I'm moving there. I feel that Blogger is not keeping up with the times, and that its functionality is very limited.
Updates stopped for this blog. Last post 20 August 2013.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Been a while since I updated, and the reason is obvious. I actually came home last weekend, but I had to catch up on 2 weeks worth of news and apply for university courses, so I really didn't have time to do anything else.Well, I'm not going to list out what the NS experience has been like from the start to till now, because that's just going to take pretty damn long. I'll just type out whatever stands out more.
So on the first day, you basically go to Pasir Ris Interchange, get on a bus, reach the ferry, get to Pulau Tekong, and you have to say oaths and stuff. They steal your pink IC, then they give you your green SAF card. After that, its lunch with the people who came with you, then its goodbye for 2 weeks. You go to your camp, get sorted to your bunks, then its a real busy day ahead of you. Its easily one of the longest days you'll have even though its factually one of the shortest.
First they'll give you a black duffel bag containing your army clothes and shoes and stuff. After that you'll get your field pack containing army equipment. Then I had to lug the damn things up 2 flights of stairs up to the hall to check if we had everything. Seriously dude, those things were heavy as hell. And my damn bunk is on the 4th floor.
Anyway you check your stuff. I really can't remember things well now, so what I say might not be very accurate. I think its lunch next, then things just get fuzzy. So to just list out the non-routine events of the two weeks:
1. Cut your hair
2. Get 3 jabs for vaccinations
3. Fill in a bunch of annoying paperwork
After all that administrative stuff is settled, life in the army is generally something like this:
0545: 5BX (basically morning exercises)
0630: Breakfast (not sure if its really at 6:30am, meh)
After breakfast to first parade: Clean the area you're assigned to
0730: First Parade (they make you drink 500ml of water and take your temperature)
0800:
1000:
1200: Lunch
1300:
1500:
1800: Dinner
Night:
2230: Lights Out
I'm sure you're wondering why there's blank spaces in the timetable up there. They're basically variables that change from day to day. It might be a route march, games, swimming, a talk, lessons, strength training, speed training, cadence runs, flexibility training, ability group run, area cleaning, or some other random rare event that might pop up.
So yeah, the army life is generally boring. Or to be more accurate, the physical training phase (PTP) of army. You're not going to be handling your SAR21 much, you're not going to learn to use the grenade, run the standard obstacle course (SOC), not going to go on field camps, no situational tests (something like the Band of Brothers part where Sobel had to lead his men through a set-up mission), nothing of that sort. In fact, I won't exactly call what I just listed above "fun". Its just unique and a special experience to go through.
Well, we all did get our rifles once though. Basically they're making us get used to the route marches, so they slowly add more weight and increase the distance we have to travel. The final target is 16km, with the full uniform, the load-bearing vest (LBV), field pack and rifle. Currently we're only wearing the green camo pants, the brown army tee, the LBV and the rifle. That's already about 8kg of weight. Oh, and we only march 3km.
So all we really did with our rifles is carry it around, oil it, and learn to check clear. Check clear is basically a process to ensure that there's no live rounds in the rifle. I'm not that keen anyway. Getting a rifle just means more responsibilities and more opportunities to screw up.
- The freakin' camp is infested with birds.
- We spent the first few nights smacking bees dead with a newspaper.
- I'm not sure if its a good thing, but staying away from the main camp requires transport, and its usually coaches we get to ride (air-con and comfy seats). Less time maybe?
- Thank God for putting me in the slackest platoon. I hope that title remains status quo. However, we've been told that we are crappy, so things may be heading downwards.
- There's ice cream every Tuesday during lunch.
- Their noodles and other noodle-like stuff taste damn weird. Its mushy and chewy.
- Their drinks always seem to taste better before you eat the food.
- You're going to gain weight.
- The floor surrounding the swimming pool is as gross as hell.
- Damn El Niños.
- Army songs are going to get stuck in your head for a while.
- Stale cigarette smoke. Sigh.
- Stop speaking Chineseeeeeeeeee!!!!!
And now for something interesting that even people who completed NS might not have experienced before.
Well on Wednesday, there were around 5 or so people who reported sick and came back from the medical centre with an "unfit for duty" status. On Thursday, it increased to about 12 or so. On Friday, there was close to 15 (light duty/unfit for duty). That's not including the people who were sick but did not report sick. I forgot to mention that this is purely on a platoon level, not company. My platoon has 64 people. If I'm to do a rough estimate on the number of people who are sick, I'd say 30 people.
That's a pretty alarming figure, so on Friday, we were sort of quarantined. On Thursday, they checked our bunks and water for ways that sickness might be spread. On Friday during morning exercises, we had to do it with a gap between us and the other platoons. During swimming, we didn't have to do warm ups, and we didn't have to swim. Damn that was good. Lots of us just slept through the swim. During gym session, we went off to a little corner to do our own exercises. To be honest, I kind of liked the way things was going, because it was like we had some sort of special status that just made us a special bunch. Its like we have our own VIP seats or something like that.
Thank God again for letting me kind of survive that. I'm not sick, though my throat is a little ticklish.
Friday was also book out day, but the bus driver went home when he was supposed to fetch us. Lol. Anyway, they called in army transports (you know, those huge lorries whose tyres are about three quarters my height). So we had to book out about 30-45 minutes later. Oh well.
Right. I just realised the title of the post is "time is scarce" and I've mentioned nothing about time being scarce at all. Well, I book out on Friday nights, reach home at 9:00pm the earliest. I have to bathe and stuff, and I'm sleepy as hell, so I usually sleep by 10:30pm. I have about 12 hours of sleep, wake up still sleepy on Saturday, read a week's worth of news and other crap, and I realise its almost time to sleep again. Then on Sunday, there's church, lunch, and when I reach home, I have to pack up, and its time to leave for Pasir Ris again. So really, I only have Saturdays to do what I want.
Ah well, 3 weeks down, 14 more weeks to go.
posted @ 11:06 pm
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Saturday, March 06, 2010
If you are reading this, then I am already gone.I have been conscripted by Singapore. I'll be online a lot less now, and as a result, will be blogging a lot less.
Singapore. Remember that country. If you're below 18 and male, don't be a citizen or a permanent resident here, unless you don't value your freedom. Besides, most first-world countries don't have conscription. Since we have a largely third-world population, and we're in Asia, we're conscripted. Well that's not really the proper reason, but what the hell.
If you haven't realized yet, the link I put above for conscripted brings you to the slavery section of the page.
Average lifespan of a Singaporean male citizen: x-2 (x being the current average lifespan). Those two years we're stuck in the army isn't ours to use. On the bright side, I'll be more inclined to give someone a punch in the face now that I learn how to defend myself. Thanks.
Goodbye.
posted @ 12:00 am
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Friday, March 05, 2010
H1 General Paper: BH1 Geography: A
H2 Mathematics: A
H2 Chemistry: B
H2 Physics: B
————
H1 Chinese: S
H1 Project Work: A
And that concludes one phase of my life. The next phase begins tomorrow.
You know, every year ACJC does this thing where they go down the list, calling people up the stage to celebrate, starting with the top student to the students with 3 distinctions. So starting with the two students with 8 distinctions, we have to wait one by one for like, 200 students to get up to the stage. Its like some sort of American Idol elimination. Its annoying if you ask me. Sometimes it makes you wonder “HTF did [insert name here] do that well?”
Ah, whatever.
posted @ 4:25 pm
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Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Went out with Samuel yesterday. Haven't seen anyone from Secondary school who isn't in ACJC for two years. Pity the other people I usually hang out with in Secondary school can't make it.Anyway, we were supposed to meet at Cathay at 11:30am. I reached there at 11:30 or 11:31 or so, but that idiot decided to come 30 minutes late. Anyway, we were going to watch From Paris With Love. I haven't been keeping up with movies news other than the ones that are hyped up (Avatar), so I don't really know if there were better movies to watch.
Anyway, we bought our tickets first, then headed to Plaza Singapura to find something to eat for lunch. So the idiot decided to take a lift to the 6th floor, walk to the Japanese restaurant, flip a few pages, then walk around some more. Then I suggested Cafe Cartel and we went all the way back down again. Cafe Cartel has this set lunch meal for $9.50, which includes soup, free flow of bread, a drink, main course, and dessert. Pity the main course was kind of crappy for that day. Their fries suck. They used to serve ice cream for their dessert too. Now its some cream chocolate roll that you get from Polar Puffs & Cakes.
We were kind of late for the movie, so we went off right after lunch to Cathay. We were late, but not late enough to miss anything important. Only had to sit through about a minute of trailers before the movie started. Did I mention the movie is rated M18? To be honest, that rating doesn't even make sense. Movies like 300 and Hitman feature much more gore and nudity, and they're NC16. The censorship board being stricter maybe?
The movie is about two secret agents who try to protect people from terrorist threats and other shit. That's pretty much it. Lol. Just sit back and enjoy the action.
Quick rating: 3.5/5.0
So after the movie we decided to go play pool at Marina Square. I've never played pool before then, so I guess I wanted to try it out. But that idiot had a lot of things to do. Lol, keep calling him "that idiot". Anyway, he wanted to go buy some bread from Breadtalk, then he wanted to go to the bank. When we were in the link between City Hall MRT and Marina Square, he wanted to buy sushi. Well, I went to buy ice cream from McDonalds in Marina Square.
There are a lot of toy claw machines thingys outside the pool place, and I told him that there was this particular kind of machine which I think may be easy to win at. Its those kind of two-claw machines. Two claws might seem harder, but if you look at how they place the items, its always sticking out dangerously over the chute. I'm always thinking that all you really need to do is give the toy a little push with the claws, and you win. I never bothered to try. I don't want to sacrifice $1.50 to do that.
Either way, we went to play pool after that. It was $12 an hour, and apparently they don't accept our student Ez-link cards. So we had to give a $50 deposit. We didn't have 50 bucks, but the guy there was kind enough to just accept 30 bucks.
I kind of screwed up the first few shots, but who doesn't? I couldn't exactly get a comfortable hold with the stick, so I ended up hitting the ball weakly and off-centre. Well Samuel isn't that good at pool anyway, so I wasn't too far back even though I kept hitting like an idiot. He somehow managed to hit the cue ball off the table. Lololoolololooooooooool.
Halfway through the game I managed to get a hang of it. I didn't screw up my shots anymore, but that doesn't mean I'm pocketing balls left and right. Its going to take a lot of practice for that to happen. That doesn't even happen when I play pool on the computer. Anyway, I won the first game, mainly because Samuel took an eternity to pocket the black ball. I was like 4-5 balls behind him, and I had the luxury to pocket all those balls while he desperately tried to pocket the black ball. Somehow 1 game takes 30 minutes, so that really sucked.
The second game ended really quickly, simply because I accidentally pocketed the black ball before I was done with the coloured balls. Since there was about 15-20 minutes left, we started on a 3rd game. I did pretty well in the 3rd game, since by the time we had to stop, I had pocketed all my coloured balls, while Samuel still had 4-5 balls left. I went on a method of "just hit the damn ball and see where it goes". It works pretty damn well actually, since the balls just somehow manage to reflect off the walls and end up in a pocket you'd never expect. Even if it doesn't the ball might manage to end up somewhere that might be easier to pocket.
Comparing pool with bowling, I have to say pool is a lot easier to get a hang of. Just 10 minutes and you're pretty much able to hit the balls properly. I even made one shot that pocketed a ball from corner to the opposite corner, along the longer length of the table. Mastering pool is another thing. I still can't get a hang of pocketing a ball as long as its not an exactly straight line. In fact, I miss the straight line shots sometimes. On the other hand, bowling takes a much longer time to get a hang of. You're going to throw your ball into the gutter more often, and even if you do manage to hit the pins, you'd rarely ever be hitting anywhere close to the middle. But once you get the hang of it, throwing the ball where you want it to go is not much of a problem. However, causing any sort of spin or getting strikes constantly is something that would most likely not happen unless you had professional training.
We thought of bowling after the pool game, but they were doing some upgrading works on the bowling alley, and half of the lanes were closed. The remaining lanes were almost fully occupied, and the whole alley stuck of paint, cement, and all other smelly things you can think of that is related. It was getting quite late too, so we just went off wandering into the shopping mall. We went into quite a few techonology-related shops, such as Creative, Sennheiser, and Sony. To be honest, I really want a good pair of earphones. One that blocks out noise, and one that plays music with a quality as rich as normal speakers. Another funny thing is that I've never seen a PSP Go yet. PSP fails too much for them to bother selling it? Too expensive to bother trying to sell? Whatever the cause, all I know is that my PSP is becoming obsolete.
The idiot somehow managed to walk into a clothes store and wanted to try a pair of jeans. Full of problems.
Anyway on the way back to City Hall MRT, I bought the chicken floss bun from Breadtalk. I haven't eaten that in years, and geez doesn't it taste good. If there's a type of food I have to choose to survive on for the rest of my life, it'll be bread and cereal. Played the game where you have to tilt the phone to guide a ball into a hole on his iPhone. Pretty fun. If the iPhone isn't obsolete by the time I'm out of army, I might get one. Bloody hell.
I decided to stop at Dover MRT again to try to walk back home. Well, this time I didn't make a wrong turn at all. But the problem is, I didn't turn at all. So I ended up walking a lot more than I should have again. I ended up at Pine Grove, and damn that place is bigger than I thought. I don't know when I'll be attempting that walk again, but since I didn't turn at all, now I know that there's a total of 4 turns, and the 1st and 4th turn shouldn't be made at all. So there's two turns left for me to explore.
posted @ 8:13 pm
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Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Here's my bandwidth history for today. I have a more accurate one, but that one would most probably be 1000000 pixels wide.
As you can see there's a funny part called "assholes hogging the connection". I know I spelled connection wrongly because Photoshop has a problem with detecting double-typed letters if done too quickly. To be honest, all they're doing is streaming videos to watch. I'm totally fine with that. But due to the nature of what they use to stream their shows, it causes other users of the connection to be slowed down so drastically such that attempting to surf the net is near impossible. Opening Google (one of the simplest pages around) takes a minute or two. Sometimes even a maintained connection with MSN Messenger cannot be set up (such programs use less than 1kb/s to maintain logged in status).
So, I download unnecessary things. It doesn't let me surf the net any better, but at least its denting their streaming.
posted @ 12:11 am
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Monday, March 01, 2010
I like this spoon. Its from Awfully Chocolate.
posted @ 12:48 am
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