2008 in film

what i've watched in the cinema this year, not sure if there're any more.

not in order:
1. the dark knight - the joker made me feel sad
2. indiana jones - crap
3. iron man - nothing special
4. jumper - RACHEL BILSON!
5. semi-pro - crap
6. never back down
7. harold and kumar - decent
8. speed racer - boring
9. you don't mess with the zohan - excellent
10. wanted - fun action scenes
11. the house bunny - crap
12. my best friend's girl - crap
13. big stan - strangely not boring
14. red cliff - crap
15. tropic thunder - fell asleep

as you can see, my 2008 has been quite terrible in terms of movies. everything's either crap or crap or boring or crap. actually that's also because i have an aversion to watching more meaningful films for fear that it will mess with my very fragile mind and cause me to be mindfucked for days on end.

seriously that's what happens when i watch a good film. it stays in my mind and i think of it over and over, and then the characters start taking over my mind and live in there for days.

but on the other hand, do any one of you have anything nice to recommend? my brain needs a kick.

just live and breathe

now finally my maid has confirmed that she'll be leaving for the land of bull-fighting and galacticos in early november. my mother has also found a replacement so i hope everything will be good.

my head spins when i try to think of may, MAY 2009, when i will finally pass out and have some sort of life again. my head spins because it seems so bloody far away that i fail to create a mental image of it. it seems like an impossible, invisible, unattainable goal, like i'll die before it happens.

now my head is spinning again.

at least we've got internet

it's 3:16am now and the view outside is surprisingly hazy, bringing me a strange eerie feeling. i'm feeling very bored and hopeless about this whole ns thing, and it's only been about 3 months. i think by the time i get out of here i'll be a shell of my former self, which is terrible knowing how little i had to begin with.

today i found out just how satisfying it is to unleash my anger upon idiots who piss me off. i don't usually do this, but it feels much better than trying to keep your feelings in check. just try not to get addicted.

the bass of life

last night i was in the shower at around 4am when a very strange and scary feeling enveloped me. i remember experiencing it before twice in my life, and the last time was 10 years ago while i was sleeping and having a fever. on that day i was crying in my sleep because it felt so uncomfortable and scary as a drifted in and out of my dreams, i couldn't wake up because the fever was probably getting to my brain.

it's always impossible to describe a feeling, but i'll try and you can try to imagine.

imagine a bass drum beating at a comfortable pace, maybe around 60 beats per minute. this bass drum dictates the speed of your life. thud thud thud thud. then all of a sudden, the beats get faster and faster. now it's at 90.

thudthudthudthud.

the things i see seem to move much faster than usual. i watch myself soaping my arms and my hands seem to be moving way too fast. i am aware that something is happening and attempt to further slow down my movements to counteract this sensation. i breathe in and out, slowly and deliberately. i try to keep calm.

THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUD.

120. the pace is getting worse now. something in my head is telling my body to move faster, to match the speed of what i'm seeing. i am fighting the urge to move faster because i'm worried that it will lead to more damage. the feeling is scary, it's not like there's a voice in my head telling me "FASTER FASTER" but rather just an insatiable urge to.

at this point of time i was only halfway through my shower and i already wished to get the hell out of the bathroom. for a little while i thought maybe i was being disturbed by ghosts or something like that, but i had already recognised the feeling as what i had experienced 10 years ago.

the bass speed now took the sound of the shower of water hitting my head. it felt as though every droplet of water was a beat, so you can imagine how fast it was, to the point where i had to turn off the water because i couldn't take it anymore.

i was still taking my time, moving slowly, breathing deeply, trying to fight the feeling. if you've watched the movie The Ring, then think of the scene in the videotape where the woman was shaking her head and it just got faster and faster until everything was a blur. in my case, i didn't see a blur, but i could feel it.

i finished my shower and stepped out, thinking that i would be fine but i was wrong and it was still there. i walked around a little until i couldn't take it anymore and went to bed. the feeling was gone soon after i lay down and then i fell asleep.

7 more months and more

i remember there was one afternoon back in tekong we were learning rifle fighting techniques. the instructor was teaching us how to smash a downed enemy's head with our rifle butts to avoid wasting bullets. at some point during that lesson, i realised that everything they teach us in the army is to help us kill people in the future, or whenever the time comes.

i thought it was quite sick that i was being trained for such things, that i can now kill someone effectively and efficiently if given the right equipment. now in the police force, they teach us how to apprehend suspects using minimal force and violence is only used in self-defence. we can't even beat up irritating suspects.

actually it's quite alright to be in the police, except that there's absolutely NO joy in training. the instructors like to put on a handsome face all the time and we can't even pretend that we're having fun or else we can start having fun while facing the ground. good thing is that we have quite a lot of free time and the lecturers are nice people, so it kind of evens out the pain.

[part removed for my well-being]

and one more sad thing is that we may not pass out in april as i thought. so far there's no confirmation but it could go up till may. how sad.

the inevitable

fuck. stars are coming to singapore on 7th jan and fuck that's a wednesday which means i'll be stuck in camp. before i enlisted i always said that one of the things i was most worried about was that my favourite bands would come on tour and i would miss them.

let's just hope this would be the first and only.

who's hungry?

we were told to bring a 10kg sack of rice in our army field packs so that we can do some fun exercises with it. so yesterday i ventured out to the supermarket to buy my rice and some sweets for survival in boring lectures.

on the way there i was nearly hit in the head by a low-flying mynah, and nearly hit by a car with a low-intelligence driver. so much excitement even before i got to my destination, maybe that's why people always say that the fun is the process of getting there, and not the end product.

anyway i managed to get to the supermarket unscathed, and went to the sweets section. after looking around for a little while, i discovered that the sweets kids have these days are depressingly terrible in terms of tastiness and selection choices.

i was trying to recall the last time i actually went shopping for sweets, and i realised that it was probably more than 10 years ago and i was with my parents getting sweets for chinese new year. and oh my, the sweets back then were wonderful. among my favourites were the chewy grape candies, rabbit sweets (poisonous), and those small colourful sweets that came individually wrapped in clear plastic.

kids these days are deprived of all that amazing goodness. they have psp, ps3, xbox live, free porn, plasma tv, they can have it ALL, but they will still lead sad lives as long as they don't have nice sweets.

in the end i bought 2 packets of kopi-ko, and now i'm leading a sad life too. and i also bought the rice for $14++ which is fucking expensive and a bad waste of good rice and money. it feels very wrong to be wasting so much rice (60 people x 10kg each = 600kg of rice) when there are many people who could do much better things with it, like EATING THE FUCKING RICE.

yes, just like that

the ns guy who died recently was my cousin's platoonmate. the way he died was so strange that it made me slightly worried about those around me. normally people die when they over-exert themselves, like while running and having sex, activities that will raise their heart rate for extended periods.

this guy died while doing pull-ups. pull-ups aren't even supposed to be tiring, and yet he died. it just made me think about how much at risk we all are, to just suddenly kick the bucket over nothing at all. it could really happen to anyone, my family, my friends, even myself.

sometimes i try to picture myself dying and how others will react to my death. will they be sad? will i be remembered, or will everyone just shrug their shoulders and continue living? i also try to think about how i would feel when someone around me dies, and i cannot imagine the feeling.

the last time someone close died, i didn't feel anything. it was my grandmother, back in november 2000. we weren't close although she lived with us since forever. i remember going to the hospital and seeing her on the bed, unconscious. once in a while she would spasm (really) and i thought she would probably wake up in a day or 2 since she was still moving.

my eldest aunt was visibly upset, but everyone from my immediate family seemed very normal. after a while we got bored and went to the 7-11, and while we were there her condition worsened i think. when we got back my aunt was crying and erm almost everyone else were very normal.

after a little while, a tear rolled down from my grandmother's eye and she died soon after. my relatives were saying she was waiting for us to get back and see us one last time before she died. now my eldest aunt was crying hysterically and some of her sisters were teary, while everyone else were again very normal.

my young 12-year-old mind was thinking "wtf? she died just like that?"

maybe that'll be going through my mind again the next time, or the minds of others when i die.