Singularity, and a little extra.....

Yep, it's official. I'm the last man single, among the good ole' Upps and Downs clan of course (or as the new condensed version is called, The Napoleon Brothers). You can already tell the heat is on me, in fact BL and Sagathi are planning on starting a bet to see if i can get attached by the end of the year. Well if anything, good luck to them on that, all i know is that someone is gonna make a big loss. Here's a congratulation to good ole' Sagathi, took you long enough eh. Well if anything i can safely predict my situation won't change anytime soon, what with those bums valuing the starting bet on my love life a shoddy $30 (bloddy hell, it can't possible be that bad right.....well i suppose i should be happy it isn't a negative.....). As is my fatigued mental state now, i simply do not have the resources at hand to pursue any form of relationship and have resigned myself to letting love find me if it so desires. Besides chances for proper female interaction are few and infrequent. As is my current state, i have absolutely 0 friends at my current Uni, after half a year of shit and still nothing, (for some reason the people there are not very receptive to conversation, and those few international students there tend to gravitate towards their own lot, no such luck for me there, i'm the only bloody Singaporean around) so you can plainly see that relationships are at present not in the cards at hand, heck they're not even in the fething deck. Bloody anti-social swinburne people.....Well the only thing that can salvage this crap-arsed situation is simply blatant and obvious divine intervention (and trust me God has obviously more important things to do, like stopping the entire human race from self-destructing their miserable selves.....). So now i fervently pray that i can transfer to a more "human" university next year (and damned hell more convenient, perferably located in zone 1.....). As for my non-existant love life, i will simply concede "As God Wills it." I shall now leave you with the lyrics form the song The Light Before We Land, opening theme for the anime Gunslinger Girl (series 2 will be coming out sometime next year!).

The Light Before We Land

In cases such as these I'd like a hand
Don't wake me up without a master plan
With sight and sound becoming fragile
Don't you understand?
When things that once were beautiful
Are bland

And when I feel like I can feel once again
Let me stay awhile
Soak it in awhile
If we can hold on we can fix what is wrong
Buy a little time
For this head of mine
Haven for us

In truth there is no better place to be
Than falling out of darkness still to see
Without a premonition
Could you tell me where we stand?
I'd hate to lose this light
Before we land

And when I feel like I can feel once again
Let me stay awhile
Soak it in awhile
If we can hold on we can fix what is wrong
Buy a little time
For this head of mine
Haven for us

Before we let euphoria
Convince us we are free
Remind us how we used to feel
Before when life was real

And when I feel like I can feel once again
Let me stay awhile
Soak it in awhile
If we can hold on we can fix what is wrong
Buy a little time
For this head of mine
Haven for us

The Princess of the Moon

Well this was a song i encountered when i watched a certain anime, UFO Princess Valkryie (trust me i was damnably bored). All in all it was a rather kiddish show, not something i would usually watch, but this song really struck a chord with me, so here it is now. It's a japanese song so i have taken the liberty of translating it (albeit rather loosely as my rudimentary command of the language is shabby at best). I think the original title was Princess of December but i have decided to call it Princess of the Moon as we all know that the Japanese language does not properly translate into English all the time (not to mention my crap command of japanese) and due to the fact that this name seemed more fitting for the lyrics. So without further ado:

"The Princess of the Moon"

A Princess sings at a black moon,

"Oh, illusive lover come with me into the night".

The two become the wind and travel among the stars,

Watching the scenery untill they awake from their dreams.

The two are the eyes of the heart.

The Princess thinks "Where is the Key?",

"Where is the key to lock this moment for eternity?".

The transient Princess sleeps at a black moon,

The illusive lover lives in the same shadow.

In reality they become memories and fade into the darkness.

The sadness of the now ending morning,

The parting couple are the death of the heart.

The Maiden commands, "Throw away the key",

"Throw away the key to the disappearing and transient shadow".

The Monkey has left the building, For now.....

That's right, after a fun-filled week of mass-mayhem n perversity Morgan The Monkey and Wei Loong have finally and sadly left for Brisbane and Tasmania respectively. They arrived last monday on the 13th, but due to my academic commitments (bloody lectures and tutorials.....), i could only roll over on the 16th, thursday. But trust me we didn't even waste a second. We had the usual on thursday, lots of CG (Lan), topped with a serving of Battle Gear4 and a hopeless go at the dastardly drum game. Of course the usual group meals followed. And that was just the warm-up. On friday i rushed off to the city immediately after my tutorials to join morg at roaldy's snazzy apartment to talk crap and listen to their questionable guitar skills (i joke, they're seriously not bad). Then it was off to join the "little one" and brendan and crew over at CG. We didn't really get far as we were all too damn hungry and promptly moved ourselves over to the much vaunted "Singapore Chom Chom" restaurant. The main attraction followed shortly after as we headed off to sing-k. And yes even lil' james went. So the night was spent singing ourselves hoarse (morg and i were constantly singing our asses off, and james left shortly after 12, i think). The lot of us then headed off to chinatown for some seriously late night/early morning-supper/breakfast (it was around 4am). Then xander, morg, brendan, ryan and i went to the arcade for some late night Battle Gear (ryan doesn't actually play so he just stood around and spectated). The day finally ended after that with me taking the first train (5:30am) back to good ole' Box Hill (which is my home for now). Saturday was as hectic as ever, i woke up at around 1 and promptly showered n dashed off to catch the 2pm train to the city. This of course resulted in me being late for the lunch at roaldy's place (of course i was still earlier than the girls.....). After lunch, the guys went to CG at the behest of james (as usual) while Alicia went off to buy the tickets to Die Hard 4.0 (yes i know it came out in Singapore a long time ago) with Wei Loong in tow. So after getting my ass handed to me again at StarCraft the lot of us headed down to central to catch the movie. And i must say it was smashing. After the movie was the usual dinner followed by a tad bit of CG and such. Sunday was a bit more reserved, at first, with me only turning up at 5:30pm to force brendan to go to church. After that it was off to Jie Yi's and Alicia's apartment for steamboat. Everything was good and proper till we were done with all the eating (truthfully neither the sushi nor the agar agar gave me any stomach problems so i guess their cooking still borders on the edible, but to give them credit i'll concede that it was reasonable.) and good ole' morg suggested we play the dreaded truth or dare. Now i'll cut to the chase, the Singaporeans (ala Alicia and i) were rather invulnerable to it untill somewhere near the end she had to choose the wrong number and got it. After that everyone knew it was only a matter of time before my vaunted and amazing luck faltered. However as most of my comrades in SG will know i am quite immune to the game as i am simply the best liar there is (not that i had to lie for that question anyway) and i can keep a straight face in the most damnable of hilarious situations. And i am also capable of feats of great insanity. As displayed when i had to lick the tip of the bottle that morgan had drank from (saliva and all) and had to drink/eat a raw egg. All without hesitation. So that wild night finally ended with the guys (xander in particular who single handedly washed all the dishes) cleaning up. I as usual had to bunk in at john's place and had to wait for the early morning train home again. As usual all good things had to come to an end, albeit temporarily, and both of them left on monday afternoon. I made it a point to come down to the city to play a round or two of foosball with them before seeing them off.

In Blood, The Corrupt Shall Pay

It has recently been brought to my attention that people who download anime are being fined by a certain company in Singapore. The company "ODEX" which is an importer of anime into Singapore has obtained court orders forcing Internet providers to give up the names of subscribers who are accused of downloading anime "illegally". And i must add, where money is concerned, Singapore is the easiest nation in the world to obtain a court order. This small part of the story already brings up many issues, one of which is the privacy of it's citizens. It seems that our nation cares not for the privacy of its citizens whenever money is concerned. Getting such a court order in most other nations (ala USA and the like, aka Western DEMOCRATIC nations) would have been rather hard to say the least. In fact if memory serves me well (and my grasp of fundamental law) don't they need hard evidence before a court order can actually be obtained? Hmm.....all the more to question the methods which have been used to obtain such an order. And all the more to question the way in which the legal system in Singapore works. It is quoted in The Straits Times (a wholly government owned newspaper, in fact all the media sources are government controlled, except cable of course) that "The recent hearing was held in a closed chamber session, so few details of the case are available publicly." Now doesn't that just sound, hmm....what's the word for it again, oh yes, suspicious? And this is just the tip of a colossal ice berg. "ODEX" is also demanding a settlement from the "accused" of up to $5000 and a promise to stop "illegal" downloading. If anything should be illegal it's this "settlement". Never have i heard a case where such a thing has occured. They also state that a simple settlement of $1000 would suffice for those with financial difficulties. How "charitable" of them. I wonder if the fucking idiots who run this organisation of the damned have ever thought that these unfortunates are downloading such things because they cannot afford it in the first place? Are the poor now expected to give up their passions because the rich demand them to? It seems that above all else, Singapore has now become a country for the rich, where the poor will forever be expected stay in the cycle of poverty. If anything this heavy-handed method is the most ridiculous one ever. A warning should have been good enough as it would deter the "accused" from downloading anything as they would now know that their actions are far from secure and private. Besides the products that this "ODEX" provides is far from satisfactory. For one they're still in the VCD formats, who the shit buys VCD's anymore?And some of them have been dubbed to chinese or english. Would i want to fething watch JAPANESE anime if the characters are farking speaking chinese or english? I think not, if anything it isn't original anymore. And for those that are in japanese some of them only have chinese subtitles. I suppose everyone who watches anime is now expected to be extremely proficient in chinese? No wonder the quality of the english language is going down the loo in Singapore. And there is also the strong point where they don't bring in anime that people actually want to watch but some crap-arsed titles. And new titles released are few and infrequent. Not to mention there is also the risk of censorship by our oh so vigilant censorship board. Now tell me, would anyone in their right mind want to purchase such sub-standard goods? If anything the only case that should be made is against "ODEX" by the consumers association of singapore on their sub-standard goods. While some citizens of certain nations are afraid that their respective home countries are fast becoming surveillance states, there is already one such nation in existance, and that's Singapore. If the courts can easily issue such a court order over such a small matter which is an obvious and blatant invasion of the right to privacy, what else are the courts capable of? On just one such occasion, someone was arrested for posting some derogatory remarks on their blog. It seems that the freedom to think and to express our views privately will soon be all but just a dream.
"Why kill the heretic? Rather, why not?"

MAJULAH SINGAPURA

It's National Day in Singapore today, the 9th of August. Still remember what National Day meant to us NCC folk. Months of frakkin' drills in preparation for the parade which each respective school in Singapore is expected to hold (This is not the main glamourous one mind you, it's actually held on the 8th of August as the 9th is a public holiday). And i am proud to declare that for 4 consecutive years in a row (2002-2005, well from the time i joined and when i left at least, don't know about now though), NCC-Air St.Pat's has been the guard of honour for each and every parade, be it National Day or Founder's Day. And i am again proud to declare that i've been in each and every one of them, for what it's worth. The first time i took part in one of these was way back in 2002, when i and the rest were just buck-privates. Some of us were chosen to join the guard of honour unit because NCC-Air at that time was grossly under-manned. A real break in tradition as Part A's (sec 1's) are not supposed to be part of the guard of honour unit, but due to a shortage of manpower and as we were just as good as the older chaps we got the job. And we did it damned well. Well i'm not that much of a patriotic person but the least i could say is this. Cheers to a good future ahead for Singapore (more importantly for us).
"MAJULAH SINGAPURA!"

Alas, it begins.....

Well, today was officially the start of Semester 2 for me and i have to say it looks like my incredible luck seems to be faltering yet again. Well i guess i have been over abusing it quite a bit lately.....so in hyper-condensed mode here's my weekly timetable, Tuesday 12:30-18:30, Wednesday 11:00-19:00, Friday 11:00-12:30. So there you have it, classes three times a week again (not that i'm complaining, although i would have preferred if they moved the Friday tutorial to Thursday.....) and for those wondering the classes on Tuesday and Wednesday are punctuated by breaks (about one and a half hours long on both days to be exact). Subjects taken this Semester are Financial Management, Statistics and Research Methods, Computer Accounting Systems and MacroEconomics. Well the main frakking problem i have with this timetable is that classes on Tues and Wed end too farkin' late. That combined with the university's apparent disdain for adequate street lighting makes the 10+ minute trek down the hill to the train station all the more an adventure. Aside from the fact that mortal danger can be found at any wrong footing. Not to mention the extremely fethed up train system only has trains running every half an hour. Which means that i'll most probably have to get on the 19:25 train home tomorrow, unless of course by the Grace of God or through the sheer and utter incompetence of the Melbourne train system (the more likely case i must say), the 19:05 train gets delayed and i manage to get on it. So theres a basic summary of events thus far. I must add that though the Semester has just begun i'm already planning my trip home at the end of it (goes to show how much enthusiasm i have for my studies eh). And another thing, today during Stats & Research Methods lecture the lecturer asked us to come up with a sentence with the word "population" in it, write it out and hand it up. The sentence i came up with? "This is a sentence with the word "population" in it." Don't think they were really pleased with that, well i was feeling rather bored anyway.....On another note i have just realised that oh great puritus Ian has linked this site as "His Excellency The Lord High Inquisitor's Blog". Much honoured by this i must add, so in view of this i will be converting this Site of Free Speech and whatnots to an Inquisitorial site. Here's a standard Inquisitorial line i used to dish out (maybe i'll start doing it again.....)
Purge the Unrighteous. Cleanse the Unclean. Kill the Impure.