My Life So Far

Sit down. Take a blankie. Make a cup of hot choc. It's going to be a mindless heartfelt ramble.

Ever since I was extremely blessed to win the XBOX360, I had the gamer life that I often wanted. Even as a young adult with a little bit more cash to spend and swim around in, I hardly ever thought of buying a console. The financial weight of the console itself plus a few games to kick off would cripple me by one grand. Now at least I have more cash for my games. My dad just bought me 3 games. I think that's too much now haha, but well they are good games. Ace Combat is relatively old but the gameplay is absolutely absorbing. I'm excited to have Assassin's Creed but since it's the same genre as Ninja Gaiden, I don't wanna start another story without finishing one first. Granted, NG2 is getting pretty hard for my gaming-uninclined mind, so it might be a long time before I break the seal on the AC box, but we'll see... Still got Star Wars: Force Unleashed, Mirror's Edge, and Guitar Hero World Tour coming up. $$$ :'(

The end of BMT is in sight. You might want to call it indecisiveness, but till today, when someone asks me if I would like to become an officer, I still cannot provide a definitive answer. I wanted so much to get a perfect score for live range (shooting), but I was sorely disappointed at my own performance. No matter how much I knew I was wrong, I could not stop my nervousness from overtaking and making me pull the trigger a hair of a split-second too soon. 25/32. Some of you are cursing me right now because that's a dream score. And that's why I tried to stop myself from lamenting too much about it. My mates might not think too well of me. Is that self-censorship? Some say yes, most Chinese beg to point out that it's humility. Perhaps it's the culture of absolute obedience to the ancient emperors that Chinese like to insist that "they're right, I'm the one who is wrong".

Made a couple of great friends in camp, bonded by passions for various things. Filmmaking. Animation. Japanese culture. Humor (yes, humor). Social welfare. Can't stand a couple of people in camp. Inconsiderate. Troublemakers. Big talkers. I notice that the big talkers always have an aura of low self-esteem around them. You just have to look hard enough. And when you find it, it will shine brightly at you after, calling for help for it's owner, asking for a friend. I'm not made out to be that friend, no matter how kind I like to think I am. Maybe in a few years.

MacDelivery seems to find itself incomplete without screwing up. Ordered two McSpicys and a double cheeseburger meal, and can I have some mayo please, but they didn't have the mayo. 3 minutes later after I'd poked the straw in, laid my hands on the fries, and carressed the burger ready to mutilate it, a manager from the branch calls to say that they sent the wrong order, and he's sending the right one over now. I say the only thing I'm missing is mayo. And he says well ok, just take the mayo when the rider comes then. So he comes, and he wasn't even given clear instructions what to do. He left his cell to charge at the branch. We got a buy-1-get-1-free.

With mayo.

It's a good thing they didn't call back asking to have the package back to send to the right house. My dad was already heartily tucking into the second burger. Yeah right you're not hungry. I would have freaked out on the phone if they did that.

Red Cliff is awesome. I knew I was right not to watch it on my ZEN. The atmosphere is just not there. But I get home to a 19" monitor, a 2.1 sound system enhanced by a USB DAC, and Microsoft's TruBass and SRS WOW settings.

I couldn't peel my eyes away.

It was so good, I immediately went to scout (ahem) for traditional Chinese music. Qin music, like it was played in Hero and Red Cliff. Not the exact type, but good enough for me. It's generally very relaxing and meditative, traditional Chinese music. Also went to dig up some traditional Mongolian music. I've been acquiring alot of all these sleep-well music lately. Good for a Tekong lullaby, you know.

I miss my involvement in the new/social media scene, really. Miss the events, the excitement and anticipation of new products, no matter how reserved the attendees are on the outside. All bloody professional-looking masks. Most of all, miss meeting new people with similar interests. Cooking up ideas of collaborations and then moving on to make it reality. Miss that, really.

Last thing. NDP. I'll reserve the best of my compliments for private conversations, because I don't wanna get dragged into detention barracks by the military police. You know? The one with the big white helment and the bug-eyed shades, twirling the rifles while the SAF Band fluttered cute red fans for no apparent reason.

The parade was a disappointment... Perhaps it was the rain, one can clearly see even on a standard-definition TV that it was raining quite heavily. But that's really no excuse for not even being able to march in proper rank and file. I dunno what happened, but I would personally prefer to think that people have started looking into this first thing this morning. And the broadcast control this year was in shambles. The very year when we happily announce that the NDP will be broadcast live all over the world for Singaporeans overseas, you can have shots of cameras shaking, lens being wiped, and cameras pointing to nowhere. Makes the commentators' job just abit harder you know that? Steve Chia and the lovely lady whom I have no idea who you are so sorry about it did an excellent job of covering the asses of like, i dunno, 25 people?? Sharp improvisation with commentary.

The comedies after that though, Calefare and First Class, look promising. Especially Calefare. First Class is the same old, great-teacher-who-will-change-his-students-lives-forever story. But Calefare shows a different side of talent from both actors and scriptwriters, so it's promising I think. Hope to be able to catch it, although I have this bad feeling I will not.

Woops. NDP wasn't the last thing.

Stay afloat people. If I can, so can you. Trust me, it's not just because I'm fat.