i'm cr-y-ing (yah rite)

i sometimes really dun understand koreans.

they seem to be this civilization that just loves to cry and cry with their heartbreaking tales and gut wrenching love stories where the protagonist almost always meets with a foul end, but not before both the male and female protagonists have a) gotten into an accident b) been swopped into different families c)lose their memory d) wept millions and millions of times....

yeah. i went watching "stairways to heaven" after being inspired by going to lotte world. geee.. really touching and interesting circumstances which is really grippingi must say.. though to get to those scenarios, the writers conveniently ignored some plot loopholes.. like HOW THE HECK does Qingshu not realise it is Chengjun and not Taihua when even the fricking hair length is different!?!

i'm hoping for a good ending but apparently my sis says there isn't one. bleah. which means even more crying.

no wonder i liked Jewel in the Palace more.

university rankings

was blissfully unaware of the recent newspaper article citing the Top 30 universities list and how Singapore is ranked high up in the 20-ish spot whilst Penn is languishing somewhere below...

then wham! bam!.. my parents started this furore over applying for other universities instead of only Penn, saying "Why don't you try to Duke(14?)", "Why don't you try for Cornell?"

Damn you stupid ranking lists! Damn you for misleading worried parents and the likes just so to glorify our national university..

Man, if people just used a miniscule fraction of their brainpower to think, they would quickly realise there are multitudes of ranking lists for all different criterias and the shit. Our idiotic newspapers just goes about choosing the list that puts NUS on the highest possible ranking, then publishes it on the newspapers like it is THE ranking, hence deluding masses of worried parents and the likes.

sheesh.

whatever lah. this still reminds me to really hurry up and apply my other universities.. it's become a sore point with my parents liao

Take THAT you Stupid ST biased list!

the irony of it all

gee... just when i psyched myself to go for a run of around 15 minutes around the camp, I ruin it all minutes after by gorging down one delicious wan ton mee courtesy of my clerk...

sometimes I really wonder how I can justify these things to myself. are such temptations really so tough that it suppresses whatever rationale you have and that only after the 'heinous' act is committed does the temptation fade and you start feeling shit guilty?

DOO duty

Doing duty just makes you realise how you can simply waste away one perfect day by just sitting there, talking rubbish and watching inane boring saturday shows.

Sigh. If we are not careful we may end up living our lives like this and one day too late, realise how much time we have wasted.

Friday was one hell of a day with ridiculous requests

"frank, i don't care how you do it... but i want to see 4 cartons of SAF beer on monday"
what... u think i'm some magician or sort that can just 'ting' and things appear?

"sir, can we have more off to top up so we can take two weeks off?"
what the!?! that's a real novel way of asking for off man...

got really pissed cos all this irritating requests and crap was distracting me from my real work which was seriously threatening to explode liao... feel very frustrated sometimes when I have to do mounds and mounds of paperwork, then act as courier service for weapons and so on, hence sacrificing my time to interact with the men and understand them better and the problems they are currently feeling.

felt so detached for a period of time thanks to the bloody beer problems...

i reason that seriously they should increase the pay of the QM. DyS4 does a lot of paperwork and has a lot of interesting side appointments but he rarely needs to really concern himself with the welfare of his guys since there are like only 2 - 3 and they have a high tendency to disappear thanks to their limitless offs it seems. Other PCs have their men problems to concern with, but I'd bet they rarely need to really handle so many problematic "children", and they have much less burden in terms of paperwork.

oh well... this kind of bitching is really pointless... not like it would amount to anything, and further more you never know how others feel about you. grass is always greener on the other side cos you are not trampling on it.

what a bummer!

sheesh... my face is seriously ruined thanks to the horridly dry weather in seoul... now i look like some desert arab with some pimple problem.. my skin is flaky and peeling and even scaly at parts..

yuck. bummer.

oh well... hopefully a few days of singaporean weather will heal it fast... =)

oh, and another bummeration. i was going to run at 9.30pm earlier on after my driving lesson, but geee... at exactly 9.40 when i was about to change, the raindrops started falling and lei-gong starts his thunderfest party of sorts..

cham lah... how the heck to regain my fitness and figure like that?!? already my face looking puffier and FAT... shudder

damn am i vain.

aniwez, one song has been running through my mind the whole night, even whilst i was struggling to parallel park tonight... that is...

harajuku girls by gwen stefani... haha... catchy, ulitmately slutty and so unique...

adios!

photo entry

this is the 3 of us at the start of things... @ Jeju Island, around 1/10 of the journey up "sunset" mountain...

korean food = barbeque, kimchi, hotpot, and MORE kimchi

me atop the "sunset" mountain, my parents gave up 1/3 the way to my dismay...

me @ at some dragon rock thingy.. which honestly is pretty lame... but got sunset view lor...

me at the teddy bear museum going crazy over teddies.. (i have some soft spot for teddy bears it seems)

me at the Yong Pyong Ski Resort which to me is the most beautiful and romantic place we visited... one because Winter Sonata was filmed there and also because it was freezing cold there that frost was starting to appear, giving everything a tinted, snowy look

together @ the final hotel on the day of departure... so fast man!

well... i think i truly enjoyed myself.. and yeah.. was a little VAIN throughout the trip...(count the number of clothes change)

thank god for such a wonderful trip!

back from the land of utter gibberish

phew.. i'm back... what a trip! many memorable things and events to share.. but a little too tired and bummed that i have to work tommorow and get back to reality.. which is that there's stocktaking tommorow and I have to get my fitness back on some track cos the trip completely derailed whatever fitness plans. pooh.

just a few thoughts before i sleep...

1. korea sucks as a shopping place. seriously if i were a korean, i would try to immigrate as fast as possible. that or learn how to buy stuff online... why? the stuff they have there are shockingly overpriced, like more than 150% the price of the stuff in singapore.. a simple comparison? a simple adidas shirt there cost like 34000won.. which is like 60 fricking singapore dollars..

honestly with such encouraging prices it's no small wonder why i ended up with nothing bought.

2. korea really does not like foreigners... there are so few signs around the place that are even remotely recognisable... everything there is the mish-mash of circles lines and dashes... it's like some morse code gone haywire or something... and then when u try to shop and look around, you are completely befuddled by the language barrier and well... you just give up. i tried browsing for a nice le coq sportif jacket which cost a whopping 128000won (of course i wasn't gonna buy it.. just gonna try and see whether it looked good).. this is the scenario...

salesperson: klk#$k3(*>?

me: err.. politely bows and jabbers at the jacket, whilst saying "oromaeo", meaning how much is it (thanks to my tour guide)

salesperson: gestures "128000won" (my eyes nearly drop out)

me: can i try it? try?

salesperson: *#8(2&nhjuhu4?

me: huh? err.. attempts to take the jacket to try it

salesperson: yanks the jacket from me and asks, M? M?

me: YES.. M.. can i try?

salesperson: 98iubBJN*B*? then goes to the store to search for an M...

this is where i have a bad feeling that he somehow assumes i actually want to buy one... so i straight away rush up and frantically wave my hand and say no.. no.. it's ok...

then dash out of sight.

phew... so much for customer service.

oh well.. tired liao.. blog again another time

touchdown, day one...

what a tiring day... finally reached the hotel @ Jeju island after many hours of tavelling.. sian.. my parents are watching me type this in the main lobby of the hotel.. which is honestly, such a wierd place to place a computer...

took some nice pics, saw some nice scenes and ate pretty good food.. will update when I'm feeling better.. =)

farewell my country!

im @ the nexus lounge of Terminal 1, sniffing and nursing a cold as I type this... pooh.. what a way to start my vacation... but oh well.. just pray that my cold will heal once I get to the land of Korea...

dun think I'll go mad with a shopping spree and spend like crazy, but will just relax and have fun... (hopefully)... just surveyed the tour group I'll be travelling with, and to my slight disappointment there is a high proportion of gray-to-white haired people as well as some toddlers... ie, the worst kind of travelling companions... but i think there are some cute gals going there for some korean soap opera "trail", so i still hold some hope.. haha...

oh well... there's still ALOT of time to the flight thanks to the paranoia of my mom, but guess can spend some time browsing stuff and chasing my cold away.. such a buggeration man... i think it has something to do with flights... the trip to japan had me sniffing like crazy on the first day and got me into a pretty foul mood as I went to meet my sis... but it got ok the next day...

think I'm talking rubbish already.. shall stop. hope i get to take lot'sa pictures,have lot'sa fun and come back ready for the battles in the battalion...

farewell my country! (yah rite)

one more day!

i was literally grinning as i left my bunk today after work, thinking of the familiar smell of the airport at midnight and the familiar sounds of the planes... hehe... one more day till my trip to korea!

this trip is particular appealing to me cos it allows me to dump my frustrating and stressful work at my battalion, allows me to relieve my mind of the constant worries of me failing my SOC and needing to training to grow thin again, and also lets me go to the airport as a passenger this time round, and not some miserable "receiver" of friends... bleah..

the feeling is particularly sweet considering the last visit i went was with me wearing a tie and "forming up" in the airport to go to the desolate place of Brunei.. what a turn off...

aniwez, these two days at the battalion sure passed pretty fast, and with fred, tang and wee kiat not around, it was pretty sian-ish.. haha... went out with derui to eat dinner @ JP and was suan-ed by him the whole way with his "you'll get your understudy only in Feb lah!" comments...

if that really happens I'll be mightily pissed and go march to S1 branch and raise a big ruckus...

whatever it is, had a good talk with him after he 'sobered' down and well, i realised I have become more skeptical about the good nature of people nowadays, especially after trying to lead my department well.. the rife backstabbing, the fake cooperations, the many failures and problems my men conjure up have really shattered the vulnerable faith in me concerning the goodness in people... and seriously, i'm pretty sad at that... don't understand why people must degrade to such a level...

oh well.. time to forget it all and enjoy for awhile! yippee!!

a lil' blog history for ya'

you know there was this time in the early part of the year where I was convinced I was absolutely hooked to blogging and found every possible scrap of time to blog about ANYTHING slightly relevant to my life...

then came the blog wars with someone.. and the media-whorish side of me lost the battle against the peace-loving side of me... (yeah rite)

my entries really started to stink and i shifted off to a *private* blog.. only to get lambasted by other pals by my YET again media-whorish intents of leaving cryptic clues like "don't go finding my secret blog"

well, i poured out my heart and soul to that.. but then some people who were either boh-liao enough or seriously "concerned" for me (or whether i was defaming them behind their backs) found a tweak or two and became like secret voyuers to my private life...

imagine my horror when i realised the intimate details in my life were being read like some tabloid trash! (yeah, ok stop calling me retarded for thinking i could protect something ONLINE.. the whole idea in itself is pretty ridiculous as it is)

furthermore, some idiot went to PUBLISH a fragment of my post on his blog, like quoting for the bible or something... and then went on to comment about it.. now that pissed me off seriously..if it wasn't enough to quote me like some pathetic plagiarist, that person misrepresented facts and made me look even more idiotic than i already was...

oh well.. so really, left with not much choices, i closed that one as well and my interest in blogging waned... died out...

several attempts of reviving something all failed, either due to the fact that my first post SUCKS (usually going something like hi, i'm back! hopefully...) or that i had no direction for my blog (personal or media-whorish?)... also, contrary to other idiots who think i don't do anything at my workplace except to convert oxygen into carbon dioxide, I am actually pretty busy.

so aniwez, realised that really a blogger is inherently a mediawhore. there's no other real motive of having a blog except to have people reading about your life, worshipping you, envying you, making digs at your life or what.. so well, I'm just gonna adopt this self-depreciating tone of the world and myself and restart this blog...

hehe.. p_f_s strikes back.

shopaholic tendencies

went out with linken and edwin this sat to play dota once again with royston, his gf and some other of his pals..

to people whom seriously think I'm addicted to dota or something... I'm NOT. serious. besides playing it awhile outside and then gushing about the results, I have not even remotely touched dota.. haha.. yeah... (i sound like a drug addict.. sheesh)

aniwez, thing is, linken met us that day with his usual pissy mood, but just this time it was like he had some serious pms. he ranted about how his spastic siblings must have tampered with his creative muVo and how they must have spoilt the catch and how he feels like buying an i-pod nano to replace this...

i suggested taping up the catch and he reacted with disgust, saying that that was so low class and people would look at him in disdain and think he was some pauper on the streets who scrimped and saved to buy a muvo and when it spoilt, then taped it up to "save" money..

he was in obvious conflict with himself that day, as he kept trying to tell edwin or I to stop him from going to wheelock to look at the i-pod nanos and buy one to replace this. to which i told him he would not be able to have an A/X month again if he bought it.

but seriously, i think it didn't work. something tells him he will end up with a i-pod nano ultimately. why? cos he started dissing his MuVo saying that it was only 1 GB, saying that it was ugly and so on..

gee, typical attitude associated with a shopaholic trying to justify a new buy when he/she already has a similar item... i've faced this dilemna too, but guess the reality of the money spent also drags me away from spending more...

so hehe.. let's see whether he'd be flaunting his ipod next round...