Eh, I actually planned for today to be spent at home and watching TV and doing nonsense online, but it turned out to be quite random and spontaneous. Hahaha! That's the kind of excitement that I want! Why can't everyday be something like today? I want to be surprised, with unexpected things and sudden changes of plans and huge upsets. But no one shares the same spirit with me. So sad =(

Anyway, I was supposed to meet Yurong for breakfast! But I woke up at 11am, and I thought breakfast was all but over, but we ended up arranging to meet at Plaza Singapura at 1pm. For breakfast. How silly. Anyway it was Hot Tomatoes Express, whatever that was, she ate mushrooms and mushroom soup while I had olive rice with meatballs and sausages. COOL. Then Yurong had to go meet her friends at Minds Cafe, but it started raining real heavily and she couldn't walk there. So began a funny incident of how she bought an umbrella but decided to take a taxi there instead and she wanted a refund on the umbrella but it wasn't possible so she exchanged it for chocolates and sweets for the same price, which will conveniently be presents for her friends!

Then I made up my mind beforehand that today shall be a Starbucks day, but the Starbucks at Plaza Sing was fully occupied so I walked around aimlessly for a while, before going to Cathay's Starbucks and was delighted to see that it was quite empty! And I spent 2 hours over there trying to write some random thing. Then I got tired and went window shopping at Cathay, which hasn't got a lot to shop anyway, then Yurong came back to return me my camera (I lent it to her), and then it was home.

I've decided. Coffee Bean is waaay better than Starbucks! Starbucks does everything sweeter and their coffee has a funny taste to it! And their selection is dastardly limited. Okay they just don't have what I like, so Coffee Bean has my kudos points.

Oh oh! I simply must share this!

Tooty is a lovely fairy
She loves eating chocolate cookie
Her wings huge her legs sore
Oh how much she I adore!

HAHAHAHAHAHA! So cute right! It really brightened up my day! Thanks!!

Random photos, yet again.













I don't know the girl in pink, neither do I know the girl in the shirt which has a "peanut" word in it, nor the one in black polo tee. Hee hee hee!

I've got mosquito bites on my neck and face and a bit on my arms! So terrible. My face is itchy!! For your information, if you happen to see me, those bumps on my face are mosquito bites. Why would mosquitoes want to bite my face??

Yar. I was doing orderly duty in camp yesterday. With my sergeant Remus. The day somehow just slipped by very quickly, partly because we were watching movies and I was teaching him how to play guitar and talking rubbish. Then I couldn't sleep at night, because of the darn mosquitoes. Only managed 4 hours of sleep!!

And today, I came home and plonked onto the bed and fell asleep promptly. Then I had time to go for lunch with my mum, and then to Bishan library for a while. Then I just came back from youth service. It was some thanksgiving thing, with testimonies from people and writing dedications for people and song dedications and pizza and stuff. And Matthew's unofficial farewell. So sad.

Okay. This post is rather short and stupid.

Shi Hui if you're reading this, remember to find the mass dance video! Tammy and mine. And you contributed a little too.

Here's my cell group. Just four of us, all serving army dudes. Whoops it's more like three of us are, but Ben had his ORD a long long time ago. HAHAHA this is really random.











Okay. My face still very itchy! Sleep!

I really don't know how I should categorise my feelings right now. Okay, it's Christmas once again. Everybody knows I get miserably dolorous at around this time of the year, because I'm such a loser who just cannot get over certain things. I know the past few Christmases has been kinda stupid for me, largely because I chose to skip most of the celebrations or I refuse to be happy or I do things half-heartedly just to show that something has been done. Like, for instance, I got into a major quarrel last year with someone over the stupidest reasons, and it's never been resolved ever since.

This year, I'm glad to say that it wasn't that dramatic. In fact, I'm surprised that I've had a very enjoyable and memorable celebration this year. Maybe it's because the year flew by so quickly that I barely realised that Christmas was approaching until five days before. This year really ended too early, too soon. But in any case, this year is Shannon's 4th death anniversary. A long enough time frame for it to be still significant somehow.

Is it okay for me to still be upset over everything? Or should I just whack myself on the head for being so stubborn.

Okie I'm not going into all these sob inducing stories. I think I've been emo quite enough for the past few years already. I shall talk about what I did on Christmas Eve instead.

I started my Christmas Eve adventure by going to Qiling's house first. Jaslyn arrived a little while after me, then Chiew Yee. There was much commotion about Qiling's choice of a new toaster for Jas as a gift hahaha. Then I left her house to go "rescue" Tammy at town cos we were supposed to meet up to go Christmas shopping. But after I reached there, Tammy told me sheepishly that she was still at home because she overslept. So I hung around for a while before she arrived, and we came up with brilliant shopping tactics that saves time because we were in a frantic (okay not-so-frantic) rush. Oh at town I met Celine, who was pretty in pink, and Cheryl, who was there with some other choir people that I know too cos they're singing at Takashimaya. COOL. And while getting Christmas red hats from these two girls along the street, they tried to flirt with me.

We wanted to be in time for Christmas carolling because this year my youth group decided to go sing carols at people's houses again. How funky. Qiling and Jas decided to join in the fun too, so we all met up at Bishan MRT before going down to church. And there began our carolling quest to six different houses! Had a great time. At each house there was great food, great people who hosted such a large group of us, and taking into consideration that we didn't even know what songs we're singing or whose houses we were going until that night itself, I thought we sounded great and it was awesome.

I got rejected by a girl! Okay she's 8 years old, she's Jaime and I've never met her before in my life. But apparently her family attends church services regularly and they signed up for the carolling session, and their family was the first house of the night. Anyway, in the midst of singing I smiled at her, then after that she came up to me coyly and offered me drinks! So I went to disturb her then I asked her to take a photo with me and she said "wait long long"!!!! Oh gosh such impudence. And the whole time we were there, she kept trying to bully me by stepping on my feet.

Went to David Chan's house too, and Kat and Daniel's new apartment, which was quite disastrous because they asked for a song that nobody really knew how to sing, and a distorted version of Twelve Days of Christmas. Was at Uncle Bee's too, and the last was Uncle Richard and Auntie Adeline's place. I like Auntie Adeline she's the funkiest mum I've ever met.

After all of that, I went back to Qiling's house! Oh Jas and Qiling left halfway to go meet up with Chiew Yee cos they were planning a sleepover. I'm just there to drop by and say hi. They were in the process of doing some facial peel mask thing, then we talked rubbish until it was almost 4am before Chiew Yee drove me back home. Got lost at Ang Mo Kio area because we exited wrongly off the expressway hahaha.

And barely after I reached home, I was up again to go for a Christmas day breakfast with Eleanor! Then I went for Christmas service with Shi Hui as my accessory partner hahahaha. OHHHH Jaime was like sitting on the opposite block in the auditorium, so throughout the service we kept making stupid faces at each other. I'm telling you she likes me! Yup okay, after service there was the usual gift exchange, which I felt kinda terrible because I only wrote cards for a small amount of people but I got gifts and food and cards from people that I never got anything for. OKAY next Christmas I'm going shopping.

Went to Novena Square for lunch with one huge group of people. Some went arcade, but I obviously couldn't stand it so I went walking around with another group. Oh went to Donut Factory too, and my eyecandy from there wasn't working there! Okay I don't know if she's still working there or whether it was just her off day or whatever. Oh yar I remember her name she's Sylvia, but I'm so sad that she wasn't there. Sigh. Then after loads of failed shopping we went back to church and sat about aimlessly haha. And after about an hour? I got home.

Yeah. That's it. Thanks to all the nice nice friends that I have that made this Christmas so fun.

Photos. There's some more which I didn't put up over here. You can click HERE.


Jas and Jaime. I think Jaime is so cute la!


Tammy, Qiling and Jas. What would I do if these great friends weren't in my life.


Yurong too! I like this shot hahahaha.


With Ming Hui, who doesn't need me in his life anymore hahahaha!






Auntie Adeline!


Attack of the cabbage-faced monsters.


And lastly, this is pure priceless! Qiling's philosophy of life!

The past few days were spent largely at home staring into space, or doing junk on the computer, or trying to read. Lingered quite a fair bit at Bishan Library too. Trying to search for nice books to read, as well as ripping off the free wireless surfing using my iPod Touch to spend meaningless time on Facebook. Spent some time at Bishan's Coffee Bean too. I found my favourite drink off the Coffee Bean menu: THE ULTIMATE ICE BLENDED. It's one of those drinks comprising of the heavenly mix of chocolate and coffee and whipped cream. Ahh I think it's uber fattening, but let's not go into that. Yeah! In my opinion Coffee Bean beats Starbucks, because I prefer their variety of drinks, and they don't have the arrogant branding swagger of Starbucks. Eh okay that's a side issue.

Today, I got lost in Ang Mo Kio. Didn't know how to get from AMK Library to AMK Hub. Stupidest thing on earth. Met up with Joel and Yurong to go town, because Joel's due for his Lasik operation. Waited in excess of two hours with Yurong and Joel's mum, even though the operation was supposed to take fifteen minutes only. Hahaha that's because there was a public conference thingy about Lasik at the very same clinic, and Joel's ophthalmologist happily ran out and gave a half-hour talk before going back to his work. Yurong did buy some tops for Christmas presents too. Joel's parents gave us a ride back to J8.


Joel's bionic eyes!

Ahh okay I'm updating again. This week has been one big blast, as literal as it is physical! Demolition range was the coolest thing ever. Everyone got to ignite the I-chain (which is this basic gunpowder wire that you connect to a detonator and explosive), and I wasted like 5 or 6 matchsticks trying to get it to burn, but that was probably just a bee sting compared to all the other explosive charges we fired that day. I got my hands on a 33kg ADM (Area Defence Mine), which can basically blast everything within a 15om range. It's stressful when you're the firer who is going to press the button to ignite that brutal explosion. I think that was a cool $15000 piece of equipment that I blasted. Sherwin got mightily upset because he didn't get to fire his PLC (Projected Line Charge, consisting of a hundred grenades) because of external interferences. But he's the only guy who fired I-chain twice hahahahahaha. Then he went and scrape off the skin off his chin and required stitches. Silly bird droppings haha.

Went to Jalan Kayu to eat with my sergeant Kai Gui on Tuesday night. Wasn't planning to leave camp actually, but he was hungry so I just went to fatten myself with prata. Then I had orderly duties yesterday, which was outright awesome because everyone's at the battalion will-to-fight and the next day is a public holiday and thus no one was in camp. Heh then there was some rig maintenance which me, Kai Gui and my PS settled in about 2 hours.

Yup yup, I won't need to go back camp until next year! Whoopeedo. Oh wait I have another orderly duty on 27th, but it's okay for me. Ask me out!!! I'm trying to find every reason to get out of house.

Hmm, I really didn't realise it, but Christmas is in 5 days! November and December crept by so sneakily that without knowing it, I'm less than a week away from Christmas. Well I'm not complaining, because I can't wait for 2008. And, for those of you who know my adversities in the past Christmases, I am quite pleasantly surprised that I haven't been as emo as I was last year, or the previous, or the last previous. End-of-years are traditionally not a good time for me to do anything, but this time it feels different. I feel like I should do something. Sigh, maybe time really heals all wounds. Not that I don't want it to heal, but it's also not that I want it to heal either. Aargh I don't know what I want.

Okiee. Have a nice holiday people. If you've got nothing to do, reach for the phone and call me out hahahahahaha.

Okay it was quite a dramatic week. First I had a fever which hit 39 degrees, and I went to TTSH for the first time in my life to see a doctor. Okay that's old news because I blogged about it already. The second major thing was even more terrible. THE WHOLE SELETAR CAMP'S ARMY INTRANET SYSTEM GOT SHUT DOWN BECAUSE OF ME. How cool is that. And you must understand that you cannot do anything on the computer if you don't have access to the intranet. And still I managed to shut it down for almost a whack-ass 24 hours. HAHAHAHAHA. All I did was I wanted to use an USB thumb-drive to transfer some files, but I didn't know that the thumb-drive contained a virus, and the computer auto-scanned it and quarantined the virus into the main server, and so one day after my ignorant act the whole camp couldn't log in into the system and thus all the clerks and admin people got to knock off early because no one can use the computers. What's even more worse was that the thumb-drive was unauthorised (it was my PC's), and I illegally used someone else's card without permission. So that effectively made things even more troublesome.

So after a huge fiasco which involved investigations and reports, I am now facing a 14-day SOL (which just means I'll be confined in camp for 14 days). Then I got my PC into trouble for the thumb-drive, and I got the person whom I illegally used the card into trouble too. Oh. And then they decided that I should do the eCyberSmart quiz just to make sure that I know my computer security.

Okay that's that.

On Thursday I went down for a recce at Poyan Range! We're going there for a demolition live firing on Monday. Kinda cool. Then it was nights out on that night too, so I got Tammy out to for dinner and we talked like nobody's business. Then on Friday I had a crash course for the demolition lessons, because I missed it when I was down with fever. It was easy to pick up the drills. Now I'm going to fire this ADM (Area Defence Mine) which is a really huge demolition charge with a gigantic explosion.

And today I went out with Edmond to Vivo! I have a new wallet ah hahahahaha it's the same one which I first saw three months ago, then I regretted not buying it but I haven't been back to Vivo since then, but I finally made up my mind to get it today. Went to Coffee Bean to sit and relax. Then after that we went down to corps for an early Christmas party! It was supposed to be an invitation for Sherwin, but he had guard duty today. Then after going through FIVE other friends who all couldn't make it or didn't want to go, I finally reached Edmond quite randomly, so yar the invitation fell to him hahaha. Party was funky, food was good, atmosphere was good. And after the party, I went to J8 with some church friends for Coffee Bean (yet again, but I didn't order any drinks this time), and then went home with Biru and Kenneth.

That's it!

I just watched the film adaptation of Dr Seuss' The Cat In The Hat! Don't tell me that I shouldn't be watching it because it's meant for kids and toddlers. Hahaha I watch whatever I want and whatever I wish to! Okay here are my thoughts on it. I thought that the show did injustice to the original book version. It was quite horrid when compared with the actual storybook, mostly because it didn't quite capture the elegant fun, which I personally felt was the essence behind almost all of Dr Seuss' work. But it redeems itself for it's whimsical setting and almost-cartoon portrayal of everything. It's colourful and over-the-top and too-immaculate-to-be-true! I have a discreet liking for nonsensical things like these hahahaha.

And that's not all. Dakota Fanning is one of the leads! Okay I've got a thing for her since I first saw her in I Am Sam (check out my archives in November 2005), then subsequently in War Of The Worlds with Tom Cruise. I think she's one of the most precocious and talented young actresses, not just for her cutesy abilities. But Mike Myers in the show was too much like, Austin Powers. Can't watch the show properly without getting distracted by his annoying laughter and snorts. And I thought the adult themes and swearing and innuendos shouldn't have belonged in a kids' show. And, the whole movie reminded me strongly of WILLY WONKA, WILLA WONKA, THE AMAZING CHOCOLATIER hahahahahaha!

Came down with a super high fever which peaked 39.2 degrees yesterday. It was kinda terrible, with a very bad headache and sore throat and muscle aches. So I took a trip to Tan Tock Seng Hospital at around 8pm last night. The doctor assessed me, decided that my fever was still too high to go home, so she gave me two pills of some medication I do not know, which miraculously brought down the high fever in 45 minutes. Then there was some big boo-boo when I realised that they spelt my name wrongly on the registration slips (and subsequently for all the other documents, such as my prescription and my medical certificate), so I have to wait a short while for them to change my surname from "LOU" to "LOW".

I've got 2 days out of camp to rest, recuperate and recover. Which, in my opinion, is both a good and bad thing. Good thing being 7 consecutive days out of camp since last week! Bad, because that means I'll miss the demolition refresher package. Eh we're going to some demolition range next week to blow up some charges! Isn't that cool I want to blow things up.

Now my temperature is back to a more normal range, although there's still a slight fever. And I've got a bad sore throat, so I can't swallow properly. Sigh.

I'm blogging from my iPod Touch!!! Oh my gosh this is the coolest gadget ever!! Okay it's a pain to type because the keyboard is way too small, but it's cool and that's all that matters. AWESOME!! Shall end here, cos it took 15 minutes just to type something this short.

I have a new computer!! And it is all thanks to the tremendous effort and help from Kai Jie! Whoopee he was totally awesome!! You see, my old computer (like, 5 years old) had some problems with the CPU fan system, and I kinda decided that it needed an upgrade anyway since it's running out of memory and slow and laggy. Actually the crunch was that the old computer would automatically shut down every half an hour or less than that, because the thing overheats. So I called Kai Jie who said he can help me build a new one from scratch, albeit reusing my display monitor and keyboard and mouse and stuff like that.

And so began our adventure! Went down to Sim Lim Square today, did an initial scouring of the place, then Kai Jie helped identify all the components and funny weird peripherals that I weren't even familiar with, and then buying all of them. After we got everything we came back to my house to fix it all up. Golly it's fun! Okay I've never done anything like that before, and computer hardware isn't my cup of tea so I just sat in amazement watching him fix everything and listening to him explain everything too. Whoaa.

Total cost? Slightly more than $800. Total time spent? Two hours to get the stuff, another two to fix it all up. And I learnt a lot more about computers than I ever did in my whole life. If you ask me about programmes or software I still can figure them out, but I'm a complete hardware noob. And therefore, the point is, I was supremely impressed with Kai Jie today because he's absolutely scintillating. You've really gotta witness it for yourself haha. AWESOME OH GOSH HE SHOULD JUST GO DABBLE INTO A NEW RANGE OF PERSONAL COMPUTERS AND NAME THEM SOMETHING LIKE, 'KJ'.

Thanks man.

Off, off you lendings.
Come, unbutton here.
I think I'm going crazy,
because my name is Lear.
(The meter stinks, but at least the rhyme's not queer.)

by Kai Jie

Eh okay. The book is Ursula, Under, written by this author named Ingrid Hill. On the cover page there is a sticker that says "Recommended by the author of The Time Traveler's Wife". What's special (to me) about this book is that I've taken 3 entire months to read it. Yeah a lot of people have been asking me why they keep seeing me with the same book all the time, to which I'd retort why can't I take my own sweet time to read my own book!!! So here's to all of you bitchy whiny people who cannot stand the sight of me clinging on to my Ursula, Under: I'VE FINISHED THE BOOK AND I'M MOVING ON.

And for the sheer amount of time spent on one single book alone, I feel that it warrants a reasonable recognition on my effort. So here's a book review in all its glory. To begin with, the book ain't that thick; it's only 400 plus plus pages in total, but the font is tiny, and it takes me about 15 minutes just to read 5 pages. On top of that, I didn't really discipline myself to read it religiously everyday, and it's not as if I have a lot of spare time to begin with, which explains why I took so long.

But it was time very well spent. The plot in itself is a highly ambitious attempt for a fictitious work, but the author managed to pull all the strings together and made it blend so seamlessly that it's nothing short of flawless. Basically the story is about this little girl named Ursula who fell into an old mine shaft. That's the main story. Then it proceeds on to branch into the ancestral family tree of Ursula. So we have sub-stories on various characters throughout the ages, all of which are directly involved in continuing the vast family from fading into oblivion, and culminating in the birth of our little Ursula. Geddit so far?

What's really remarkable is how the author brought to life each separate character's history, and still managed to link them all up. The ancestors range as far from Chinese to Finnish, with different occupations and family backgrounds and does not differentiate between the prosperous and the destitute. All of them face the common difficulties of trying to survive in an era where disease and death are all common due to the lack of medical breakthroughs. And trying to ensure they have offspring for the next generation. And dealing with the violence of not-so-civilised humanity. Each of their story is a test of endurance and an outstanding feat by itself already. And you have to link it all up and equate it to come to the conclusion that Ursula is too precious to die from her fall into the mine shaft, because she is the precocious result of numerous heroes throughout history.

Being a literature-sucker for good prose, I thought the narration was impeccable, precise and simply fantastic. If you're a stickler for lucid English sentences with all the narrative stylistics, this book is for you. And the author's choice of being an omniscient narrator is perfect, because it provides as the constant and all-knowing linkage throughout the story's timeline, with all the subtle nuances of irony, and the gentle reminder of all of human beings' instinctive thoughts and reactions and sentience and methodology of the way of life.

But there were times when I thought the prose tries too hard to please. It can become slightly verbose, and that is where it works against itself because it is too gaudy. Actually if I were to be polite, I'd use the words "extravagant" and "lavish", which sounds more high-class hahahaha. But I felt that it was more like a poor attempt at rhetorics. It's too pretentious.

And the plot. It becomes irritatingly common and predictable after a while.

But outstanding depiction of all the stories, related or unrelated, that had Ursula as a character in it. Again, those scenes resemble more of scripted TV serials because they try too hard that it loses it's realism, but it redeems itself by being sugary-sweet and tugs at the emotions of the reader. That is, unless you're so impersonal and have a heart of stone, you'll almost certainly side on Ursula's side and wish her all the best.

Yeah. BIG BROWNIE POINTS to Ingrid Hill for a brilliant book, although I wish it was less naggy (so that I can finish the book faster) and not so fake-ish. Superb writing though; it ought to earn a place in some Literature class for tone and tension and stylistics and character analysis and narrative techniques, and so much more.

Sigh. This whole week has been kinda emo. For a lot of reasons. Ryyan Spenser passed away on Wednesday, after getting into a motorbike accident a week and a half ago. It came as a huge shock, because last I heard he was getting better. But that's probably the clearest indication of the brevity of life. You never know when something terrible is going to happen; and you won't know if tomorrow will ever be there for you. Okay granted that I wasn't very close to Ryyan, but still he's a friend and the loss saddens me. I don't do deaths very well. Never did, because it shakes me up emotionally just to think of one less person living and breathing in this world. And so most of the people from my company went down for the wake and funeral service yesterday. Poignant and plaintive. I skipped the cremation at Mandai because I didn't feel very right about it. And I probably cannot handle it anyway.

Okay. On a much brighter note, I finally passed my IPPT! The only station that is hindering me thus far is standing broad jump, which I think is the stupidest crap ever. I don't think jumping is an indication of your fitness level! But what the hell I finally passed on the dot, after trying for so long. And then we went down to Nee Soon for our live-firing range. I'm a marksman at heart. It's a long story, but the gist is, I've hit 22 out of 28 rounds (that's the minimum criteria for marksmanship) but this probably will not be an official record in my NS life. Because the conduct of the whole thing was so screwed up and some results weren't captured and I didn't get the same result during those reshoots, so I can't do anything but accept it as one of those common inefficiencies of army. But there were $200 at stake too! Okay la I don't need the money desperately and besides it's a bonus anyway. But still there's a tiny chance of hope, because I still don't know my results yet and there might still be a miracle.

Had dinner at Qiling's house last night. Jas was there too. It was a pleasant coincidence, no less, because my mum and my sister went to Malaysia to visit some relatives and attend a wedding, so there's only me and my dad left at home and my dad's busy with his work so I needed to settle dinner on my own. Then today I went J8 with Yurong and Douglas for lunch. Went to corps to hang around and play bridge (Tammy joined in) after that.

I finally made up my mind about the World Vision adoption. I'm going to support this 10-year-old girl from Bangladesh by paying $45 a month. At first I was hesitant because I didn't know if I will be able to cope financially. I mean, it's okay for now since army's paying me regularly every month, but what about when I get out of army?? This is for an indefinite period, and I didn't feel that it will be very responsible for me to back out. But now I'm going to leave it all in God's grace to provide. And this gives me an added reason to stop spending so much and start saving up.

Sounds pretty cool eh! I'm like a "daddy" for this little girl. And I'll be able to write letters to her, and if World Vision is planning some trip to Bangladesh I can go along and meet her. Ooh! I can't wait to get started.

Yea, I guess that will be all for now.

Here's a silly thing I did today: I went to pluck my eyebrows!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Joel's going for his prom, and as with all prom-related things he wanted to look good, so Biru introduced him to this beauty shop somewhere at market. And I tagged along because I've never plucked my eyebrows before and I thought it'll be a good idea to try. There's gotta be a first time for me somewhere someday!! So now both my eyebrows feel kinda twingy and numb.

Anyway, for those of you who yet know, I've got a new iPod Touch!! Got it off some broadband internet promotion with Singtel. I swear it's the coolest gadget ever. Now I'm adding songs to iTunes and trying to configure all the small small things.

Going to be leading worship with Biru this coming Friday for youth service! Hahaha once again it's been a long time since I led, so it's kinda exciting. I realised I get excited easily these few days.

I'm currently into Gil Elvgren! For those of you who don't know who he is, he's this American artist who did a lot of pin-up paintings, of which most included girls with sexually provocative poses or in lacy underwear and such. I think he's excellent! Here's one of my favourites:



Oh okay. I think I should go.