To the airport

Went to the airport three times this week to send my friends off to UK and Japan. To the five of you, all the best! Here's the roll of honour for those who have left (and will be back) and the instantaneous impression when reminded of you, arranged chronologically.

1.YH - Congrats for scolding the army officer during an assembly session in HC.
2. Pek - Before we can see your slapping motion, the fly on the table has already been killed by you.
3. JF - Being turned off by your disgusting buddy in BMT.
4. ZW - Conference with lk using isac card, advising him on project 29.
5. SYing - Always pinching lk.

And I only managed to kope two pics.

At the departure hall, it's only when the departing passengers go to the other side of the glass wall that parents start to shed tears. It's only when they are on the other side that the mood becomes more solemn, that we want to linger a bit more to see you all walking farther away from us, occasionally turning back to wave goodbye. The piece of glass reminds us that we are physically divided from that moment onwards... And we normally only realise that when they are at the other side.

Need Cash, anyone?

I saw this advertisement at my grandparents' house today. Everyone is learning the concept of packaging and advertising well. Advertising, that's part of marketing strategies! I learnt that in MKT1003.



What a samaritan that guy is. Helping people with cash problems! There are only three people in this world who will be so kind hearted or 'kind hearted' to strangers.

1) The banks. Obviously it's not from the bank.
2.) The rich. When they donate, they need publicity.
3.) Ah Long. That's more likely.

Ah Long is learning the ropes of marketing well.

OAC 我们的家

Decided to post the lyrics here after yesterday's outing.

OAC 我们的家

这些年来 我们走过坎坷路
时不时 感觉好孤独
几经风雨 我们有缘来相遇
就此结下了解不开的友谊
坚定不移 我们历尽了迁徙
为了一致的目标 让我们一起向前行

Chorus
Ah – Ha OAC是我的家
每一刻都想念她
我们付出了所有
为的就是发扬她精神
Ah – Ha OAC温暖我心
给你我似家的温馨
让我们手牵手
一同共创美好的未来

多年以后 我们唱起这首歌
一瞬间 回忆齐涌现
弹着吉他 友谊就像这首歌
永恒的 陪伴着生命的旅程
歌声响起 秉着炽热的内心
让我们再次歌颂 以往美丽的回忆

Chorus x2
Ah – Ha OAC是我的家
每一刻都想念她
我们付出了所有
为的就是发扬她精神
Ah – Ha OAC温暖我心
给你我似家的温馨
让我们手牵手
一同共创美好的未来

Supper @ Bedok 85

After attending pek's farewell yesterday, 29th OAC met up at bedok 85 for supper at 11pm! To put it in a more nolstalgic manner, last supper with zhengwei and shuying. The company was great! In what seems to be minutes, it was already 230am when we left. Apart from the usual good food, sugarcane drinks and crapping, this supper was a little different from the previous suppers we've had. We had a mini-MAF cos Tze and I brought lanterns to relive our childhood memories!

After eating at bedok 85, we went over to bedok reservoir to light up, a place which ben claimed to have special memories with.... With university level understanding of torque, Jingsong and Likoon managed to balance themselves on a see-saw without their legs touching the ground, with a very constipated look though. Walking towards water with our lighted up paper lanterns, we settled down to light up more candles, forming the numbers 29. Some of us also went nearby to play with the swing. It's like turning back time to our childhood. I noticed the playgrounds were all sand based, something which is very hard to find in Singapore nowadays. While using candles to form 29, tze, jw, shu, pg and zw were trying to use a burning twig to draw hearts and stars while our 'official' sandfly-cum-mosquitophilic photographer cons took pics of it using fireworks mode. The effects were fantastic!









Apart from the merry making in the wee hours, I felt it was a nolstagic night. A quiet park, a half-full moon and a group of friends sitting in a circle with lanterns, burning lanterns, burning candles. It felt so much like a campfire. Automatically, we started singing some HC songs and our own OAC song. Those were the good old days. The meaning of mid autumn festival is 团圆。And I thought the outing suited it, since two of us are leaving for the UK and Japan this week. Nevertheless, MAF also have a meaning for people who are leaving their home. 但愿人长久，千里共婵娟.

Pek's farewell

Friday was engin day! Half day for all engineering students. My lecture ended at 12pm. After having lunch at Techno Edge, I went to beach road with likoon to buy a 60L Outgear backpack for jingsong as his b'day present from 29th. Later on, went back to RV to visit zhengwei and weiqi. Had a short game of frisbee and wanted to visit Mr Desmond Lim, but he was not around. 530 was up! I gotta rush back to put down my stuffs and attend pek's farewell cum birthday party.

Pek's farewell was at Parc Vista condo at lakeside. Needless to say, the food was definitely great since Pek is someone who is always hungry! Junyuan brought his ice wine! That was wise move, I must say. The last time I opened my ice wine at yujin's house, it was shared by more than fifteen people, which means each person only get a sip of the wine! Not shiok enough! This time round, the wine was shared by 9 of us from ADA! I got to drink about 1/3 the volume of a paper cup! That pureness of the wine was great! Shouldn't have ate the korean bbq during the last day of NZ. Should have bought 2 more bottles back! Back to pek's farewell, it was a good catching up with my army friends, especially ivan, a.k.a. bunkmate! We have not seen him for a long timE! i gotta self introduce myself to him yesterday. "Hi Ivan, I am Jeremy". Always pon our outings! He's famous for this pillow talk, which all you hawkers will remember.

Weijie: "Hey Ivan, don't like that lar, what are friends for?"
Ivan: "Hey what friends, we are just bunkmates."

Now that pek is leaving, we will have one less person turning up for outings. Certainly it's going to feel like a missing jigsaw. Nevertheless, let's hope that our rotation of organisers for outings will continue. Keep the fire burning.

Macritchie Outing --- Marcel'06
Dragon Gate restaurant Tim Sum Buffet --- Jeremy'06
Marche --- Alan'06
Paragon Ding Tai Feng --- Jy'06
Swaadhisht Authentic Indian Cuisine --- Siva'06
Michael Father's Tze Char --- Pek'07
Geylang --- Wj'07
?? --- Alan

A journalist from the business times once said, apart from the three types of mutually exclusive friends identified by Aristotle, "there is another type of friends. They are those that you know your life will eventually diverage from, but with whom you've shared something special for a time."



And to pek, thanks for being both a brother and a great friend. I've learnt a lot from you. All the best in the UK!

Zhengwei's Farewell

Went for zhengwei's farewell on saturday at east coast park coasta sands chalet. It's been a great outing with this bunch of friends from 29th OAC. Something really special about this group of friends is that we are still going out as one big group after graduating from JC for 3 years, and it's pretty often, say at least once a month, but most of the time is twice a month. Maybe it's because this is the 21st Bday year for all of us, maybe it's because the guys have passed driving and can drive pple out for supper. Whatever the reason, looking back we have really came a long way, a friendship forged since YLTC 03 and is still going strong. Now that zhengwei is leaving, it's one less person in the group. The guy who is trademark for saying disgustingly mushy stuffs is leaving. There is no one to teach koon to say sweet nothings and not to stutter again. Of course these are not his only good points, but these are the first two that came to my mind currently. Hope you don't mind, zw. Thanks for organising the farewell. It's been a great night catching up with everyone. We will miss you one =D

Something good about the day

Sometimes you just need to do one or two things you don't normally do to break the monotony of the day. This was what happened today for no reason. I think I was abnormal.

I saw four teens cycling past me while I was walking home from woodlands library. I noticed some orange light on their right and on closer look, each of them was holding a cigarette. Although this is really not very me, I just blurted out, telling them to stop smoking. And I got my retribution when they replied me with a string of vulgarities. But so be it. There was no new vulgar vocab to learn from them anyway. I once used them as punctuation too.

Later, feeling totally saturated from trying to draw correct freebody diagrams to solve equilibrium problems (fearing that Sir Newton will wake up from his grave if I don't draw according to his laws.), I went for a jog to drain away the lactic equations accumulated in my brain. Saw this young girl in a car. I tried waving and smiling to her but she hid below the window. Well, very not me to stop halfway to wave to a little kid. But it's kind of those little pleasures of life. Haha.

Weekend is coming. Hosei!

Botak Jones

Went with my army friends to botak jones yesterday to celebrate jy bdae at the clementi outlet. It's my third time eating at botak jones! And yesterday was the second time I ordered a cajun chicken set, plus a shared plate of large whoopass cheese fries! It funny how 1 month in university can change our conversation topics. It used to be army here army there when we had outings. But yesterday, the topic was this lectuerer sux or don't understand what that lecturer was talking or I spent 3 hours doing one question in my tutorial! There was also a significant decrease in the universal friendly gesture -F- used too. We dun use it as a punctuation anymore. More cultured now? Less 'Ah beng?' Nevertheless, despite the erosion of crude culture, we can still talk about any rubbish. Just that the rubbish topics now include maths and equations and being in an almost all guys class. No more Russel Peter's jokes!

And one hour passed like nobody's business when you are in good company. or engrossed in what you are doing.

I went home after my outing to do my tutorial which was supposed to be submitted today. I din realise that it was already 2am by the time I cleared it. As a result, I missed today's morning run which I promised myself cos' my lazy body just refused to get out of bed! I really missed going ecp to run every sat morning.

Today, on my way back from school I remembered I haven been on msn for a while since most of the time I was trying to clear my pile of work. I am not sure when did it become a 'habit' to come online. So, on my boring journey home I did some mental sums, like those sch kids having mental sums. The only difference is that I don't have an exercise book now to write it down like last time. But I think my mental sum is more meaningful than those your teachers give you, kiddos.

Assuming an average of 2h spent on msn per day.
1 Day = 2h
30 Day = 60h (awake)
= 2.5 Days (awake) -------- (1)

[ Recall: An interesting chat with my friend yesterday taught me the concept of waking days. If you sleep 10hour per day, which is about half a day, you only live about 30 waking years if your lifespan is 60 years. Sound like some chim crap, but I shall crap on. ]

So assuming you are a superman and sleep an approximately 4h per day.
Total waking hours per month = 20 x 30
= 600h
= 25 Days --------(2)

Comparing (1) and (2), percentage of waking time spent on msn = (2.5/25)*100%
= 10%

How you infer this value of 10% is up to you. Cos I have not really reflected on the 10% either. It's just out of curousity on the train that I worked out the percentage. We can't say msn is totally bad and time wasting because it's a virtual meeting place with your friends and many other advantages you can name. But we can't say that 10% is not a significant amount of time. And maybe 10% is just too much an underestimate because you might just be online for more than 2 hours and sleep more than 4 hours per day. So next time when I want to complain I dun have enough time, I should think twice whether I am a victim of time or vice versa.

Took so long to type out the maths when my mental sum only took less than 1min. Haolian my core 2 duo brain processor a bit =)

Work

It's four weeks into the semester and schoolwork is piling up. Been trying to clear some of them these few days but was unable to summon enough discipline or having mental blocks when attempting to them. Yet life's not so bad after all. I am starting to know most of my classmates (and also happily accept that it's almost an all guy's class). I also look forward to the weekly canoe polo training to release the suppressed violent tendencies of me accumulated from the frustrations and sianness of mugging. Admist the monotomy of a work-oriented week, little actions certainly go a long way as a pleasant surprise, thanks :) Well, I am glad I am adapting well to university life. Things are now starting to settle in place and I have better control of my time now.

"The only way to go beyond work is through work. It is not that work itself is valuable; we surmount work by work. The real value of work lies in the strength of self-denial."
--Kobo Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

Sunday

An excerpt from a social experiment book that I was reading, which I found it interesting.

"And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy," it is written in the Book of Genesis. God devoted six days to creating heaven and earth. Then, on the seventh, the work is finished - not by building a holy place, but by creating a sacred time. Although the world was created in the first six days, its survival depends upon the holiness of the seventh. "What was created on the seventh day? Tranquillity, serenity, peace and repose." Philosopher Abraham Herschel observed: "Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh we seek to dominate the self... In the tempestuous ocean of time and toil there are islands of stillness where man may enter a harbor and reclaim his dignity. The island is the seventh day, a day of detachment from things, instruments and practical affairs as well as of attachment to the spirit."