Draft is finally out...

Yep...it's 0348hrs on a Saturday morning...and my draft is finally done...finished! I've just sent it to my supervisor at 0342hrs just now! Yes...yes...yes...now life can get back to normal...Let's wait and see what his comments are...

I'm Simpsonised!

Contrary to what StimGam portrayed me as on the banner of his blog, I think I look more like this...right? Check out his banner for other 'characters'! Quite a good resemblence!

On the 'Onslaught' front...the 'disease' has spread far and wide! I counted at least 20 people 'trying' out the game 'in between' lectures...ehem! During lunch, many small groups were seen discussing strategies on the best 'combos' to use to defeat the 'Onslaught'! There's a talk going around that it may soon be the 'official' game of 38th CSC! Some suggested that by Monday morning, those involved are to show a screen capture of the highest score from now till then. Winner gets the 'pot'! Currently the honour goes to Bernard Ng with 200 + waves on the Classic map and counting...

And on the CRP front...I'm happy to say that I'm halfway there! 'There' being the 5000 word mark. Actually it's not so much the word count but the flow of ideas and one's own thoughts about the topic at hand. I WILL FINISH BY TOMORROW! Then it's back to 'Onslaught'!!!

An Onslaught of Essays!

Oh man StimGam! Dammit...dammit...he has spread the Onslaught disease to me! It was an innocent MSN message that said "Check out this game" and I was hooked! Now Jefri knows why I was 'disengaged' from the JPP discussion!!! Hey, I was maintaing 'listerning watch' ok! Then Chris saw the game and next day he told me, "Dammit Shah...why did you introduce the game to me!?!?"...Next to be hooked was our resident fighter pilot. I guess the only time he displayed that much concentration is when he is in the cockpit of his F-16! The three of us were discussing strategies to overcome the onslaught as we made our way to a Japanese restaurant @ Jurong West Sport Complex for lunch! And when I got back to attend the country brief, I saw Simon, Robin and Choon Keong playing the game in the audit!!! Talk about spreading the disease! And all this in the middle of a hectic period when the rest (including myself of course) are rushing our Commandant's Research Paper (5000 words baby!) before flying off to Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and China around the National Day week. We don't want to be lugging our laptops overseas to do the CRP now do we?!?! Dammit...dammit StimGam...now I know why there's a tagline on the Onslaught website saying "You wanted to get anything done today?"!!! You have been warned...Once you click on the link and unless you are not human, you will be hooked!!!

July 2007 Monthly Cousins Gathering

And so we trooped to Annaz's @ Woodlands last Saturday for our Monthly Cousins Gathering. There were 20 of us there! The gathering is getting bigger. We would like to welcome Faizal & Widdi to their first ever gathering! As usual, it was potluck. Our kind hosts provided the drinks (hot & cold!) and ice-cream floats. We brought along 2 pieces of pound cakes with some chips. Rina brought indo-mi goreng (the 'base' food) and pieces of chicken that was sinfully nice! Glynn brought along home-made quiche (it was delicious Glen!). There were also doughnuts and jelly. All in all, the food was much less than what was brought for the previous gathering. I guess we learnt our lesson not to bring too much food. Suffice to say, we finished them in good time. We made time to catch up and talked about what has been happening in our lives. That is the main objective of these gatherings. To get away from our kids, to chill and just to chat. While we finished our dinner and caught up with each other, I started off with our 'favourite' 'Stories' 'game'...Those not familiar were initiated to the inner-workings of the game. Essentially, each person is to come up with a sentence to continue on the sentence from the previous person. Hence, one has no idea of the bigger story but only that of the previous person. It's great fun when everybody has written their part and for the story to be read out. Nine out of ten times the story will be hilarious. Maybe I'll publish our collective 'masterpiece' here one day!

Boboy had brought along a video clip of the guys from the 'Upside Down Show'...Those guys are tireless! I got tired just from watching them! Although I can't say much of the show I did enjoy the last part just before the credits.

Then came the Game part...It always fell on me to start the games...I don't mind and in fact relish in it but it's an art to judge when the rest are ready to start playing! Usually by the time we start the games, it will be something like 2300hrs! But we started at about 2100hrs that day. We started off with Taboo...Hohum...as usual, the gender that talks the most won...again...No guessing who huh?!?! Next, I pulled a fast one on the gang by introducing a new game called Um or Uh! It's basically a game of 'public speaking' and since anecdotal evidence points to people dying rather than give a presentation, I didn't really tell anyone about the game beforehand! It was hilarious as we pick out the topics for the other team (it was guys vs gals as usual) to talk about. It was great fun seeing the gang fumble and try to 'bluff' their way through the topic at hand. 30 seconds never felt so long huh guys!?!? As it happened, my future sister-in-law picked a topic on "Sex"!!! Her parting words were "Come November, I wish to have great sex!"...Oh boy! Oh Boy indeed...Pun intended! As it turned out, the gang gamely played the game and I think everyone did well! Kudos guys! Should have more of that huh?

I wanted to play Pictionary Mania next but one thing lead to another and we ended up watching some crap show by some WWE star who went around hooking up people with a chain and hook...literally! How we ended up watching that show I don't know but it was a classic case of the 'Abilene Paradox', a concept I was introduced to in the course of my work. We played traditional Scrabble while some watched the show though...It's been a long time since I played Scrabble and it brought back memories of the times when I used to play it non-stop from 2000hrs till 0400hrs for a few weeks when I was posted to Temburong, Brunei waaaaaaay back in 1994! After winning the first game, it looks like I have not lost the 'touch'! Must play more!

Next, we watched "Music & Lyrics" while some played Carrom...By this time (it was about 2359hrs methinks), some of us had already turned to 'zombies'! It was about 0300hrs when we finally bade goodnight (good morning?!?) to our kind hosts and made our collective journey back home...We gave a ride to Muz, Faurin to Carl and Tit to Nurul...

As always, it was great fun...good food, good company...always looking forward to the next one! We're having a Simpsons Movie night sometime next week...All are supposed to wear either yellow or some Simpsons t-shirt! That should be fun! Oh ya, enjoy the first ever (at long last!) photo taken of EVERYONE who was there that night...

Keeping the Peace...

While the military is traditionally the instrument of policy for governments to extend their will onto other governments, more and more it is being used for other purposes. Chief amongst them is Peacekeeping Operations (PKO) or Peace Support Operations (PSO). Singapore has contributed to a significant number of them over the years. A lot of my friends have been involved in PSOs and PKOs in countries from Africa to East Timor. I myself have not been involved in any directly but have been put on standby and gone for training for a few. The office in the UN that is responsible for these missions is the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. I would be honoured to be given a chance to don a blue beret and participate in one of these missions... A chance to help others, a chance to improve lives...for the betterment of humankind!

The ultimate symbol of sacrifice...

"I dedicate my LIFE to Singapore..."

This is the phrase that EVERY recruit utters on his first day as a soldier as part of the SAF Pledge led by his Commanding Officer, this is the phrase that every officer cadet says as he stands proudly on the hollowed grounds of the SAFTI Parade Square before he is officially commissioned as an SAF Officer by the Reviewing Officer and this is the phrase that EVERY SOLDIER says every year on SAF Day on 1st July.

The military profession is unique in that it calls for unlimited liability upon its members - that when called upon, we will give up our lives for our country. I am reminded of the seriousness of what we do when we had a talk with the Head of Army Musuem a few days ago. The ID tag or "dog-tag" as it is more commonly known is given to recruits upon enlistment. It is the ONLY item that we have that is useful only upon the death of its owner. It has no other purpose other than to identify who the owner was. All other equipment given to us are gainfully used except for the ID tag which just hangs around our necks or kept safely somewhere. We do not use it to identify ourselves because we have our 11B or the military IC for it. If it is to be used, it is only used upon the death of its owner. Since there always two tags, 1 is taken by the medic and the other one attached to the owner so as to identify him...

So, there...for those who have it, think about it the next time you see your ID tags. It is the one thing that you have that you hope will not EVER be utilised...

The rat race begins...

It is but a fact of life that in Singapore, parents take the education of their children seriously, very seriously. In fact so seriously that they are willing to 'sacrifice' 40 hours of their lives so that their precious ones have a fighting chance in Phase 2B and not the 'dreaded' Phase 2C! Those of you who have 'been there, done that' would know what I am talking about...Yep...My BH and I have officially become 'members' of a certain primary school's Parents' Association! "I cannot believe it....!", as a certain character in the Little Einsteins likes to intone when something truly out of the norm happens!

We received a flyer from the FD's school saying that a certain primary school was having an open house last Saturday. Although it's a year away before the FD has to register for Primary 1, hey, what the heck...it's never too early to conduct a bit of recce! So the four of us trooped down to the school on a hot sultry morning. Personally, it's been a long time since I have gone into a primary school and I was amazed at the transformation it has undergone! Suffice to say that they were a far cry from the one I used to go to... We explored some of the classrooms and stalls that were set-up by the students, teachers, staff and parent volunteers. I came away thoroughly impressed with what the school has to offer. On the way out, we passed by the registration counter and gave it only a cursory glance since it wasn't our FD's turn to register yet. Upon further enquiry however, we realised that it was the last day for parents to register to be parent volunteers to be eligible for next year's registration! A full one year before actual registration..."Oh, it's not as bad now", said the admin staff who attended to us, "Last time, it used to be 2 years! Now, as long as you have clocked 40 hours, you are eligible for Phase 2B...But it does not mean that your child will be guaranteed a place in this school! If there are more applications for Phase 2B than there are places, then we will have to ballot. Of course, parents who live within 1km of the school gets a higher priority that those who live between the 1 to 2km radius...". Thus we were 'inducted' into a group of about 60 parents who actively give their services ranging from routine weekly reading programmes, counselling to adhoc events like class outings...Hmmm...maybe I can put my photography skills to good use! Oh...of course there are other 'collateral' benefits of joining as a parent volunteer beside the main obvious one...We get to meet other 'like-minded' parents, we get to extend our circle of friends, we get to see at first hand how the school is run, we get to talk to students who are studying there to find out what the school is REALLY like and we get to be involved! In the end, I guess it is a win-win situation for all involved!

Hmmm, there is that other school open house this weekend...another 40 hours of 'volunteering' perhaps?!?!

(For those not 'inducted' to my blog, BH means Better Half, FD means First Daughter and SD, although not mentioned here, would obviously mean Second Daughter. For those not familiar with the Internet and other 'unwritten' rules on blogging, one should not give away one's names, schools, etc, etc...there ARE many weird characters floating around in cyberspace with extra time on their hands...Also, once you publish something in your blog, it NEVER gets deleted...even if you have deleted it from your site...even if your site closes down...even if your computer crashes! Because somewhere out there, there are always sites that trawls the cyberspace and records EVERYTHING that has ever been published...so for those who like to pour their hearts out in cyberspace...remember, it may come back to haunt you YEARS later! Like when your future boss googles your name to check on you...I may sound a bit like an alarmist but that's the fact guys and gals...so be careful what you publish...)