Rainbows in Airdrops

Sometimes, in tough and tiring times, all you need is a reminder from God that all is fine.

It's not the face that launched a thousand ships, and I don't know how our armies compare with others, but stopping commandos (albeit female ones), an NDU sergeant, and a bunch of us riggers while derigging our CDS to just stare up has to have some power in itself. It's the same feeling that Noah got when he finally reached ashore - that all is still good in the world and things are as they should be.

Jason pointed at one end of it and said there's a pot of gold there. Maybe someone airdropped it there.

soap bar FML

I went to Beach Road to get a soap box because my field pack inspection needed one and no one I knew in close vicinity had one to spare FML

Thoughts on ACR

G Camp seems like a pretty nice place to be, sans the distance from camp to bunk. The bugger comes more from the complete lack of any combat pay (though I suppose I can't deny the perks that come with a lack of combat pay) but hopefully overseas missions (well, one in particular) can make up for it decently.

At this point I guess this should serve well for any future Riggers who look online (coz all of us did thinking wtf the course was and trying to get info on it)

TO ALL FUTURE AERIAL CARGO RIGGERS: THIS IS A STAY-IN CAMP. SUCK THUMB KTHX.

Hopefully this blogpost ends up useful to some aerial cargo rigger in the future wondering wtf the camp is about. At least he won't be wtf about one thing at least. >_>

Hopefully S Camp is better. >_>

POP

And it's motherfucking POP at last

and I would write something meaningful like all the shit I learnt and felt and thought while in BMT

but I'm too fucking tired after walking 24 clicks in the dark

so fuck that

Snippets of Army - Night Firing

The stars are bloody beautiful when you lie down on the grass and look up. You could care less about the gunpowder in the air, the loud bangs that blast against your ears for a while until you adjust to it, the shockwaves on the ground that shake your body that slight bit, and the motherfucking huge black bar in the middle of the sky that blocks out a huge chunk right smack in the middle.

There's also the fact that you're bloody wearing a long 4 as usual with helmet and LBV, but fuck that. The weather's cool and you don't really care

"Detail 5 fall out Detail 6 take up proning position Detail 7 assist"

oh fuck my turn as assistant torchlight out oh fuck hurry up hurry up shineshineshine oh fuck my turn as shooter fuckgetoutmymagazinesandpronefuckkneelingpositionfuckneedtoloadfuckneedtostandup
NOINEEDTOSQUATDOWNTOLOADFIRSTfuckLEDnotstablefuckitsthetestneedtopronefuck
ohmygodwhatjusthappenedFALLOUTRUNBACKQUICKLYPICKUPMAGAZINESLETSGO

...well at least I didn't have to go fuckIAIAIAIAIAIAIAIA.

Snippets of Army

"With this, I will defend my country!" I shouted. I realized inside what that meant.

What I didn't realize was that there would be a fucking 5-tonner in the way when I needed to draw the damn rifle from the armskote.

Receiving Rifle

God bless he who made the skies, the stars, the predawn hours of night and created me to see the wonder of the stars and the world in such a beautiful manner.

And God fuck whoever made me have to appreciate all that while holding a rifle in my right hand and put me in a long 4 while he was at it

BOOK IN FML

life sucks

Me and Religion

I sometimes wonder how it turns out like this.

Did it start with a random day in the underground basement before choir practise over ten years ago, when my brother came up with a nickname for me? I came up with a nickname for him on that very day too. His stuck for an hour. Mine stuck for over twelve years. I recall just last year in a lunch with my classmates from sunday school that some couldn't remember my name and only remembered my nickname. It's kind of expected when you think about it, I guess - I've almost never been called by name by most of my peers in my entire life in the church. The exception would be the 3 guys older than me in choir (the 3 who stuck around the longest) - of which none remain in the choir, and only one remains in the same church. Oh, and it's not the session I attend either.

Did it gradually start from the various lessons during Sunday school? Fingers pointed. I usually ended up answering majority of the questions, or end up seeing an awkward silence every week. It gets ridiculous. I kind of turn into a teacher's pet. I hate it. Some ask me stuff after Sunday school. Some tell me I should try leading in worship or whatnot. I couldn't have possibly wanted to be further from that idea. "You have the leadership capabilities" they said. It's a sentence I'm familiar with, even outside of church, but I've never entirely believed in it.

Did it gradually start from my interest in philosophy and Nietzsche between primary and secondary school? Maybe - it does fit chronologically. But I don't entirely think this is the case - it probably sped up the process a bit, but I doubt it could have been a cause. Xenosaga Ep.I will still be amongst the most awesome JRPGs to come out for the PS2 though.

What I do know is that I've been feeling this way since Sec1 and have since been slowly moving into this state.

I realized sometime this year that the act of leaving the faith is probably one founded on emotional rather than logical foundations. To say that you can leave the faith because you started questioning it and couldn't get satisfactory answers is unlikely for anyone unless you never had a bond with the religion in the first place. And that's precisely the state many of us are in, so it's no longer just about questioning and the like - it's perfectly normal in Christianity. In fact, people who doesn't question their faith in the least bit are the exception rather than the rule.

At the same time, staying in the faith despite all that is also a decision founded on emotional rather than logical foundations, I feel. It's what's keeping me from doing something that I should've done long ago. Social inertia. Fear. Emotional pain. The way your decisions affect the livelihoods of others in that smallest way. The little things that tie you to a place, a concept, a person or object.

It's turned me into what I was for a good six years. Schoolmates eventually just thought that religion was an O.B. topic for me. But really, it was because I couldn't give a good answer myself. Of course, there were idiots who think that TOK lessons talking about inconsistencies in the Bible would lead me to question my faith. Some people don't get it at times, I guess.

And I think that after six years, I'm almost capable of severing ties. It's probably the most painful thing to learn; its necessity so very questionable. But there's still one last person at the end of it all and I still haven't figured out how the hell I'm going to get around this.

Sigh.

Random story

The kid in front of me smiled. Innocent, wide eyes that gleam just that little bit. Frizzly, amber hair that seems just a tad roughened up. A speck of mud on the right cheek from a tackle during soccer. And the wide smile that trumps it all.

How the fuck did he turn into me?

Of course, even though I can't help but ask myself at times, that's all rhetoric. I know my past too well. Everything that happened. The stupid bullets my genius Dad designed that supposedly awaken the potential within a person. The stigma. The raid. Imbeciles and harbingers of doom, the crowds screamed, milling outside the house. The ringing gunshot, how slowly the bullet flowed in the air in and out of Dad's cranium, twice through Mom's, through my sis and bro's. The fear in the gunman's eyes after the bullet grazed through my hair, and the next shot was a click. How he fumbles around and looks desperately for another bullet. Anything.

He sees it. Next thing I'm unconscious. I wake up to a bloodied mess - the gunman's limbs scattered around the room. Mom's head away from the rest of the body, Dad's guts straddled across the wooden floor, my sis and bro beyond recognition. There's blood on my hands and a hole through my head. Somewhere near the left there's a crushed bullet that looks like the one Dad was working on. Damn you, Dad.

I know that in every universe, somewhere around this time I go mad. It's one of the few constants of my life. Every other timeline of my life deviates far from each other from this point on. I know because I've been to every single one of them. In each universe I went to my powers were different.

One of me ended up with superhuman capabilities and went on a crusade- a universal genocide that would wipe majority of the human race in just under a decade. Another learnt teleportation and went about a similar journey of meting justice to the rest of the world. A third could create more of himself by thinking about it - created an entire empire overnight and began to conquer from there.

All deranged beings, all out to kill the world. The path taken is immensely different, but the general path stays similar: going mad, killing everyone, and in the depths of solitary eternity regaining sanity. And the end of each path stays the same: Suicide.

I'm the only one that's different. I gained the most mysterious power of the lot: The power to travel to any point of time in any universe. I've witnessed the death of countless mes. I've killed the entire world overnight and murdered everyone on Earth simultaneously. You could say I was the perfect one amongst them all.

For that same reason I've been stuck in eternity that slight bit longer than every other Me, and got a bit more time to think about stuff. I believe in a God. I believe in salvation for people who live good lives and a tenth layer of hell dedicated to me alone. It's queer, but it's probably the first thing I think about every time I regain sanity. I think about how to get this salvation. Almost every other me gives up and commits suicide, resigned to this fate. Of course they would - they can't change the mistakes they made. Only I can.

I think about killing the gunman before he manages to kill anyone in my family, then perish the thought. Another me tried that - he could go back in time within his own universe. He killed the gunman two days before. Someone else filled his place. Went back and killed him too. Another. Killed. Another. Killed. Another. He killed the next gunman just before he took Dad's bullet and shot it through the kid's head. The kid went mad and took the gun and shot himself in the head. Same shit, different way. Ended up suiciding too.

But there's one thing I thought about that he didn't. I thought about killing myself. And that's where I am now - 5 years before any incident occurred.

The kid's smiling. It's the kind of smile that gets to me and gets me thinking about how the fuck this kid here could end up killing the world. It's a ridiculous thought. An equally ridiculous thought is that if I killed him I could save the human race in every alternate universe out there. I know it will - my early years deviated so little that the pathways never strayed from this single path of life. Every future starts from here, and every future where the world dies dies with this child here.

Maybe this alone could bring salvation to every single me out there; letting them rest in peace rather than forcing them to kill themselves in such a terrible fashion.

"Kid, if I told you that you were capable of saving the world right now, would you?" his toothy grin shines that little bit brighter. He'll never know that I asked the same question to his father an hour ago and shot him through the head.

"Sure I would! Don't you wanna save the world too, mister?" It's all I need. We think alike. 'course we would.

"Of course I do." Bang. Bang.

The blood flows slowly down the pavement. The two of us probably look angelic to everyone around.

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What a random story lol I just needed to get that out of my head

A sad state of Affairs

I find myself stuck in an extremely buggersome situation.

It's an idiotic situation with a seemingly obvious answer but never really is.

Some identities need to be shed for the sake of progressing in life. But well, maybe I'll keep this old one on a slight bit longer. Maybe miracles will happen. Maybe not.

Surreality

I sit on the recliner reading a book I borrowed a while back about how America's slowly losing the game of maintaining the moral high ground in a post-9/11 era when suddenly a rather loud blaring of Josh Groban's You Raise Me Up plays outside the left window. It's probably Ngee Ann Poly having some random fair, I think, as I move to look out the window.

I hear none of the cheers that followed a similar performance at a fair the polytechnic had a few weeks back of Jason Mraz's I'm Yours. Instead I look at the road beside the HDB blocks in front of the polytechnic and see two vans, a bunch of people - mostly Malays - and a few black-suited men. On the front of the frontmost van is a greyscale photograph of a rather old man, frame adorned by red and white flowers. The people are too far for me to clearly make out the emotions hanging on each of their faces. Some look forlorn to me. The black-suited men around the front van look solemn. The entire scene is silent save for Josh Groban.

The clouds are overcast and the rain begins to set in. It's a silent rain - the solemn kind you don't usually notice if you're looking elsewhere. From the third storey looking down you can see the stone pavement slowly turn a darker shade, drop by drop by drop. To an spectator, it almost feels like teardrops.

It doesn't seem the same for the people following the van, though I can only speculate as to their thoughts and feelings. One of the black-suited men directs the people onto a bus parked on the left (which I noticed only then) and opens up an umbrella for them. Another gets into the driver's seat of the front van, and the last one hurriedly picks up the photo from the front of the van and puts it just behind the windscreen - even the dead need shelter from nature. The frame remained at the front of the van, and a few flowers drop off from the top-right corner of the frame onto the roadside. No one seems to be concerned about the aesthetics of the frame at this point.

The road seems entirely empty now, save for the two vans, the bus and a black Mercedes following behind; probably the family. Josh Groban's still singing while the rain slowly gets stronger. The 3 vehicles slowly begin to move off. As the front van turns the corner, I see the casket. It's a beautiful one, though I cannot help but find it an inappropriate term to describe it. The wood is a deep auburn; newly lacquered with a subtle sheen to it. In the center lies a small golden cross, a lucid shine on a solemn surface.

Josh Groban sings at his loudest just before the van fully turns the corner and drives past the wall and my line of sight. The second van follows quickly, and the bus and Mercedes trail behind a slight bit. The windows are slightly darkened on the Mercedes and I can only see a faint silhouette of the family inside as it drives by - a silhouette as deep a black as the car, and perhaps themselves.

Silence comes almost immediately. The rain begins to lighten up the moment the cars disappear; an amazingly surreal transition. The sound of construction works starts again in the distance, along with what sounds like grass-cutting. Not a single person was left. Nothing of the twenty-over people that were just there moments ago. The only remains are a slightly wet pavement that's beginning to dry up and six flowers in the middle of the road - three red and three white.

After a while I look out the window again. There's a woman slowly walking from Ngee Ann Poly over, walking on the road. It's a perfectly normal day. She'd probably find it rather strange that there were six flowers lying on the road randomly, if she even noticed them in the first place. She never does - it doesn't ever cross her mind, even subconsciously, to look at the road on her right for any reason whatsoever.

It's probably a normal day to her - cool weather with a slight drizzle that conveniently cleared up the moment she left the polytechnic, little people along this path, a mostly empty carpark, and the faint sounds of construction works in the distance.

A few years down from the past

I find that now, a few years down the road, I've slowly begun to lose my touch on writing and thought.

I can't tell when this happened to me. 2009? 2008? 2007? If I had to say, it would probably be 2009 or mid 2008. It's surprising really - the number of blogposts titled 'Conversations' or 'Tales' just dwindled down to nearly zero this year. But there is something I know.

People write stories for a reason - either intentional or unintentional, like inspiration. I've had my share of both, as I'm sure most writers would, but of the recent year I've had nothing suddenly come to my head that I could write a whole story on, nor have I had any compelling message to push to others that I would write a whole story.

At this point I cannot exactly tell what it was I sacrificed my writing and thought in order to gain. Responsibility? Academic 'success'?

Sigh. It's rather difficult to believe that you were smarter in the past but somehow that's happening to me. AND just before NS. This can't be good.

IB Results

So hilarious. It reminds me almost entirely of the past, except that this time the results mattered a lot more. And this time maybe there'll be one or two others who get how this feels. Not. Who am I kidding?

See, the Elite Squad works on a different level from the rest. Layman statistics don't apply to them - they're not the 'normal' that a statistician speaks of. There's a need to completely regather data when you want to find out about them. And if you're part of this group you can't rely on the statistics of the layman to decide your strength - the weakest would probably be slightly below average here.

This isn't a situation where one can stare at the rest of the masses and go "Hey, what about them? I'm better than him, him, him, him, and the rest of them!" because it just doesn't work. Did Newton go about saying that he was better than all the people who weren't standing on the shoulders of giants? Never - it's evident enough that he's far more far-sighted than the rest already, and comparing yourself with them would bring yourself down to their level. What would gravity have to say about that?

I was of a class where the class mean was higher than the level mode, which was higher than the level mean. The class mode was one from a perfect score. Layman statistics just fail when it comes to these people.Forcing the square peg into the round hole would give two conclusions: Three people are below average in a class of twenty-nine. The mean student would be better than 74.5% of the school population. Two ridiculous conclusions by a long shot, and reflective of the failure of standard statistical figures being applied to non-standard groups.

What am I, then? The normal within the abnormal. The average within the extremities. The standard solider within the elite squad.

It is... dreadfully painful to have to be seen as abnormal by the normal and normal by the abnormal. Because that makes you a person belonging to neither group, with a certain sense of loneliness to the normality of the situation.

2010

2010 is finally upon us. It's queer that I write this at so long after 1st Jan 2010 rather than 1st Jan 2010, but oh well.

I spent the countdown into Christmas and into the New Year lying in the balcony of my relative's house staring at the sky.

3.
2.
1.
2010.

The sky doesn't look any different.

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It's quite queer, but this year and the year before have both begun with wedding celebrations. It almost feels like parallels could be drawn between the beginning of two years that could not be any more different.

I guess seeing the first one puts the second one in perspective though. That perhaps the happiest couple in the world might not be the happiest after all.

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So my cousin got 42 points for IB despite taking Latin B SL and Music HL. I consider that some insane achievement in itself but damn lol. Now must get 43+ liao gg noooooooooooooooooo

Oh well I'm too lazy to worry about such stuff. FF13 and P3:FES beckons while the rest of the folk around me stress themselves to death over IB. Queer.