112548323125209481 Wednesday, Aug 31 2005 

my first step in saving up for myself: get another student. and this one is actually recommended by my current one.. which very likely implies that he finds me a decent tutor. i mean, why would he otherwise introduce his friend to me right? :) it means a lot to me, as it shows that i’m actually moving on the right track. there is this recently-ignited five minute passion (but hopefully it’s more than that), that drives me to put in even more effort in my teachings. that also means, however, that i only get a break on tuesdays in the weekdays. but i don’t care haha!

yesterday was terrible, being a cos. having to settle 11 cases, and solve mysteries of doubling report and negotiate with close-to-unreasonable fmos didn’t exactly make my day. but, nothing could beat the fact that i dropped my mp3 player for the first time since last year september! oh man… it was a record one year of taking good care of my player as far as i’m concerned, and just because i was rushing to settle this wasp-or-hornet hive emergency, i failed to see it sliding off my chest pocket! argh… thankfully it is still working fine so far.

recently, i have started to play dota again, under the influence of qingxiang and slut. it is actually quite fun, despite me being owned repeatedly. maybe i should join a dota club or something, to hone my rusty skills, or the lack of it.

112488056132281838 Wednesday, Aug 24 2005 

it takes poverty to make me appreciate the value of money. with only $100 in hand until the next pay day, i have never felt so fucked before. two days ago, isaac, hb, heather and i had a cheap dinner at nydc, and i actually borrowed $11 from isaac. and today, i forgot to top up my wallet, and my jeffrey, my upper study, paid for all my meals. suddenly $5 seemed like a huge amount to me. for the first time, during our 3j gathering i was actually praying that we had dinner at a fast food restaurant (thankfully we did.) no more impromptu spendings on books and albums from now on. at least for this month lol.

likewise, it takes failures to make me cherish what i have achieved so far. no, it isn’t (totally) the lack of ambition or the laid-back attitude that i have. imagine if i have not failed in my application. i would have continued on my relentless pursuit which i know will not end, what with the specialisations etc. the impact may be worse then.

during my free time at ops last thursday i was checking out on my course to be next year. it offers a “biomolecular engineering” option. and the modules that i will be going through… may not be perfectly tailor-made for me, but it’s almost what i would have liked. sweet… :)

i think this is pretty neat! my own take based on the snow wolf lake. :)

112481464428987235 Wednesday, Aug 24 2005 

it sucks to feel so stifled, so many things to say, but you can’t. because you know there’s always a one-liner rebuttal. and it seriously sucks donkey dick. to hell with the so-called legal-sociological arguments because there’s no such thing as one.

anyway, it was a great saturday night. if not for that stupid video. hahaha…

and what a sad week to look forward to. what with three days saturated with meetings and courses pertaining to topics i have absolutely no interest in. if there’s anything i hate about work it’s total boredom. (those nothing to do but have to listen to things you dont like kinda boredom and not having to do tedious job kinda boredom, though i would have disliked the latter as well.)

112361156363885936 Wednesday, Aug 10 2005 

been working rather hard this week. yesterday while the whole unit was out on the national day carnival at marina bay and was dismissed at 1145, i was stuck in camp, with the cos, my upperstudy and a few officers. had to tend to some seminar that we organised. stayed until 4… though i shldnt be complaining since the cos stayed til 1730…

then today did the national day “bomb sweep squad” duty with the promise of 1 day off. luckily the experience wasn’t like last week; it was much better! everything went smoothly, and there were hardly any casualties throughout the duty (although i almost lost my temper at a fucked up medic in the medical post). so, not much to do there… looking forward to my day off tomorrow which is long overdue (since it’s an off due to the WITS project which we have completed last year. yea, seven months overdue.) and take a much needed break before my tuition at night.

112361128331647269 Wednesday, Aug 10 2005 

I’m really not surprised if the charm in my wallet works wonders. for such an offence me and my friend committed, we only received 3 cos each.. which is really lucky for us. probably because the officers and the dxos helped us verbally, which i’m very grateful, so there. no revoking of off days, no signing of extras, woot!

just checked my bank account today. yesterday there was a miserable $15 left inside. today, after pay day, i have $65. i got a bit of a shock, until i realised the remaining of my allowance has been used to pay up for our accomodation in perth last month. the bad news is, two guys have already paid me the money last month and I’ve spent it all. the good news is, i’ve tuition and past debts owed by other friends to compensate.

the underline thing is, i’ve to spend less.

just last weekend, lemme see. on friday, $20 gone for a yuki yaki jap buffet with beng, liwei and kelvin. and we actually agreed beforehand to try something cheap! what happened?! :(

on sat, went to watch ‘land of the dead’ with kelvin and edmond after an unsuccessful attempt in helping kelvin to solve his statistics problems. that costed me $10.(“a level” knowledge will be obsolete by the second day in uni.. i should realise..)
at night, went to double o with zhiyang and ky.. that’s another $50 gone.

on sun, went to the ‘dimsum dollies’ play with tenghwee and psq.. another $40.
at night, watched ‘charlie and the cho factory’ with mingde and spk.. another $10!!!!
then yesterday, watched ‘wedding crashers’ with qx.. yet another $10. that amounts to $140 in four days. ok, that is alarming. i should seriously stop.

‘land of the dead’ was quite enjoyable although the row of ppl behind me spoilt the whole atmosphere by talking rather loudly and even rudely at times, throughout the show; and laughing at the inappropriate occasions. i presumed they were jc2 kids since they were wearing uniform and the show was m18. i thought i grew out of the ‘aa’ stage since i was 16… so i guess it’s really high time they grow out of it too.. -_-

then during my train ride to double o that night, had another similar encounter… seriously, if i never look at how they behave myself, i would think there was nothing wrong with my secondary school days, where a whole gang of us would just sit down in the middle of the train, talking very loudly and laughing very loudly at our jokes. each of us carrying a ‘i rule and i dun care what you think of me. i can do what i want’ attitude on our chest everywhere. the thing is, these guys are probably around my age, or even older, thought they would be matured enough not to do such silly stuff out of consideration of the other passengers… -shrug-, maybe i’m a pacifist by nature. which may not be a good thing actually…

dimsum dollies was quite funny but after that we met up with zhongyang and he was telling us that they censored a whole chunk of… some “crazy horse” satire, in which they had men dresssed in silver drag and dancing in cages. they showed it on the first day which zhongyang attended, but removed it in the latter days.. anyway, it sounds distasteful enough. think i’d wanna give it a miss too lol!

yep.. and i’m gonna start spending less frm now on.

112299507984661444 Tuesday, Aug 2 2005 

bought e album… the music is really nice.

You’re beautiful.
You’re beautiful.
You’re beautiful, it’s true.
I saw your face in a crowded place
And I don’t know what to do
But it’s time to face the truth
‘Cause I’ll never be with you.

112299496504321508 Tuesday, Aug 2 2005 

if everything turns out wrong, i may have to sacrifice the next few weekends in camp. and all my efforts in.. wits, workshops, national day bomb sweep, weekend duties… come to zilch with the possibility of forfeiting all my off days.

i am involved in a stupid mistake which resulted in my laboratory not being locked. the number lock is faulty, since the hatch doesn’t really come out fully, so even if it seems locked there are times when it isn’t. the thing is.. whenever i use that door, i’ll make sure that it is locked properly. however, dozens of people use the door and sometimes, to make things convenient for themselves, they deactivate the number lock, and forgot to activate it back. either that, or they use it negligently without seeing if the lock comes back to normal. despite my countless tireless reminders, such incidents still happen. and being part of the members in the lab, i have to ensure that everything is locked. although that is quite hard to implement since people like to chill in my lab. so i left the place without checking. and two hours later the cos left the place as well.. without checking also. since we assumed that it would be locked anyways.

over the weekend, it was discovered that it wasn’t.

security officers informed, demanded an explanation and a written statement from all involved personnel (that includes me of course.) branch head requested a thorough investigation. in the statement i admitted that it was due to my negligence. so did the cos…. we made a terrible mistake because after that we discovered that there were witnesses. other people in our branch actually also helped to checked that the number lock was locked… so it could mean that someone else unlocked it after office hours.. but of course no one would want to admit it. but not blaming anyone here, because i believe the culprit may not even know that he did it since so many people do it all the time. and as a result, we are responsible for it.

but.. i do admit that it is our fault since if we have really checked it thoroughly we wouldn’t need to confess in our statement earlier on and rely on witness to get ourselves off the deep shit we landed into.

but i also cannot deny it’s suayness that gotten onto us since such incidents, as i’ve heard, aren’t that uncommon but no one was really caught.

anyway…. burnt next week as well. eighth august whole day have a seminar to attend to, and ninth is my national day duty. since i have all my off days suspended i can’t apply off for tenth and eleventh.. had intended to do that to take a break from all these shit actually.

all these took place yesterday, although investigations are still pending now. i placed the good luck charm (which i’ve totally forgotten ever since i returned from perth) in my wallet yesterday night. and we are all pleading for leniency. chances look good… hopefully everything will be ok.

Cause you had a bad day
You’re taking one down
You sing a sad song just to turn it around
You say you don’t know
You tell me don’t lie
You work at a smile and you go for a ride
You had a bad day
You’ve seen what you like
And how does it feel for one more time