Monday, April 30, 2007

DRILLLLL

2.11pm
i do believe i stated i had high hopes for gurren lagaan, and thus was worried that i'd be dissappointed more easily. but no. NO. it has met, and exeeded my expectations. never ever have giant robot heads seemed like a better theme for an anime. this is shaping up to be a spectacular ride.

of course, following typical gainax production strategies, they probably blew half their total budget on the first ep, intricately animating things like dust swirls and explosions. but what the hey. it was worth it. i doubt they can keep the level of animation up, and if they can, then holy shit this is the anime of 2007. if they can't, we'll always have paper cutouts and manga pages.

middle of the morning night

2.35am
my watch rang at 1.50am, from the last time i set it a few days ago to wake me for field camp guard duty.

finally found another anime to start watching again. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and yes that was copypasted. it's by gainax. the director was the dude responsible for flcl manga pages in the anime and the paper puppets in karekano. he did the gunfight scene in flcl and the crab battle in mahoromatic. if he can churn out 26 episodes of stuff like that, then i'm in for the fucking ride. i am so fucking in.

of course, now that expectations are high, i will be dissappointed easily. we'll see how it goes. ep1 download has begun. perhaps i'll sleep now, or go back to levelling my warlock. 28.5!

WHAT IS THIS

2.10pm
so apparently ouendan 2 is already out... since feb 21! happy birthday to me. i can't find a rom online.

not that i can play, even if i find the rom... stupid charger...

oh snap

Sunday, April 29, 2007

7.44pm
i'm not sure i properly conveyed the overwhelming nature of that panic attack i had. but no matter. it is over.

and in presently more important news, i forgot to bring my DS charger back from camp. on a three day weekend! fuck! i was even planning on getting out my Sapphire cart and see what pokemon i can steal
dammit

i foresee that i will wow alot

catnip

2.45pm
back from the aptitude test.
....
i'm not sure how i did. better than a lot of the others, i'm sure, but good enough? i dunno.

we were given three a4 cardboard sheets and an hour to make an abstract sculpture representing the theme of "lightness and heaviness". wtf. okay, i expected shit like this. however, the time limit really threw me off. halfway through i had a massive panic attack. the worst i've ever had. it was ridiculously frightening. my hands shook uncontrollably and i started to babble to myself in my mind. thoughts of giving up then and there and retaking next year constantly flitted through my head.

i was freaking out because i only had like 20 minutes left and i was like 10% done. i

HOLY FUCKING SHIT I JUST REMEMBERED THAT I DID NOT REMEMBER TO ATTACH MY EDUCATIONAL TRANSCRIPT but wait a sec i also remember them saying i can mail it in within three working days oh fuck oh fuck brb

yes. calmed down. things should be alright. its not like i can cheat a photocopied result slip.
back to the story. i planned out an abstract see-saw balancing thinggy, and for some reason i chose to make the middle plank curve upwards. the cutting and taping for that stupid thing was a nightmare. i was barely started and i tore the cardboard by sticking the tape on wrongly thanks to by injured fingers and then i looked at the time and holy shit i had twenty minutes to go. i hadnt even cut out all the pieces i needed. serious panic. i tried to calm down and move on to another part, making a simple cube. i couldn't. i fumbled around for a fucking five minute period before i slowly started to calm down. a few tips for myself in the future: stop looking at the time every half a second. look at what others are doing. it really helped when i realised others had gotten about the same amount of work done as me. of course, i had more to do, but still. looking at other peoples' designs of ..a cone with stuff sticking out of it.. made me feel better about mine. so i finally got back my senses (hey dude why are you cutting each side of the cube out individually???) and made the cube. and moved on to the balancing board. the taping was still messy but now that i could see that everyone else wasn't particularly worried about tidiness either, i didnt care so much. in the end i got it done. the design was more or less what i planned, minus the polish and the sharp detail. give me another half an hour...

anyway. part 2 and 3 in another hour. part 2 was fucking easy, 2 minute work. five words each to describe some pictures of a kettle and a house in the woods. part 3 was brilliant: adapt your design in part 1 into a structure/piece of furniture to sit one or more people. i hope all the idiots who made cones choked and died.

oh nooooo

Saturday, April 28, 2007

11.32pm
i cant believe i'm reading up on architecture
i'm going for an impression along the lines of "no definite information but interested"

a couple of bridges: cavenagh- only suspension bridge, oldest too. benjamin shears, longest, tallest. erm. esplanade bridge.

upcoming architectural thinggies in singapore: the singapore flyer. stupid wheel. i think its ugly. IRs. one by genting. marina bay one by moshe safdie (what an easy name to remember... SAF DIE.) which links nicely to

stuff outside of singapore: habitat 67, also by safdie. i believe i've blogged about it before. freedom tower.

pritzker prize = good

kk i'm going to sleep. this is not getting me anywhere.

did i say sleep? i meant play pokemon. the new additions in pearl and silver are annoyingly heavy on steel and ghost type. it's quite ridiculous that there isnt a decent flying pokemon around. i need to get an aerodactyl.

fuuuuuuck

11.23pm
my future
it is ruined

i am now really worried about the architecture aptitude test tomorrow.
firstly because there is competition from about 400 other applicants. what the fuck.
secondly because a number of them are 4A students. in Bravo company i've got an old sec2 classmate clifford who's a 4A student and still put architecture as his first chioce. man! go do something... more... i dunno, educational or sumshit
thirdly i've heard the test includes a questionaire with stuff like 'name five statues in sinagpore'. holy fucking shit. merlion.. raffles... that freaky bird... um, sergeant rocky?
thirdly. i do believe i mentioned my impaired left hand. the list of items to bring seems to indicate that theres significant construction work of some sort. not good.

shiiiiiiiit

if i dont get in then it's choice number 2! industrial design! fucking fuck!

CHIONG SUA

5.01pm
sigh
back from field camp. another one next week. i am not a happy camper.

cliffsnotes:

silver for ippt! truly amazing for me. 2.4: 17+ minutes to 11.18 in four months... i never though i'd acheive anything like that.
still.

from this highly scientific graph we can see how i will never acheive gold.

field camp day one. it rained. i nearly managed to almost slightly sever my left thumb and ring finger while pitching basha. i can't type properly. or, i can't type w, s, x and 2 without sharp pains. oh, and i found out that the sharpshooter (me.) has to carry the matador (fuck.) i found out in the afternoon how ridiculous it is to doze off while standing upright on your feet. carrying a sar, matador and claymore bag. i think i absorbed about 30% of all the lessons they taught.

field camp day two. it rained. we awoke to the raging fury of a cat1 monsoon. it was absofuckinglutely brilliant. i love the rain. i really do. it's the muddy ground that gets me afterwards. in the night, i got caught powderbathing with two other guys outside the campsite boundary. three extra, to be served during field camps. better than getting confined, at least. cleared one with prowler duty. walked two rounds, then went to sleep, lol. the guard duty roster happened to be already full that day.

field camp day three. no rain in the morning... which means 5bx. fucking sian. more drills in the day. blew all the remaining blank rounds at night, all at once. we were firing the things like they grew from trees... or maybe mimosa. fucking mimosa. it's fucking everywhere. thank goodness for gloves.

random thoughts, lost track of timeline:
tripflares are cool. breaching is a stupid suicide mission. the infantry are fucking extra. smoke grenades don't cause asthma attacks. plan B (bravo?): gunpowder smoke does. am opportunity!

those were just the main events. points that i didnt mention were the pervasive irritation of constantly wet+muddy pants and feet. the murderous mosquitoes that are smaller and less obvious than the tekong monsters, but somehow bite 5X more. retardedly heavy LBV - why attach ET tools??? and the Mike Foxtrotting MATADOR. getting taught by fucking stupid WO's. honestly, we know it, they've admitted it, their education level is lower than ours. i don't want a fucking PSLE-level adult teaching me ANYTHING. the lessons do not make sense. they are disjointed and incoherent, and one WO will infallibly contradict another at a later date. and no one will dare/bother to clarify because we'll just get scolded for 'not paying attention'.

in general, i can summarise any field camp experience in one word: leceh. so sue me, i take a lot of little things in life for granted. but all those little things dissappear all at once In The Field, and it makes for a supremely annoying experience.

fuck sispec.

i should sleep

Sunday, April 22, 2007

1.02am
but time is so short
news: ff13 is not ps3 exclusive! gasp. i doubt the wii could handle it, though.
also!
new katamari! let it rest, you fuckers!
and what the fuck it's also not on the wii... excuse me?

ugh

Saturday, April 21, 2007

11.24pm

i give up on the mushroom thing
the search function does not have simple parameters like 'colour'
crazy mushroom fetishists

fuck bravo company

10.48pm
lost a saturday to m203 and matador subcalibre live firing. oh damn, i promised myself i wouldn't start my blog entry about army shit. ah, anyway. grenade launchers are cool. and its highly disturbing to feel a matador shockwave sweep through your body.

anyway. that was the high point of the week. and i had to lose a saturday for it. the other days of the week were absolute shit. there is no progressive training in this fucking place. you spend morning to night in filthy fatigues because they schedule SOC first thing in the morning and then have a full-day navigation exercise from noon till midnight. and then agr and strength training the next day with a 6am wakeup timing. average hours of sleep a night is about 4.5, once my mandatory hour of DyS is counted for. i don't mind sleeping so little, it's pretty easy to get used to and stumble through each day like a zombie (i doubt people notice any difference) but its really annoying when they ask if we've had seven hours of undisturbed rest, and then ignore us when we all shout NO. and then give a lecture at RO (cutting down sleep time again) about how if we don't follow hte lightsout timing then its our own problem. fuck you, then don't make us pack and plan for a full day navex after only briefing us in the evening.

oh, a thing about the mandai forests: burn it all down. or at least give me decent checkpoints, and not fucking 1km apart, with wonderful descriptions like "NW of slope". still, i admit it was pretty nice to navigate the section over that 1km and end up only 5 meters off the checkpoint. but... i don't want to do it again. fuck the next one on tekong. oh, right, storytime. the night portion of the navex was fraught with more spooky encounters, courtesy of another indian friend with the eye. i mean, the "Eye". he was bed two as well, just like nawal was in Ninja. and the thing he saw was fucking similar to the one in BMT. same outfit, same actions, same demeanour. i have decided to cut storytime short because i want to sleep tonight.

i just skimmed through what i typed and it's not looking good. sense no making. but i'm too tired to edit it.

one last thing to do before i go to sleep:
during the navex i saw a mushroom. actually, i saw a shitload of mushrooms, big flat brown ones embedded in fallen logs and tiny round white ones peppering the side of stump and funny cone-shaped ones poking out the ground. but i saw one really eye-catching mushroom. it was shaped as generically as a mushroom can be, i'm you know the shape i'm talking about, but thsi mushroom was neon orange. bright neon orange.

http://www.mushroomexpert.com/
http://mushroomobserver.org/
http://www.mykoweb.com/

lets see if these bunch of freaks can help me.

holy shit i just rememberd something else. we came across some sort of freaky animal hanging on the side of a treetrunk. shock still. unblinking. at our head level. we stared at it. it stared back. it was the size of a bloody dog. its body sort of melded with the treetrunk... leading me to think that it had wings covering it... and that maybe it was some sort of bat... the SIZE OF A DOG. no.

isn't it?

Sunday, April 15, 2007

2.48pm
.٨rcueid. says:
when we get to use smoke grenades
.٨rcueid. says:
i'm goign to inhale a lungful
.٨rcueid. says:
see what happens
[Josh] non-aslc batch |http://ratherstrange.blogspot.com/| says:
aaaaa
[Josh] non-aslc batch |http://ratherstrange.blogspot.com/| says:
thats smart

i will be bringing my ipod in this week. what next! mah laptop????!!!!!

origami. origami. shut up, kid.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

3.34pm
one thing the army has taught me to love is water. it's the tastiest drink in the world. seriously. the past week was crazy. three SOC periods. crazy endurance runs.

congratulate me for i have finally learned all the names of the people in my section. ftw!
bslc ..ahem, basic section leader course, is 30% over. three weeks in sispec. i have a few observations that i will now make.

1) having regulars as commanders is totally different from having NSFs. and i can further split this down into the sergeants and warrant officers. the sergeants are a far cry from BMT sergeants, who, i now realise, had a totally fuck-care attitude towards training us. these sergeants are a hundred times more competent and down-to-earth. i guess it comes from realising how they're the smallest shits in the pecking order of army regulars. the warrant officers... are fucked up. i don't like them. fat, annoying, bossy. impatient with anyone and everyone. fat. arrogant and quick to impose their own wil upon anyone lower ranking. this includes us trainees, as well as the sergeants and PTIs. a thing about PTIs.. i like them. sure they're sadistic, but when i'm immersed in a company with fucking low (i.e, non-Ninja) standards, a bit of enforced discipline is somewhat refreshing. anyway. back to the warrant officers. who are fat. a PTI will be explaining something, eg. SOC stations, and the conducting warrant officer will sit at the side, or pace up and down, and glare at him. you can almost see the impatient fucker thinking something along the lines of "fuck off you stupid shit, i'm the one in charge of the trainees. are you done yet? don't waste my time etc etc" and when the PTI is done, he'll step in and start giving his own lesson. in cruder, less sensible and more repetetive words. and burn our admin time. and all the while i stare at his BLOODY PAUNCH and wonder how he is qualified to give any lesson on any physical activity. fatasses. oh, except for my PC, who looks like a coffeeshop uncle but still gets gold for IPPT (lower standards considered, of course)

2) point (1) was too long

3) scrap the points, i've lost track of what i was thinking about SISPEC while typing out point 1.

so.. random thoughts. 13 minutes for SOC. cleared the obstacles, at least. i really hope they take my physical standards into consideration if they want to pop me in ASLC, because i think i've about hit the upper limit of my physical abilities.

oh right. big point. my DS has been an essential lifeline. one of hte best purchases ever. every night i play till about eleven and run on six hours of sleep the next day. unlocked and beat ready steady go on tuesday. hit the meat of pheonix wright. it's a great game. I AM THE RIGHTEOUS DEFENSE ATTOURNEY! RAWR. megaman ZX is starting to look interesting nwo that i've got the saber. died repeatedly on the first boss, gave up after a few times because i got tired of replaying the entire stage. classic gameplay ftw.

the drink machine at my company line only sells jia jia products. i don't really mind, the selection is decent enough. sourplum ftw. lime is good too. and there's this really wicked canned coffee by the stupid name of boosta. from the stuff on the can, it seems it's teh equivilent of coffee and red bull together. funnily enough, the word 'caffeine' does not appear even once. reccommended intake: 2 cans daily. i hope i remember that wrong, and that it's "not more than 2 cans". but hey, jiajia's a 'singapore heritage brand', there's no reason to expect decent english standards.

compass course. man that was fun. navigation is really cool. wandering in a straight line and hoping you hit the next checkpoint. 100 metres is 67 paces for me. heading to lower mandai next week for a real full day exercise. gypsy 1. stupid codename.

monday! SAW + SAR live firing! ftfw! can't wait to try out the scope and teh pewpew lazors. also, as Bed Number 5 i narrowly missed carrying the SAW and Matador. instead, i glanced once at a list where the letters 'SS' were written beside my name. i had no idea wht this was until the section live firing demonstration. my biggest guess now would be 'sharpshooter', meaning i get to play with a SAR with a 3x scope. woot! unconfirmed, though. i'm happy enough not to be carrying a Matador, in any case.

army life blogging stops here.

...and i have no other life at the moment so there's nothing much left to say.
anime watching has begun again. went to box and got the first two seasons of nanoha (i can not bear to type the full name out). a third season is already out, and ..well, you have to take notice of that, right? i mean, it shouldn't be too horrible. then again... galaxy angel has like five seasons and... never mind. we'll see.

also, reminder to self to catch up on air gear in an understandable language. english. also, also, i need to play the other tsukihime routes. the manga is excellent (this is a biased view, -duh-) and i am catching hisui-moe. it is an inexplicable phenomenon.

oh, right

Sunday, April 08, 2007

7.27pm
one more thing.. to the guys enlisting tomorrow... ..though i doubt any still read my blog....
HA
HA
have fun, suckers. in any case Ninja already took in a ptp batch on march 15th, so, like, whatever, you get no pity from me. i hope you get into jaguar.

one fifth over

7.11pm
it's a time and more! and i probably made this joke before.

three day weekend, and here i am blogging an hour before i have to leave for camp. this is one of those times where i don't feel like recounting the last few day's events one by one. a bunch of us met at william's. was pretty low key compared to past occassions. gary i brought you your powerball but you forgot to take it lol.

i heard a dedication on the radio a night ago.. to 4Q of raffles institution... class of 1991. how long ago was my 4Q? i cant even remember any more. oh, right, 2004.

will be bringing in my ds to camp tonight. will forever live in dreadful fear of a MP-conducted stand by bed. still trying to think of a hiding spot.

low morale.

wdsjbhavhbholyshitadsjbvha

Sunday, April 01, 2007

4.09pm
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adsvklkingdomadflakrgv
dcvncx,heartsmvnenoiv
aevmnerv;dosizcjmb,ty

OBJECTION!!!

4.38am
HOLD IT!
i've been awake for 24 hours now. and i slept at midnight the day before. i blame pheonix wright. and mario. and puyo pop. and castlevania.