back to be gone again.

haven't typed on a computer for ages. and yes, i have gotten slower by a lot. but oh well, i suppose uni life will be sufficient time for me to gain back finesse in typing, not that i was ever very fast, but oh well.

i know i haven't blogged in ages. and i'm not going to say that i've been busy training, which i haven't, but rather that my weekends have, shall i say, been otherwise engaged. so there. though in all likelihood nobody visits this place anymore...

so what's up with me? gotten skinnier, though i haven't weighed; it does look that way though. gotten stupider; mental calculations just seem so much more tougher now, AND gotten way uglier. heh.

oh, and did i mention that i've FINALLY gotten on to the psp band wagon. =DD

spending lots of money on loads of random useless things too. and on food though. been eating with less restraint nowadays. haiz. MUST RUN MORE!

one thing that the army has done for me is allow myself to focus more on myself, instead of a whole host of other things that have to be completed by whenever. though this also means, increasingly, that conversation topics become extremely limited. hmmm, yet net-surfing time is never used to keep up with current affairs. what in the world have i turned into?

anyways, like i said, i don't really have much to say about anything else anymore, beyond self-reflections, so here's some videos to keep you guys entertained.

Hugh Jackman's opening address for the Oscars 2009


The PEN story - an ad by Olympus

Dia'Spura, SINGcity2, philedelphia 09

nice.

oh, and i'm in sispec now.

it's been a long time.

the last time posted was before my civilian status was revoked and the capacity in which i am posting now is that of a private in the singapore armed forces. in this short period of ten weeks, so many things have happened; that which i can mention and so many more than i cannot mention. i have met new friends, made new enemies (i think), done new things, and gotten my results.

on the subject of my results i will say little more than this: they are not disappointing. but i must thank my lucky stars for them, for there are many others who did not fare as i did. and for them, i wonder the path to take henceforth.

it seems however that with the closing of this door must come the opening of the door to the next part of our lives. in this phase it is no longer to be taken for granted that we will hang out together next weekend, or the weekend after, as i, along with i believe, many others, have. it becomes a conscious effort to do so, one that i admit i am not used to exerting. and even though friends from long ago may be able to catch up and interact as we did in the past, there comes a silence before long, after all the catching up has been done, one that lacks the warmth and comfort that used to exist in its place. And you wonder where it has gone, and why you did not treasure it before.

people will come and go in your life. however long they stay in your sight is unclear. what is clear is that you have to want to keep them there before they will stay.

isolation.

The bikes ring, the children chat,
The car vroom and all these at
The city center and the town square
Merrily merrily everyone gathers there
To see the action and the living
Going on and all is in being
But for one man who sees but hears
Nary but the music he holds so dear
In his heart that is the sound of the wind
So soft yet resounding as it sings
A little rhyme that starts with
I am all but everywhere but if
You think I am where you are
You are sorely mistaken.

------------------------------------------

dunno if the above makes much sense but i think it kinda reflects how i felt as i walked home today (the day before) thinking about my enlistment.

cheers...

i am. and i am.

i am jezer ___ ___ __. and i am about to become a man.

today is the seventh day of the first month of the two thousand and ninth year after the year of the birth of christ (correct me if i'm wrong). and i will be enlisting into the national service come 1300 hours.

i have feelings that cannot be expressed here, for fear of being labelled unpatriotic. how sad life has become, when self-censorship is encouraged, and the resultant lack of a need for censorship hailed as freedom of the media.

may i pass these two years peacefully. and may i be proven wrong about my misgivings.

the end.

don't worry (or fret, if you're not exactly a supporter of my blog), i'm not closing down the blog. not just yet anyways. i'm just doing an end-of-year post, especially since this year seems to be more significant than all the rest, considering all that has happened. indeed, life this year seemed strangely more erratic than all the others, and yet at the same time, calmer.

and no, it's not just because it's my 18th year on this planet, and therefore that the calm comes from a maturation of my psyche. it's more than that. it seems as if i've fundamentally changed in my approach to my, and yet i continue to view it through those same lenses. naturally, this will often lead to some form of internal conflict, and seeing as how i'm not the most emotive of persons at the best of times, not least to say at the worst of them, at these moments i tend to appear glazed over, unfocused. consequentially, of course, people tend to get insulted, and i do apologize to all those that i've affronted over the course of this year and those before, as this fault of mine has only been made aware to myself this year, thanks to the advice of a very good friend that i will only call J.

as you may probably have surmised from that last statement, this post will not name any one person outright, and even if asked, i will neither confirm not deny any attempts at identifying a person indicated on this post, unless they are the person concerned. before i began (as if i haven't already, i hear you say), i must first warn that this will end up being a very long post, and so that you should steel yourself. in light of this i will be providing some light music that you can use to entertain yourself in the course of your reading, assuming of course that you wish to be entertained as such and that you will in fact read to the end.



this has been a year of many firsts, as one might expected of it being my 18th. it was this year that i met my comeuppance, so to speak. it was the first time too that i had a taste of possibly what i wanted to be in the future, in more ways than one. i got to speak in front of a crowd, a rather large one at that. i saw certain people for who they were when they weren't being so much of who they were supposed to be, and what i saw surprised me. it was also the year in which i drank my first cup of whiskey. it was the first time i sent a package. and after fretting for days about whether or not it had in fact reached its intended destination, i'd have to say i was relieved when told that it had. it was the first time i'd made pasta, or deshelled raw prawns. and many more, such that to list them all out would not only require an elephant's memory, but that would also cause this post to be longer than one page would allow for (although i know that realistically this isn't possible online, i'm just allowing for reader concentration spans and all that...hence the music...of course, it's to make for the sufficiently emo mood that i like to put myself in when i reminisce or reflect on issues such as these.).

necessarily, this post will, as most other posts of this nature, thank the various people that have changed my life for the better this year as well as acknowledge the people who should be acknowledged. i will maintain that there is a distinction between the two, and since this is my blog post to begin with, that will be the end of it. as a disclaimer though, this post is not meant to insult or criticize, and should not be taken to have such intention.

therefore, i would like to acknowledge/thank, in no particular order other than the letter that i like to assign to that particular person, without any form of symbolic meaning, and with the arrangement of the letters being purely alphabetical (also, who i thank/acknowledge is for me to know, and me only, though i suspect that after a while i'd have forgotten who is represented by which symbol. gender references should also not be taken literally.):

- A, without whom my chingay experience would never have happened.
- B, for triple F.
- C, for being a friend since that first day when i sat down and said hi.
- D, who is way shorter than he is.
- E, for truly being a dark horse.
- F, who witnessed what no one should have to see.
- G, for always saying what he thought.
- H, for opening my eyes to the way things were done in the real world.
- I, for being less metro.
- J, for being there.
- K, who is always photo-ready even when he isn't.
- L, whose tagline for everything i seem to be unable to recall.
- M, whose sweetness i seem doomed to have a soft spot for.
- N, for whom notes can just be read.
- O, for whom fuck isn't the worst he can throw at you.
- P, whose chair became my weighing scale.
- Q, who was cool till the end.
- R, who somehow always managed to put me down while perking me up.
- S, who never once flared up.
- T, whose enthusiasm and affection continue to surprise me.
- U, whose attitude is one i'd like to have.

a part of me would like to continue this list all the way to Z, but my mind no longer has any names for me, and hence to continue would be contrary to the point of this post. nonetheless, in the course of the next two days, as this post is still a work in progress, at least until the actual end of the year...but given the amount of time that i've actually taken to writing this entry, i should say that it's pretty complete. that is, until i edit it. =P

in any case, ns will have me writing scarcely for next year, and the year after, so don't expect much from me alright?

and with that, until i write again, here's to a good year ahead for all of us.

P.S. hmmm, doesn't seem to be as long as i wanted it to be. will most probs add to it in the next few days. lol.

UPDATE: 31st Dec 2008, 2310 hours

as singapore approaches its last hour of 2008, and despite the eye-catching but horribly distasteful countdown party on channel 5 and 8 meant (i think) to draw minds away from the more pertinent issues of the year, it would do well to reflect on these issues with regard to singapore.

and the clock ticks by...

hello all.

not been doing much...

just thought i'd post some stuff for you to entertain yourself by...

improv everywhere - human mirror


really dirty talk (slightly NSFW, nothing visual though)

delusion.

i'm not going to say anything about this but do check it out...it's about the Singapore Government suing the Wall Street Journal and their response online. It's been tomorrowed, which is where i got it from...

=D