School is slowly beginning to chip away my soul. What happened to the comfort that our teachers gave? "everything is going to be so much easier after your A levels" is a total lie. Okay...perhaps partially because we boys get to take a break for two years. National Saikang isn't as bad as everyone thinks it is. Besides being confined for the weekdays and sometimes the weekend, I don't think there's nothing that I don't like about it. Although, I can hear a lot of people jumping on my defense and saying how wrong I am. But hey, to each his own. I got the good part while you're just unlucky to get it bad by being subordinated to people like me. Not like I'm a bad superior anyway.

So everyone's dying. Those who aren't, have nothing but school going on in their lives. That was an indirect way of me saying that they don't quite have a life. Hence, school is an incomplete package. Can you imagine what you're future employers are going to see when all they see on your resume is nothing but your so called excellent GPA? What about CCA? What about other things? TeeeeeeetTtt!! (im trying to emulate the sound of a buzzer there)

I'm supposed to be writing out my essays but so far, nothing coherent is coming to my mind. I hate writer's block. IF HDB was to actually build such a block, I'll shit at its lobby everyday and pee in the lift. In short, it'll be my toilet. By now, I'm pretty sure you get the idea but I just can't help to emphasize it because I cant seem to be able to write something coherent for the paper that's going to be graded.

I love bike rides. It gives me a peace of mind which then inspires me to write about a lot of things. But you see, that's the frustrating part. I can't note down these thoughts and no matter how hard I try to remember them, I would have probably forgotten about all of them when I finally get to park my bike. When that happens, comes to urge for me to get on again and ride. Well, you know what? I NEED OPEN ROADS!!! If it winds, It'll be so much better. Btw, it's winds as in winding not because I am grammatically illegitimate. Stop jumping on me guys. pffttt!!

So yes...I had fun today. The rain was merely a hump in a great day; so was the waiting time for each ride. Speaking of which, I hate a (dirty) joke. What does Viagra and roller-coasters have in common? You have to wait over an hour for 3 mins of fun. But other than that, I had a great time. Kinda reminds me why I'm still afraid of rollercoaster rides. YEs I AM! Is that supposed to be a revelation for you? Anyway, it's because I dont have any control. IT goes where it is supposed to go. That's what makes it so scary. I can't dictate when that initial dip(this is the scariest part by the way) will be and how the twists and turns will come about. SO there you go. (:

Bleargh!

I'm supposed to be doing my readings and all other nonsense but here i am writing out this nonsense. I guess, i'm very very selective about my nonsense.

Looking through my photos on FB, i guess I could see me slowly but sure transforming. Photos of me as a toddler that was posted up by my cousin kinda reminded me how all of us used to be young. Well, by that i mean't our parents too. When I look at how young my parents were then and how worn out they look now, I regret the times that I dont get to spend with them. With secondary school, it's because of them working. So I decided that I didn't want to stay at home too long because I stopped seeing the point of coming home to an empty house. So I picked up a lot of things to do with rugby making the bulk out of it.

That was 10 years ago. Now, I think im regretting the times that I don't get to spend with them: my family. True, one of the reasons why is that I am actually embarrased by their antics sometimes- with my mom speaking so loudly to us all that I guess the whole world knows what we are talking about( think lift with strangers in it plus my mom scolding my dad for being so slow :\)

I guess that's what make them them. They would talk so loudly that I suspect strangers think that me and my brothers must be deaf. And my dad, he just so chill about things. I've never seen him or heard him in a panic state before. Not even when I told him about an impending punishment that I might get for losing my "wife" over in Taiwan.

My parents have indeed make me who I am. Well, that said, I dare say that I have the best parents in the world- wouldn't trade them for anything at all.

Seeing how the times has worn them out...i feel a sense of sadness. They've never quite told me how they were like when they were young in whole- just bits and pieces here and there. But maybe because they were/are always so busy and all. But I wouldn't be who I am right now if it wasnt for them.

That said, I can sense some of you already thinking bad things about them for you think I have done something bad to you. Well..FUCK YOU! Things happen because they were meant to happen. No matter how much effort you put into things, it will never turn out the way you want it to be. Not even if you cry infront of others just to get their sympathy. To me, it's jsut an act of sucking up and that sucks- shows how parasitic your personality is like. Plus, to make others feel bad about their choice(even though its a good one), that's just as bad. Says a lot about you.

That out of the way, some parents are jsut so screwed up. They always think that what they're doing is right when it spells W-R-O-N-G. I get these people...they've committed so much mistakes in their past that nobody ever showed them what is right. It comes to a point that what they think is right is actually wrong.

Ah...i've lost my train of thought here and hell yeah did I digress here. Oh wells.

Cherish your youth, even when you're all wrinkly

It's been a damn long time since I've written anything here. The blame could probably be placed to the countless of writings that I have to do just to get that measly piece of paper halfway through 2012. Slowly but surely I am asking myself- Is this all worth it?

Life would surely be better off if I was on some faraway deserted island where all I do all day is relax, enjoy life and get served by beautiful servants (no dirty thoughts here please). I am sure somehow this fits into some of your very definition of paradise. Instead, what we all we want is to go through hell for a measly piece of heaven before ending up in hell for eternity.

I have a joke which sums up the point that I'm trying to get at here.
An investment banker was in a plane that crashed into the sea. He gets washed up onto an island which was had a small native population living on it. After he was nursed back to full health, he began to take notice of how the natives lived their lives. They did nothing all day but to laze around and occasionally fish for food and farmed just for sustenance. Nobody seems troubled as their life was that of lax. He thought to himself, "they could be so much better off if they did a lot more!"
So one day, he went up to the chief and started questioning him.
"Why is nobody really working here?" he asked.
"What for?" was the chief's reply.
"So that they can grow more food"
"What for?"
"So that you can export the food"
"What for?"
"So that you can make money for yourself!" the investment banker was getting annoyed at this point.
"What for?" the chief continued.
"So that you all can one day settle down peacefully on some tropical island and retire peacefully without any worries about the world"
"Isn't that what we're doing now?" came the chief's reply.

Each day, we are in pursuit of something...something that is intangible: happiness. We take that everything we do now is just a means to attain that. But slowly and surely, it chips away our soul bit by bit. Are we really happy in what we do? I guess the best way for any of us to love anything that we do is to do something which is an end in itself- like making money.

Fact is, I still have no idea why im here. I should have signed that damn paper 3 years ago and be part of ISAF by now. But, some some sheer carelessness, i opted out of it. Not a day goes by without me wondering about the "what ifs".

I guess, we live our lives thinking about the "what ifs". Each day is lived with us making choices. Having the chance to actually choose is what makes us all humans. While we may casually think that there are many options available for us all, fact is, at every second of our lives we are deciding whether to open door A or door B. There's only 2 choices for us. Only 2! Every other choice is basically the succession of the choice that we've made from the previous ones.

Time is a bitch on this one because it doesn't allow us to reverse on the choice that we make. It's constantly moving forward. But thankfully, with the blessings of ingenuity, us humans have been able to delay the effects of time- we are now allowed to move horizontally. Progression doesn't always take place vertically; it sometimes takes place horizontally. Like from JC to Poly kind of thing. It is still a progression. We choose exhaustively without thinking much of the consequences of our daily lives. We choose and choose until we hit a brick wall. If you hit one literally, then, go see a doctor for it because I'm talking analogically. Upon the confrontation with that brick wall, we then have the option of sliding sideways. It's a slim chance but the chance is there nontheless. It's like looking for a that hole with sunlight in a dark cave- you either go for it or you'll remain there in the dark. Either way, there has to be progression.

Consequences do come with each and every choice that we make. Right now, the choice that I've made to write this out has resulted in me not doing my readings or any of my reports. But it's a choice I've made and we live with the choices we make. In order for us to make "smarter" choices we have to gain that sense of maturity. Here, I define maturity as having a full sense of consequences from the choices that we make. We never make our choices blindly. How we choose has been shaped by the people around us, and also past events that has brought us to the point of life that we are at now.

Too bad, nobody realizes this- we actually live our lives in a big circle. Ever wondered as to why a certain point of our lives seems so familiar? We have a term for it: mid-life crisis. It's exactly the same point where we decide what to do with the rest of our lives. Think O levels or A levels. That period of time left you wondering, "what the hell should I do next?" But thankfully, during our youth, we have our family, friends and also our teachers to guide us. Try doing that at the age of 40. The only sources of guides that you'll have are: mortgage, your family and your kids' education. But we get by...by god we do. That's the amazing character of humans: our resilience.

Well, after that period, you think you're doing fine because you got by. Wait till 50 hits you and then 60. The sad thing about us all is that we are only temporary. We are temporary in other people's live. We are temporary at a place. We are only temporarily on earth. The constant being of temporariness.

Life starts with us jumping off a diving board aiming for a perfect entry into that small hole at the bottom. Many of us fall short and land on the sides of that small hole.

PERFECTION

Everyone is striving for this. To be perfect. To want everything to be perfect. It is a crime to ourselves if we fall short of being perfect. What does this word mean?

To many of us, it simply means getting everything correctly done. To others, it means nothing goes wrong. Its a half-full, half-empty kind of dialectic. It's a shame that we have turn our minds to an explaination so simple that we lose foresight of what this word really means.

"I am a perfectionist!"
Many of us proudly exclaim this fact and then deliberately ignore the "urgh!" faces that everyone around us makes. Some of us even suffer from violent spasms whenever we hear this and when we finally gain conscious, we find the perfectionist perfectly lying on the perfect floor with a perfect red mark which suspiciously has the same size as our palm on their face. Then again, you can always exclaim, "whoops! Im sorry! Im not perfect you see.."

Nobody has ever realized the true meaning of perfect. Here is a list of things that it really means.

Paranoia
We never ever want to get things wrong. When things go wrong, we panic! At best, we resign to fate which is good because we then realize that we can get everything to go our way (unless you're me of course). Because we want everything to go right (aka our way), we tend not to trust others so willingly. We end up doing all things ourselves and then scream in angst when we realize what we're really doing is digging a deeper hole (which is only good if you want to end up on the other side of the world aka China or NTU).

I mean, look at Hitler! He had a good thing going. He could have even stopped the Allied invasion dead in it's tracks in Normandy. Instead, his distrust in his Generals meant that they didn't have the capability to mobolize the Panzer reserves to unleash hell on the Allied attacks. They had to ask for his permission and even then, he'll only consider about it. By the time he approved of it all, the Allies were already in too deep. That fellow commited suicide just over a year later. He was a perfectionist!

Are you going to perfect everything that goes wrong? I guess, yes and no. Well, wanting things to be perfect isnt wrong. No wait, it actually is! You can never get perfection. What you want to strive for is greatness. Perfection is overated. And soon, perfectionists will be walloped by the anarchist who wants nothing to be in order (but that itself is a certain kind of social order).

All I am saying is that, don't be so bothered about every little thing that doesn't go according to your way. Two wrongs makes a right anyway. So, if you keep doing something and you think you're going the wrong way, just do it one more time and then you're sure to be on the right path soon enough.

Don't let wanting things to be perfect consume you. Perfection is in the others of how others see you. It's whether you are perfect to them or not. NEVER EVER compromise on your values and your traits. That's not being perfect, that's being accomodating. So unless you're a hotel or a hotel manager (even if its the kind found on Facebook), do yourself a favour and dont do that...it's just too insulting.

Prefects are certainly not perfect