My buddy forgot to bring his Staff Work textbook home and asked me to meet him today so that he could borrow mine for photocopying. Irony is that he reminded me to bring home my Staff Work textbook on Friday evening and yet, he forgot his own.

We had lunch at Waraku restaurant at Starhub Centre. I ordered a Katsu Tomago Yogi Don (AKA Katsu Don) which I think is superb. I am gonna go back to this restaurant again to try out its other dishes.

There is something interesting about the items in the menu though.

Hmmm. Kinky? Or what. Ha. The caption doesn't match the picture in my opinion though.

The bloody barber screwed my haircut!

"Do you think your brain is more powerful, or a computer is more powerful?"

Most people would choose the latter choice because of all the things which a computer can do with ease; typing out documents, correcting our grammer, displaying tons of information, simulations, extrapolations, communication, entertainment, learning, storing colossal amounts of data, financial management - the list goes on and on. The computer can virtually do all the things that a human brain can't do and for the things that the brain can do, a computer can do better. No doubt, the computer is a wonderful and miraculous creation.

But there is only so much wonder about the omnipotent machine. All the supercomputers and other similiar machines are but just creations from the human brain. The human brain conceived them and the same human brain created them. Without this thaumaturgic core organ of ours, the world's computers would continue to exist as virtual reality. So would many other creations of ours.

The human brain is a very complex entity. You can take all the supercomputers in the world and put them together and they are still no where close to attaining the complextity of our brain. We know everything about supercomputers but we have yet to decipher all mysteries about our brain.

The thought that you are thinking now, are you leading your brain to think it or is your brain infusing the thoughts into you? Are we in control?

In any case, the brain is an amazing organ.

Hmm. Lets see.

I am trying to organize my thoughts and pen them down. My mind is in abit of a flur now.

Whats a flur? I dunno. Dun ask me.

I am just a normal average guy. Not those kind of ravers, revellers, emo-ers, punkers etc etc.
Yet sometimes, I try to be like them.

Its cool to be cool. Literally. To have many friends to chiong with you. Friends to party with you? Drink, smoke, eat, talk cock, fight and get busted together.

Sure is fun. But its so un me.

Perhaps I should just stick to the old me. The same me. The average me. The normal me.

I want to be more intellectual!

Why do I sound so emo or something like that?

Its because Ted busted my left eye with a squash ball flying at 50 metres per second.
I think some of my neuro nerves went haywire.

The 129th intake came in today. I was the emcee again.

Typical Singaporeans... the moment they hear the announcement "We have come to the end..", they would start to leave automatically, without waiting for the guest of honour to take his leave first. Tsk tsk.

It was a less-fit intake and there are about 400 of them. Its one of the biggest intake in this year. The academy is gonna get crowded.

Soon, I will see the United Nations refugees running around looking for their uniforms and other stores haha.

All right. I am such a happy today and yesterday night. Wonders do happen I guess.

Ted, Alfonsus, Kenneth, Julian, Elleen, Novi, Novi's boyfriend and yours truly had a mini gathering at Suntec City. We dined in together at Ichiban Sushi restaurant. The food wasn't half bad. The Nabei (Nabeyaki) Udon I ordered was good. The peach ice-cream I shared with Ted was sweet and delicious! If only it wasn't shared with Te.. never mind :D

Ted and I spotted this pretty cute attendant at the store. Ah-ha! What an eye candy.

We did some catching up with one another. Alfonsus was so happy because he found some army personnel with whom he can share his agony in Hendon Camp. Julian is on attachment to some logistics camp, talks about transferring over to police. Kenneth is learning how to ride a motorcycle. Ted is the same as usual; chest grabbing and neck choking. Elleen and Novi are both studying at NTU along with Florence. Elleen still looks like piglet. Novi has a boyfriend. What a pleasant surprise. Novi.. a boyfriend... hmm.

It was so nostalgic. I get to revel myself once more in these familiar company. My lame genes and retarded antics were suddenly revitalized! Somehow, it just feels so much easier to let my hair down and pull up my socks with my good ol' friends.

Probably thats why we are friends!

Hunks in White Cleaning Services Co.


Introducing our fledgling cleaning company with a promising future.




Just as our name suggests, we have hunks wearing white who will clean your apartments for you.

Not only do they just clean, they clean with grace and precision.

At the end of the day, come home to a spick and span home!

We were asked to go back on Thursday night and then released on Friday night. We could have the whole of this week off and the reason why we didn't is because they need us to go back for one day to prepare the accomodations for a neighbouring force that would be visiting us soon. Interesting isn't it?

Talk about making full use of manpower.

Let you guys guess what this arrow is for.

Hint: Neighbouring force coming over to stay with us. Our neighbours are predominantly Muslims.

Oops I did it again!
I went on yet another shopping spree today!


Shopping List:

1. Levi's Sneakers - $55
2. Wilson Squash Racket - $48
3. Prince Squash Ball - $4
4. New pair of spectacles - $98
5. Titanic model kit - $23
6. The Secret - $23
7. 4 pairs of socks - $10

Grand Total: $331


When I realised that I had spent half of my this month's pay in one day, its abit too late. Ha. The last time I went on a spree I only spent $215.

Oh well. Theres always the need to pamper myself.

Thursday 23/08/07
Day 1

The commencement of my 12 days OBS course. I was hoping that the journey from HTA to Punggol jetty would last forever so that I won’t reach Ubin. I am still quite sian about the whole thing. Upon arrival I saw this big ship which was built on a patch of land some distance in front of the jetty.
We were ushered into the Multi-purpose Hall where we were divided into 3 groups (A.K.A watches). I was in “Nehru” watch. My instructor is Cindy and she looks like a pleasant lady. I saw the various rock walls and ladders and ropes hanging down from the roof of the hall and wondered if we would be doing them. I have mild acrophobia. Next we were led to our dormitories which we assumed we would only be staying in for a fraction of the 12 days. When I entered the dorm I was like “Wow!”. The place was much better than I expected. It gives off a kind of cozy feeling. I picked a bed next to the window overviewing the Tenacity Drive. Or was it Enterprise Road? Basically its just the route which we will take from our dorms to the other facilities.
I thought since half the day is already gone and we would be slacking for the rest of the day and the real activities would start tomorrow but no. The instructors wasted no time. After briefing us about the dos and don'ts of the dorms and officially handing the stores to us, we were told to report to the Inverse Tower in our climbing attire, bringing along our harness and helmet. My first activity was a high element! So off we go to the Inverse Tower and after some rounds of belaying lessons and briefings, we started scaling the tower. I paired up with Jaromes and we did the DDD; 7 logs there were attached together horizontally with the distance between each log increasing as one gets higher. I got really scared when I reached the 3 log and got abit hesitant about moving on. Nonetheless I moved on. But alas, fear took control over me and I got stuck at the 6th log. In the end, we failed to complete the DDD because the time limit is up (yes, there is time limit).
After that I felt damn disappointed with myself. Just one freaking log away only. I tink I let Jaromes down since he wasted all his effort in hurling me up to the 6th log, only to have me giving up there. Hai. When we were packing up our stuff and were getting ready to return to the dorm, I realised that it was such a bloody waste. Just one more log away only. Hai. Its always like that, regretting what I didn't do. After that we changed in PT attire and went for a 2.4km run. The route was so very similar to the MacRitchie route, except with even more rocks and uneven surfaces.
Food at Ubin was good. 10x, probably 100x better than HTA's. We had a night lesson that night. It was on leadership profiling. I was given this booklet which I had to fill in accordingly to see what kind of leader I am. The results were somewhat surprising. Self-renewal and Character. Hmm..


Friday 24/08/07
Day 2

10 more days away to the end of the course. The usual routine here is lights out at 11pm (our lesson drag till 12am this morning though) and reveille at 5.55am. Relive the BMT moment! Anyway, we had to report to the Expedition Square (AKA parade square..) by 5.55am for a not-so-formal flag raising session. For being the super-provost, I got arrowed to raise the flag for our first time. Its quite simple. We just had to sadiah when we were asked to and then stand straight until the flags were raised. No singing required. Short and sweet.
We began the morning with a game which I can't remember. It involves all 42 of us though. After that we did some stretching and went for a 2.4km run. Probably because of the terrain, all our timings were between 11 to 13 minutes. After the run, we cooled down and went to have a dip in the sea. Simply put, all of us stepped into the sea and then lower our entire body into the seawater and then come up again. Once would suffice. I wouldn't mind if the water is crystal blue but with all the floating twigs and leaves and rubbish and patches of oil... Ugh. No choice tho, it was mandatory for all of us.
That concludes the end of morning PT and we went back to change and then went for breakfast and then went for morning circle. Morning circle is just a session where everyone would gather in a circle with all 3 instructors and we would reflect upon the previous day and then share with one another. Quite pointless in my opinion. This would be the usual morning routine for the next 10 days.
In the afternoon we did two activities, kayaking and X-field. For kayaking, we were thought the basics of kayaking.. how to paddle, how to steer the boat etc etc. When we were about to set off to do a little bit of rowing for practice, a thunderstorm starts to brew and we were forced to abandon the practice row. We waited for the rain to stop and when it does, we began doing the X-field. Its something like the amazing race, minus the price money and minus the global scale of checkpoints. We had to find like 7 checkpoints which are scattered throughout the island in like 2 hours.
The checkpoints were planted on ...

......
..
..........
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Ok. I give up. I no longer see any point in sharing every single day of my OBS here. I will just give a brief summary.

25/08/07 - 27/08/07: Land expedition. Same stuff. Basically we just need to go around finding checkpoints and work as a watch. Got to camp out in the open, cook our own food, saw huge spiders, found out about something more in Ubin. Ended the expedition by building a raft at 4am on the last day and paddling it back to base camp. Upon reaching the base camp at 8am in the morning, we went kayaking to prep ourselves for the sea expedition that is coming up next. We kayaked around the entire island of Ubin plus some of its offshore island.

28/08/07: Felt very nua due to the hectic and tiring schedule yesterday. The usual morning routine still applies. We had some more kayaking classes today and spend the afternoon planning the sea expedition. We would be the one planing the routes, deciding the ETA and stuff like that. All of us are running the sea expedition.

29/08/07 - 01/09/07: Sea expedition. First day we got stucked outside of Changi Naval Base. We were supposed to keep a 1km distance away from the base but the freaking strong waves kept pusing us towards the base. A police coast guard boat actually approached our instructor's boat (they were not kayaking, they were in their engine powered boat) to see what we are trying to do. Luckily things went well. Camp at east coast the first night, sister island the second night and east coast again on the third. Corals at sister islands. Aircraft carrier. Destroyers. Adrenaline rush from the rocking of the waves. Big big waves. SIA and budget planes flying above us. Sun tan. Sun burnt. Shaq. Motivated. Shaq. Motivated. Goes on and on. Arrived back at base camp on thursday 4 hours earlier than the ETA. Mwahaha. After packing our canoes and stuff, its about 3pm. guess wat. THE DAY GOES ON AS USUAL. we still need to do afternoon PT!

02/09/07: Peak ascent. Another high element challenge. But abit more advanced. This time round I completed it! Huat ah. We spend the whle day doing it cause everyone must at least climb once and the periodic intervals of rain kept disrupting our ascent. At night, Nehru gathered for the second last time to share our reflections. Found out interesting stuffs about Cindy and my other mates.I shared some of my own too.

03/09/07: To quote Mark Twain - "I am happy when I completed a challenge; abit because it has ended but chiefly due to the fact that I will never be doing it again." Yes. The much awaited day has arrived. We did the graduation run in the morning. A 10 km run. I finished it in 52minutes and 42seconds. Went for breakfast. Then went to pack up our luggage. Then went for a debrief. Then went for lunch. Then went to souvenir shop. Then went back for more debrief. Then went home. The end.

Few things I want to say about the OBS. While it is fun , I won't say I thoroughly enjoyed the whole course. There is still room for improvement. Like the quantity of ration given to us during the expeditions. Anyway, I have learnt several lessons during the course and I think I have grown slightly more mature. Perhaps. I have developed more of my leadership skills. And yes, it will be a somewhat memorable chapter in my life.

I dunno about you guys but for me, everytime when something comes to an end, like JC, some courses, BMT etc etc, I will feel kinda emotional? Something like I don't want it to end.

I guess I said enough tonight. Getting exhausted...