We thronged over to Vincent's place on Sunday for his birthday celebration. It was quite cramped, and the corridor and lift landing were packed with his friends and relatives by the time Yock Song, Dennis and I arrived. We were late thanks to a wrong turn at Toa Payoh. The sumpteous buffet dinner cumulated in an alcohol overload on the poor birthday boy, thanks to the generous contribution of liquor by Ivan. Well, it's a good thing I got him something that might help jumpstart his liver again...

NSSonline

There is an associate professor by the name of Chew Shit Fun. It is a perculiar name, no doubt, but there are some rather mean remarks on the net regarding the poor lecturer. Hell, there is an unofficial mirror page dedicated to her. It's certainly most depressing to be made fun of on campus, much less the monster of an internet...

Oh yes, for all Magic: the Gathering enthusiasts out there, The Grand Prix: Singapore held at Suntec City from 18 to 20 March 2005 was won by Itaru Ishida.

Here's a teeny update:

Backdated entry:

03 March

Lunch at California Pizza Kitchen with the ORD fellas - Joshua, Daniel and Connor. We ordered a 2 pizzas and a pasta for only 15 bucks per person. And I'd say it was quite filling. I then went on to the GenCon near Funan Centre and bought four cool Marvel Card containers for 2 buck apiece.

25 March

Good Friday. Went out for lunch with Zi Rong and Loren at Foodmore (Yep, that's 2 weeks in a row...). This time round, I tried the 'fried' rice wrapped in an omelette (S$4) and fried dumplings (5 for S$3).. The rice was disappointing, but the dumplings were quite savoury.

We hopped over to Sim Lim Square after that to source for a budget computer. For under S$350, one can get a rather functionable 2 mHz system with 128 MB RAM and 40GB HDD. That's cheaper than most electronics gadgets nowadays. Most probably will be returning on Monday to make my purchase. Laptops, opn the other hand, cost no less than S$1,400 for a respectable one. Looks like I'll have to wait till SMU engages a distributer before I can finally lay my hands on mobile PC technology. Loren wanted to buy a Philips 15-inch LCP monitor, but there was not a single attractive, female promoter there, so he turned tail and decided against getting one. Tsk.

Did monitor consistently my BP for the past week. On Tuesday, it was still high, but by Wednesday, it returned to normalcy.

BP Monitoring Chart:

140305 / 1600 155/70

150305 / 1130 130/70

150305 / 1800 148/100

160305 / 1035 121/68

210305 / 1120 120/70

Met Clarence Heng from ZHSS in the sickbay on the 11th. He's now a cadet in my camp.

Joined in Jin Yu's Birthday dinner at Fish & Co., Bugis Junction. We had a Seafood Platter for 2, a Whole line fish and a smoked salmon salad. Someone commented that the Whole line fish, my recommendation, looked erm... 'ugly'. It certainly looked different from the one I ate at Chua Chu Kang with my camp mates, but thankfully this did not affect its taste. Prior to that, I was looking for them at Yogi Hut, an organic food cafe near Tekka Food Mall. What was supposed to be an easy trek from Little India MRT soon became a mini city tour for me, as I hunted down the elusive cafe. Just as I was getting exasperated, I saw a little Inn, and asked the friendly receptionist for directions, to which she promptly directed me to the cafe, just FOUR UNITS DOWN THE ROAD! Sheesh...

Will be doing this Thursday's duty in lieu of Zhi-Yang's wargaming exercise... Well, it's a Good Thursday duty, which means I'll only get to book out the following morning.

On Sunday, I met up with Zi Rong and Jian Ming at Sim Lim Square, after which we went over to Foodmore for lunch. The Chicken chop rice (mini-wok)(S$4) was quite tasty, and the portions, generous to say the least. After lunch, we trooped off to Sim Lim Square again, and Zi Rong bought a limited edition Blue-cased I-River for S$470 nett. What a bargain! And bundled along was a polaroid camera. Lucky! I settled for a score of ultra-thin CD cases and knowledge of a workable AMD 2100+ PC with 40GB HDD and 128 MB RAM going for S$338! Might consider getting one for dad to work on, since the one he's using now is a 200 MhZ one.

My Maple Story is up and running again! Heh, now can start training my level 30 Cleric, in anticipation of Ossyria and the next job upgrade of Priest at level 70 (Summon Dragon)!

REDCON 2A!

Whee... We managed to achieve that despite some minor hitches, so that means we're now Operationally Ready! Next ATEC is in ten years time...

We're now doing Alert manning again; this time it was (as usual) uncalled for (unplanned, unexpected, whatever...). One whole month of Alert manning. Hopefully there're be no bank robbers escaping to Tekong or terrorist threatening to blow up our critical installations, because WE WILL BE THERE IN 4 HOURS AND GUN THEM DOWN. Now, that said, our REDCON 2A battalion will be ready for anything.

Friday, 11th March

Despatched two-odd stacks of FFI forms to Kranji Dental. They complained that they were running out of forms. Sheesh... Anyway, Ming Hui's going to start clearing from End April. Thanks to a whooping 14-days off for our better-than good results in ATEC, I'll be starting from the start of next month. Heh, gave him a treat; That's for being a great (and patient) buddy during BMT, for going through CMC together in the same platoon, and for covering our ATEC.

Saturday, 12 March

Went down to SUNTEC today for the IT Show and Shin Min Daily Record setting attempt. The IT fair was understandably crowded. There were some great deals, such as the USB adapter (S$ 29), Ethernet modem (S$ 115) and HWM subscription (S$ 120+), which comes together with a free 128MB thumbdrive. What I got, though, was a stack of CD jewel cases; the selling point is its capability to stack on top of each other. Innovative!

Monday, 14 March

NSC appointment today. The Specialist was a visiting fellow, a Sinhalese, whose accent was so strong, I was trying to figure out what he was trying to say half the time. Thankfully my Singaporean accent did not affect his ability to comprehend my sentences.

RHG Check up in the afternoon. Did an X-Ray and check up, all for the price of S$ 18.90. I suspect SMU subsidizes the Check ups. The doctor told me that my BP was quite high. This is of particular concern to me, as the highest I've had so far was 138 (systolic), and that was in Secondary School. He told me it was more like 155! Either the machine's faulty (it's a manual sphygnomanometer, by the way) or the doc's wrong. Well, either way, it's time to buck up and start intensive training. The blood vessels are complaining!

I met a P017 coursemate at Comics Connection. (?)Jake's going to ORD in 2 weeks time. My turn will come soon.

Has been a fortnight since my last update, thanks to ATEC preparation last weekend.

230205

Went to Jurong Point for Night's off. At Harvey Norman, I had a half-hour massage therapy, courtesy of the iSqueeze and the iMedic. OSIM's iMedic chair was officially launched in Singapore in April 2002. The designer of iMedic, Dr Matsuura, specially made a trip from Japan to give a presentation during the press conference. And I can see why. One must try out the iMedic's range of therapeutic treatments before commenting further on its price tag - a whooping S$4,700 odd.

240205

Battalion Movie Night. We were called back to company line after fifteen minutes, to prepare for a field pack inspection.

Pillow fiasco. I found my support pillow missing. Someone cleverly swapped it for a low-grade SAF one. Upon further investigation, I found out that mine was not the only one missing. Jian Zhong also had his removed, but then again, it was his second last night then, so oh well...

250205

Most of the company booked out after 0900 hrs, but we had to stay back till five or so in the afternoon, thanks to some last minute Medical Continual Training, as well as to familiarize our new MO, Dr Timothy, with our outfield arrangements and SOP.

Will update on ATEC next week! Keeping my fingers crossed for a high REDCON 2A first...

Was on duty on Thursday, a rather unfortunate one at that, as our network was down, hence the need to fill in over sixty blood request forms manually. The tedious process, including outside help, was in excess of one hour. Thanks to Guo Chuan, Jeremy and everyone else who'd helped!

Friday was supposed to be reserved for Medical Skills training, but CO insisted that we tag along for our Coy cohesion activities at Mount Faber SAFRA. We tagged along with CSM and S4's cars for several games of bowling at SAFRA. We performed rather well, with our team, the adeptly named 'Saviours', managed a strong showing of 600 odd pinfalls in our first game, which though was way short of the 680+ required for entry into the grand finals, was a remarkable achievement for a team of amateurs. We fumbled in the next game, conceding gutter balls and failing to save several spares. I did participate in the grand finals, though, taking the place of another bowler. We managed 600 plus points in that game as well, placing us perhaps around 6th to 9th out of the ten teams.

Maple Story was down:; Apparently my manual patcher was corrupted... hmm... Luckily Zi Rong plays the game as well... :) Just burn from his computer.

Found a Mokbi Shooting star this morning... a lucky star, I'd say, perhaps an omen of things to come? haha...

Well, anyway, CO has promised 4 weeks off for REDCON 1 status during ATEC the following week, 3 for a 2A and 2 for a 2B. Hope we perform well, then I'll be able to clear from early to mid April onwards... Mwa ha ha... Keeping my fingers crossed...

Do keep yours as well...

There was a LEGO offering on Yahoo acutions. Perhaps I'll be getting some figurines on the cheap, to add to my collection.

Wow... this is the second time in the army that I'm enjoying a ten-day rest. The first was when I was down with intestinal worms in August 2003, though I wouldn't say I enjoyed it much then...

Let's see... Went to Sim Lim Square with Zi Rong, Jian Ming, Loren and Darryl on Sunday (6th Feb), then wrapped up with a game of pool at Selegie.

Then on Monday, my unit organised a cohesion programme at East Coast Park. There were games to be played, and in all the games HQ Coy faced a massive shortage of manpower. I got to try out a round of volleyball, where we lost marginally, something like 24-20... Sgt Melvin was the best performer for the match easily, with his dives and serves... All was fine until we found out that we had to clear half day off in the morning and another the following day for Chinese New Year. This is in hind sight of a burnt half day off prior to Christmas and New Year's Day.

The Lunar New Year was spent visiting all my relatives. This year, we managed to cover all the places in good time, even though we had set off at noon.

Spent Sunday at Terence's place. Steamboat was in the order, as was mahjong. Side note: Yanni's music is really very lifely and vibrant! Dinner at Europa. The buffet dinner that was screaming 'Chinese New Year' only had several kueh to its name. A shame, there, as I was expecting barbecued pork slices and raw fish salad. Even the kuehs were not up to standard; Their consistency was wrong and they were baked for too long.

!Hola! Buenas.

Was flipping through a book on Spanish for Beginners which I loaned from the National Library.

Weekly review on my 'Always Throw Track Carrier' Battalion:

Highlight of the week was a visit by the Royal Bruneian Infantry Regiment for EX DB. The welcome ceremony was played out in the morning of the 25th. I was innocently standing by the side of HQ block when the Bruneians made a beeline past me to the CO car porch for a break. Pleasantly, a private from the RBIR greeted me 'Good Morning, Corporal'. Aww... that was so sweet... The actual excercise was on Thursday, and our BCS moved out to deploy light mode near Pasir Laba.

Bruneians have a knack for Panadol. According to a certain someone, it is their cure-all miracle pill.

The Safety Officer was giving a Safety Briefing at the Training Shed and after painstakingly explaining the rationale for all personnel to stand during the Safety Briefing to the Bruneians in English, he realized that hardly anyone was paying attention to him / understood what he had been trying to say all the while. When he called for all to rise, only one Bruneian heeded his call. Oh well.

The Singapore Acting Federation was at work during EX DB. Camcorders and Digital Cameras were present at scene when Chief visited.

Apparantly, the Sultan of Brunei himself paid our President and Prime Minister a visit during the Exercise period.

Medics are area cleaning specialists. There is an invisible link between the two. During our ATP last year, we were tasked to clean the toilet at the range. During EX DB, we were tasked to maintain the cleaniness of the traning shed and tasked to pick up litter.

Wednesday: Missed my first IV infusion attempt in half a year.

Friday - Someone from Workshop knocked his head against the turret of an SM-1 tank! Minor contusions, but I sent him to the treatment room for management anyway.

Saturday - Went to Novena and then Plaza Singapura. Met up with Zi Rong, Jian Ming, Loren and Jia Rong for some LAN, and dinner. I think ATP helped double my frag to fragged ration. Ha!

Sunday - Plans for some recreation in the morning called off at the last minute due to unforseen circumstances. In the end, we just settled for lunch at MacDonald's. We tried the Prosperity Burger meal, with the chich patty in the burger having a tad too much pepper and the curly fries not tasty enough.

Still on Maple Story, though I can't wait for Civ 4 and Heroes of Might and Magic 5 to be released!

The week was a rather uneventful week, at least impression-wise:

We went outfield again from Tuesday to Wednesday (No nights off, sob...) Once again, we practised building and demolishing of tentage, attempted to set up our Camo net after dusk, ate combat rations and fed flies. We dismounted once and provided buffet breakfast of 11 x Fresh blood to a thriving mosquito colony on Wednesday morning. Also did up some personal camoflague, which has caused large pimples to form on my face...

Went to Tampines to join Ivan, Rui Yi and Xuelun for a game of badminton on Friday morning, then headed over to Xin Yi's place for a steamboat lunch. The Tom Yam Soup was expecially spicy, and coupled with the warm weather, made for a slightly unbearable lunch. Thankfully, we had some fruit punch and green tea at hand. We managed, as always, to finish all the food. There was this IQ game online, which I spent an hour on, and progressed rather well, till it was time for dinner... Dinner at our neighbour's, Simon's, cooked food outlet near Zhonghua Secondary School.

Went downtown with Mum to meet up with Aunty Dolly for lunch. While they were shopping at Robinsons, I went to check out a hobby shop, and ended up buying 5 model kits for less than thirty bucks! In the afternoon, we went to visit Grandpa and Grandma, and ended up returning home with enough fruits to last a week! Had a sumpteous Seafood Wine Steamboat for dinner along Upper Serangoon Road.

Booking in tonight, and preparing for next week's joint EX with our friendly Bruneians.