what i did today:
-received tons of phone calls from people who don't wanna book in to camp to attend the remedial training.
-decide that i have to watch 'before sunset'.
-took the whole afternoon to watch 'all the real girls' cuz i kept falling asleep. it wasn't too bad.
-read people's blogs to find out what they're doing
-read my august '03 entry in which i said i don't want to go to 42 sar. look where i am now.
-found a really cool website which sells bags made of real container truck tarpaulin.
-booked a driving test on jan31st.

one of the great things about fellow human beings is that they don't tell you that you left your fly wide open. this morning i went to camp in all my unzipped glory. i didn't notice if anyone was staring at me in the mrt cuz i was snoozing away. i only realised it when the guard commander at the gate asked me if there was something wrong with my zip. i don't know why he was looking at my crotch though.

reality check: i kept telling my hairdresser to cut my hair as ah beng as possible but she told me that i look too kuai to ever carry off a beng hairstyle.

i went to billy bomber's again yesterday for dinner, which turned out to be boring. that is exactly what is wrong with going out with army friends whom you've already seen for the past 6 days. we couldn't get to watch any movie and i was being an anal retentive sourpuss. i was anti-pool, anti-arcade and anti-lan. the only thing i remotely wanted to do was to sing karaoke. shopping was a revelation. sometimes if you keep wearing the same type of clothes, they will come to define you. we were making fun of the men- garish loud long sleeved shirts were deemed wong-style, imaginatively named after one of my men wong.

listening to lamb's best-of compilation is like listening to a soundtrack for an unmade romantic retro-futuristic noir film. it is at once intoxicating, lush and comforting, perfect for space travelling astronauts. best bit: the second chorus of til the clouds clear, when lou's voice takes on wanting urgency and soars into the stratosphere amid increasingly claustrophobic beats.

note to self: there are driving test slots available on jan 26, 28 and 31. dunno if i'll be free.

alright i admit it, i'm spooked by scary movies. but that doesn't mean that i spend half the time covering my face with a jacket. shutter actually has a story to tell. it goes beyond the usual random haunted house. i probably spent as much time laughing as screaming. i didn't realise i shouted at all until the movie ended and my voice was all hoarse. but that could also be a result of the ktv session earlier on. i think ktv is not really healthy. you just sit in a room for hours and eat tidbits and try to sing and watch other people sing. i usually don't have many songs to sing cuz i don't really listen to chinese music. they sound familiar only because they have been overplayed on radio or tv advertisements.

so anyway army life is going to get hectic soon and the only thing i can look forward to now is an odac christmas at kim's house (i don't think we've asked her yet) and there'll be a gift exchange thing (how exciting) and maybe there will even be a turkey.

an interesting project i can work on (when i'm really bored--after ord perhaps) is the soundtrack of my life. it's common knowledge that certain songs will bring one back to a certain point in one's life or mark significant chapters in one's life. maybe it can be a boxset of cds with a cool booklet. but it'll probably be hard to pare down the songs i've heard. it will be easier to do the secondary school parts because i didn't have much money to buy cds. two songs i know will definitely be there are 'barely breathing' by duncan sheik and 'foolish games' by jewel. i remember i wrote an email about the top 20 songs i liked of all time, or at least of that time, and sent it out to some people in the class. i wish i had printed it out cuz that would be nice to keep. as i've grown older, songs hold less and less meaning to me. they are just something i listen to for leisure. they don't seep into my subconscious and i don't memorise the lyrics and i rarely sing along. primary school will be even harder.. it will be some aaron kwok junk or something from those sing-a-long sessions that we did as a school. come to think of it, wasn't that like ktv with a thousand people in the hall?

i'm still in love with shawn ban's website.

sometimes i think my friends seem to lead complicated emotional lives. i guess we all do. i think maybe i'm not so good at expressing my emotions or i just suppress them or ignore them. or maybe i'm just too good at keeping to myself. i'm in the mood to rant. i'm so sick of people judging me. i'm so sick of people telling me that i look stoned, that i have big eyes or that i talk monotonously. i'm not even going to come up with a witty rejoinder, i'll tell them to fuck off. i'm so sick of people casting me into a stereotype just because i come from so and so school. i'm tired of being the good guy, the outsider, the quiet one. i'm just a rather screwed up person. i haven't been a good brother and i haven't been a good son either. i hate being funny. i hate having to think about what people think of me and why i always do not know the right thing to do at the right time. everything i am, i can only have myself to blame.. i have so much inside and i just can't let go..

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i went to a jazz bar last night. the band was a bunch of unlikeliest looking people. the saxophonist dave barlow was the guest performer. he was bald, had a scruffy goatee, and wore a polo shirt. the drummer looked like the orchard road underpass busker.
the way i've been living my days, it's like every moment is wasted doing something absolutely mundane. i wake up at 11, go to a shop in beach road to purchase a spanner and an allen key, then go home and watch dvds. i need either a really good past time or more friends.

i failed my driving test.
hrmmph.

i think i should blog only when i have something to say. otherwise, it's just a waste of time. i should be asleep right now because i have a driving test tomorrow morning. i'm feeling the pre exam stress. i'll probably get sweaty palms and churning gastric juices tomorrow. anyway a few days ago i decided to apply to berkeley, you know, for fun. i even got to filling up my particulars. that's when the camp computer crashed. maybe it was divine intervention. so i went home and had a talk with my mum. i guess i'm still a long way from learning not to regret the path you've chosen and thinking about the long term instead of short term. i think i've been very fickle minded and undecisive. and so i've gotta stop thinking about taking u-turns. see, this worrying about my studies can only mean one thing: that my ns life is coming to an end.

p.s. this was a classic example of self censorship. i kept it vague and less specific because i sound pathetically conflicted enough.

[in which i think i'm recovering from blog fatigue]

1. had dinner at black angus. tried to recall which was the bacteria that grows on food. went over to the marmalade pantry to try the cupcakes but unfortunately they didn't have any left. so kim, onz. ended up drowned in chocolate cakes. couldn't walk well after that.

2. change of plans after all, i'm going to kuala lumpur. it's suaku but i'll still go up the petronas towers and take a picture.

3. ok so it's a general survey and it's not the whole picture but how am i supposed to feel now that the national university of singapore is ranked higher than cornell? actually the whole ranking thing just brings back to me how narrow minded and callous i was in applying for universities cuz
a) rejecting cambridge probably wasn't a good idea now that it's no. 6. though it would mean going to magdelene college and boating on river cam.
b) passing up on berkeley which i had no idea was so well regarded. i am such a retard.
c) applied to carnegie mellon and considered illinois, both of which are even lower in rank.
d) not going for the imperial college interview was really stupid.

but i really shouldn't let this bother me.

yes gabriel i really did buy "welcome to sunny florida". i only wish there were more songs in the dvd. i always wondered why the title was so weird until i watched it and found out that it was raining heavily the day of the concert so the title's probably ironic. there are the old songs like crucify and precious things and newer ones. sometimes i connect with her a lot but sometimes i just find her wailing idiosyncratic and excessive. i can understand why some people are turned off by her. but the audience in the concert was like a cult worshipping her as a goddess. there are actually people who went to 90 of her shows. i hope to see her live within the next few years.
i've been watching the johor dvds for the past two weeks. i'm 2/3 through six feet under season 1. i just went to the website and found out that they're already in the fourth season. hubba hubba. it's pretty funny and interesting- every episode starts off with a person dying in the craziest shit way possible. for example, this guy went into a dough mixer and the switch gets turned on and so he got chopped into many bits n pieces. my copy of 'lock stock & 2 smoking barrels' doesn't play well at all though.

i have a break from this wednesday to next next sun. dunno what i'm going to do, considering i'm not going to KL with the other guys cuz of my driving test. which i'm so sure i'm going to flunk. i feel like a failure sometimes. so far i've spent about $1800 on practical and some more on the initial fee and the test.
so anyway i'm expecting to be bored to tears the next week.

the raining season is great. it never fails to rain during training.


seriously. i really thought the odds were against him.