hello 8:30 to 6

this 2 day work/ 2 day off system is great because i have lots of free time. 3 days out of 4 i'm free. too bad i'm going back to the office after this week.

bad thing is that i kinda lose track of the days. weekdays and weekends don't matter anymore. only important thing is when's my next shift.

being so free means i've been riding quite a bit, and the roads seem to be perpetually jammed in the mornings and evenings.

each time this happens i have to resist the temptation to join the rest of the train of bikes and just ride in between the lanes. amazingly i haven't done it, even when traffic is totally at a standstill.

it's so fast and easy. but argh. control. if i don't, i'll be riding in between lanes all the time before i even realise it.

and another thing that stops me is that i have a complete lack of faith regarding other drivers. some asshole might just find it fun to swerve a little to their left or right and that'll be the end of me.

yea it's still fun

first let me say wow!

anyway before i started riding, i thought that my biggest danger on the road would be cars and taxis and big trucks, because they're all crazy bastards with no care for the safety of others.

well, that's true. but i've found out that other crazy bikers are even scarier. at least the cars and trucks are big so i can see them coming and avoid them. bikes are small and fast and they so often like to ride in between lanes because they all believe they're valentino rossi reincarnated.

most days i'll be happily cruising along when some crazy biker just zips by beside me. then i'll wonder why didn't i see him in my mirrors before. i think one fine day i'll change lanes, not knowing that one of them are coming up beside me.

the result will be fantastic.

sad life

these days i usually wake up automatically at around 7-8 in the morning, even if i'm not working. then i take a look outside the window and see that the whole sky is overcast, the air is cool and i think to myself, wow, what nice weather to ride around in!

then i'll start feeling sleepy again so i'll go back to bed, only to wake up at 12+, take a look outside the window and think to myself, wow, fuck, i'm gonna die in this heat! and so i proceed to spend the rest of the day stuck indoors.

the heat

i realised that the titles of my last 3 posts all included some variation of 'oh,' and so decided to leave it out for this one in order to preserve what little bit of masculinity that is left of this blog.

i'll be out now if not for the scary sun burning anything and everything in its path. i need to get some stuff to pimp my ride with. in fact there are quite a few things that i should be/ would be doing if i were in another world.

here's a list in order of importance:
1. pimp my ride
2. exercise
3. cut my hair
4. buy some clothes (IMPOSSIBLE even in another world)
5. watch terminator and some other movies
6. buy a laptop
7. buy a handphone
8. shoot down the sun with my bow and arrow
9. marry the lady from the moon
10. cook the jade rabbit

oh yea?

i've always found it rather vulgar when i see married couples smoking, as in both of them smoking. if only one of them smokes, i'll know that at least half of them is normal. if both smoke then they're just a fucked up couple.

but it only applies to married couples, probably because sooner or later they'll have a kid and still continue smoking, thus resulting in a fucked up family. worse so if i see that they already have kids.

i don't bother about non-married couples because they can just smoke themselves to... wherever.

yea cigarette smoke is totally harmless yea.

oooh alive!

hm yea still alive. however i am unable to decide if riding is more fun than chasing banglas. it's a different kinda fun, really.

and i suppose it's a good thing that the whole scooter begins to wobble once i start going over 80. it keeps me in a relatively safer speed.

now i'll have to think of ways to make my ride more fun or interesting.

oh oh i told my mother. through sms: "i just bought a scooter. now can ride to work everyday."

replied: "ok. be very careful on the road." (or something like that)

well that was easier than i thought...

oh excite!

i'm gonna collect the bike later. MY bike. it's quite exciting really. haven't felt this excited since... yesterday when i climbed a barbed wire fence in search of a runaway bangla, baton out and ready.

yea later i'll let you know if riding is more run than chasing banglas.


maybe i'll make mine like that, minus the luggage.

r&b

the radio in the office is tuned in to 98.7 everyday. so after 2 weeks worth of bombardment, some of the songs are now stuck on me. some of the other songs are so terrible i don't know how they got on the radio.

ciara ft. justin timberlake

flo rida ft. wynter gordon (i only like the girl's parts)

black eyed peas

oh yes

9th june is exactly a year since i gotten my bike license and i still haven't been on the road since riding for my test. today (8 june) i paid my deposit for a vespa (FINALLY) and should be able to ride off with it on thursday.

it's green, not really the nicest thing out there but it'll do for now. at least it's in a good working condition and so be unlikely to die on me in the middle of the expressway or something.

and then i'll have to get used to it because i gotta ride it home on thursday, and it feels very different compared with a normal bike. it's partly because the engine is on the right side, so the whole bike is unbalanced.

lastly there's the issue of telling my mama. probably tell her after i ride home on thursday. "HEY i just bought a scooter!"

stranger things have happened

i went to tuas yesterday and it was such a strange place, it didn't feel like i was in singapore.

the whole area was big and flat and sparse, with low-lying factories and almost nothing over 5 stories high.

the road we were traveling on was long and straight, lined on both sides with palm trees and empty except for trucks from the factories, making it feel all the more strange.

weather was clear, skies blue with a few clouds. looking around, i realised that i had a 360 degree view of sky around me that reached almost down to the horizon. that's really impossible to find here.

and then we approached the sea and it was blue! not shitty green that i'm so used to seeing. blue seas in singapore? where the hell am i?

060509

in the past i used to always sleep on the same bed in the same room in my house and i'd always wake up and immeidately know where i was. sometimes i'll sleep elsewhere, in another room or at my friends' place, and i'd wake up all confused, wondering where the hell i was. my mind was programmed to be at home.

and then i went to the army and for 2 months slept on that same bed in that same room on that island, for 5 nights a week, and the other 2 nights i'd be at home, but sleeping on random surfaces, not the one i used to sleep in. every morning i'd wake up confused for around 10 seconds before i checked my surroundings and decided on where i was on that particular day.

my mind was still programmed to be at home. i think it wouldn't have been so bad if i had slept on that island the entire time, because at least i could have adapted to the new place. anyway i got off the island and spent 5 nights a week in this new place, sleeping on the same bed in the same room, and the other 2 nights on random surfaces again. this went on for over 7 months till now.

i came to the realisation during my 16 days at OBS that i didn't care where i was anymore. most mornings i'd wake up and find myself in another strange place, sleeping on the ground or in public pavillions or occasionally in tents or back in our room. i didn't have that sense of confusion anymore. i just woke up and got up, never once wondering where i was or why i was there.

it's not that i knew where i was. i didn't know but i just didn't care, it didn't matter to me. somewhere during the 7 months i lost my concept of home. my mind is now open and i am free.

woe is me

sometimes before our morning presentations they'd visit stomp to pass the time. if you haven't been to stomp, i suggest you don't start. stomp is basically a place where kaypoh singaporeans take photos of every little thing that offends them and post up to share with other kaypoh singaporeans to comment on.

everytime they access the site, i start feeling so ashamed to be singaporean, or even to be associated with them. they're so stupid that it makes my hair stand. like there was a woman who took a picture of a girl in shorts, saying that the girl's exposed legs made her husband lose concentration while driving. seriously.

how fucking stupid and annoying can we get? it's one thing to be stupid and annoying in private, but now! it's ONLINE! for the whole world to see! fucking genius who created that damn thing. anyone with half a brain would know how damn embarrassing this is to our image. and to think it's run by the government.

i dunno, maybe the people in other countries are the same too, just that i haven't heard about it because no one else is as fucking stupid as us to broadcast our shit to the world.

"welcome to stomp, we are singaporeans and we are fucking stupid. thank you."

life of late

yes i'm sorry i've been rather busy lately. life has been spent mostly in the office (8.30-6), where i do mostly nothing for most of the day. to illustrate what i mean by "nothing," today the only work-related things i did was to write down ONE line of instructions from my boss in the morning, and in the afternoon carried a container of petrol approximately 2 metres.

actually other days i've had slightly more things to do but yea. just boasting.

life outside of the office has mostly been spent somewhere in cyberspace, looking for suitable vespas/other nice bikes to buy. it's not as easy as i thought, which explains why i'm still walking and taking the bus. each trip takes 45 minutes, if i ride it would be less than 20. just that it's a lot less likely to die while taking the bus.

etc etc what else do you want to know?

blue

when i was on the plane back, i watched a whole lot of stuff on the plane entertainment. amongst the shows i watched (documentary on high-class callgirls etc) was a documentary on the origins of surfing.

busting down the door. it shows how in the 70s, surfers from america, australia and south africa started going to hawaii to hit the biggest waves anyone had surfed back then. this small group of surfers risked life and limb to revolutionise surfing, and this eventually lead to the evolution into what it is today.

after watching i felt an immense urge to go surf. after all i've been skateboarding for about 5 years now and it has its origins from surfing. so this is me going back to the roots. or something.

anyway yeaaa gonna go surfing. bali in december anyone?