270 : Be prepared !

This is a 3m x .8m banner to be displayed at the CCA open house NEXT YEAR. I kinda like the yellowness to it. And speaking of yellow.... I WANT MY BANANAS !!!!!!!

269 : Kurisumasu Take 2008

Its kurisumasu once again ! Here's a recap of what i did 1 year back.

Yup! It was all about a student's life, design project submissions, hardcore partying, scouting, and participating in fun-filled japanese events. Gosh. One year passed by so fast ! Before i know it i'm gonna do another recap for next year kurisumasu.

Here's something for the record this year. I haven't got my hands on my outing photos yet, so gonna post a little something before i head back to my new home in a few hours.

P.S. Oh the blog gonna be 1 year old soon, so changed my banner a bit with some of my sketches.

268 : Optimism Part 1

I remembered about roughly 2 years ago, i had this exact same feeling of anxiety, guilt, fear and helplessness. Its mainly the helplessness feeling that annoys me the most. Lack of control of things around, not able to shit when you want to, being left in a situation in which makes you pinned against a corner, your breathing heavy and difficult.

And often than not, life is just like that, OUT OF CONTROL.

We struggle mindlessly, aimlessly like slugs with salt poured all over our bodies. Its depressing. Ahmi just is.

Something knowing too much is not that beneficial, makes you think thrice about things. Sure, its confirm plus chop we'll get to experience monstrous training and exercises, but i'm sure most of us can push beyond our limit among things, darou?

As i sit here in front of my PC, with YUI semi-acoustic melodies pumping through my speakers, i tried to picture myself in a near future, somewhere in camp, reading an interesting book, with the smell of warm coffee seething into my dust-free nostrils. Ah. Shiok.

I'll just need to look forward towards that vision, fake as it may be, but it'll get me through i hope. C'mon, what's the worst thing that can happen to me ? Losing a leg ? An arm ? Or maybe perhaps my ego as an ahmi kia.

Let me educate some of us not inside of the little things that we city people fail to appreciate.

-Home, may it be the food, the fridge, or the warm water you get to wash your ass with.
-Security, knowing enough walking out of your comfy home won't endanger yourself with being robbed or mugged.
-Family, knowing there's still some people who genuinely care for you...
-Water, clean water ! Refreshing and tasty clean water to drink and wash.
-Vending machines, one day when electricity comes to us only in history text books....well.. yeah
-mp3 players, mobile, or any other electronics... i'm so going to suffer from withdrawal symptoms in camp.

And the last one,
-TIME. Seriously, without free time ( as in nonobligatory periods of time ), there are so many things you can't do.

Hey ! Sure i make it sound as if i am deprived of everything, but at least i am serving the jinkangkor ahmi, and not in north korea or those other 3rd world country doing shit. I guess its time, we just step out of our comfort zone and embrace our hasher reality.

What's the worst thing that can happen... to us ?

267 : Iconic

Yeap, three smilies. That's where i am heading towards coming monday. I don't know whats worse, my posting, or the err... literal design of the pahlade square.

266 : Conversations with children

Its hard to pick a topic when you're trying striking some conversations, especially in those boring situations where the really old people just keep talking and nagging and talking and nagging till eternity or when ... never mind too rude to write it down here.

I used to always say, that we youngins got a canyon wide generation gap with the elderly and usually our parents. And its natural we have this fault at hand here, nobody's to blame, too. I realised, that it was only me, who was too naive, being the younger one to not open up and get to know better of the geezers.

And the real funny thing is, i feel generations apart when i talk to my younger cousins.How young you might ask ? 17 ? 16 ? 10 ? Yep, three of em, all girls. Or maybe its the gender thing. I dunno.

Buying gifts for these ladies are another pain in the arse. Seriously, as an almost full fledged baldie, i can tell you, we can't really be bothered with things regarded to gifting and giving that something special. There wasn't much reaction when i handed over the nice t-shirts i got for them, not that i was expecting one anyways.

Thinking back, when i was about their age. Approximately the time when i had my VERY FIRST blog post over here, i was nonchalant and shit at the age of 16/17. And now, i am 20 going for 21. 21. 21.....



21... Oh feck.


I asked my 10 year old cousin, where she would be in another 10 years time. As anticipated from every child, whenever a question that would never come into their mind hits them for the first time right in the head, the answer would be I DON'T KNOW. Convenient ain't it. I can't remember how i was like when i was 10. Still in primary school probably drooling over my table and wetting my textbooks in class, just MAYBE. I'm 20 and i'm still drooling in bed anyways. =X

No one bothered to bombard me with questions about life when i was young, i guess we just followed the flow until at one point during adolescence, you just knew, "Hey something is not right. This is not what i want." and then you will start thinking doing about things that you really wanted to do~

We should all start young at some point too. 10 years is a long time for many of us. For most of us, its roughly 15% of our life time, for the smokers and my smoking friends, thats about 40% if you're realllly lucky.

Be a life architect, draft a master plan (pun intended) of how you want to live, how you intended to become, dare to dream, even if its a nonsensical dream. Thats it ! Daring. People, including myself lack the balls to do things that crosses beyond their line of comfort. I really thing we should start young.

And whatever you had read above, was what i had told my cousin. She nodded, and gave me the i understand look (but i took it that all she understood were the effects of hitting 21 in another year's time).

When she becomes a big sister for her other cousins or auntie for her nephews (if i have kids or if i somehow adopt children from 3rd world country), i guess by then she'll understand. Well, 10 years IS a long time. And i thought 2 years in ahmi was a thorn in the kidneys already.

I ended our little 15 minute talk with my overly used "Growing up sucks eh?".



PS** Ahmi posting out tomorrow. My fate, for the next 1.5 years will take now pass thru the point of no return. I think.

265 : dummy gaynade

I sure hope blogger does not crash on me again for the umpteenth time in the past 15 minutes. I'm a fella with mighty amount of patience, I'm sure many would probably threw your itouch against your annoying little cousin squeaking next to ya while you're aimlessly to type this load of nonsense on that little screen of yours. Thankfully, from where I am seated in this starbucks cafe in suntec, you get to vent whatever clogged up frustrations on my venti sized cuppa, sipping sips after sips indoors with a crazy storm raging outside unseen by me eyes. Ok. The screen is really small and hard to type, perseverance.

Was supposed to have a meeting today (seems like there's meetings every single day since I became a PVT). Good stuff. Shopping, good food, liberty, and of course coffee. But well as fate had... no wait... I would say an expected turn of events and schedule crash, I found myself shopping aimlessly for belts as once again I felt as if i lost another inch round my waist again. I'll will skip the details about how the shopping went and go strait to the point. Boy, why aren't there any nice trendy belts out there in the market? Recession is kicking in faster than I thought.

I had a sudden urge to eat bananas when I walked passed carrefour awhile ago. So I went inside, thinking "hey, bananas would serve as a nice dessert!". I saw from afar as I approached the fruits area that they were selling dole's bananas. I had a pretty darn good experience with that brand of fruits in sunny island chalet. Once again, I got pumped with optimism as I approached the tasty bananas on sale. I was willing to fork out a buck or 2 for them, but bah, sure, they're bananas alright, and they sure are tiny and short, as if a retarded fruit peddler had thrown them into the dryer and set it to full auto. Recession!

Cut cost! Cut cut cut! Cut ka liao liao. Just glad they didn't cut the air conditioning here where I was sitting.

My cup's gotten cold again. History does repeat itself. And today I've made the same mistake of being overly optimistic about things, drawing assumptions like doodles on toilet paper. "hope" is a concept conceived by philosophers of the past, a concept i feel many of us cling too tightly for comfort and practicality. Reality is closer than you think.

I think I'll order another drink or something before I fall asleep typing this boring entry.

264 : Huh?! What's GEE PEE ?

Since most of us here, reading this rusty 1 yr old blog of mine since i moved to this url, are mostly ( MOSTLY ) between 12-24, you're either an old boy, a nice lady, or a hot-blooded teenager, in which i can't really be too bothered about as the younger are really... in every sense of the abbreviation, WTF. Well, no offense to the ones who are youthful yet pack some respect for the elderly.

And therefore, with the demographics, i can deduce that, the whole lot of ya, have no idea that, PEE-OH!-PEE, has since, a few months back, rebranded itself as GEE-PEE, graduation pahlaid. Same number of Es, less syllables, but more shit. Its really these kind of transition phases, you have to be bothered with yourself to correct others for the sake of Mother Singapore. Generations back, no one cared. *envy*

Yes! That's right! 12 is better than 11 which is curiously better than 1. Which means, i get to wear my cool t-shirts that doesn't say "Ahmi, the not-so-decisive-force-but-still-can-protect-the-country-somehow" shirts to sleep each night, well for the next 12 days at least. Optimism, that's the 一番大切な trait we short-haired men need to have right now.

My super supportive (note* sarcasm here for those who yet to know me all too well) mom came to my GEE-PEE with my super zai camera, as requested by me of course. If i didn't request anything, well, NOTHING would have happen, i would have taken the ferry back myself yesterday. Apparently, a zai camera required extreme skill to operate, as such, most of the shots taken yesterday were a total goner. I managed to salvage a few photos with my zai photoshopping skillz, but as the saying goes, "shit in, shit out".

So the best picture so far, untouched by my delicate photo editing skills was the above picture.


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Ok, fine it was edited with some words to hide the un-focus-ness of the poor shot. All of the shots were bad, i just didn't want my mom to read all these and feel bad herself. Where would you find such a wonderful son like me ? さあああああ～

263 : 5.5 day work week

Coming next Tuesday is my GeePee Parade ! That's the new term coined by the geezers high up there to revitalise the age old Pee-Oh-Pee Parade. Everyone's falling sick, cough flu, fever, mostly fever. I've got a nastly flu and twenty four clicks ain't a walk in the park, its a trek in the jungle with wild savage insects and monkeys and wild boars. But thats ok, we're allowed to bring in snicker bars and coffee this time round. Morale +50%.

Not that i want to complain about life, but more often than not, it seems super unfair for somethings, ok make it MOST of the things.

1. The other guys in the school one are having 5 day work weeks rather than 5.5 days, which means most of the time they get to go home on Friday nights. This might seem trivial, but people like me who wants to make a trip to the bank, or my own personal clinic will feel extraordinarily pissed. By the time, i got there on Saturday afternoon, they're closed. Which means i've skipped my personal insurance payment and medication by yet another week. The perk about bloggin on a sunday night means i am going back monday evening/afternoon, but nooooo, tomorrow is a public holidays. And if you're wondering, i did asked permission to leave earlier on saturday mornings/friday nights, but permission denied for ADMIN REASONS.

2. GeePee rehearsals was another thorn in the kidneys. I'm tanned like charcoal now on my arms and face, that sometimes, when i look into the mirror, i thought i turned Bangladeshi. But luckily i'm still putting on my ahmi clothes and i look less like a construction worker, and more garang. Well, since i am this tanned, i though i can save on the black coloured camou cream and maybe even use the savings to buy myself a happy meal or something tasty. If the sun could tan us green, that would be even more awesome, i could save MORE on green camou cream in which more of it are being used, and we'll look as cool as the hulk too. School two guys had 5 rehearsals while the other school had just only 3, so these guys over there looked more brown than black. I've always loved marching, but 5 under the sickening hot sun, is just OVERKILL. Seriously, is image THAT important ? Deterrence my ass.

3. I'm spending yet another lonely weekend at home, with the 4 walls echoing my thoughts and my frustrations. Sometimes, its really saddening. Most of the time, it could be serious fun. You could blast the hi-fi set, disturbing your neighbours and what not. You could record your own songs in the silence of the night without any worry of eavesdropping. I had trouble sleeping last night, after watching a scary movie with my polymates yesterday afternoon.

I dreamt that i got posted to artillery as some saikang god last week, but looking at my performance thus far, haix, should be expecting people to call me sarge next time le.

Too much typing and whining, my coffee's getting cold, shit. I've still got ironing, dishes, watering the plants, cleaning my room, sorting out my feel-good pack among the other 100+ sketches i've expected myself to do this weekend. And oh, i still got my audition to practice for coming week if i want to become a performer in the ahmi. Chances low, since i am combat fit and all, but having some optimism for once ain't bad after all.

OH NO !!! COFFEEEEE !