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Of Friends
Dear TomHa,
Wanted to blog about this yesterday but it sort of slipped off my mind amidst all the hustles and bustles of this weekend which saw me do so many things in such a short period of time. Kind of reminded me of those crazy madcao rushings in Army.. Haha.

Well, friends, I presume that I do have a lot and I am not sure about how i treat them, I mean, I seriously tried my best to treat each and everyone of them well, to the best of my ability. Whatever result that comes out is not going to be my call anymore, so yar, you get the idea.

So, there I go again, the number of friends that I have never troubles me one bit, but it is the variety of friends that I have that I find to be rather amusing sometimes. I mean, some of them have personality that are so conflicting that I find it rather strange that I actually got acquainted with them! I mean, if you look at it, I have friends who likes reading books so much that he actually idolises Li Ao, the madcap speaker who always raises provocative cross Taiwan straits issues because he reads 10hours a day and has over 10, 000 books at home! Wow. ok.. this friend of mine really likes reading and he reads academic textbooks for fun, can you imagine? I cannot even stand having textbooks within 10m of sight. They make me wanna puke. All I want to read are books with stories and are funny. How different, and how freaky.

Well, I have some other friends who enjoy punishing themselves so much that I find it really hard to understand why they are doing this sort of thing in the first place! I have a friend who revels in having pus flowing through some wound on his butt as a result of engaging in some sadistic racing sport that involves some Kayaks and waters. Eeew.. Freaky..

I have friends who are actually artistic. Hmmm.. you would understand this much more if you should have a look about the things that I drew. Some are already good drawing for fun, some further their studies in this field all the way till the tertiary level, some are even making their living in this field! And it always gets really embarrassing when I got invited to have a look at their masterpieces. Haha, me and my big mouth.

I even have a friend who although the whole world is telling him how good he is already, just can't seem to stop feeling depressed and engaging in self-pity. I mean, if I can like talk Haiku in his normal conversations, make you feel worthless in one sentence, write over 400 words to describe his barber experience with only the last sentence telling you that he IS cutting his hair, and is RICH and can go watch concerts, performances live when all I can do now is to wait for arts central to broadcast them some 4/5 years later, I can go die a peaceful man.

But, then again, I am not them. I still like them as friends! Wahaha..no offences.. this is the sort of thing too much thermodynamics can do to you..

Dear TomHa,
Sunday
Well, I just love freelance work. Was asked to head down to climb adventure today to supervise a level 1 course for budding climbers. Must say that the fact that they looked fitter than me certainly gives me all the shudders. However, all I can say that it is easy money, earning $100 in like 4 hours when all you do is stand there and wait for the instructor to finish giving his instructions and you go up to the students and check up their knots and belaying tachniques and blah blah blah. Must comment that not all that were taught would be very relevant in climbing. Theory says it does anyway. Think it is something like what you learn in BMT, pretty pointless especially as you step into a unit, or so, as all my friends told me.

Next Sunday
It is the 2nd of Oct!! Yeah! I will be turning 20 on this day next week. Although I must say that I am actually feeling rather sad about shedding down the heavy responsibility of being a teen but well, it is a path that everyone has to take. Sigh. Guess that I will be hating the idea of turning into an adult next year even more ba. Below is a list of obnoxious things that I would want for my birthday. Take you pick and if you have spare cash to ermm spare, buy one for me? I wouldn't mind double of triple of anything in the list. Hehe.
1) Bike Helmet (Haven't bought a new one since the last one broke into 2, courtesy of my brother..)
2) Bike Shoes (Mine is too old to be seen on the road.)
3) A sling bag, a crumpler would be nice.. hehe.. (Or rather those kind of imitation ones also can.)
4) A casio g-shock with all those kind of metal straps.
5) Climbing Shoes
6) A trek pole
7) Climbing Ax, rated T, straight
8) Carribenas, lots of them, screw gates, aircraft grade aluminium
9) Juma Ascender (not sure of spelling)
10) The obnoxious of all, Snow Goggles!!
Haha, I wonder which one I would get.. So exciting.

Nature
So there was Rita, engulfing the Gulf Coast of America. They say that the damage that it had inflicted on it is not as great as those that were inflicted by Katrina. During my Geography days, I was always fascinated by the power that Nature is able to unleash on us, and that no matter how smart or how able humans are, there seems no power to overcome this force of nature. Either you survive it or you die. No two ways about it. Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, hurricanes, droughts, floods... natural disasters that makes you think twice about the power of the atmoic bomb and how small we are when we are placed to endure the wrath of nature. I guess Katrina gave the American Federal Government a suitable wake-up call and despite the deaths and all that, I think I will be bold and say that it is not all-bad. At least Mr Bush et al has come to realise how feeble they are and that in the end, America is not going to be the infallible fortress that they had built.

Music
Yesterday's band practice was terrible. We were playing the Incredibles and gosh, from the first day since I played around with music, I had never hated any timings that were normal. I mean, I always hated 6-8, 7-8, 3-2 all those funny funny timings, never 4-4s, 5-4s, but yesterday I cuoldn't count 5-4 properly at all! Argh! In the end I had to depend on the basses' rhythm to play my stuff properly. Another thing, guess I forgot to teach my juniors how to cao-geng sight reading in sec sch days. It was one of those never-wrong skills that my seniors taught us. But of course, it only works for desperate situations as should the conductor wants to test the section only, then you are in for deep trouble. Haha..

Uselessness
Am feeling so useless in front of thermodynamics and sensors and actuators. Alamak. Maybe I should really start getting serious about this semester. Adios!

Of Life

Dear TomHa,

Watched Brothers Grimm with LiJia yesternight and gosh, I just cannot stop remarking how long it has been for me since I last entered a cinema. I mean, it might not be very long for other people but for an avid movie-goer like me, with the last movie being Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it certainly felt long. Brothers Grimm was not too bad a movie I guess, given that there were many references to those fairy tale stories like Cinderella, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood and there even is a reference to an enchanted axe which I cannot stop commenting "Isn't that from a chinese fairy tale?" Hmmm. Wellzz. There was Monica Belluci as the evil mirror queen in the end which provided more than eye candy to the show of a very GRIM atmosphere. Wellzz. Quite ok ba, 3 poppcorns out of 5.

Did not do much this holidays. Lucky me, my holidays turned out to be more than a week given that it was Engine Day last Friday (The organisers were so proud they got the Vice-Dean for the gues-of-honour...Big Deal) and there is no lesson tommorrow. Did not do more than a quarter of what I had set out to do, which is to catch up a little on all my modules (Yes, I lagged behind for ALL modules), call up more sponsors (Only managed one), run more (Alright I achieved this), climb more stairs (Did only 3 sets of 28floors.. think I sure cannot make it for assessment this sat liao..sigh). So what exactly did I do then? Went on a fishing trip with Malaysian cousins, and we caught only 1 fish after sitting by the pier for like 5 hours? Kaozz.. Watched so much TV, it was almost as if TV was just invented. Other than these, all I did was to stare blankly at the ceiling on my bed or playing table-tennis with the wall. Was too lazy to move.

Am contemplating to quit mountaineering after hearing about the cost break down and the amount of money which we had to fork out ourselves. It is a humongous amount of money to fork out for a CCA. To add to that, you would not even be sure that you'll be using those things that you had bought. Sessions of ceiling staring always churn out questions like should I be contented climbing Bukit Timah or trekking along Macritchie, which are really puny compared to what I had set out to achieve. I don't know. Mum always say, don't worry, money can be earned back one, but after you had been through the rigors of earning money, you understand the magnitude of the amount of money that is lying in the bank at present. I guessed worked like shit is a major understatement to what I had been doing for the past few years. Wellzz.. let's see how it works out..

More thermodynamics beckons.

Canoeists gather!

Canoeists gather!
Originally uploaded by Minas Morgul.

Dear TomHa,
Ar.. Mid-Autumn, my all time favorite chinese festival, where the moon is round and bright, the mooncakes are sweet and high in cholestrol, when the tea is just so bittersweet. The festival of all time, when I spend time with family, playing with my siblings around in the local playground while my parents go chatting up with the Bangladeshi sweepers doing their jobs (HUH???), where lantern riddles becomes lame jokes in the end, and also, of being able to catch up with people whom you have lost touch with, for a while.

We had canoeist gathering of some sorts at Daming's house, where I wanted to have some sort of a Mid-Autumn celebrations over a hotplate, but perhaps the sauna and the jacuzzi had cleaned out too much toxins in me that I forgot more than half the things that I wanted to do. But never mind, we were a bunch of joyful people who indulged ourselves in the joy of being able to laugh at each others' achievements, or rather, the lack thereof. Joseph was there, a delightful sight, I presume to actually see your coach outside training hours. The weird accent which I presume that everyone of us were able to imitate to some level of perfection. Haha. The cranky people remained cranky, the fat remained the fat, but the muscular became a bit nuah. But most noteworthy is the fact that wenyang created a stir in the pool when he arrived showing off his singlet tan with all the pecs and muscles. Beware, I think the guy in purple trunks already have you marked loh.

Indeed, I must comment that we had toned down a little as most of them had some transformation in the Army. They had grew up to be almost man-like, though I am not sure if that will last after their ORD. I hope it will, but please, let us remain as childish, sarcastic individuals in front of each other ok? Afterall, any actions on your part to act like a mature and serious man would only result in you being labelled as a wayang king, refer Bryan Yip..(I dreamt to become a policeman since I was a child).

A joyful day of festivities. If only Liverpool had won the battle with Manchester United, today would have been even sweeter.

So..much...death...
Dear TomHa,
I do not know what to feel at this present state. Today was supposed to be a happy day, given that it is HC MAF and it is a saturday. Was planning and saving up for the taxi ride which I was going to take from Yuhua to HC after alumni band for the whole week and then, POO, everything that you had planned for did not survive what fate had in store for you. Grievous things happen that take you by surprise. I was REALLY surprise today, or rather, yesterday night. On further thought, surprise should be meant for good things, so I think some change is in order. I was SHOCKED, by the apparent fragility of life and how fate can really play a cruel joke on people. An uncle of mine passed on to the other world yesternight, exactly 2months after my Grandma's death. Personally, I was not as shock when grandma died. It was a natural life cycle, and she was really old. However, this uncle of mine is only like 2 years older than my dad??!! Experiences like this really makes you contemplate life in a different fashion.

The past few weeks were a killer. They were so stressful that I wonder if I would ever be happy again. Lab reports, CAD drawings, and many many more things that exterminate brain cells in a single swoop came flooding on us. Next week is going to be worse. But, the consolation is that mid-term break is coming and I do not have a single mid-term test for a change.

Ar..go sleep liao..