You can don't respect my RANK, but you must respect my ORD.

NOTHING IS CONFIRMED UNTIL IT ACTUALLY HAPPENS.

The New Paper, Thursday, 15 July 2005, Net Buzz

PEOPLE REALLY SAID THESE IN U.S. COURTS
Spotted by CT Lim

Q: Were you present when your picture was taken?

Q: How far apart were the vehicles at the time of the collision?
Q: You were there until the time you left, is that true?

Q: She had three children? A: Yes.
Q: How many were boys? A: None.
Q: Were there any girls?

Q: You say the stairs went down to the basement? A: Yes.
Q: These stairs, did they go up too?
(*I thought this makes some sense . . . after all there are flight of stairs that cover many floors.)

Q: Mr Slattery, you went on a rather elaborate honeymoon, didn't you? A: I went to Europe, sir.
Q: And you took your new wife?
Q: How was your first marriage terminated? A By death.
Q: And by whose death was it terminated?

Q: Was it you or your younger brother who was killed in the war?

Q: Can you describe the individual? A: He was about medium height and had a beard.
Q: Was this a male, or a female?

Q: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
A: No, this is how I dress for work.

Good news! The number of years that we have to return for NS reservist has been brought from 13 years to 10 years! Hooray!

The perfect situation for the army? Robot wars. Each NS Man will take control of one robot and perform proxy fighting from a safe zone using remote controls. So all we need is to train our reflexes and our brainpower. Concentration, concentration, concentration! If your robot gets maimed in action due to negligence on the part of the controller, then the government will just deduct money from your salary to pay for the cost of new robot!

Damn, simulator shooting is terrible. I look through the rear-sight aperture and I can't see any fuck thing on the screen. It's a whole messy patch of black. The target is dark-coloured with a sand-coloured background, so it's supposed to stand out. Instead, black and orange merge mercilessly together against my eyesight.

We have instances where the targets will appear either on the left or right side of the boundaries of our lanes at random. Not being able to see clearly, I have to look up to spot where the target has appeared before taking careful aim. Now this wastes a lot of time, so I can't do a good aim and a good trigger squeeze. There is a technique for puling the trigger, so that it doesn't jerk the rifle and cause the bullet to fly off somewhere slightly away from your intended point of shot.

Sometimes I wonder how on earth I ever got my marksman badge.

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

We've got news that the Brunei trip might be postponed again. The advance party is flying out on 26 August instead of the 22nd as initially planned. So our departure will be delayed as well. Till when we're not sure.

So many things have not been done. Let's just hope that cancel this piece of shit.

The Straits Times, Thursday, 11 August 2005, Forum

RECENT NATIONAL DAY SONG LACK MASS APPEAL

Watching the spectacular National Day Parade on Tuesday, I was struck by the evolution of National Day songs over the past couple of decades.

The recent repertoire, including this year's Reach for the Skies, is ostensibly more melodic, sophisticated and attuned to popular culture than the previous decades' Count on Me Singapore and We are Singapore.

And yet, despite the former's congruence with current tastes, the songs just don't seem to catch on as readily with Singaporeans as the simpler, folksy songs of yesteryears. As I watched the spectators belt out Stand up for Singapore an the other campfire-like songs, but sway silently to the newer sounds of Home and the aforementioned 2005 National Day song, I couldn't help but wonder if perhaps the latter are just a tad too sophisticated for mass singing.

These National Day songs are meant to rally Singaporeans in celebration of the special day and to generate a feeling of pride in our country.

That invariably involves the songs together as a nation. But mass singing requires simple melodies, "reachable" notes, and easy-to-remember (that is, repetitive) lyrics – elements that the latest songs don't quite possess. Though I have enjoyed the fresh, inspirational and aspirational harmonies that showcase our country's young talent, our National Day songs should b be timeless, not just hip now.
Perhaps we should look towards creating less demanding songs that can bridge the gap between the nerdy old-school chants and the newer inaccessibly-pitched tunes – songs that people of any vocal range can readily belt out with pride.

I have also noticed that songs of recent years mention the words "Singapore'" and "Singaporeans" sparingly or not at all. Though I fully recognise that it is unnecessary to punctuate the songs with these terms (for we all know who we are and where we live_ and that this makes for a more universally acceptable piece of music that wouldn't embarrass school-going children and teens when compelled to learn and sing these numbers, these words offer the songs an identity of which we should be proud enough to declare.

One of our more memorable tunes proclaimed, we are Singapore, Singaporeans, so why not say it (o sing it) with pride?

-- Marisa Low Tze-Mien (Ms)

What a bloody waste of time.

Today happens to be a school holiday, so to rope the army guys into the act of slacking for one day at home, they've decided to organise the Army Family Day, so all the army people are supposed to bring their families along for a day of fun at the NDP Carnival at Marina South. To make sure the more the merrier, they've kindly added, "Compulsory for NSFs."

So, 9am at the Engineer Booth. Luckily we went there before to drop some stores, so we know the place. It's at some uluated part of the carpark behind the bowling alley.

Thankfully I run into Proko. Some company on the unknown and ardous journey to the Carnival.

There's a large crowd of people at the Marina Bay MRT Station. Like, really a lot. For a moment you'd think this is Orchard Road. For once, Marina Bay is actually crowded!

And there’s like lots of people all the way up to the bus stop, where SBS has kindly created a new service number specially for this event. Okay, it’s an extension of the existing number 400. They just add an ‘A’ behind it.

We thought, free shuttle. Not exactly. Cash card = $0.39, Coins = $0.90.

And we realize the money is not worth what it seems. We are dropped quite a distance from Marina South proper – the bus stop outside the Superbowl Country Club, to be exact. Which means having to walk a rather long distance to get to our destinations.

We separate outside the bowling alley. Proko says that he can only see three of his friends there. He doesn’t belong to anyone. He’s been posted out from his vocational institute, but the new guardian doesn’t seem to have his name anyway as yet. So, boh cheng hu.

I continue down to the Engineer’s Booth. Attendance taken, as usual, with the nominal roll. Out of camp still so formal. Then we wreck our brains to figure out who’s not here. Our platoon is miserably small now, with people out all over the place.

From that moment, we wait in great anticipation for dismissal. Neither of us really have the interest to walk around and marvel at the exhibits. I mean, you see all those vehicles day in and day out, you’re so sick of them you don’t even give a damn about the joyrides.

Chief arrives and gives his opening talk. How agile, he climbs to the top of the tank and speaks to everyone. Then there’s some treasure hunt shit… our own little treasure hunt is to find the right person who will let us go off.

Around 10.30am and we’re dismissed. What a long walk to the bus stop. SBS should stop complaining it doesn’t have enough revenue and then raise fares. Just one little short roundabout trip and they earn like how much…? Come on, shopping centre managements absorb the cost of the shuttles traveling from their malls to the nearest MRT station. Whoever’s doing the shuttle service for the carnival has the monopoly. No private cars allowed at all – the only way to get in there is to walk, or take the bus. Most people would take a bus – okay, I’m one of them, the lazy bastard.

Happy National Day folks.

Guess what? Techno rules. The majority of the music in the NDP could well have been brought into Zouk and danced to by the masses.

Even the entire medley of old Singapore songs (Stand Up for Singapore; One People, One Nation, One Singapore; We are Singapore) have turned techno. There's one "puk-za" beat dominating them all!

JRR Tolkien would probably write this about dance music today: ONE BEAT TO RULE THEM ALL.

The only nice thing about this year's NDP song is that Taufik sings parts with Rui En, makes it sound very interesting. Come on, what else can you write about in NDP songs, besides "hand in hand", "harmony", "stars and crescent and moon", "working together", "fellow men", "stand together/up"?

And shittification: how much do they spend on the fireworks? This is not the only instance where the fireworks are ignited. Each time they blow they blow people's hard-earned money into the sky. Fireworks should be corporately sponsored, and not based on income tax of the ordinary people.

But on the day who cares? The parades and mass displays are often designed to inject pride for about a month or so before people care more about putting food on the table, and cursing at the increasingly high cost of living.

17 mAY 2005:

PART I...

In the wee hours of the morning . . .

Watching your computer die in front of you is no joke.

My laptop has just returned from the service centre, where the motherboard was changed. The battery cannot charge up, no matter how long it has been on electricity. At first we thought there's a problem with the lithium ion battery – we all know how easily that thing gets spoilt with poor usage habits. But the guys there say the battery's fine – the motherboard is preventing the battery from being charged up.

Now, the computer has some functioning problems. Initially I thought those who were just the usual stalls, especially when too many things are running at the same time. Some blue screen would show up – some error message which I think nothing of after hitting Ctrl+Alt+Del. I shut down the computer, restart and continue working.

Then the crunch comes at around 3am in the morning.

The blue screen appears again… I shut down the computer again and restart.

This time Windows won't run.

For those who use Compaq laptops or computers, when you turn on your computer you'll see a black screen with the words COMPAQ in red in the centre. Slightly bottom left, in fine print: F10=ROM-based Setup.

Thereafter I get options: do I want to start in Safe Mode, Normal Mode . . . et cetera et cetera, I can't remember everything. But none of the options work. I get this message:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
\system32/hal.dll

And the computer can't get any further.

I toy around with the various options for almost an hour, before going to sleep in futile frustration.

Funny enough, I dream that my computer is working fine and I'm resuming my work.

When I wake up and turn on the laptop, it's the same as before I'd gone to sleep.

So much for self-consolation . . .

* * *

I'm as desperate as a parent whose child is at the end of the life tether, and a master whose favourite pet is terminally ill. I inform my father and we dash down to the service centre.

Thankfully the hard disk is still okay. I'm able to retrieve my files, especially those that I worked on the night before – arrangements for Buddhist Fellowship. Thank goodness I did a backup on my external hard disk drive last Sunday before my father sent the laptop to the same service centre for the motherboard problem.

And a new problem is presented: how to work while the laptop is down!? I can't possibly use the desktop in my brother's room – he has to use his table anyway. My father tells me that my mum has a laptop from work which she hardly ever uses. That sounds good.

Back home, my parents realise that they cannot remember the exact password to the computer. My father used it before, but that was like four months ago? Eventually we do find some domain which does not require a password. Even at that Sibelius can't be installed because it's not an administrator account.

Damn, two days of productivity lost. It could be worse: God knows when the laptop is coming back.

And did I say we have to reformat the entire hard disk? Which means re-installing all the numerous software I have had before? I should check if I've kept some of the set-up programmes so I don't have to log onto the net to download everything again.