cesc week 1/bookout/back to YO again

So it appears that my life is summed up, week by week, in short snappy despatches (damn. dispatches? despatches? Merriam-Webster Online: despatch n. chiefly British variant of dispatch - guess that's me then. Chiefly British).

Well yes, it's been a ridiculously relaxed week at engineers; 4 days' worth of lectures with half a day of chemical defence training and an ippt. That's what I call a honeymoon period. True, the pushup count did hit 100 on day one but they were just scaring us I guess. The real fun starts next week with some explosives training and PT I think, as well as lots of theory. So (and this is old hat so I'm not breaking any rules by mentioning it) there's a heck lot of equipment we're going to have to learn to handle, like boats, personnel carriers, mine clearers, I think 5 different types of bridge - the lectures were all about these. SLB, VLB, AVLB, BLB, FLB... Can't even remember what they stand for. I figure it's Super Long Bridge, Very Long Bridge, A Very Long Bridge, Bloody Long Bridge, and... Fucking Long Bridge. xP

(well I thought it was a good joke)

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Booked out on Friday at 5pm after a parent visit (yeah they actually invited parents to tour the training facilities O.o). I had a whole lot of activities on saturday (alright 3)... lunch with Yalies, YO, cousins' birthday thingy. You won't be interested about the last one.

We'll start with the lunch. What can I say? I didn't say very much actually... lots of them are posh types, international school students, rich kids. One was, what, the 7th in her family to go to Yale? Not holding it against them, but buying Chinese art for investment purposes is not my usual subject of conversation, for better or for worse. Everyone seemed to be incredibly well-travelled and possess some incredible pedigree or something. And seeing as I'm going in 2 years' time, I'm more boggled than enthused about which classes to take or avoid, or which professors are the best, that sort of thing. Added to that, I didn't know anyone apart from David, while everyone seemed to know at least 3 or 4 others. O.o so time crawled and sputtered along like a ricketty old car that's running out of petrol. I guess once I'm actually there I'll find my particular community and friends to fit into nicely, but right now it's not on my radar screens, and I'm not sure how far I'll fit in with the Singaporean community there.

As for YO... (mmm nice contented feeling). It's always good to be back, again and again and again. Lol I've turned into a semi-regular saturday visitor. Had to try to resolve a problem back in my section - not sure if I helped, but it was my duty to try. Chatted with Mrs Wong, Mr Lim and Miss Wang... Mr Lim invited me back to do sectionals with them heh. I'm flattered that he asked my musical opinion on the Dvorak 6th xD

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Handling that problem that I alluded to earlier got me thinking about being a musician in an orchestra. I always felt that YO was home to me... for me it was just the awesome feeling about making music with friends, and also about doing your job right. Doing justice to the music and all that. To me seating (your position in the section, how far front or back you play) was never, ever an issue. I was... simultaneously extremely gratified and shocked when, at the start of sec 4, I got parachuted into the hot seat as section leader.

I mean, wtf? What am I, noob, doing there...? I knew that lots of the seniors would've been pretty disgruntled - in sec 3 they'd all been comfortably treating me as the little kiddo on the block (a role that I was happy to play haha), and suddenly I'd leapt over their heads. Yes it was probably unfair for them, yes I personally would have preferred to wait till they left before I took over, if it ever happened. I do know that things got a bit chilly after that between me and them, and I wasn't comfortable even till our Vienna trip, which was why I spent so much time with my pals from the violins and elsewhere - I think from then I wasn't 100% connected with my section. But I had to do my job. I've always been extremely grateful to Mr Lim for giving me that chance to develop myself musically, and even more so, for trusting me, a nobody back then, still a nobody now.

And I haven't always been a principal player in orchestras. I've played behind, 4th desk; I've guest played elsewhere - and being a guest player it's rude to be anywhere other than the back unless you've been invited by the conductor to step forward. I've noticed embodiments of sheer incompetence sitting pretty up front, but that's not an issue and should never be, as long as you do your job as a musician. Of course you might resent being behind them, but on principle I try my best to separate personal from professional.

No one in my section is incompetent - at least none of the oldies who've been with me, I've whacked you guys often and long enough, as you very well know. (Damnit I still think of it as 'my' section.) What I didn't do well enough was train you guys to take over once I left. I'm afraid that besides Ms Yeo's advice, no one told me much about being a principal player. Well I guess being a musician you have to have a clear idea of how the music should sound - every single note and phrase - and be able to communicate it to the listener. And as a principal you have the added responsibility of sharing that musical vision with the rest of the section. Your musical judgement has to be there, of course, and that grows with experience.

Wish I could spend more time there with the orchestra. Lots more stuff to share there, because I guess music is one of my greatest passions. For better or for worse.

a quickie

This'll be quick, cos it's a night out and i've gotta go in half an hour's time. First two days in engineers - almost all lectures, which everyone slept through without the slightest hint of shame wafting through the auditorium lmao. Heck, it was completely useless and half the time the lecturer didn't know his stuff either. True, I've forgotten how to explain "adiabatic lapse rate" but if he can't I'm not going to try.

Other than that, our bunks suck (not even a hot water dispenser, the thing's designed like 60s-era one-room flats although from the outside it looks damn nice), but the food is quite awesome - by SAF standards. Except for today's lunch they fed us (among other things) tofu stewed in soy sauce, some beancurd dessert AND soya milk. Overkill! Yeah I know soyabean's freaking versatile but is this some sinister plot by Singapore Food Industries to hike up our estrogen production? O.o

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I'm also starting to revisit, emotionally and mentally, the first 3 months of this year. I guess I was too caught up in my own sorrows and concerns to realise that my dad was slipping away; and when he got weaker, lost appetite and started sleeping more, I didn't actually know that it wasn't because he wanted to, it was because he couldn't do more. He'd always be there, when it mattered, and now that he isn't... it's an empty, lonely, smallish feeling.

And yeah, to you out there it might seem cliched, but it's made me treasure the friends and family that I have, much more. Why? I dunno - perhaps something like this drives you to rethink all that you hold dear, or it makes you so keenly aware and regretful of the times that you were a cold ungrateful selfish little asswipe (yes I was.) and consequently want to give yourself and your love to the people who matter. And yes, I am Classic Introvert; it takes a lot to be admitted to my innermost circle of friends, but those who are there do mean something significant to me. Yup Adam, I guess that's why I can't just 'let things be'.

Oh fux gotta run now.

back home/dream

Well I reported for my new posting at the engineers training institute on Tuesday. They took a ridiculously long time to do their admin - particulars etc. - but the food was pretty good by SAF standards and our commanders aren't too bad. Lightly sarcastic and threateningly funny, which is about as good as it gets. One of our platoon commanders went round wishing people happy birthday O.o pretty good of him. Discipline and footdrill standards seem (relatively) high though -.- and the course is 11 weeks long. Still, we'll be sergeants before almost everyone else I think. Kinda cool in a sense - quoting lip: "ahh the joys of a meaningless egoboost". It also means another pay rise, which is always good and prevents me from starving to death from lack of brain-food.  

Hrmph. I'd still prefer my rank sitting pretty on my shoulders rather than moping about on the sleeves though, but such is life. (For those of you who didn't get that - shoulder = officer = pro; sleeve = sergeant = noob. I = noob)

Oh interesting: the word sergeant comes from the Latin serviens 'one who serves' via French sergent. Which should give you some idea of what I'll be - first among equals of the saikang warriors. Bloody impressive isn't it?

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Anyway most pertinently they gave us 3 days off - wed-fri - thank goodness. So I burnt yesterday going to RJC with Daniel Ong/pooch/paniel and saying hi to all the teachers I knew and all my happy madcap juniors who were dying cos of GP CTs (fond memories). Being the ex-chairman of interact club pooch knows half the school by name... damn irritating haha. Errr... what else? MRTed off to gramophone at cathay and got myself some simon and garfunkel and a tang - i mean t'ang ^^ - quartet cd of schulhoff and haas quartets while my mom got a platters compilation. Platters... sounds like some finger-food collection if you know what I mean, but I wisely didn't comment in case she chose to withdraw my access to the $60 of gramophone vouchers haha. It's some ancient band, where ancient means pre-Beatles.

I miss school, and the care-free-ness of the whole thing, and the energy and enjoyment we all shared - teachers AND students, which is extremely unusual. RJC's changed a lot; the corridor to the staff room has been changed to a "staff access only" room which looks like some kinda lounge, and the mini-canteen's become "hodge lodge", some exclusive cafe thingy as far as I can tell (closed both times I've been to the school since last year). Feels strange to not have the mini-canteen; it was humanz home. It's like RJC's taken on a subtly different flavour, maybe a sour aftertaste that wasn't there before. Still it was nice to be back and talk to Mr Teo my maths ex-tutor and avoid my chinese teacher lol and say hi to Mrs Toh (GP) who unfortunately had to rush off. Bad day to visit, it being GP CTs. Fond memories nevertheless.

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Oh yes in other news, I've been offered the Econs & Law double major at NUS. Pity, this... in normal circumstances I'd be ecstatic; now, like Adam, I'm going to have to bastard them and reject it.

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Slept from 7:30pm to 7:30am with a couple of breaks and a few dreams; dreamt of lots of friends and woke up with the first verse of a beatles song on my mind - for me that counts as a pretty darn good sleep!

From Me to You
If there's anything that you want
If there's anything I can do
Just call on me, and I'll send it along
With love, from me, to you.

friendship

It might seem strange to be reflecting on this now, when I'm reporting to a new posting tomorrow which is gonna suck bad (bridging engineers! fuxorz.) but perhaps when you're being uprooted, transplanted and repotted into new surroundings you're going to feel the lack of friendship really acutely.

And well, this was triggered off by an epiphany of sorts. I logged on to MSN, saw a few friends online who I hadn't seen or spoken to in ages - good friends who I really respect - and realised I really had absolutely nothing to say to them. That I couldn't even be assured that if I decided to go back to it and pick up from where we left off, our friendship - that connection we had - wouldn't be worse for wear.

It did come as a rather startling thought. Scratch that - I think 'dismayed' is the right word (it's a word that deserves to be exhumed and put back in use, but that's for another post). And I was reminded again of that deceptively simple poem -

And sometimes it happens that you are friends and then
You are not friends,
And friendship has passed.
And whole days are lost and among them
A fountain empties itself.

- which kind of sums up the feeling. Think of the image "a fountain empties itself". Ahh... you might not feel it immediately, but think of it - a fountain is meant to be filled, and to flow and froth. So to empty a fountain feels like depriving it of purpose and meaning, right? Futility. And to compound it, this fountain "empties itself"; just, starkly, like that - absolutely no reason. Imagine the water just flowed away and you couldn't find the leak. No control, no explanation. It's a brilliantly, chillingly evocative image.

So yes, back to friendships. To me - especially so since I've not many really close pals, and I do put in a deep time and emotional commitment to each of them - a friendship ebbing away is a pretty bad feeling. And I don't know how to stop these things from happening. Is it inevitable, that as people draw apart in their dealings and activities, they lose the bond that used to tie them together so well? Or is it just that these things affect me more than most other people? Is this just a typical introvert worry / obsession / concern? I'm not putting this properly, but I hope you get what I mean.

/bslc

So the course's finally come to an end. Nothing much; I guess the highlight of the week was the 28km march through friday night and saturday morning (thank goodness for vaseline, though I'm still suffering from a raw pinkie toe, and sore feet). I fell asleep while walking, didn't know that was possible before - but live and learn! What happened was, I walked off the track into a puddle and fell in, getting my knees slightly muddy (well it was only a puddle). That cold impact woke me up for maybe half a minute, and I was back to sleepwalking. Slept during the parade too, standing at attention; I know at one point I jolted myself awake by falling backwards a step and trying desperately to grab at air for support. Incredible. But I can't beat the golf coy guy in the front row who collapsed in POP, lmao.

Let me see what else there was- the usual last night camo/powder/colgate parties... slept through the whole thing as always. I got my hair and feet camo-ed green while fast asleep; woke up angstily at 4:45am groaning and made the fatal error of putting my hand on my hair. C'est la vie; got up and washed it off. Must say my hair's grown back and actually looks kinda half-decent now!

Nothing much else in the last week. Well yes, posting; I got posted to engineers - possibly the only cool thing about it is the blue beret you get ^^ and it's supposedly a short course - something like 2 months. I can live with 8 weeks of crap for a sergeant rank, that's not too bad. But if I got it wrong and it's any longer... -.-

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Well yes, thank fuck I'm escaping at least some of my bunkmates. Some are nice; others are utter turds. Wankers in the literal and metaphorical sense; we've got a deep-pak paki (PR here i think) who can't keep his hands off those places where the sun don't shine. Same guy brings in porn on his PSP. And amazingly, he's incredibly self-righteous about it - it's "maturity". Another one - my "buddy" or rather the unfortunate sinner who's on bed 2 - smokes in the bunk, toilet, corridors, everywhere. I've gotten sick of hearing his voice, he's an idiot with the mental age of a kindergarten kid. Voice loud enough to wake the dead, grammar beyond atrocious. Always banging on about "you 6 A's how can dunno ___" or "you 6 A's, complain, sergeant sure listen one" - just try to parse that sentence! Unfortunately he's an engineer; army regular. Might bump into him in the engineer course again, fux.

Well at least I've crept up the food chain from private to corporal; in practical terms that means a $100 pay rise. W00t more bucks to finance my book-buying profligacy!

a little shake-up

I've spent around 1 hour labelling all my posts. In obvious, blatant and gratuitous homage to douglas adams, the labels are Life, The Universe, and Everything, because by any reasonable definition of the word enough, there can never be enough H2G2 references. And there's a little Admin label for those posts that are clearly Administrative in nature.

Now to explain the categories:
Life - Mine, obviously. As any old fool could tell you.
The Universe - Anything about the sciences, natural or social; ideas and thoughts which conceptualise molecules and people as predictable and invariant actors locked in a cosmic dance; one that is eternal, beautiful but ultimately devoid of transcendent meaning. So musings on economics, political science and linguistics would belong here alongside explorations on thermodynamics, quantum physics and the origins of life.
Everything - Anything about the humanities and arts; that which gives meaning to life. This means music, art, literature; all that which defines us as human, rather than the naked ape.

I might add sub-categories as we go along, but for now this is probably a good enough start.I should, over time, be posting more on the universe. It's fascinating stuff. really.

This is also an attempt to look at what I blog about, and think about. This blog has largely been about my life, but I do want to take it in a new direction, to look at ideas, concepts and works that have shaped the way we see ourselves and our universe. True, there's an anthropic bias in the way I've labelled the humanities as "everything", but till we discover sentient life out there, we are the only creatures capable of imbuing meaning into that which is fundamentally without meaning. And I believe that's something significant.

Of course there'll still be army and general life wankst, that's what blogs are for. This reorganisation is just an acknowledgement that there's more to life than that; and if you like, a statement of intent - that I want to use this as a platform to develop the way I think. Thinking is good; more thinking, better - that's a principle which is so simple as to be blatantly obvious, but at the same time, so simple as to be vastly underrated. 

So we'll see how things go from here. Till next time, then.

how time flies

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (trans. Fitzgerald)

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
-attrib. Groucho Marx

It's interesting how we perceive time. It initially crossed my mind to title this post Time's Arrow - the reference is both to Arthur Eddington's 'arrow of time' and to the mindboggling Martin Amis novel (which is frankly not worth the tedious hard slog through the book) - but then I realised how pretentious it'd be. But yes, it's amazing how difficult it is to rigorously define what is future and past. (I do mean rigorous; "that which is to come" doesn't cut it.)

Physicists have a neat way of doing it, using the second law of thermodynamics (which states that the amount of entropy in a closed system increases with time). Therefore following that, the future is that period of time where entropy is higher than at present, assuming of course that the universe is a closed system. Unfortunately it does seem to be a rather circular argument - essentially, entropy increases as time passes, and time passes when entropy increases. But then I'm not a physicist.

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Another neat idea, this time from economics. It's about the distinction between price and value. As I was telling ZH just now while we were out for a coffee =P (yeah, I am that pedantic. But so's he, so there) there is actually a difference between these two concepts, despite how often they're conflated.

I assume you've all bought something at least once in your life; for the sake of argument let it be an Ice Blended from Coffee Bean (for even more specificity let's make it a White Chocolate Dream, cos it is truly inconfutable proof of the existence of goodness in this world). Now backtracking a little, let's question: why on earth did you buy it?

Cravings, urges, spurs-of-the-moment, addictions... all these reasons don't cut it. The truth is simple but stark: you bought it because (at that point in time) you valued the ice blended more than anything else the $6.20 could have bought you. The price is secondary; if you were willing to pay anything up to $10 for it, that means it was worth $10 to you regardless of the list price. On the other hand, if you chose not to buy it, that implies that you think you could have put the $6.20 to better use - maybe by getting a caramel latte instead, or a meal from macs, or by cabbing home.

The distinction between price and worth is possibly one of the fundamental things in economics that very few people fully grasp. And it has implications for all kinds of things - even psychology (why do I feel the pinch in my pocket after finishing the White Chocolate Dream, for instance.) Good ideas are fascinating things.

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So much for pedantry and ideas. It's been a tiring week - a navigation exercise on Monday, field camp Tues-Thurs, and Happy Hour on Friday night, after IPPT and SOC. On the bright side I only have 6 more days left to survive before I officially get my rank and pay hike. Happy Hour was a disaster for me; I was one of the emcees, and therefore expected to keep people entertained. Big mistake; to most people my jokes are as funny as a funeral. You guys know me... it was excruciating by the time the night was up. Geez... bad.

I'm not looking forward to my posting; just hope it's not something too siong or sucky. But there's nothing I can do about it now; time's arrow is relentless and unforgiving. Oh well... This post was supposed to be longer, but it's late and I'm so sleepy that it feels as if my eyelids are getting weighted down by lead weights. Shucks. Goodnight all.

shrug.

BSLC is coming to an end. Hope i don't make it to ASLC. Although i dunno - it's a very real possibility that's reared its ugly head. ASLC is 13 weeks of tough love, including a roughly 10-day-long overseas training thingy. (ugh) And it could be anything after that - a unit (ugh) or bmt (lol) or even mdc (hurrah). If I go back to bmt i'll probably see my juniors lol. And be the slackest, blurrest sergeant there.

pfft- Adam JX Shag and I had lunch on thurs, at a decent jap restaurant (i know, i know, total oxymoron, yeah) and i think jx said if i ever went back to bmt i'd be the nicest sergeant around. Compliment or insult? O.o Whatever it is... wish I could land a posting like jx or zh. damn you lot. jx... ankle problem my foot.

Anyway. Field camp (grandslam) and our final IPPT next week and SOC test/POP the week after. Grandslam sucks. IPPT... my fitness has actually degenerated cos of the fatigue; I'll most probably pass but not too sure of silver and probably shouldn't be looking towards a gold. As for SOC, I've never passed swing trainer and nothing's changed since the last time I tried.

I don't know what to look forward to after BSLC in the short term; MDC will probably not materialise... looks like my ns life will suck, bad.

Only looking forward to the bookouts and time with friends. W00t for geog guys' movie outings and endless chats (yeah somehow although we're all so different in outlook and interests - especially me the outlier - we still hang together amazingly well). W00t for lunches with lots of different people, for hanging around with ZH in bookshops salivating at hidden unimaginable and (for our pockets) unattainable treasures - someone please drag me to a bar next bookout! W00t for friends.

And of course, w00t to dreams and the far distant future. Class of '14.

well, make me.

i can't really bring myself to give a cold damn in hell about most of army life any more. just going with the flow. this is a kind of existence that can truly be described as 'squalid' (apologies to you adam). most days i'm flooded with a malaise that isn't particularly encouraging nor totally debilitating. what am i doing, doing what i do?

well yes i do think too much about these things. and yeah, since young i've always seen ns as just 2 years to get through - thanks in part to my parents' views.

yes, i know i could have pushed myself to do many more things. maybe even do better than sispec. but why? at the time it didn't seem worth it. at the time i was in deep emotional flux. i still am. and it still doesn't seem worth it. the calculations don't add up. if i was brought up to believe that ns wouldn't be a waste of time, if circumstances were different, if i had less emotional baggage to lug around besides a sickening field pack, LBV and weapon, maybe i could have hit something more meaningful than bslc.

lots of the time i'm thinking about falling out of training. mind exaggerating little jolts of pain, or the extent of physical exertion. (doesn't help that lots of my good friends are slacking off randomly around the place, living a real life.) and these thoughts don't help me get by, i know; they're unproductive, and they certainly prevent me from doing my best - which is something that i ultimately do want. i hate this. it's a personal weakness.

i'm not a strong person, and that is true in many different aspects. and i do have an overriding sense of my own inadequacies that perhaps doesn't fully do me justice; maybe it's an inferiority complex, maybe i just know all too well that there are so many other people out there who are better than me in so many different ways. and i know that handicaps me too, to some degree. i could well have stepped out and provided some direction, some positive energy in the platoon, in my section, but heck! why bother? why me?

and that's part of why i can only see these 22 months as a barrier between me and my life, my dreams; not something to take pride in and do my best in just like anything else. maybe because army drives you so close to your emotional, mental, psychological limits, it exposes them so brutally to you, if only you have eyes to see. and i think i see, only too well.

I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased.
- Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky