my.escape

domingo, mayo 30, 2004

[ 562. Link ]

Just got back from shopping with garreth and weilong. Bought (yet again) another shirt. Buahahah...

Booking in soon. I'm hungry, but the fear of getting fat got better of me. Heeh... Well, who cares.

BSO: the link's http://www.tag-board.com

Shannon left at 7:23 p. m..

[ 561. Joel ]

Shannon left at 10:58 a. m..

sábado, mayo 29, 2004

[ 560. Week ]

Strange week for me. Thought a lot. Looked and saw a lot that i've never seen before. Yesterday was another exercise. And the ex ic was actually ben yuan, one of the few christians in the platoon (yet again). Nonetheless, that morning, a few of us started the pointless chatter prior to the exercise, the topic of christianity came into place (yet again). Nonetheless, someone pointed out, "Ben is a god-fearing man." I mean, wow. These are non-christians commenting on this christian. No doubt Ben did talk to me about some problems he had with his church and such, but he kept it a seperate issue from his relationship with God. Me? I'm famous for linking everything up and make it a big chunk of trouble for me altogether when God is not really at fault... think that incident enlightened me a lot. So guys.. don't worry about me... i'll be fine... =)

Shannon left at 1:58 p. m..

miércoles, mayo 26, 2004

[ 559. Nights Out ]

Yupz... it's mid week. And i'm at kelly's house playing mahjong. Muahahahahaha. Anyway, my platoon's getting more fun to play with each week. =p They are really a nice bunch... Nonetheless, shall update you guys more this weekend. tata.

Actually i got a lot to say. But it's just that kelly's keyboard is kind of alien to me and i keep making typing errors. Argh. i just HATE new keyboards. Well.

"...Shut up, just shut up, shut up...."

Well, There are 3 erics in the room. Haah. Plus kelly, our resident mommy, zhixiong the toilet ic, darren, my losing brother, benjamin the saint and desmond the... ermz. Too vulgar to publish here. Haah.

They? Playing PS 2 and mahjong. Me? Desperately trying to blog. I highlight the word try. His keyboard is really those normal kinds where i always touch an extra key. Ouch.

"...Can you feel love tonight, wo xiang man bu yun hai..."

Haiz. Thinking of my guard duty last night. Had a good talk with benjamin. Did a lot of things. Haah. Yeah, a lot. Today had a really slack day. And this friday's exercise gonna be a torture. I'm the detachment ic. Oh sharks. Ravi promised us 2 extras if the logbook if not done properly this time round. Well, then again, we already have 3.5 guard duties for the platoon for the next platoon. With any extras, we'll be doing guard everyday. Sianz right? Anyway, sianz......

Shannon left at 7:41 p. m..

sábado, mayo 22, 2004

[ 558. School ]

Ok... going back to srjc later. Today's college day. Have to go collect a prize. Before you think too much, i oly got 2As for my A level subjects. The third distinction came from my S paper. Nonetheless, guess it's a good time to meet people. =)

quote this from marv...
"Been feeling rather moody the past few days. Well, maybe its because I saw my name on the bottom 10 list of my platoon mate's peer appraisal. The weirdest thing is, I don't even talk to him. Been feeling really affected by this. I am someone who is really sensitive to people's comments about me. That's been one of my many character flaws. Maybe its because I don't have a high level of self-confidence. I've been put down by setback after setback after setback. I'm always living in the shadow of other's achievements. When will I be able to step out of the darkness and let myself truly shine? Perhaps never..."

guess this is how i always feel too... that people has a problem with me... but i've long learnt that i don't have to please everyone... but it's just a me thing that i don't want people to hate me...

Oh gawd i just have so much to say. MOE has finally REJECTED my application for a scholarship but considered me for the teaching award instead. In the interview letter i noticed this...
"As part of the Teaching Award, you are being considered for the following subjects that must be read during your local undergraduate studies:
a) Curriculum Subject 1: Chemistry (To read as a major)
b) Curriculum Subject 2: Mathematics (To read minimum of 4 modules)"
I mean. OUCH. How dare they CHOOSE what i want to teach? I mean, i don't necessarily need them to earn a living. Anyway, i've already accepted NUS offer into getting into Arts and Social Science. How the hell am i going to change that? Ah heck.

Meeting merv for dinner tonight... haven't seen him for a long time... lalalal...

Shannon left at 1:50 p. m..

[ 557. Depressed ]

Last week ended on a bad note. Think i was pretty in the dumps last week. Especially during lunch on sunday. I felt... nowhere. Just felt as if i was sitting there for the sake of sitting there. Felt so much better when i dragged enghow up to the blessing point to buy the camp tee. Then had a pretty good talk with enghow after that before booking in at night again... sianz.

Started off the week quite sickly... contemplated reporting sick since monday, but hesitated due to the promises of going far away from the course comm on the exercise day. But heck, by wednesday i gave up and i went to report sick. The MO was such an idiot. All he did was just to match the medication to my symptoms. Go figure that yourself. Think this week i learnt so much. So much more about my platoon. About selfishness, about giving. About team work, about covering your own butt. All along since the start of course there was this dennis who told interesting stories about his four years as a soldier. But as days goes by most people got irritated by the exaggeration of his stories, and more importantly, he wanting to give his five cents worth in every single thing that is mentioned by anyone. Nonetheless, we started poking fun at him, initially discreetly, up to outright blasting at him this week. There was this group of us who were blasting him with personal attacks, and another group poking fun at everything that he says, in hope that he would tear down that mask and be his real self. Things got pretty out of hand, especially the past few days that he kept very quiet. Last night was when my bunkmates had a pretty long discussion into the night about the issue. About how far we went. About the concept of changing people's character. Imposing values and principles. Accomodating people. And so on and so forth. The two groups obviously had very different goals as i observed. One was to just irritate the hell out of dennis so that he will shut up and stop bugging people, while the other is to find out the real him. Thats the difference that mattered. But we failed to observe. During that late night talk, many more issues surfaced. About how other individuals actually have so much burden. So much personal issues and conflicts. So much hurts and memories. Thanks, i needed those to remind me. Those old feelings just came back. I could almost feel for these people, yet i can't vocalise them. Not at least to this bunch of people. It just shocks and saddens me to realize that so many people are facing such huge stress at such a young age. Maybe the problems can't be measured side by side, but everyone has a mountain of its own. And many people have been known to fall into depression and nonacceptance of their circumstances. But who can really help? This sounds cliche, but it still stand true. Only you can help yourself. Everyone has their own cross to bear...

Shannon left at 12:21 p. m..

domingo, mayo 16, 2004

[ 556. Names ]

Hmmmm. Yes, this is something that i've always wanted to talk about. Did a bit of blog surfing and found that izati has actually linked me as "xuan-an-shawn". Indeed, my chinese name has gave the people around me some trouble (about as much as my jokes are to them). As such, i ended up with LOTS of names and lots of variants to my name as well. In primary school, i was happy bear. why? All because of this stupid bag that i had that had a big bear splashed across the front with those words in bright blue letters. Ouch. No one had problems with my name cuz i was in this cheena school where people knew hanyu pinyin better than their alphabets. When i got to secondary school, that's when the problem starts. The first idiot who mispronounced my chinese name was mdm latifah wong, my sec 2 form teacher. Damn her. She started the trend of suan an vs. Not to mention, suan an has great resemblence to suan gan, and that's how i became good friends with the lime. That was when i was fed up and started taking up the name eric. Now i remember. Even my British Council teacher (Ms Claire) could pronounce my name without any problems! Damn those people who don't even make an effort. Anyway, i still rarely use my name eric unless absolutely necessary. I feel that my chinese ame has a special meaning to it. My sec 3 form teacher had this habit of writing my name as x'an, and thereafter, people started calling me xane (pronounced as zane.) Then my sec 2 english tutor was smart, in order to pronounce my name correctly he wrote it as shuen an. Yet another person whom i can't remember who ended up calling me shannon. I kinda liked the idea initially due to the resemblence it had to my chinese name, but discarded the idea soon. It sounded too girl back then. In jc, it wasn't too much of a problem. My class was chinese, those mrs suresh isn't. But she didn't have too much of a problem after 2 months. It was also when i started 'testing' out the name eric. So i had a couple of people like mandy calling me eric. Oh, then people like izati (whom i met during orientation) found my name too much of a bother, and decided that xuan sounded like shawn, and shawn i became. In church, i have also people like huixin and bo calling me xuan for convenience sake. Sounded ok, so i decided it was nice too. =)

Well, so you see how i have so many names. If you still wonder what to call me, just still to eric, shannon, shawn, or the great old xuan'an. Cheers. =)

Shannon left at 6:37 p. m..

[ 555. Quote ]

The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to her appointed feasts. All her gateways are desolate, her priests groan, her maidens grieve, and she is in bitter anguish.
-Lamentations 1:4

It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to teir loss they are crcifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to publi disgrace.
-Hebrews 6:4-6

Shannon left at 6:02 p. m..

[ 554. Tuition Kids ]

Shannon left at 8:22 a. m..

[ 553. Spoilt ]

I'm spoilt for a choice. There's an important decision that i've made. In fact, before considering carefully, i was pressed for time. I figured that it wouldn't hurt anyway. It'll give me time to think, give me money that i can save and the space that i'll treasure.

The concert was great. Nelson's choir did something usual. I mean, nelson's school choirs are almost famous for their musicals. Alas, what i saw was one of their not so outstanding performances. Not the same for the dance though. I've always been very impressed by the power of movement. How dancers actually draw a beautiful stories through their choreography. Everything is at work, from their limbs right up to the facial expression. Very vivid i tell you.

Shannon left at 7:45 a. m..

sábado, mayo 15, 2004

[ 552. Freak ]

I almost freaked out just now. You know, the new blogger look actually tells you the number of posts that you've made. Then, you also see that my title has a number to it. Apparently, it doesn't tally. So i thought i made the grave mistake of misnumbering. So i went to look through my posts. Thanks to mandy. -_-" I worried in vain.

Just had my tuition. Thankfully they weren't as troublesome as last week. You just have those tough weeks when all four girls had pms together. Ouch. That was last week. And yes, next week guess what i'm teaching. CHINESE. YES. CHINESE. Ouch. I'm becoming an all-rounded tutor. My initial agreement with my mother (who got me the gig) that i'll only teach chemistry. Then i had to take them for physics too. Not long after, i had to take math too. And now? CHINESE. -_-"

Going for a concert later. Catch me if you can. =)

Shannon left at 6:23 p. m..

[ 551. 2nd week ]

Hmm. so blogger has a new look from what i saw. Nice features it's got, but the links still quite screwed up from what i saw. Nonetheless, kudos to the blogger team who tries to make it more user friendly. At least to me. Haah.

It's the second week of course, or rather, the end of the week, and guess things are brewing up pretty ugly. Oh yes, we had this exercise line combined on wednesday, in which we made history. History? Yes, the record of being the first platoon whose night phase was cancelled NOT due to Cat 1. Let me talk abit about this exercise. It's the line laying practical phase where we got to ulu sembawang to lay about 1.6km worth of lines per group. Operations standards stands at 3km of line per hour and 20 minutes per crossing, but as trainees definitely we get some allowance on top of that. But not as much as we took. Horrendously, we took 3 to 6 hours just to lay those lines. Starting from 1pm (due to cat 1 in the morning), you do the math. And when you lay lines, you definitely have to recover those line. And recovery was worse. We thought it was easy, but murphy's law was reality that day. There goes another 3 to 6 hours. You do the math again. After the debrief, even an 11pm movie would have ended and that was just the end of the day phase. So CC decided to cancel the night phase due to our "outstanding performance".

Now coming back to camp. We unloaded, sent our arms, moved our stores and cleaned up before sleeping. And the next morning we found a blackout. The next thing we knew, the platoon opposite us accused us of:
1) making a helluva noise when we got back from exercise.
2) shouting for them to fall in at 3am.
3) locking one of their bunks up while they were still sleeping.
hey hey, that's enough ok. And for that we were punishd by a sergeant. And it's THEIR course sergeant. Though the punishment and the reason for it sounded reasonable, guess we were just upset that it has to be meted out by another sergeant instead of our dear william.

Think the platoon got closer during the exercise and this whole event. And of course, i benefitted socially as well. Getting to know people, putting aside our differences, learning to be initiative, doing junk work, going library together, sitting through lectures together, the list goes on.

Shannon left at 2:38 p. m..

domingo, mayo 09, 2004

[ 550. Chomp Chomp ]

Haah. Finally chomp chomp is opened. Went there to makan with mx yesterday... its nice to go to a new old place. get what i mean? Well, things are pretty much the same... the stores i mean... but the benches, the cleanliness... it's definitely a lot better. Nonetheless, guess i pretty much enjoy myself yesterday. The food, i meant. Doesn't bother me about the calories intake, haah, dieting always comes tomorrow isn't it? Lolx.

Had a pathetic time having tuition today. Did physics with them, and guess which topic was it? Eletricity, Magnetism and Electromagnetic induction. Michael low must be laughing his guts out now if he ever know that i had such a hard time not only to swallow the concepts, but to relay them to my equally pathetic students. Ouch. In the end i think i did a pretty ok job though.

Today book in timing is rediculously early. 9pm. Ouch.

Shannon left at 10:21 a. m..

sábado, mayo 08, 2004

[ 549. Course ]

Course finally started. Whew! The first step to my signalship. If there's even such a word. Well, i learnt that 24 hours do make a difference. The very first day i was there - we were oneday late due to coc - and people who were there since monday behaved as if they knew everything. Wow, just one day and you guys are lao jiaos. *bish* second, i aged tremondously ever since i entered bmt. There are now people thinking that i'm the 1983 batch. Ouch. And finally, i do admit that there's a difference between jc and poly students. And to the dear poly students in my platoon, especially those from the first bunk, we don't need comments tell us how tactical and how chao keng you guys can get. And yes, how smart you guys are as well. Enough of those smart alec talk. Bear in mind: we do have a couple of rjc students in the platoon.And ultimately it's the jc study style that's gonna get you the good grades on the stupid tests in this course. To fish with you, poly students. And one final point: I'm not a typical jc student. Trust me.

Shannon left at 2:53 p. m..

sábado, mayo 01, 2004

[ 547. Guard ]

Whew. Tired, yet not sleepy. Did my first guard duty for adsd. It's only now then i realize guard is only fun if you do it with your friends. Nonetheless, at least it's over and done with.

Actually i didn't had to do yesterday's guard. You see, i was a reserve for monday's coc parade. And yesterday there was a rehearsal, thought to end rather late. So sgt andrew asked if i could take ziwei's place for guard. So i agreed. I don't know if it's my luck or someone up there really have an issue with me, someone had to be absent for yesterday's rehearsal and i had to go for parade. And then it ad to end early at four. And while everyone was preparing to go home, i prepared to go to the guard room. dotz.

Oh yes, i said it before and i shall say it again. The RSM is my good friend. I loved him for screaming at me in front of the unit and making me run one round around the parade square. Yes, he's such a wonderful friend.

Chinablack tonight... anyone? Ring me.

(PS: No one ever leaves comments anymore right...?)

Shannon left at 10:39 a. m..

gone.

will i be back?
i don't know.
maybe i've started elsewhere.
maybe never. again.

domingo, mayo 30, 2004

[ 562. Link ]

[ 561. Joel ]

sábado, mayo 29, 2004

[ 560. Week ]

miércoles, mayo 26, 2004

[ 559. Nights Out ]

sábado, mayo 22, 2004

[ 558. School ]

[ 557. Depressed ]

domingo, mayo 16, 2004

[ 556. Names ]

[ 555. Quote ]

[ 554. Tuition Kids ]

[ 553. Spoilt ]

sábado, mayo 15, 2004

[ 552. Freak ]

[ 551. 2nd week ]

domingo, mayo 09, 2004

[ 550. Chomp Chomp ]

sábado, mayo 08, 2004

[ 549. Course ]

sábado, mayo 01, 2004

[ 547. Guard ]

the guy

his wishes

his horizons

people.

tags

gone. will i be back? i don't know. maybe i've started elsewhere. maybe never. again.

domingo, mayo 30, 2004

[ 562. Link ]

[ 561. Joel ]

sábado, mayo 29, 2004

[ 560. Week ]

miércoles, mayo 26, 2004

[ 559. Nights Out ]

sábado, mayo 22, 2004

[ 558. School ]

[ 557. Depressed ]

domingo, mayo 16, 2004

[ 556. Names ]

[ 555. Quote ]

[ 554. Tuition Kids ]

[ 553. Spoilt ]

sábado, mayo 15, 2004

[ 552. Freak ]

[ 551. 2nd week ]

domingo, mayo 09, 2004

[ 550. Chomp Chomp ]

sábado, mayo 08, 2004

[ 549. Course ]

sábado, mayo 01, 2004

[ 547. Guard ]

the guy

his wishes

his horizons

people.

tags

gone.

will i be back?
i don't know.
maybe i've started elsewhere.
maybe never. again.