书　写信　自己对话谈心
只是心又飘到了哪里
就连自己看也看不清
我想我不仅仅是失去你

This was the only song from her that I have listened to, but I remembered liking the song alot when I first heard it. Its a pity.

what we do on a Friday night/Saturday morning

the rich gets richer, the poor gets poorer

After a talk with my parents I decided not to apply for financial aid this year. Looking at the combined monthly incomes of my family there is no way I am going to get any form of help. Oh my god I laugh at my own stupidity. Hopefully I get it.

I can't really say that the person who is earning the most right now is not contributing a single cent to the household.

the 'turbo' button

After my Primary School Leaving Examinations, I bought a Sega Dreamcast gaming console [with the support of my mother but not my father, leading to a cold war between him and me lasting a month]. The console was sold in a package, which included a second controller, because back then when online gaming was not introduced to consoles yet, nobody bought a console with only one controller.

So the shopkeeper asked me, "The second controller, you want the one with the 'turbo' button or without?"

At the innocent young age of twelve, I had no idea how the 'turbo' button was going to help in any games, but since turbo == fast, I thought somehow it must be good, so I got the one with the 'turbo' button.

Later it turned out, that controller was simply a non-original one [which means it was made by a third party and not by Sega]. And the 'turbo' button didn't really had any effect on anything [with the exception of Street Fighter 3 if I remember vaguely, the 'turbo' screwed up the gameplay -.-||]

As time went by I had more encounters with the turbo, mostly in games where a single press of the button gave me a short burst of acceleration that put me far beyond the reach of my opponents.

Then as I grew older and learnt more I realised the 'turbo' function was something unrealistic that existed only in the virtual world; one don't find turbo buttons in real world family sedans; one cannot make himself run at supersonic speeds suddenly, because one can't create energy out of nowhere realistically.

The closest thing that comes to it was nitrous oxide, but the gas runs out pretty quickly and it cannot be refilled unless one is playing the Need For Speed series of games, which are, well, games.

Until this season's Formula One!

With the start of this year's season comes the introduction of Kinetic Energy Recovery System, or KERS. Basically KERS stores the energy released from braking, usually wasted as heat, and stored it so drivers can use to increase their speed for a short while, at the press of a button, something right out of the virtual world.

I think KERS has already being in existence for quite some time, but the first time it was brought into Formula One. Still its an expensive system, so only the richer teams carry it.

I usually find Formula One boring because the strategies employed by the teams to win are the number of pit stops, the positions on the starting grid, the point system, the safety car, which all had nothing to do with racing at all; overtaking is far and rare in Formula One. And I haven't mention how budget is proportional to the number of wins.

Now with KERS, together with numerous other changes, like reduced downforce, slick tyres that reduce grip, overtaking is much more possible. Already I saw many splendid overtaking maneuvers during the first race of the season, the Melbourne Grand Prix.

Then again, maybe I watch too many dramas or play too many games haha.

Hopefully the rest of the season is going to be as exciting as the Melbourne race, and that the appeal on the diffuser problem will not affect how the rest of the races are going to turn out. I can't wait for the Singapore GP!

One day I should get back to watching World Rally Championship again, still my all time favourite racing event. And how can I forget DiRT 2!

my little contribution to Earth Hour

Well the song is not exactly about saving the Earth, but since it depicts what everyone is encouraged to do later at night, so here it is!

全世界都停电 - Tank

连你都会残忍隔绝
我的心能要谁了解
眼中烛光摇晃着熄灭

为何把我推向边缘
被砸坏了的一切
卡住了我让我无法往前
囚禁在距离笑声最远的房间
单独隔离 寂寞地盘旋

全世界都停了电 全世界都封了街
我所有窗子外面 被贴上黑夜
我呐喊思念 却没人听见
绝望到极点剩的是疲倦

全世界都停了电 全世界白雪满天
才发觉在我心间 有回忆碎片
一作梦翻身 就刺痛流血
我卷着身体缩成一个圈 像一个句点

连你都会残忍隔绝
我的心能要谁了解
眼中烛光摇晃着熄灭

为何把我推向边缘
被砸坏了的一切
卡住了我让我无法往前
囚禁在距离笑声最远的房间
单独隔离 寂寞地盘旋

全世界都停了电 全世界都封了街
我所有窗子外面 被贴上黑夜
我呐喊思念 却没人听见
绝望到极点剩的是疲倦

全世界都停了电 全世界白雪满天
才发觉在我心间 有回忆碎片
一作梦翻身 就刺痛流血
我卷着身体缩成一个圈 像一个句点

Save the Earth!

Do you want to win S$200,000 in the OCBC Happy Savings Draw?

The new 2009 MSN Live Messenger.


Fulham 2 Man U 0


New layout; not used to it yet. They reduced the difference between the person's nickname and the actual messages, making the entire conversation window look like one wall of text. The main messenger window too.

There are only four different statuses now; Available, Busy, Away and Appear Offline, differentiated by four different colours.

The "What's New" thingy at the bottom gives updates on everything one's friends have done in their Live.


Quite useless in my opinion; but luckily can turn it off.



An icon will appear at the top right hand corner of the main window when one rests his pointer there, allowing one to change the look of the main window. Again useless in my opinion.



This new Messenger feels more like catching up in the looks department so it looks more like an application in Vista. So in short, no big deal.

如烟 - 五月天

我坐在床前　望著窗外　回忆满天
生命是华丽错觉　时间是贼　偷走一切
七岁的那一年　抓住那只蝉　以为能抓住夏天
十七岁的那年　吻过她的脸　就以为和她能永远

有没有那么一种永远　永远不改变
拥抱过的美丽都　再也不破碎
让险峻岁月不能在脸上撒野
让生离和死别都遥远　有谁能听见

我坐在床前　转过头看　谁在沉睡
那一张苍老的脸　好像是我　紧闭双眼
曾经是爱我的　和我深爱的　都围绕在我身边
带不走的那些　遗憾和眷恋
就化成最后一滴泪

有没有那么一滴眼泪　能洗掉后悔
化成大雨降落在　回不去的街
再给我一次机会　将故事改写
还欠了他一生的　一句抱歉

有没有那么一个世界　永远不天黑
星星太阳万物都　听我的指挥
月亮不忙著圆缺　春天不走远
树梢紧紧拥抱著树叶　有谁能听见

耳际　眼前　此生重演
是我来自漆黑　而又回归漆黑
人间　瞬间　天地之间
下次我　又是谁

有没有那么一朵玫瑰　永远不凋谢
永远骄傲和完美　永远不妥协
为何人生最后会像一张纸屑
还不如一片花瓣曾经鲜艳

有没有那么一张书签　停止那一天
最单纯的笑脸和　最美那一年
书包里面装满了蛋糕和汽水
双眼只有无猜和无邪　让我们无法无天

有没有那么一首诗篇　找不到句点
青春永远定居在　我们的岁月
男孩和女孩都有吉他和舞鞋
笑忘人间的苦痛　只有甜美

有没有那么一个明天　重头活一遍
让我再次感受曾　挥霍的昨天
无论生存或生活　我都不浪费
不让故事这么的后悔
有谁能听见　我不要告别

我坐在床前　看著指尖　已经如烟

reduced intelligence

In an attempt to find out why VJC did not win anything in this year's National Olympiad in Informatics, I went to try out the problem set myself.

This year's problem set had been reduced to four, instead of six in previous years. Therefore, instead of giving progressively difficult questions, this time out of the four, only the first was a giveaway. The second problem was a story so long I could not understand; the third was a simplified Traveling Salesman Problem which I tried but had quite forgotten how to code it out :/ The last problem was on ciphers which I had no idea how to solve.

Two years of National Service had had its effect on me; I have become more stupid now. Although I should say I did not have a good knowledge on the various algorithms in the first place. Haix.

The rain is coming! I love rain!

看病难，养老难，上学难

Caught a repeat of 焦点, and those were the 三座大山 that many people in China are facing now. Quite an apt description, not just to the Chinese but to everyone too. I remember there was a dumb Channel 8 television drama which I watched in the past, and the character in the drama was saying in Singapore, its better to die than fall sick.

The show talked about millions of graduates in China who could not find jobs. And today's news mentioned tens of thousands of graduates in Singapore who are jobless.

And there were the Singaporeans who put their aged parents in nursing homes in Johor and even Malacca because the nursing homes in Singapore were too expensive to afford.

I loved the watch! Thanks to all yet again. Must have cost quite abit, felt bad that you all are spending money on me. Have not worn a watch for a long time, and still not used to an analog watch. A little too formal. Hehe.

The best birthday wish I had came from my very good friend in primary school. Although since primary school we had both moved on with our respective lives and seldom talk to each other anymore, even on MSN, the birthday wishes to each other still carried on year after year without fail. To 15 years of friendship!

My house is now bright again! Some time back my father decided the original round fluorescent light tubes were too expensive, so switched to the really small type that one normally uses for toilets, and it made the entire living room looked really dark.

I guess my mother complained about it, so now its back to the round light tubes again, but with a smaller radius, most probably cheaper as well. Nevertheless the living room looks like a living room again.

When I was much younger, and when the family was warmer then, the living room was always lit with both lights at night, and I really loved the very bright living room. Now, in the name of saving electricity and the cost of replacing the light tubes, only one light is on at night, and sometimes when I come home at 7.30pm the living room will still be in pitch black. I don't like dark living rooms.

Then again, even if the lights are still there, the noises aren't anymore.

narrow and complicated

That's how my mind works sometimes.

I finally solved the problem with my MIO router that had plagued me since day one when I gotten it, by a fairly simple method that had eluded me for so long because, as the title says, my mindset had been too narrow and complicated.

As mentioned before, my desktop would be disconnected from the router, and hence the internet, whenever I played games; any game, with the unexplainable exception of Company of Heroes which I could still play. Also I had no problems with other activities like web surfing and MSN-ing. Even my most bandwidth intensive activity, torrent-ing, worked without any problems.

So I tried all sorts of methods to my LAN card; reading up tons of articles, turning off power saving options, updating drivers, disabling IPv6, etc. I reset my router, tried to bridge it to my Asus router :S, installed Microsoft Network Monitor and monitored my network traffic, then installed a Linksys LAN card, just to describe a few.

Couple of days ago I realised, to my stupidity, that besides LAN cable, I could actually connect my router to my desktop via USB cable too. For a long time all I had in my mind was LAN, LAN, and LAN, because that was the case when I used Starhub before I switched over [and then there was my two years of National Service where it was even more LAN]. And people these days don't connect routers to computers via USB anymore, because it requires installation of the router.

Problem solved, at least for now. Tried half an hour of Left 4 Dead and I'm still connected. And there's one more light blinking furiously on my router now. Ha.

Of course that did not come easy. Apparently there was no installation software to get my desktop to recognise my router, so I had to comb the Internet for a while before I managed to obtain it.

Haha I laugh at myself.

disappointment

1.

2. So turns out past two days I was not the only one to experience the [very] frequent Internet disconnections; there were a few others who had the same problem too, and we all lived in the same area, meaning something is wrong at the service provider's side.

I sent an email before I realised I was not the only one, so a technician has already been scheduled to come down to my house next week. Its ok, for even without the disconnections for the past two days, I still have other problems [together with tons of evidence to show] for the technician to solve.

How interesting it is that when I was in National Service, I was the 'technician' who went around solving problems that users encountered.

deception

Another Wallaby 2008 photo. Its the Rockhampton Post Office, which I thought was in use but turned out it wasn't anymore. Obviously the building had been given a facelift; looked new and nice.

Add a film grain and a sepia overlay, and...


Couple of days back, the news carried a report about an economic rice stall that was selling food at $2.20. The stallholder when interviewed talked about a regular customer who could not even afford $1 economic rice, and fell to his death, probably because he was too weak from the lack of energy.

And then there was this organisation that managed to raise $19 million in less than 24 hours, for construction of its new building. 22,000 people donated, which means on average each person gave more than $800.


Again overdone.

And what the hell is wrong with my Internet tonight?

discoveries of a mountain tortoise: widescreen

Being in a poor family means that I am usually not among the early birds when it comes to playing with new gadgets. I only get to use them when the ones I have finally break down one day.

So, despite widescreen technology already being in the market for years, today was the first time I got to play with one, because my LG 4:3 LCD monitor is still running perfectly well. My father, perhaps out of his mind, came home with a China-branded LCD TV [apparently he bought it because it was cheap -.-']. Happily I borrowed it to hook up to my desktop.

Switching from standard 4:3 resolutions to widescreen 16:9 there is nothing to 'wow' about simply by looking at the Windows desktop [there's just more space] or watching a movie [there's just no more black bars on top and below]. The awesomeness comes in when playing games haha.

Games, unlike those from years ago, support widescreen natively now. Instead of having fat-looking monsters or out-of-proportion buildings and vehicles that arise from using standard resolutions in widescreen monitors, the graphics now turn out correctly.

I tested out Company of Heroes, still one of the favourite games yet.

Standard 4:3


Widescreen 16:9

More space by the sides, and no obese looking soldier!

Standard 4:3

Can only see two buildings =(

Widescreen 16:9

Can now also see my engineer squad busy with their work! =)

As one can see widescreen monitors do not stretch graphics, but really allow players to see more when playing. The screenshots above are resolution-dependent and monitor-independent, so one cannot see standard graphics being stretched in the widescreen TV.

Of course if anyone thinks the extra screen space doesn't seem to help much, that's because its only 19inch wide. Apparently if one wants to get a widescreen, one should get one that's >20inch.

Its a pity my graphics card does not come with High Definition input, otherwise there will be even more fun! Makes me gian to get a widescreen monitor hehehe.

Sorry if this doesn't excite anyone. It excites me lol.

perspectives

Perfect Cut 2 is quite a nice drama. Moving away from the issues around cosmetic surgery it now involves other touchy family and relationship problems too. Or maybe the first series already included them but I never watched haha.


Went down to take a look at this year's Career and Education Fair, which was, as pointed out by a friend, more like a education fair than a career fair because other than the highlight of the entire event, the Integrated Resorts, and a couple other companies like Sakae Sushi and Mediacorp, that were offering jobs, the entire floor was filled with private schools and institutes offering courses for people to sign on to 'retrain' or 'upgrade' or 'reskill'.


In the narrow circle of friends I had when I was back in secondary school and junior college, when we talked about 'furthur education' we usually meant NUS, NTU, SMU, or prestigious overseas universities like those in Ivy League and Oxbridge. Now that my circle of friends have expanded through National Service, furthur education now also includes SIM University, which offers degree courses by UOL[where the godly London School of Economics is part of!], RMIT and University of Wollongong. And then there is UniSIM, University of Melbourne, MDIS, Digipen, and many other academic institutions that may sound lesser but not a doubt, still provide decent education to people who found themselves at a disadvantage due to society's obsession over academic grades.

sharpening by unsharpening

I had some fun with GIMP, which is a free alternative to the godly but expensive Photoshop. Used a photo which I really liked alot taken during last year's Wallaby.



Couldn't achieve much with a compact camera shot through a windscreen, so I used the Unsharp Mask in GIMP and dragged the various sliders around...



Haha. Its just for fun. I think I overdid it lol. Maybe should get down to some serious reading on image manipulation sometime.

my Briefcase of zeroes and ones

Yes I live in the past too; I think my days of secondary school were the days I had the most fun, and definitely one major contribution came from my involvement in my co-curricular activity, the uber cool computer club. Haha.

As mentioned before I was in Multimedia group, creating animations and games using the then Macromedia Director, which was a forerunner to the now-so-popular Flash from the same company [now all bought over by Adobe].

Unlike my good friends who did programming or micromouse, where source codes were in mere kilobytes, Director files could go up to megabytes, easily balloon-ed up as we kept adding in elements.

[Flash uses primarily vector graphics, thus file size can be kept small. Director takes in anything from bitmaps to MP3s to AVIs to entire Flash files.]

Well the word 'megabytes' doesn't raise any fear in anyone today anymore, since space is now dirt cheap and redundant. Back in the good old days of secondary school, however, the only form of storage I had came in the form of...


Image koped from Wikipedia

...where all it could take was 1.44MB worth of things [its really 1.38MB only]. CD-rewritable drives were expensive then thus I could not afford them. Not to mention external hard disks or USB thumb drives, if they were already in existence then.

To bring a Director file simply from home to school or from school to home was one big headache, especially once the total space required exceeded the size of one floppy. Therefore we had to come up with all sorts of methods to circumvent the lack of space.

One method was:



Yes its WinZip, used back then when Windows did not come with its own compression software. I would use WinZip to compress my files to squeeze into the floppy, but when even the compressed file was too big for it, it had the ability to span the compressed files over several floppy disks!

Another method I could use was via the Internet, after I just got my 56k modem haha. Back then there was neither Megaupload nor Mediafire; there was no Gmail yet, and Hotmail only provided a miserable 10MB[?] of space allowing only 1MB[?] of attachments.

In comes [Finally at the main topic. I sincerely apologise for my long-winded-ness] Yahoo Briefcase! It provided a generous [by standards then] 30MB of space, and had no attachment limits.


One that I created together with my friends. Brotherhoodofevilhelldeath. Haha.

With space constraints gone, my Internet speed became my limiting factor. With download speeds at 56kbps and upload speeds at 33.6kbps[?], one upload could take hours!

Anyway the reason why I talked about this is because Yahoo sent me an email yesterday, that they will be closing down Briefcase soon, asking us to save all our files inside.

With the abundance of USB thumb drives and external hard disks running into the gigabytes and terabytes, and with new startups like Megaupload offering gigabyte worth of space, Yahoo's 30MB 'briefcase' isn't that attractive now, and its closing down should be seen as a matter of 'when' rather than 'if'.

Nevertheless Yahoo Briefcase has played an important role during my days of fun; more than just providing me the ability to bring my things around, it has also become a time capsule of sorts for me. Even now I enter the username and password of this Briefcase it still gives me a good chuckle.

Thank you Yahoo Briefcase!

Last but not least some other little graphics I did back then:






Can you see which part of the world this is? Lol.




For the above two pictures, I drew the arms [and the bird] myself. It was also a modification from a ClipArt picture like the 'wildman'. It was meant to show 飞鸽传书. Haha.

ORD LOH!

[I typed this out on 230209.]

And yes, I have reached [and passed] my Operationally Ready Date; is officially a NSman now. Unlike my peers in various fighting battalions where ORD is celebrated with parades cheered by families and friends, my ORD was more like a chore for me to complete. Nearing my day of freedom I wrote my transcript and testimonial and submitted them, got various signatures for my clearance, got my dental and medical checkup done, and handed over everything to my understudies.

On the day itself I proceeded to S1 Branch to retrieve the pink IC which had eluded me for the past 1 year 10 months, and my Certificate of Service. Before taking home the remaining personal belongings, I recorded my final book-out in the book-in/book-out book, where the unspoken rule was that we would scribble anything we wanted on the book under the columns for our next book in date and time.

My consolation was that I walked out of the gate with three other friends, at least better than my bed buddy who ORDed alone a few days back. Haha. And as the day itself was a normal working day for everyone else, we were still able to see all our friends, though this time with a little 难分难舍。 Haha.

When people talked about National Service, most would talk about how they bashed through thick vegetation, leopard-crawled through mud, or climbed up steep slopes. For me, however, National Service had been about servers, computers, routers and LAN cables. Doesn't really fit into the picture of 'army' huh? Haha.

On the other hand I was still very much a soldier; defending the nation [or so they say] was the very reason why I was conscripted in the first place. I had my fair share of firing weapons, sitting in tracked vehicles [not every vehicle that has tracks is called a tank! Haha.], and close combat fighting.

The difference came in when I was out in the field. Instead of running from tree to tree taking down 'enemies', my peers and I set up systems within the shortest time possible.

Because of my vocation and appointment, I have learnt quite a fair bit about networking. The servers, routers and the expensive softwares used are luxuries that I have never touched before, coming from a junior college where A Level Computing means C++ programming haha.

My 1 year 10 month stint brought me out of my previous comfort zone of education; back in school the closest one could get to having bad experiences with people was during projects when some people seemed to do everything while some never did any work at all. Coming to army that was rather mild. I began to meet people whom made one wonder how they could have survived for so long.

[Out in the field where everyone slept on cold hard benches in the training shed there existed one who asked "WHERE IS MY PILLOW AND BLANKET!" while sitting on his safari bed.]

There are too many for me to recall now anyway; have already forgotten all the bad experiences. If I try to recall and write all that I can write a book.

To be fair I met many good friends in the army too [I don't think there's any other place where one could start hugging another after knowing each other just three days ago LOL]; last time in school friends usually meant those of the same age, those older were considered seniors, those younger, juniors. But in NS, rank, and not age, decided who my friends were. In the bunk I slept in, I was one of the youngest among all.

I met people with backgrounds that were very colourful. I met people who had went to jail, to boy's homes, to detention barracks, to exotic countries like Mexico and Turkey. I met people who had received public caning in school before, people who had stolen before, people who smoked like there was no tomorrow; met a swimmer who once held local youth records, and even a Taoist priest.

Coming from schools where everyone around me never did anything more than skipping lessons and cheating in tests, each of them had an interesting story to share.

[On a side-note, I think I have breathed in enough cigarette smoke to shorten my life by two years.]

And thanks to NS, I the mountain tortoise finally had the chance to fly in an aircraft for the first time in my life! I went to 2 countries for 3 separate events on a total of 8 flights; my 23+49=72 days in Australia and ~3 weeks in Taiwan will be major unforgettable highlights of my life; if my life had anything worth highlighting in the first place haha.

All in all, National Service had been a memorable experience. I am glad I'm finally out of there, having tolerated the lack of freedom, but kind of sad that I have to leave the friends I have literally lived with for the past year. After going through NS, my conclusion will be: Defend the country, definitely yes. Do National Service, definitely no.

civilian conversion course

A course that everyone for once yearns to go through, now its finally my turn, as can see from the time I am doing up this entry and the reason why I am doing up this entry instead of sleeping: waiting for the conversion of my Japanese drama to complete haha. I don't want to leave the desktop on for yet another night[or morning, that is]. It has already been running for >48 hours.

Before enlistment National Service was perceived by many of us as a good two year break from the monotonous work of studying; while our female counterparts were cracking their heads over their next step in life we were all going, "Ah never mind lah apply first. If never get can try again the following year." And the following year x2.

Then when everyone was inside we all could not wait to come out, to go back to studying again :/

Then again National Service indeed forms a nice cosy shield from all the external factors. A small but manageable sum of allowance every month, no worries about daily transport fares or locations to settle the three meals, and free trips to go overseas!

Now that the comforts of the National Service 'shelter' is gone I am faced with the pressure of finding work to do, for a good five to six months before university starts. Introvert me is having abit of trouble finding one hahaha.