off day

3 weeks of non-stop action in e office, i granted myself an off-day today~ woke up at half past nine, washed up and had my usual off-day breakfast, pratas!

right after e "feast", i headed straight to e salon for a hair treatment. i always love e silky hair-like feel after those treatment. however i hate waiting.. haiz

my relaxing day officially commenced after 1pm. after settled some stuffs back at home, hitched a cab, head straight down to bugis as i've got an appointment with steve! kopi-time~

steve and me did our part in this point of recession period; contributed to e economy - we bought some tops and xmas presents at bugis. eventually we had our starbucks session at kallang leisure park! thats one venue which i've not been for as long as i could remember. e place has been given a new life thus more people are spotted shopping there now (or at least i think so).

whole afternoon with steve, of course dinner has to spend makan-ing with joanne lah. japanese ryori at plaza-sing! won't be able to spend much time there as i'm gonna force her to join me to watch singapore-indonesia game tonight on tv! gonna rush home!

6:45pm.. warm evening welcomed me at h0ugang. as an evening lover, i'm always looking forward to an evening although it does not happen that often for my case. e scent of evening does bring me back some childhood memory. scent of evening are those such as smell of dinner cooking, corridoors, old rattan chairs and etc... by e way, does anyone understand what i'm saying here?

here are some of e stuffs which i've bought today. well, should have more of such dayz available for myself and coffee.. maybe thursday?

10yrs old

unfortunately i will have to work through e long weekend. with a highly hibernated mind, i almost couldn't focus on anything other than surffing e net. then an idea struck me. i proceeded with an illegal activity; in cinema advertising term, they call it "file-sharing"!! * my name is jun. Hi JUN!! *

i downloaded quite a couple of songs (oldies) to refresh my childhood memory. songs like 红蜻蜓，星星的约会，蝴蝶飞呀 and etc.. does anyone know who sang e above mentioned songs? haha~ they're my very first idol, pop group, 小虎队！

probably it's been more than 15years since i really listen to all these songs again. i could still recall it's their little tiger head logo on their group name which attrached a then 10yrs old me to convince my dad to purchase their cassette tape at ( i could still remember) $6.00 nett!

surprising i can still sing along with most of e songs, word by word. incredible feel!

as i'm getting older, my hectic working schedule and rusty brain could not recall much about those 小虎队-following dayz. i only know my neighbour telling my mum that i sang alot while i'm in e bathroom, i sang their songs in school and i've got whole lot of their cassette tapes collection which of course ain't got any idea under which gara-guni's care now...

those dayz was simple. stress-proof. however we've grown up. at times, it's essential to think back what we've done when we're young. these parts of memory got me down to e humble ground again. once again, my life is resetted, new game commences.

ready to go.

生活太幸福了

i feel so "lighted up" upon reading this sentence this morning. to set e fact right, i am not a big fan of emil chau but i do admit a couple of his songs did set e mood during my school dayz.

无法写出悲伤的歌, 是因为生活太幸福了.

no particular reason why i was smiling while reading this sentence. most probably i am just impressed with one's life when he or she declares that life is too blissful to be sad. it's hard not to imagine what actually makes a person happy to this extend, haha~

生活太幸福了..

these few characters are big and daring. ultimately not much people would be able to use this word for expressive usage. i've got to say those who can convince themselves, allowing such a blissfully-word to be echoed out of e mouth, they are true happy man!

maybe i should say that every e moment i wake up in e morning! Yap~

lost friendship

how much endurance will a friendship has or rather i should ask how much it will take to totally screw-up years-long valuable friendship?

met up with my former team-mates and coaches for a lunch. coach sivaji enlightened me, indirectly provided me with an answer which i've been pondering over the years... self-expectation reached a maximum level where one started losing control of the surrounding.

during my peak footballing time at e highest level of football, i lost many friends. since then, i've been wondering what could i have done which caused all my friends to leave me. ain't got any idea.. frustration hit my head, e agony of not knowing what possibly had happened to e world, or rather me, was really a struggling task. innocent parties started to leave me alone so as to remain neutral with e majority.

back then, i did not understand why i was not accepted by my friends although i am playing and training with some of the singapore's best players here. I trained hard, i played hard but it's never e result which i've wanted off-e-field.

coach sivaji said, "when one of certain calibre get used to e highest level of satisfaction, he risks losing valuable friendship at e most easiest level." - reason being, i'd expect my friends to put in maximum effort in all (social) games which absolutely not an easy one for majority. all of them are amateur and they just wanna have fun. then, facial expressions sum it up - arrogant.

9 years. it's been 9 years and finally i've unlocked e misery in my heart which until today, my friends and i don't speak about it anymore. we've all grown up but obviously we are not as close as we were before.

my expectation of my life has changed. not so dramatically but significantly. i've grown up to be more appreciative of what i've got in life. anything which possibly could have bring me more closer to my heart, those are bonus.

does anyone experience e same agony which i've went through? maybe all of you did but still living in a soul-searching world of yours...

interview

i received one of those unexpected call yesterday. guess what, a call from NTUC-Lifestyle magazine, requesting to do an interview with me! after hearing her out, then i realised that it's actually an interview in conjuction with STB as I was featured on one of their show recently. of course ain't in any position to comment but to refer the call to our marcom team pending for advice. according to karen, most probably i will be the one as the magazine has already hand-picked me. kind of nervous but looking forward to another different brand-new experience~

i texted Joanne and informed her on e possible brief appearance on e mag. she felt that it's funny but should be very interesting. i texted DK too. I thought he might be e person most suitable to comment on this interview-issue. despite his hectic rehearsal schedule for e 45yrs anni-celebration, he replied saying that this unexpected interview will be a very good exposure as well as for my own portfolio. I think so..

next course of action does not come into place yet, but do keep my ears open for any further update cum instruction. nonetheless, e interview request is indeed an overwhelming request for me. cheers~

army - my thoughts

(photo: source unknown)

a sense of loneliness hits me immediately after the out-processing. i am not particularly surprised by e mixed feeling attack but rather amazed by how fast this in-camp training has ended. shall use my very own way to sum it up below!

BUNK:
we hav been staying at e same level, same venue and same bed yearly but i just can't help but to comment that to climb all e way up to LEVEL-6 after an exercise is damn tiring lor! can't we change it to level-4 from next year onwards??? for this in-camp, i've also brought in a 4-way extension cable to link up e wall plug to my bed! all my camp mates were impressed! * exclusive usage*

CANTEEN:
e only place for us, e uncles, to la-kopi.. tua bao, siew mai, fan chio and relax. you will never be able to imagine how much we can chat about there! amazing!

E-MART:
for those, especially ladies, who dunno, e-mart is our one and only SHOPPING mart which we can buy things. be it army gears, toiletries or tibits, u will get almost everything! well, this in-camp i am kind of disappointed with e variety which was available for our favourite past-time; shopping! basically other than running shoes and army t-shirts, e rest of e shelves were all empty! nothing to buy leh.. si bei sianz

OUTFIELDS EXERCISES:
first week, we've got a 2D1N ops training then followed by another 3D2N battalion exercise on e second (final) week. not too sure if we're better-trained now, e action-fronts were not as tedious as before but e forever-sunny weather almost killed us! very hot lor! e outfield ration, erm.. seems like has already improved. we've got nasi lemak, nasi bryani and etc. kinna apertizing! journey in e 7-tonne was another memory as well. all of us will squeezed into e truck, located a good location and slept throughout e entire convoy movement! being e "smartest", i've prepared a hammock for my nights in e nobody land during outfield!! training has never been easy as we're preparing for our oversea fatek in thailand in year 2010. gonna speak thai again ya!

PEERS:
singapore is not a big country. everyone knows e fact. but i'll never get to meet any of my campmate outside e camp. it has to be in e camp where we will eventually be able to meet up with each others and there comes e usual cliche like, how's life? how's work? when u're getting married and bla bla bla..

one of e hot topics is of cos e rising popularity of Da-Fung-Chui of Superband! everybody is talking about e band's bassist who happens to be one of our campmates, (hide)yaki! whenever yaki behaved funny, e others will threaten to report to e press! haha.. i'm gonna blog about e moment when we won e waterpolo competition, yaki bared his entire BUTT to e whole camp!! haha..

other than e yaki, shorty (steven lee) has got his own fair share of glory! shorty is a jockey and do not be fooled by his small build, he's not one to mess around with! albert has been transferred to our detachment and ever since shorty has been commanding him to do lots of things like collecting rations, massaging his tired legs and etc! e entire commanding and instructing was known to be a joke but occassionally i found it to be slightly over but I do admit that i did benefit from shorty's BSM-like task allocation at times, haha!!

EARN A LIVING:
quite a couple of our peers are holding interesting job. we will then sit around and talk about his job! below is e interestng jobs breakdown...

1) Jockey (Steven Lee aka Shorty)
2) Air Steward (Darren Deng aka Dalian)
3) Musician/Celebrity (Hideaki aka Superband DFC bassist)
4) Air Traffic Controller (BC Speng aka Chen Zhicai look-alike)
5) Dentist (BSM Tiong aka)
6) Event Coordinator (JUN)!!

SUMMARY:
i cursed and sweared during outfield but when finally everything comes to an end, i feel emotionally empty. i'm gonna miss e army dayz where we do not have to think about what happen outside e camp. all we need to do is to think of when can we have our nights-off, go canteen talk cock, play futbol or lay on e bed playing mobile phones. it's ultimately everyone's dream to be paid salary but do crap! anyway i am always looking forward to e next in-camp which most probably gonna be in aug 2009. i might be writing more next year!

In-Camp Training