Almost at the end of October, but yet my heart and mind have yet to settle. The thought of what makes one happy still escapes me. not feeling sad definitely doesnt make one a happy person.

what is in a birthday? the declaration that i have managed to survive yet another year on this earth.

maybe this is the perfect moment to make yet another blog post on this blog. reason: cos ndp is over. i wouldnt dare claim that ndp has been a breeze, or that i enjoyed in thoroughly, but i have to admit it did change my perspective towards those who take part in the preparation and those performers in the parade. now i can feel the pain of each year's participants, of 16 or more saturdays burnt, of each ever so precious weekend burnt, and of course all the hard work they have put in, forced to or willingly.

how did i feel marching, singing the anthem and saying the pledge? a simple question with such a complex answer. a mixture of love and hate for what this country represents. but the important thing is, hate isnt the opposite of love, indifference is. hate is instead an offshoot of the love towards something, of expectations and hopes and dreams not fulfilled, leading to the generation of that particular emotion. how does one love a country but dislike the acts of the people who live in it, when it is the people that make up the country? by sitting on a fence i guess. though it is inevitable i will have to fall to one side or the other, sooner or later, it is true that for now, the balancing act continues.

and lastly, life is back to normal. (hopefully)

lo and behold, i have gone into understudy at the job site. spending 12hr+ 2 days out of 4 days awake and manning a com is not exactly the most demanding of jobs, but at the same time it definitely isnt a piece of cake especially on days with night shifts. for this i recommend eating coffee beans, with the testament that eating 3 kept me wide awake for almost the whole night. and as usual, climbing up the rungs of this ladder aint easy.

now that i have more time on my hands, the question that remains is one of how should i best spend my time, besides sleeping and eating. perhaps more sleep, but what else after that? i guess i have been indulging time in cheap thrill games, as well as the search for pdf documents on various topics related to botany. wouldnt harm to start reading up, would it?

posted to bayesian, existing for many hours a day underground, disconnected from the world, disconnected from the sun, disconnected from life. but that's just how life is, at least for the next 1+ years. no, wait. i am too optimistic here. more like, 2 - years, after all, it has been only 3 months since it all started.

been slightly more than a month since i have last blogged here. why u may ask. perhaps i was just too busy trying to get a life over the 1.5 days per week of freedom showered upon us, or perhaps everything is just restricted or a secret meant to be kept, thus the emptiness of the mind, and that of the space of this blog.

Posted to the water, a place i have mixed feelings about. still undergoing what they call 'navalization', i am still learning how to adapt to the change in environment from the previous place, and more importantly, to the people that i coexist with. i guess only here would i get the chance to actively interact with people from various walks of life.

Having to march for NDP and other parades does mean one thing: 6 day weeks because saturdays no longer exist.

urged to blog for the few people who do actually happen to intentionally chance upon this site, here i am, blogging at the com.

why the silence for so long? simply cos i didnt really have the time to blog about my nonexistent life at a nearby island. island stay has been quite good actually, or to put it simply, it has exceeded my low expectations. the food is quite good, except for the breakfasts, and the sheepherders continually bark at us, herding us from point to point.

this phase of the island stay is over, but to put things in perspective, as my platoon mate told me, life so far has simply been the time it takes to train a basic foot soldier in any strategy game. whereas training a soldier on the com takes about 30secs, training a soldier in real life takes far longer than that. and if a footsoldier dies in a game, the silver hand from above can just train another one with ease, unlike in real life. 

lastly, and importantly, both the soldiers, in and out of the game, follow orders from higher-ups.

came back on friday afternoon, after 2 weeks in europe. too many memories to put into words at this point, though i doubt that i will be able to recall all of them after i enter ns. 

first time i stayed in hostels, and i must say that it wasnt that bad an experience after all. sure, some strangers are sleeping in the same room as you, and that u tend to feel paranoid about your belongings, but other than that one gets to meet people from other cultures, plus lodging is far cheaper than a hotel.

as for not going on a tour, it allowed me to catch a glimpse into the daily lives of the people living and working in those cities. taking public transport, in the form of trams and trains was rather disturbing, though enriching. an example would be the london underground, where there are so many train lines that one can easily get lost in the system. the criss-cross of lines, plus the fact that one platform can service more than one destination, the trains tend to stop frequently between stations, the lights tend to flicker onboard some of the trains, and at times train lines or stations fail to function, and one gets chaos.

2009

the first day of this year was spent outside, in a place near the police academy, where not a single building above one storey could be seen in any direction. the day was also spent at vivocity, where there were so many people on both the first and second storey the place looked like an ant's nest. recession? what recession? perhaps it was more of window shopping than purchases, more of small purchases than larger, non-commodities.