I wanna be the very best.
Whenever I take a book out of my "assault pack", people around me ask, by courtesy, what book I'm reading, the genre, the author. I don't really know how to answer all these questions and I don't know why they do these things. I cannot bring myself to judge another person by the genre he's interested in, and I don't see any value in putting in my opinions about any particular genre. It angers me and puts me in a defensive mood whenever someone says "I don't like this kind of books", and then I feel stupid about having felt defensive in the first place.
Whenever someone takes a book out to read, I like to think of myself as a literate person and I'd invade that person's privacy by reading the title of his book. I think it has something to do with me not interested in asking the obvious. If you're wearing a name tag, I won't ask you by your name, I'd choose to simply call you by what your name tag is saying. Isn't that why name tags are there? If you can't respond to the name on your name tag then you're quite a bit of a retard and I won't waste my time trying to get your number.
Name tags identify the name of someone. Book titles identify the title of the book. It's that simple.
I automatically deem people who ask me for the title of my book as idiots. If you have to ask the obvious to start a conversation, I'd rather not have anything to do with you.
I don't really know how I choose books to borrow, really. They always say "Don't judge a book by its cover", and I try my best to stick to that adage, but let's face it, I don't want to wake up beside a monster every morning. I try my best to flip a few pages and look like I'm busy reading in the words, but I think I'm simply scanning through the book to a certain optimum length of time to hold onto the book for before placing it down without looking like a complete moron who doesn't know what he's doing in a library.
I don't choose books by supposed famed authors, because someone once said something about treading the path less trodden and being rewarded by..new sights? Doesn't matter. I just don't like to follow the crowd. I don't have to choose a certain author simply because everyone else is all over him. I read what I feel like reading.
Reading is tiring. It becomes more like a match of sophistication--who's books' author is more famed and more sophisticated wins, and is automatically the Chimp king. He'd then demand the respect and awe of other readers and utter wise words while experiencing the best fellatio a man can get. I've had enough of this race where I get judged for reading what I like to read.
I don't feel like joining this anymore. It's not that I feel insecure, it's that I am disgusted by what reading has become.
Or maybe I'm reading too much into it.
Either way, I've decided that I might as well drop my pretense. I mean I'm unsophisticated, so I might as well stop trying to be. No amount of books can change the way I perceive things, and instead of reading the accomplishments of others, I might as well embark on a totally new journey, one that'd be much more fulfilling and rewarding than reading.
I am going to catch up with my childhood and play Pokemon all the way through my driving course. The past week had been difficult, I'm not used to booking out on Saturday and I'm not used to wasting my time doing 350 MCQs 4 times. If the Organization is part of a bigger plan, then by extension, I can safely conclude that meritocracy isn't evident in the framework of said bigger plan, and I can do nothing but kick shadows and suck thumb...
...and buy a shiny new Nintendo DS just to play Pokemon Black.
(Then, the same inquisitive people would go "What game you playing?")
I officially have no life, and even if I had one it would degenerate into something less substantial than it has been already.
-- 9/25/2011 02:57:00 AM
Inferno.
"When I was a boy my mother used to say that hell was the painless place where everything has been forgotten.""That doesn't sound so bad."
"It couldn't be worse."
"It couldn't be worse."
"Why?"
"Because there is no love. That's why there is no pain."
They walked beneath a milky sky shot with patches of insistent blue. Anselm looked up and asked, "Then what's heaven?"
"An inferno where you burn remembering all that should be remembered."
-The Sixth Lamentation, William Brodrick.
I was reading this book in camp when I came across this, and I just had to write it down. I don't know what's so attractive about this passage though. I guess I'm able to relate to it on a more subconscious level, and so I subconsciously took it down word for word.
I'm so going to Swen..no I mean I'm so going to the library later to borrow any book penned by William Brodrick. Since I'm going on a driving course organized by The Organization, and thus have to spend countless hours waiting for my fellow course mates to drive, I might as well spend my time productively like I've been doing so since my time in SCS.
I don't need to pick up a new language to feel like I've spent quality time in SAF, I just need to read more good books.
Who is reading this anyway? I mean like ultimately it doesn't matter who reads this or not, but it'd be nice to know which of my friends have too much free time, and who is stalking me.
Because from what I see, your posts are disturbingly similar to mine. Won't you talk to me? Or if you're really this shy and want me to take the initiative, you can quote my aforementioned quote and say something really weird like "I read this book and decided to quote this" and I'd talk to you like as if I didn't know you were stalking me.
Sense: I make none.
Khatib camp isn't very fun, in the sense that I can see HDB flats all around me and at night the corridors are lit and I get so very homesick. So near yet so far.
Good night.
-- 9/18/2011 02:42:00 AM
Creativity is overrated.
I was quite disturbed by what I saw on Channel 8, Friday 8PM. It's a show about how teenagers should go broach the topic of boy girl relations.I didn't watch the whole thing, no I'm perfectly sane and I don't need to be taught how to breathe, but the preview was bad enough. I think it's scary that they're trying to teach these impressionable teenagers (the show's target audience) how to express themselves.
If whatever is reflected in television were to be religiously followed, all the atas dining places would be filled with guys doing the cliche one-knee kneel while thrusting out a diamond ring to propose to his girlfriend of 3 years, and life would be very predictable in the sense that if you're the girlfriend of 3 years and your boyfriend suddenly asks you out to an atas dining place, you can expect him to pop the question when the lights are suddenly made dim and music cut.
BORING. Life would be so predictable, and the girlfriend could choose from a list of responses prepared for such an occasion in her handbag, because she cannot think on her feet and thus cannot deviate from the standard responses to a proposal.
Because of television, creativity is not celebrated nor given due recognition. In fact, being creative is seen as being flippant.
My friend's friend's boyfriend proposed to my friend's friend at MacDonalds, and was promptly rejected because she thought he was joking.
Decades of reinforcement is forcing us into this pathetic hole of social inhibitions, so much that the usual confession of love (in the form of rape) in days long gone is now illegal. I can only imagine how much more censored we would be in the future, and how much more we'd censor ourselves, and I think I'd remain weird by not conforming, I think I'd remain weird by being as spontaneous as I want to be, I think I won't change much, but somehow, being different
doesn't get me laid =\
-- 9/11/2011 03:04:00 PM
My Nattasha.
WK's plot to make me interested in Japanese floundered, thanks to Suckseed which got me interested in Thai more =.=
Somehow, I don't understand nutshit about the Thai language (at least I know what "kimochi" and "yamete" stands for in Jap), but I like this song:
I keep replaying it. I spent these 2 days replaying it, just because I can and have no better alternatives (no one to give me a blowjob or ask me out for a meal or something equally boring). This borders on stupid, I know. Playing it over and over again doesn't make her suddenly start stripping for me, and it doesn't make her appear on my bed, but I still play it over and over again.
She could be swearing and sweetly cursing me to death with that killer voice of her and I'd die happy, unwittingly, and most definitely willing.
Oh, to be a fan boy at this age, how embarrassingly youthful. If anyone wants to watch Suckceed with me again I won't mind, come come don't shy, do ask me out (;
Isn't it lamentable how language barriers get in the way of appreciating Earth? Perhaps there are enlightened humans around who don't know too many languages but are able to appreciate every single culture present on Earth, but right now I'm unenlightened and I cannot step out of my comfort zone because of this.
I think I posted about being lost in translation a few months back when referring to the Millenium trilogy, and I still remain lost and I don't want to translate it to something I can understand anymore.
I remember One Piece's Pirate King, Gol D. Roger, who had the ability to "hear the voice of all things". I only want to feel, because no matter the meaning, as long as it can't be felt, it's pointless.
Is it possible to communicate without any language? Is it possible to point and grunt and be understood completely? We can't even communicate when we speak the same language, when there isn't even a language barrier in the first place--
so is there really a language barrier, or is it just a convenient excuse?
Can we not feel the amusement or humour or sorrow or fear or any emotions simply from the voice of someone? Can't we communicate simply based on raw emotions?
Nope we can't. Perhaps we can evolve to that stage one day, but we probably won't live to see that day.
Really, what's stopping us then? OK, what's stopping us from what? I'm not making sense anymore.
In order to break the monotony of my thoughts, here's a picture of my new girlfriend. I deliberately chose a rather unglam picture of her because I want to show her who's boss
but she sang too well and my heart melted so I had to add this in:
(:
-- 9/08/2011 11:40:00 PM
ARTI ARTI. INCOMING INCOMING.
I was with my SCS section mates yesterday at Marina Square to watch a movie. We reached at around 12PM and we chose the 7PM slot for SuckSeed. 7 hours to burn there =.=
It wasn't that bad though, quite fun spending time sitting at Starbucks playing Monopoly on an iPad and watching Happy Tree Friends.
The movie was comical, and I liked it a lot, but there are some stuff reflected there that's not very healthy (when Koong tried to express himself to Ern with a copy-paste song), but which reflects the current state of human relations--we don't even bother to try express ourselves in our own words anymore.
We think that simply showing another person a song would reflect what we feel about that person. We think that it's better to stick to the tried-and-true path, that if a song is popular enough, we can use it. We leave our speech in the hands of composers and lyricists.
We become one in many. And soon enough we can only cut and paste whatever is on TV or in songs, and we become predictable because we'd lose our own nuances in whichever language it is we're trying to express ourselves in. I think that'd be a most deplorable state. I have nothing good to say about people who quote others excessively, and I can never bring myself to respect someone who can only spam songs in the hopes that whoever is on the other side would get what he/she is trying to convey with the spammed songs.
We forget to be sincere.
On an entirely different note, I was at the event just now, and the atmosphere damn one kind. You can see the classic otaku type at the event--men who've never seen the daylight for ages, haven't had a proper haircut for months, and fat. I was quite embarrassed being thrown into that lot, and the last time I checked, I don't understand Japanese, so I felt like I was burning throughout the event. It was quite enjoyable and she was quite cute and animated (typical Japanese I guess), so time passed quite quickly.
That, or the event ended really fast, which was the case (20 mins).
I might morph into a fanboy, but thankfully I don't understand Japanese so I have this natural barrier against falling in love with random girls who'd never look upon me as nothing more than statistics.
To show that I've been there done that, here are pictures that I took:
I'm finally booking into a new place tomorrow. I can't help but be slightly excited, because this is after all a totally new environment--from using the small bite-sized SAR 21 to handling the bigger guns otherwise known as cannons. I'm really glad to get out of infantry though. If artillery is the king of the battlefield then all the infantry men would be our sluts.
The army should never play with gender because dicks like me will remain dicks. I hope they give us like...2 hours to unpack our stuff. Machiam check into hotel like that. Even better if they give us free and easy.
ARTI ARTI. INCOMING INCOMING.
-- 9/06/2011 10:13:00 PM
Tug and pull the big guns.
I spent a lot the past week. It probably runs into 3 digits. No wait, it definitely runs into the hundreds, thanks to WK. I can probably list out what I've spent this entire week:
Buffet at Nihon Mura after 28km route march: $33 (because we had to pay for food wastage =.= we ended up taking away the extra unfinished food back to camp)
Cab back to Sengkang with all my barang barang, along with T. I didn't want to lug 4 bags home on the MRT, it'd look retarded: $20
Dinner at =.= =.= =.= =.=* : $17
Bad Teacher (bad movie): $11
Dinner at Billy Bombers...or whatever it's called: $30
Grand total: $111
My wallet is emptied. My heart aches, but spending is part of youth. I'm just glad I don't use my credit card often, I don't have a spam money attitude.
I'm quite tempted to become a Guardian on BattleOn though.
Foundation term in SCS just ended. I'm lucky enough to be posted out of Infantry and into artillery. You have no idea how scary it was when the list of names of people staying in infantry was being read out. Everyone was hoping it'd be someone else that gets the worst lot. No one likes "Forging Ahead".
The tense atmosphere was worse than most of the other life-defining moments I can recall. Brr.
*The dinner was at a rather random place WK pulled me to. It's at Scape, and there are 2 shops that have the same theme, and the cafe had the same theme as the shop. I don't really understand WK's fetish yet and it's disturbing to see him go that way, and he's trying to erode me into becoming something like him and I hope I remain inert.
The shop is AKB48 related =.=
And being WK, he made me buy tickets (his treat) to see this girl this coming Tuesday:
I had to leave my contact details behind and my balls shrivel even more when I think about what I'm about to do with my Tuesday.
Random post. I can only hope that Artillery would be fun. I mean, I polish my big gun every time I get the chance to, I just hope the cannons there won't be much bigger than mine, if not it'd be tiring.
-- 9/04/2011 04:56:00 PM