So I went to watch this morning's SYF for secondary school bands.

Of course, main reason was to see AMK. In the end it almost turned out to be the only reason. Every other band, save for Hougang, were thoroughly uninspired. There wasn't anything worth listening to until Hougang went up, and then AMK bested them.

Sure, AMK only got a gold, but so what? I see so many people's MSN nicks/PMs saying stuff to console or whatever. You know what, that shouldn't be the case. It just feels like these people are belittling the band's achievements. They don't need no fucking condolences; they were that damn good.

I don't even see why people would want to go to sites like sgbandfusion to see what they said about AMK. The band performed to a level where only fools and retards would dispute their quality. They don't need other people's opinions to validate themselves. The fact is there, the recordings available to anyone to listen; AMK were miles ahead of everyone else this morning.

So they got penalised for taking too much time. So what? They performed at an incredible level. If they get marked down by such chickenshit criteria, so be it. Everybody there this morning knows who played music and who just played notes.

People are so narrow-minded. The award is a big thing, yes, but the most important thing has always been, and will always be, the experience of creating music as a team.

Everyone, get the fuck over getting 'just' a Gold. Because they played great. Don't fucking belittle their achievements by getting all bogged down by the semantics. AMK was a powerhouse this morning. So don't fucking forget it just cos they 'only' got a Gold.

Get the fuck over it. The fact remains that they are a quality band in their own right.

Well done, AMK. You played music, not notes. Well done.

Well then.

Just like that my birthday has come and gone. While I don't really celebrate or even put much focus on it at all, it still feels a little sad for the day to have gone, hah. Doesn't make sense, does it?

Truth be told, and I don't know why this is the case, I have never felt the need (or even want) to celebrate my birthday. I tend to find it embarrassing, people fussing over me. All I really ask for every 28th March is for friends to acknowledge the fact and wish me a happy birthday. Doesn't have to be in any elaborate manner either; a simple sms would more than suffice.

I see no need for presents or cake. Honestly, the best present (if you INSIST on giving me one) would either be money or a free meal or something like that. Basically, something money-related. Not that I'm money-minded or anything, but it just seems the most practical to me. Helps me save, you know? Besides, most of the material things I want, I can get them myself. I don't spend much on a day-to-day basis, so occasionally splurging on some more expensive stuff (video games, a few books, etc) is well within my means. Therefore, it's just about impossible to get me something I really want if you were to buy me a gift.

Well, I'm 18 now. Qualifies me for M18 movies and videogames, as if I haven't already had my fair share of those, haha.

It's a nice number, 18. As I've said before, 18's one of those landmark ages. That alone makes this birthday that little bit more special, I guess (even if my birthdays are incredibly ordinary affairs). Pretty much opens me to anything now. 21's the next landmark, but that seems ages away, what with two more years of poly plus NS between now and then.

18. Hope I have another good 12 months ahead of me. The last 12 were quite satisfactory, even if there were some huge hurdles, obstacles and irritants along the way.

18.

18!

Fuck, I sound really pretentious in that last post don't I?

I didn't mean it to come out sounding like that, really. Then again, how do you talk about something like that without sounding like an elitist asshole? Maybe I should stop with such posts.

Life's been tremendously boring recently, although that's also how I like it (for the most part). Been taking the time to read some books I got from Borders recently, and to catch up on all the lost sleep one tends to accumulate over the course of a school term/semester. Not many games to play; I've semi-quit WoW (might go back to it next time, but it's a definite no-no for the forseeable future), and it's not like I've got any new games recently. Mind you, there aren't any good games out there to get at the moment. Guess I'll just have to make do with some hardcopy entertainment (my books) and whatever I can scrounge together from the Internet.

Damn, I'm a fuckin' loser. =D

Well, just four more days to my birthday. Not like I'm gonna have any celebration or anything, that's just not how things work in my boring ol' life. It's just, I'll be 18, you know? Not a big deal to me or anything, but 18 is one of those landmark ages, innit.

On a last note, anyone who hasn't tried reading the comic Pearls Before Swine needs to start. Funny as hell. Cheers mates.

Something interesting I noted recently: people don't realise how much they betray themselves in their writing.

I've touched on people putting on facades before, and while most of the time those facades are laughably easy to see through, many people completely expose themselves in how they write.

Very few people appreciate the power of words, and the fact that most people just blog/write without really thinking about which words they're using leaves many people more exposed than they would like.

Anyone can be non-direct in putting their thoughts across. For example, when you want to write about something but at the same time want to conceal some personal opinions on the matter, you'll change your writing accordingly. However, a lack of thought/vocabulary will always betray you. Only people with competent vocabulary or the ability to cover all bases (an extension of 'thinking too much') can truly hide all that they want to hide.

Via this method I've managed to gather more insights as well as confirm some beliefs I've had about some people. Don't get me wrong though, it's not only 'bad' people who commit this mistake. Regular, good people do too. It's just more fun to be able to see through the 'bad' people who think they're oh-so-clever. There's nothing more sorry/pathetic/bleedin' hilarious than someone who thinks he's cleverer than he actually is, after all.

Doing this with people I trust is merely to corroborate their words with their actions, thereby helping me gauge their sincerity. They generally all check out; they're good people, my friends.

I also have some strong thoughts on another subject, but it's a little too sensitive to talk about publicly, especially with most of the population totally unable to engage in a proper discussion/debate without bringing personal feelings and bias into it. To be fair, it's internationally sensitive anyway, this topic, so forget it. I'll say this though:

People should make choices to enrich their spirit. Not to provide compensation for other lacking areas in their lives. By using ideas as an emotional crutch rather than for what they really are/stand for, you only disgrace the ideas and put yourself across as ignorant, needy, and devoid of any self-belief.

Whatever your choices may be, always look for peace and presence of mind. Submitting yourself for any other reason is pure idiocy, and will leave you poorer for it.

Clarity and incision.

I feel like I've got alot to say but not the means to express them all.

It's just alot of conflicting emotions. Thankfully though, they're not on the same subject so it's not like I'm having some decision-making crisis. It's just, quite a few different things are occurring at the same time, you know?

I've realised recently that, in some cases, longevity stands for shit. This is something close to my heart and it is quite piercing that this can actually occur. It should never have occurred, this problem. No signs pointed to it. The subject should be stable enough to not let this happen, but happen it did. The whole situation is absolutely ludicrous and supposedly impossible, but it happened.

Some other aspects of my life are doing well, though. I'm happy for those, feeling good about things in general. There's not much to be said other than I'm happy about these things.

So it's quite a mish-mash of things... I'm not about to let the shitty stuff bring me down, but it does leave me wondering about the future. Will it work, what we intend to do? And if it doesn't, what'll happen? For that matter, if it works, will it work the way we want it to? So many facets to this conundrum...

Well, also, results are out. Did okay, nothing great. So I'm not ecstatic but far from unhappy either. Very 'meh'.

I need something... 'ethereal' to help me along... and this is a great song for that very purpose.




Led Zeppelin - Kashmir

Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream
I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been
To sit with elders of the gentle race, this world has seldom seen
They talk of days for which they sit and wait and all will be revealed

Talk and song from tongues of lilting grace, whose sounds caress my ear
But not a word I heard could I relate, the story was quite clear
Oh, oh.

Oh, I been flying... mama, there ain't no denyin'
I've been flying, aint no denyin', no denyin'

All I see turns to brown, as the sun burns the ground
And my eyes fill with sand, as I scan this wasted land
Trying to find, trying to find where I've been.

Oh, pilot of the storm who leaves no trace, like thoughts inside a dream
Heed the path that led me to that place, yellow desert stream
My Shangri-La beneath the summer moon, I will return again
Sure as the dust that floats high and true, when movin' through Kashmir

Oh, father of the four winds, fill my sails, across the sea of years
With no provision but an open face, along the straits of fear
Ohh.

When I'm on, when I'm on my way, yeah
When I see, when I see the way, you stay-yeah

Ooh, yeah-yeah, ooh, yeah-yeah, when I'm down...
Ooh, yeah-yeah, ooh, yeah-yeah, well I'm down, so down
Ooh, my baby, oooh, my baby, let me take you there

Let me take you there... Let me take you there...

In a mood that can only be described as 'smouldering' now.

Work is bad enough in itself, in the way it just drains me of all my energy, and it was worse than usual today cos I got a headache. It's fucking impossible to work with a headache, especially in an environment that mostly leaves one feeling incredibly restless. The last 3-4 hours of work was torture.

The bus home was hell crowded, but that's to be expected at 7, 8-something on a Saturday evening. What really got my fucking goat was the people on board. Dicks who don't know how to move to the back of the bus when the space appears. There was this woman who was content with parking her fat ass near the entrance and only showed signs of moving when a seat freed up. Just as well the seat got taken before she got there, the fucking lard-bucket. What's worse though, was the fact that she went back to her original, space-filling position. In a bus that crowded, that's just plain selfish (and that's a severe understatement).

Also another couple of ladies who liked to move back and forth in this, I repeat again, FUCKING CROWDED BUS. For fuck's sake, DON'T MOVE UNLESS YOU HAVE TO.

ALSO, a young couple who looked like the world owes them everything, standing at the entrance and just plain refusing to move further in. Your typical couple of the modern times; the kind that leaves you wondering just what the fuck either party sees in each other, your typical ah lian-ish girl with a guy who doesn't look like he's got any substance at all. You know what I think, I think they probably got together cos both were desperate for a relationship.

I see such people and I just lose faith in humanity all over again. That makes about 5 times now I've lost faith. This world is fucked, so long as such people exist.

I've read The Watchmen (the graphic novel), and although the ultimate solution seems extreme, somehow, you just feel that that's probably the ONLY solution. I'm not going to elaborate on the book (it's awesome though), but yeah.

It's never the ideologies, the technology or the concepts that fuck this world up. It's always the people who fuck it up. We're fucked cos of ourselves. That's how ri-fucking-diculous this world is.

I apologize for the insane number of F-bombs in this post, but you try going through what I did today without swearing. You'd explode from the effort, I guarantee you that.

Fuckin' hell.

So I'm currently in the shop, finally getting a break.

It has to be said, the lunchtime period is the busiest by far. People take advantage of the one or two hours they have for lunch to drop by the shop to pick up a few spare parts or to drop off their bike for servicing or whatever. Rushed off my feet for a full two hours, I'm not kidding. Not even a second to sit down.

I'm going to be helping out in the shop till next Friday, as my parents flew off for a little holiday of their own in Taiwan just this morning. I woke up at the godforsaken hour of 4.15am to see them off. Not that I mind; they're my parents, mind you. But when you just spent the previous day also working and only getting to sleep around 12-ish, you're going to be hell tired the next day.

Truth be told, fatigue hasn't quite hit me yet. Then again, I think I'm running on pure andrenaline at the moment. I bet I sleep like a log when I hit the sack tonight. It's just as well I'm not going to work tomorrow (the only day besides Sunday that I won't be, for this period), and that I'm only meeting Abby and SK in the evening. If we were meeting in the morning I wouldn't be able to make it. But hey, Abby doesn't wake up till 3 in the afternoon anyway, so there was never any danger of that happening =D

Another thing that's helping me keep awake is radio. Not local radio, radio on da intrawebz. I interchange between AbsoluteClassicRock (a British station) on iTunes and listening to a huge playlist of classic rock/blues music on www.last.fm. I can't stress this enough; once you go to radio on the internet, you'll never, never, go back to local radio. Well, for me, anyway. I just prefer the topics they come up with for discussion on Brit radio, and the music selection (from both sources) is just so, so much better than what's available on local radio, even the more bearable ones like Gold 90 (sure, go ahead and call me an old stick in the mud =D).

I've already heard so much stuff from Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple and all these other legends, and I just can't get enough of it. Not just the usual stuff that Singapore radio plays from these guys either. Not just stuff like 'Smoke On The Water' or 'Voodoo Chile'. The variety is awesome. These stations really are for me.

Lunchtime's over and there's significantly fewer customers now. I thought I'd have to write this post in chunks while I got up every few minutes to tend to another customer, but I managed to do it all in one sitting.

It's gonna be one helluva week and a half. Then again, if everyday were like today I wouldn't mind too much. It could be much worse, that's for sure. My job sure as hell ain't easy, even if getting it is/was. Just as well it pays good, eh?

Cheers mates.

Man, what happened to me?

I used to have tons of things to say and tons of ways to say them. But all I've got recently is a whole load of emptiness.

I read through entries of mine from over the past year or so, and I really used to have so much more to talk about, to ponder on, to work the grey matter over. Posts used to come much more frequently back then too. So there was both quality and quantity back then. Now, there's neither.

Maybe it's because my life has become that much more boring since then. There used to be so much more happening in my life, both good and bad.

You know, even though this blog is public and open to anyone to read, its main purpose is really to give me some perspective on the changes in my life and how I react to them. Sort of like one long-ass reflection worksheet or something, except that in this case it's actually useful.

Reading my previous posts also gave me food for thought, besides wondering why I have so little to write about these days. Maybe it's cos I don't update often, but I seem to jump from one major event in my life to another. I only have to go back a few pages to read about the biggest lie that's been told to me recently, for example.

Speaking of which, I think that... incident has had a much bigger and far-reaching effect on my life than I first thought it would. In many ways it probably represents the last chance I'm giving to life, the world and the people in it. Life has disappointed me in many ways, and me being the kind of person I am, I probably would've given up on it long before this incident, but apparently, my heart screamed out to give this godforsaken world one more chance, and I did. Of course, we all know how that turned out, and now it would seem that I'm more cynical than ever.

Even the nicest people I meet almost all turn out to have some hidden agenda of some kind in the end. I don't go out much, so I have alot of time to think about things, and I come up with solid theories on alot of different people. I say 'solid' because those theories account for everything the person says or does, no hanging doubts.

If there's one thing I've come to a conclusion about with all this thinking, it's that the nicest, most seemingly perfect people in the world are all dirty, stinkin' liars. Okay, maybe I shouldn't say 'nicest', because some people genuinely are nice, but the ones I mean are those that seem to be perfect. There's no one perfect on this world, and, as I've said before, I'd be more inclined to believe or like someone for what they appear to be if they had flaws rather than if they appeared perfect.

An extension of that theory would be that, since perfection is impossible, it would stand to reason that those who appear perfect are putting on a show, for whatever reason. You've got the scheming motherfuckers, you've got people who just act nice to know more about you so they've got leverage on you, and many more types. Motherfuckers, all of them.

My closest friends, they're all really nice people but they've all also got some glaring character flaws which they mostly admit to. That's real, that's genuine. And that, coupled with whatever else you go through with them, makes for strong, real friendships that last. In contrast, friendships with people who are just nice all the time don't last, cos they're unreal. People might not consciously realize it but I think everyone has that feeling way in the back of their mind that some (usually the majority) of their friendships won't last for much longer than the period where they're in the same class/CCA/whatever.

Me, I just bring that feeling to the forefront of all my social situations. On the one hand, it makes me appear to be a cold, unfeeling sonofabitch, but on the other hand, it ensures that I stay away from the biggest bastards. There's also that grey area some people fall into though, in my mind. People who fall into this category are genuinely nice people who I just can't relate to and therefore can't form a real friendship with. These people, I don't have a single problem with, but there's never going to be much of a relationship here either.

If anyone reads this and finds themselves fitting into the 'dirty, stinkin' liars' category when they think that they haven't actually done anything to reveal their hand, well, hello there! That's right, I've seen through your facade. It might trick many people, and you might think that you're some kind of mastermind, but guess what? You don't really know a goddamn thing, jerkoff.

Cynicsm might reign supreme in my head, but I still try to be nice, or at least only for as much as I need to/think the person I'm talking to is entitled to. I never mean any harm, but allow me to have my prejudices eh?

That's all for now... I do realize that this post has been quite a hodge-podge mess of ideas and thoughts, with next to no organisation, but whatever. The message got across and that's all that really matters in the end.

Cheers mates.

Abygail

Shi Kai

Tommy

Trumpets [Da Section]

Mabel

Samuel

Alter Ego

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