whaaaaaaat

Thursday, May 31, 2007

9.54pm
this anime is weird
the opening was great. it was excellent. it was promising.

...the first ep is boring. no, it's excruciating. i can't wait for the characters to shut the hell up.

and then...
and then..
i started laughing. i thought i was going mad. there was nothing to laugh at. i think i was laughing at the intense concentration of pure MUNDANE(n) in the chatter that was being presented to me... but i'm not sure. i think i'm going mad.

and yet... the first ep of haruhi was shock-treatment standard boring as well...
WHAT IS GOING ON??

dancing animu!

9.32pm
if you understand that entry title... you're from 4chan! go a-fucking-way!

but still...
it's a dancing animu!

opening lyrics:
i'll still be laughing in the end/ebcause its a sailor uniform/QED!

sigh. right.

7.33pm
erm, right. i guess i have to blog. only that everyone's blogging like once a month, at most, and it feels weird to be the only one updating once a week. except daryl, of course. in any case, it would feel weird to miss blogging about a big event like bslc graduation...
...but it seems like every week something big happens... so whatever...

yeah i'm a corporal. the rank on my arm is now corporeal. PUN. i could have crafted that one a bit better, but i'm out of practice. sorry.

the 28km march was pretty tough. bravo got the shittiest starting order. last to leave. firstly there's the stupid fact that we ulitmately end up getting less rest time than we should because the first few companies that headed out first already rested a whole lot more. secondly, our rest areas at the stop points were also all at the back, so on the way in, we always had to walk past every single company that had already tossed all their stuff on the ground and were happily Sunset Bay-ing, if you know what i mean. and when we start to move off, it's like an extra 100m (minimum) of walking to the start point before the PTIs blow the fucking whistle to start us off.
after the final rest point i was all fired up to go, so i started my stopwatch when we got up. my feet felt like tonners had run over them all morning and my head was simultaneously foggy from sleepiness and pounding from a caffiene-withdrawal headache. a while later i realised we had come to a halt.. what's this? i looked at my watch. it had only been seven minutes since we started walking. what was going on? a shrill whistle sounded. "ok guys, last 4 click! go go!"
!!! fuck!!!!
it doesn't help that i brought every fucking thing along. shouldve left the dummy loads and the litre of water in the pouch and ET tools behind... that's, what, 3kg? it would have helped a lot to carry 3kg less.
one last thing. NTU is fucked up. up the hill, down the slope. up the slope, down the hill.

the graduation parade was a mindnumbing nightmare. we got back later than everyone so we had like three minutes of rest before forming up to march out. fuck you, sispec. why the fuck make us keep our fieldpacks on? i fidgeted. so kill me. my shoulders would have fallen off if i didn't. my arms were too weak to do hormat senjata. and not even the rusok after, it was the saluting part that i cocked up.

anyway. by that time i'd been awake for more than 24 hours. after the parade we still had to march back to company line, which is further away than everyone else's. hurrah. we had to clean our weapon, which was a joke. weapon oiling brush and bolt carrier group in hand, we all zonked out. everything gets blurry from there. there was lunch somewhere, and we got our postings and booked out in the evening, but everything in between was a blur.

i'm now going to ATI, armour training institure. i've heard i'm automatically going to be an armour infantry soldier, which means i run behind the tank and still have to chiong sua. or something like that. i'm not very well informed about armour. oh, i get a black beret.

i watched pirates 3. people said it sucked... well i can't disagree. the storyline was getting a bit pretty flaky by the end of the movie. calypso was a waste of time. singapore was a footnote. barbosa is suddenly mr. goodguy. the main characters had about twenty minutes of dialogue, total. it didn't feel much like a pirate movie.

embarking on a new anime series, lucky star, by the revered kyoani. i read a chapter or two of the manga that it's based on though, and it wasn't very good. it sounded at first like a cross between genshiken and azumanga (i almost ruined my pants) but it fails in application... it seems like it was aiming for, and falls extremely short of, azumanga's deadpan non sequitor humour.

ep 1 had completed, i'm waiting to see if ep 2 will complete before i watch the first one. book in time tonight is 11pm, i've got more time to spare than usual. tomorrow... sispec anniversary. waste of time. i'm bringning my camera in, i hope they dont conduct checks at the gate.

odin sphere has absolutely entrancing graphics. gameplay is a bit iffy, through, but i hope i've only scratched the surface. pokemon is taking a turn for the worse as i just caught my first lengedary with one ultra ball toss, and discovered how freaking powerful it is. i'm still holding out against using legendaries, but hte temptation is there. ouendan 2 has been completed on hard, moving on to the cheer girls difficulty. ikuwayo!

i wanna be a pop star

Sunday, May 27, 2007

1.00pm
japan produces males artistes who are REAL MEN. RAAAAAARGH

i don't want to blog now. my life is going through one of those annoying stages that i absolutely hate: change. sure, stagnation is boring, but there's something to be said for confortable routine, too.

BLSC is ending. amazing. it seems like [it was just moments ago / only yesterday / a heartbeat away from / etc.] when i first started army life. it always seems like just when i'm finally adapting and even flourishing in my environment, it's time to scrap everything and start again.
for eg., during our first and final 100% stand by universe, i found a power point behind my buddy's locker. liek, zomg! eight weeks with that thing behind me! my life would have been so much easier if i had found it at the start. it took a little remodelling, though, because the locker was originally pressed flat against power point so there was no way to plug stuff in. half an hour and a jacknife later, this wasnt a problem after i ripped the whole block out of the wall and moved it around the locker to a recess in the wall... or something. it's hard to describe. this is really one of those picture-says-a-thousand words times. in any case, i now have an easily accessible and completely, totally covert power source at my bed. it's brilliant. my DS ran red twice last week since we had so much fucking free time and i never had to worry about using the plugs at the other side of the room. and now i have to kiss it goodbye because ~~even if~~ when i stay over in ASLC i have to move over to Hotel Company.

anyway. somehow i cut my SOC timing down to 9.24s. hah, unit standard met. should i thank bravo for making me carry dummy loads and doing multiple rundowns for each lesson? i could, but... nah. it's been a constant question for me which i prefer: Pain+Gain vs. Slackage? i enjoy my fitness now but i loathe exercise. sorry but i can never actively visualise the benefits ahead of me when i'm dying of thirst/exhaustion/lack of breath. at that moment, at that place, all i ever know is that i am suffering and i want it to stop.

next week: 28k 'fast' march. a joke compared to Ninja. of course, i never completed the 24k so who am i to talk. also, next week: PASSING OUT OF BSLC WHAT THE BUTTT

sigh.

game talk. i've spent so much time on my DS the last week. it's kind of disorienting, actually. 'wow, i played that much? wait, wasn't i in camp? how on earth did i do that?' etc etc

pheonix wright 1 completed. the final, fifth case was humongous. four pages of court evidence to go through, endless cross examination of fucking witnesses who fucking LIE on the witness stand. i mean, commit perjury, and not like... you know, lie down. retard. anyway. the case just kept going and going and going... investigation and point and click and discovery and OMG WHAT A GREAT GAME

also, we had another nights off, on the day Pirates 3 came out. the only conceivably possible timing only had 5 seats in the front row, so we buggerred off to the arcade and then went to play LAN. urg, dota. i can't wait for starcraft 2 to come out so dota will be left behind in the shadows. hopefully. of course, we also played cs and i ruled iceworld with that totally cheap shotgun. i dont even know its name. then we moved on to a map which needed actual skill, and i got pwned totally.

back at home, i believe i may finally be dusting off my PS2. unsurprisingly, it's ATLUS to the rescue with delectable offerings that meld in anime along with an rpg setting.
...although i never did finish Disgaea 2...
anyway. kawasumi ayako voices the main character, squeeeeeee.
ecchi nano wa ikenai to omoimasu!
EEEEKSUUUU KALLEYYYYY BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!

the download should be finished by the next time i get home... wednesday? something like that. i'm also downloading pirates 3 because i'm never going to get to watch it outside now that i missed the first weekend since its release.

BAM

Sunday, May 20, 2007

4.32pm
THE WITNESS'S STATEMENT IS CLEARLY FAULTY, YOUR HONOR!
This evidence, it er... clearly contradicts the er... witness' statement?
...
It doesn't, does it?

chewing through the phoenix wright OST. midi music is hard on the ears so i'm only picking out the few i enjoyed.

yes yes starcraft 2, whopee. when i heard last week about the rumors of a new blizzard game announcement i was all set for world of starcraft. now it's just starcraft 2. hurrah, just point me to a torrent and tell me the cheats. i'm in it for the story. i watched the trailer and watched the marine get suited up and waited and waited for it and he opened his mouth and then he said: SOMETHING OTHER THAN 'Gimme something to shoot" OMG WHAT THE FUCK WHAT A WASTED CHANCE
sigh.

HOLD IT!
where are the xel'naga!!!!! what the butt!!
at least... let there be kerrigan? pleeZe? there can't not be kerrigan. that would be so wrong. i think i saw kerrigan in the trailer.

i hope this allows blizzard to split its scifi half and fantasy half into two, and stop screwing up WoW with clarke's third law. fuck clarke.

GRRR

Saturday, May 19, 2007

10.46pm
this has been one of those weeks where a lot happened, but seems trivial compared to the acute hardships of the weeks before.
point form!

- guess who's an architect?
no, not me. not yet.
been accepted into NUS archi. ftw.

- SOC timing 10.46
seventeen seconds away from a pass timing. it's harder than it sounds. tuesday is the test. in bravo, only if you get below 10 minutes, you get to book out early on friday. like, dream on, man.

- bravo company is fucking welfare again. it boggles the mind.
we had two nights out in a row this week. eight weeks of waiting.. and suddenly two at once. it was anticlimatic, anyway, because all the movie timings were screwed up. missed 28 weeks later, definitely have to catch it eventually. the second night i just stayed in bunk. srsly, i have my DS to game, my ipod to listen to music and watch anime if i want to, the only reason i even need to step out of camp is to surf the internet. and stay sane.

- pheonix wright is almost done. need to start looking for the second game. i think its in the big torrent i used the last time, but i've already deleted that. pokemon is crawling along. my team is horribly imbalanced, in the bad way. i still have nothing to counter flying and water pokemon. go figure. my zubat-turned-golbat-turned-crobat is crazy strong. who knew?? i relied on it for like both the last two gyms. i actually WoWed a bit today. on my rogue, which i've been ignoring for some fuck reason. just can't bear to reach 70 without a flying mount or decent gear. same dilemna as pre-60, i guess. i'll get over it. i hope. gold count is 720. 280 more to go. must save.

i see my point form steadily breaking down. oh well.

so much to do! so little time. end up just not feeling like doing anything.

Monday, May 14, 2007

i started these downloads half an hour ago!

shallow and insipid

10.18am
hurrah, Off In Lieu. supposedly we get monday morning off because our saturay was burned, but it wasn't burned that badly. extra sleep time and a chance to recover. i don't think it's entirely sufficient, though. my knee hurts whenever i bend it so i walk funny. my back is... i'm not sure what the fuck is up with my back. it doesnt hurt normally, but when i try to do the old sit-in-a-chair-and-twist-around trick to crack my spine... i can't. it hurts a fuck and i can barely turn halfway around. my left shoulder sometimes sends out warning twinges, too, when i bend over and stuff.

i blame the matador. nah, i take that back. i think i've seriously gone mad, but i enjoy carrying the matador now. the sling is wide and well cushioned, so it feels more comfortable than my rifle. the weight is fucked up, but after two weeks you sort of get used to it. sort of. and with the added trouble comes some added benefits, firstly being the constant availability of a dry seating area, no matter how muddy the ground is. just dont let the commanders catch me sitting on it or i'll get pumped with my hands resting on it instead. also, it's a great footrest at night, so my pants dont touch the ground. also, it's the perfect excuse when they ask for volunteers to do shit. i just turn and walk away, and they can't say anything because oh noes i'm so burdened already. rofl i'm a selfish bastard.
no, really, carrying that thing around everywhere must entitle some form of positive reciprocation, right?

anyway. three SOC periods in the following days. i hope my body can keep up.

-anime babble-
just finished nanhoa A's, now i can move on the ongoing StrikerS. it will be rather mind boggling to see how every other loli character suddenly twenty years old.
it's been some time since i've blitz-watched (i need to find out the german word for 'watch') an entire anime series, and i must admit that the feeling is not entirely the pleasant rush that i remember it being, a few years back. damn, i sound old.

fucking fuck, i'm already nineteen. last year as a teenager. twenty is a scary number.. it disturbs me to no end. it demands something, and i'm highly uneasy about my future. mainly because i know i won't suddenly change into some responsible, hardworking guy with a (*ahem*) healthy lifestyle and less childish interests, and moreso because i get the feeling i should.

no! back to superficial blogging. pokemon now! omg i'm raising a zubat. for the first time ever. even back in the days of pokemon red, i glossed over zubat as an annoying thing they put in caves to piss you off. now i'm raising one. mainly as a replacement for aerodactyl, wtf. a far cry away from what i want? surprisingly less so. amazingly it's going to match aerodactyl's speed, but without the attack stats i want, so it will most probably become an annoyer. fear toxic! and confuse ray! and flinching moves! jolteon is a harder problem. nothing matches the speed and special attack stats i want.

meh. random thoughts. Get Fuzzy is still funny, amazingly. i think it's the characters that manage it. that new sunday comic, Lio or whatever, is a waste of space. ben and jerry's chocolate fudge brownie ice cream does not, can not come from an earthly source. i still weigh 72kg, after three weeks of field camp. i blame ben and jerry's chocolate fudge brownie ice cream. ...and oreo wafer sticks and tony roma's steak and ribs combo meals.

buggrit

Sunday, May 13, 2007

10.52pm
pokemon talk time
more stalling. it seems like i didn't do my homework properly. both aerodactyl and jolteon can only be obtained after i complete the game once and see all the 150 pokemon viewable at first. what. the. fuck. thanks, that's my two favourite attackers gone. i'm sticking by my decision not to use any legendaries so it's back to the drawing board... serebii.net ftw

taimu waitsu foru nou waan

3.24pm
toki wo kakeru shojo was good. a bit like the movie groundhog day.
except it is japanese and animated, which instantly makes it 50x better.
and minus the stupid jokes and bill murray.
and more heartwarming and nicer to look at.
in fact it's nothing at all like the fucking movie groundhog day. except for the time travel bit.

er... right. i need to get the OST.

no, wait. i need to get to sleep. fuck, i typed in the time wrong. it's am, not pm. whatever. tab tab enter

GRAND SLAM

Saturday, May 12, 2007

8.39pm
EX GRAND SLAM is over. three weeks of field camp. omg i'm so happy i could go squeeeeeeee

seriously, i can hardly believe it.

a few things to note, though. that last field camp wasn't really that horrible. in fact, i could even claim i enjoyed it somewhat, for a number of reasons.

firstly! i got a pimple before field camp, and like most of my pimples it was huge and swollen and impossible to burst. so, i reported sick. for a pimple! any complaints from commanders were silenced by the perfect excuse: "you know how fucked up my head is???? well it became like that because of something like this!!!! *point to pimple*
so i got 5 days excuse from camo cream.
field camp with no camo! liek zomg lol.

secondly! i never knew it as a recruit, but tekong is a wonderful, wonderful place. at least compared to lim chu kang. ZERO mosquitos. i slept with my shirt open. i slept in peace without irritating buzzing beside my ears.
field camp with no insects!

thridly! lucky weather. we were awoken by monsoon rains again, which i thoroughly enjoyed. (i kept this to myself, though, since my bunkmates didnt seem to be having much fun) BUT, the extra hot tekong sun beamed away for the rest of the day, completely drying out my sleeping area. i even hung up my groundsheet and it fucking dried out. sweet.
field camp with no mud!

fourthly! no one told us, so we had no idea: exercise grandslam is less of a field camp and more of a sit test! wtf three days free and easy. cooking food, lots of free time. i got everyone's unused solid fuel together and had myself a fun time committing minor arson. i didn't manage to burn down the whole forest, but i tried. an interesting discovery i made was that comms cord burns for a decent amount of time if you use a big bunch and manage to collect the melted plastic together somehow. anyway. the testing required us to do a lot of fighting patrol missions and ambush setups. so apart from the person being tested, it's really easy to slack since my sergeant is a total blur cock. if i'm not section commander for ambush setup, i just prone and go to sleep. if i'm not sect com for fighting patrol, i just take a slow stroll along the planned route and then when contacted, dash a short distance into the trees till you can't be seen and happilly walk around, shouting out responses to commands as required.
field camp with no chiong sua!

also! OTOT powderbaths, actually enjoyable! combat rations! yes i enjoy them. especially after two weeks of being forced to eat fresh rations. wasting time with a fork and spoon and a flimsy paper box of soggy food. combat rations! so simple so easy, just tear and eat and tape it up and toss it somewhere in a ziploc in your fieldpack. and biscuits and pocari and cereal mix and fruit bars. it's a picnic in the park! i have been brainwashed.

arh i'm wasting too much time blogging about the army. but i must still continue, for the sucky parts must be recounted as well.
the first day before EX GRANDSLAM we went for EX WANDERER. tekong insects are fucking unbelievable. i walked into a spiderweb so big that the web gummed my fingers together. the spider itself was the size of my palm and did a fucking dance on my face. i walked into a number of ant nests that were covertly constructed on the undersides of leaves. what the fuck is up with that. there's no way to avoid those nests completely, so you never now if you managed to skirt all the boobytrapped leaves till you find your entire sleeve covered with big brown-orange ants. navigation in tekong isn't that bad, actually, since the island is so big that we can walk on the tracks without much fear of being discovered. but. walking on the tracks didnt help much because HALF THE FUCKING COORDINATES ARE OFF. confirmed by a sergeant with a GPS who helped us on one of the checkpoints. also, it rained at around noon for two hours or so. both my boots filled up with water. i was wearing double layers of socks, so i had about a third of a litre of water sloshing around with my feet. now both feet have minor footrot. joy. also, also, my fucking company sets the night cutoff timing at 6am. the next fucking day. we found the final checkpoint area at around 1am. we confirmed this because there was another checkpoint sign with the exact coordinates of our own checkpoint on it. we spent the next hour combing a 30 metre radius around the sign. at 2am we gave up and comms'd back to HQ. basically, expectedly, they told us to fuck off and keep searching. so, more half hearted attempts. after another hour half of us (including me) gave up and sat down. we were at a BMT sit test site so there were actually plastic chairs around, lol. burned solid fuel while the remaining people who were still adamant on finding the checkpoint got pissed and fumed at us. we fell asleep while they spammed the comms channel with complaints. at 4am we eventually got orders to change our checkpoint, along with new coordinates, but by then we were so fucking shag that we didnt find that one either. eventually we were allowed to move to the night end point. to be greeted by another 4km march to our GRANDSLAM camp site. it was a miserable first day. my feet were immersed in water for so long that when i took them off (at 8am the next day) it looked like i had two big white brains on the ends of my legs, since my feet were so wrinkled and swollen. i powdered them down but it just looked weird cuz powder gathered in the cracks. so they now looked like sugared walnuts. or something. metaphors! what joy descriptive language brings me.

it's 9.41pm now. i've been typing for an hour. the wordcount on this entry is about a thousand words, and i wish i still had the energy to type more out. but the clarion call of my numerous electronic vices pulls me inexorably away. i intend to finish pheonix wright tonight, as well as watch that anime i blogged about last time. i need something lighthearted and preferably comedy-based first, though, because i just read all of RE-TAKE and i'm feeling mellow.

stop! typing!

okay!

Wondering if anything will go right

Sunday, May 06, 2007

6.43pm
hour zero approaches. at least this time there's two days in civilisation before going out to the field again. and it says a hell lot how i'd even prefer life in pasir laba camp to anything.

my DS is with me and i'm ready to play tonight. a few problems though.. pokemon is put on hold till i can link up with joshua and trade over a decent fire type. i'm stuck at a stupid grass gym, of all things. i could catch a nearby ponyta... but nah. i hate training pokemon i'm not going to use for long. and my life is a hollow, empty shell until i get jolteon.

nerd talk! enough.

oh, i lied. last minute anime watching... i'd completely forgotten about nanoha A's that i downloaded a week or two back. there's a german speaking robot sword! liek zomg. also downloading toki wo kakeru shojo, it's movie size and won't complete before i have to leave. another spur-of-the-moment grab, i'm hoping it will be another voices of a distant star. at the very least, i hope it's another tokyo godfathers. haven't watched anything heartwarming/breaking in some time.

nothing much more to say. my back is constantly aching and that's not a good sign. it's not bad enough to make me downpes but also highly crippling. i've noticed that almost all my bodily grievances fall along that line, highly annoying but not enough to warrant any significant ease on the demands placed upon me. like my asthma, it's a daily irritation but never serious enough to get me out of athletic stuff. my eczema and my bald spots are fucking annoying but who cares, it's just skin deep. sometimes i wish i could lose a foot. seriously. is that being morbid? maybe. but i'm pretty sure i could lead a normal life without a foot.

my left foot, please, because i think i'm getting foot rot in between my toes. fucking two weeks of 24hour boot-wearing. with wet+muddy socks.

why does the army torture us so

Saturday, May 05, 2007

9.02pm
twenty four hours from now i will be back in camp. i just got home.

three consecutive field camps in three consecutive weeks. it's insane. we went for section live firing today on four hours of sleep. i was the second M203, which means i had to run out in front of one of my bunkmates (..and a bit to the side..) while he let off bursts of automatic fire from behind. i'm still alive.

tonight i will bathe, and go to sleep immediately. i guarantee it.

noo

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

5.52pm
I DONT WANNA BOOK IN

spiderman3 was lousy

i need to charge my DS

i dont wanna book in