matte black

on the first day we were sitting on the ground and i was looking at the clouds grow and bloom, something that i haven't done in years. so i sat there watching clouds and thought to myself that maybe it's gonna be fun and i can watch clouds everyday, but erm i was wrong and so spent the next 14 days rushing around everywhere with no chance to look at pretty clouds.

another thing was that i didn't get to see the sun rise or set because due to some strange reason it'll always be obscured or we'll be indoors. this led me to believe that the island is not actually a real island but more of a large computer simulation like in the matrix, except that the programmers didn't create sunrise and sunsets.

i also grew addicted to polishing my boots till they were shiny, although we were only required to keep them black. really once i had shiny boots, it was impossible to go back to dull black. i could spend 30 minutes of my scarce free time polishing my boots, and then feel sad when i see them get scuffed up. the cycle repeats itself daily.

i got so bored writing about my boring life and i'm sure you are bored too. i'm sorry.

7 more weeks and another 20 months

days are long on the island because we wake up at 0530 and go to bed at 2030, so there's 17 hours each day for us to do shit.

i don't miss home or my life or my friends or anything (heartless), but rather just dislike being on that island and listening to people shout all day long. in fact one of the 2 things i don't like is that the people there like to shout a litttttle too much (the other being i have to handwash my clothes).

i just find it very disrespectful when they say things like "YOU FUCKING CHEEBYES ALL DON'T LIKE TO ECHO RIGHT? NEVER MIND, I WILL MAKE YOU SUFFER!" followed by evil laughter within their hearts. lucky for me, my direct superiors are more respectable and prefer to use talking rather than shouting or barking.

but seriously when i look at those people, i can imagine that life must have been tough for them in the past, probably getting picked on all the time and shit like that. now is the time for their revenge.

for example,
one's an indian who's kinda like satish but only slightly better (the one whom i quoted in the previous paragraph)

another has a setreotypical loser face with a speech impediment (he says wope instead of rope, etc)

there's 'chicken little,' who has a big and deep voice to make up for his lack in height (only to my nose level, and i'm not exactly tall), and his 'big and deep voice' is seriously seriously impossible to comprehend (senang diri = SAAANG EE-EEE)

the only normal people here are those who are really really normal and do not have self-confidence issues or deep-set emotional problems so they do not really have the need to vent their anger and watch others suffer or make them do stupid things for their own amusement.

i wonder how am i going to be like in the future? perhaps it's as they say, "for your own good" that they treat us as such, to make us stronger and more resilient. maybe that's how i'm gonna be in the future, for their own good, or maybe i will remember my own time back then and try to treat them more like humans rather than faceless recruits.

what i do

scratch my head scratch my face scratch my arms scratch my chest
scratch my stomach scratch my groin scratch my balls scratch my ass
scratch my thighs scratch my knees scratch my toes scratch my soles

famous last words

some things before i go

1. i shaved my head and currently look retarded, i'm not going to post a picture because it will forever sully your wonderous impression of me

2. i got kicked in the mouth on sunday and there's a deep imprint of my braces on my upper lip

3. i finally drove a car after passing my driving ages ago and good to know that i'm still pro at it

4. i feel completely blase about tomorrow, which is strange since i predicted a fair amount of anxiety

5. i am sad that i have to cut my nice and long fingernails, having kept them since february

really

i won't be around much soon, so from here on you readers can post comments here and ask me to write about whatever you want to read from me, and i will do so as soon as i can.

stories, opinions, experiences, anything you want. just leave a name so i'll know who wants to know.

sooner than you'd expect

whenever i look at old people, i just can't help but imagine myself in their position. i can't accept the fact that one day i'll be so old that i wouldn't even remember what it felt like to be young. my childhood would be so long ago that the memories only come in tiny bits and pieces.

so old that when i look at my face in the mirror all i see is a bag of wrinkles and saggy skin, blurred by my deteriorating vision. the mind is slow and the body is fading, with nothing left to do but wait.

i always wonder what old people think when they look back upon their past. do they still feel regret for actions done decades ago? have they come to terms with it or did they just get resigned to their fate after all the years that have gone by? or perhaps they've simply forgotten about their regrets, washed away by the ebb and flow of time?

maybe if i am able to get some answers it would show me how to live my life or lessen my fear of the inevitable. maybe it would keep me from worrying about all the things in life that are beyond my control.

that's me

the sky was still dark that morning, as the sargeant led his recruits on their first ever morning run. they had just enlisted the day before, and many of them had a long sleepless night.

they dragged their sleepy feet across the ground, thinking about how they haven't been awake at this ungodly hour for more than half a decade, cursing their luck for being male and for not having gender reassignment earlier.

suddenly there was a loud BANG! followed by what looked like fireworks shooting out of a recruit's leg. "ARTI! ARTI!" shouted the sargeant, collasping to the ground, covering his head with his hands.

the recruits quickly followed suit after a moment of stunned silence, partly due to the BANG, and partly because they haven't learnt wtf they were supposed to do when someone shouts "ARTI!"

when the dust settled, the sargeant went round checking on his recruits and tried to find the source of the BANG and fireworks. the recruits were pointing at one of their own, lying face-down on the ground. his right leg was severed just above the knee.

shocked, the sargeant turned him over, revealing his nametag "J. M. CHANG." the recruit stirred and slowly regained cconsiousness.

"are you alright? what happened?" asked the sargeant nervously.

"sorry sargeant, my leg burst."

burn those evil garments

back in 05-06, girls here had an unhealthy relationship with denim skirts. every girl and their mother were clad in denim skirts, and poor me, poor me was wondering if there was something wrong with me since try as i might, was unable to comprehend just what was nice about it.

there were even cool reconstructed skirts made from their old jeans and shit, which meant there were pockets in strange places and lines here and there. cool.

denim skirts must be one of the most unappealing, unattractive and unflattering piece of clothing a girl can put on. it's right up there on the list together with leggings on fat legs and wearing your grandmother's underwear to the beach. it's really that bad.

the material is far too stiff for a skirt and the cut is too squarish and constricting. this results in flat asses, squashed thighs, leg immobility, and basically looking like they were wearing a blue box. if you haven't realised, wearing a blue box is not a good thing. this is not meant to be a complement.

fortunately for me and other like-minded people, the trend died out. our joy was short-lived, however, as more unspeakable horrors awaited.

3 years old

i'm trying to recall how i used to be back then when life wasn't so messy like it is for everyone when they grow up. i want to remember and replicate it right now.

i can remember the things that happened and the people that were around but i cannot remember my mentality or how i could just float on without worry. i guess it was in not knowing that i managed to stay out of trouble with myself.

ignorance saved the day? or perhaps it was innocence.

when i was around 3 years old i woke up one morning and looked at my legs. for some reason, i didn't notice that i had calf muscles before that fateful day, so it appeared to me that they grew out overnight.

i ran to the living room and telephoned my mother at her office. 2272622. i still remember the phone number. i used to call her a lot when i was young and tell her random things that seemed so interesting to me.

i believe i told her something like this:
"mummy! my leg got 2 meat leh. last time don't have one."

good times.

i was into abstract art back then

during art lessons when i was in nursery and kindergarten we used to have colouring books and i always ALWAYS grabbed a crayon or colour pencil in my fist like i was holding a stick, and... coloured the page.



it'll end up like this 90% of the time, only messier. in purple. sometimes i used brown, but mostly purple. perhaps this was the first sign of gayness i've ever expressed.

seriously no one ever told me i was supposed to use multiple colours and colour inside the lines. it's a colouring book and i coloured the book. that's what it's for, right?

i think my parents and teachers may have believed i was mentally challenged.

everyone should try it

i got drunk for the first time in 2005. maybe some of you might remember it. it was my first time really drinking alcohol and it felt weird and made me laugh a lot. i wasn't really DRUNK but it was good enough for my first experience.

i didn't like the feeling at all, being dizzy and sleepy and disorientated, and i still don't like it now. so why do i drink? i guess the fun is in the process rather than the outcome, playing games and behaving in ways that get progressively stupider as the alcohol flows, until the point of drunkedness is achieved and the fun stops.

drinking has brought me many experiences that i wouldn't get otherwise, such as puking, puking, puking, shitting in bushes, sleeping in the bathroom, puking in the airport, puking in taxis, puking in bushes etc, but mainly puking.

however i always try to remain relatively rational when i'm drunk and i've been quite successful. i always manage to get home under my own ability, i've never puked on myself (maybe a little) and i've never lost any belongings. sometimes though i manage to do or say things in my state of drunken invincibility that make me feel stupid the day after, but nothing too severe (most of the time).

last week my father found an empty bottle of jack in the kitchen cupboard and kicked up a fuss until i told him it was mine and that i finished it 2 years ago. he said something about alcoholic and then asked why haven't he seen it before when it's been sitting happily in there for 2 years. kind of a redundant question since he's only home maybe a total of 1 month per year and he doesn't really spend his time scouring through the cupboards.

he went to put the jack back in the cupboard and instead found a half-finished bottle of tequila, also belonging to me. i think he must have been a little shocked. luckily he doesn't know about the whisky in my room or he'd make me go to rehab and i'll say no no no.

i drink at home by myself sometimes when i'm bored in the afternoon when no one's at home so there's less explaining involved. i don't drink a lot, mostly just to pass time and to have something to do. i've only gotten drunk twice by myself so it's not really a problem.

anyway i've developed an aversion to most alcohols, which explains why the tequila and whisky are still in their bottles rather than in my stomach. i think my brother's gonna take over from me.

oh oh oh fly away

remember one year ago? how about two years ago? i was looking at the time on my laptop just now and i realised that it's july already. i laughed a little to myself as i recalled what i wrote last july and i went to look at it for a bit.

2 years is a long time. people only say that time flies when they are thinking in retrospective. a million years gone by could well be a single second, it doesn't make a difference because time that has past doesn't exist anymore.

looking ahead, the next 2 years is going to be very long indeed, although i'm sure i'll be back here in 2 years saying "wow, that was fast." but time is not fast. it is the longest, slowest damn thing in the universe.