… or the next one ( if i don’t come back as a square of toilet roll) or in heaven or whatever, that i will…

… NEVER ASK A WAITER/WAITRESS WHO’S RUNNING PAST ME WITH A HANDFUL OF DIRTY PLATES…

… TO COME OVER AND TAKE MY ORDER. OR TO GET THE BILL…

because there is only ONE answer he or she can give you – “Can i get back to you in a while, sir?”

I mean. SERIOUSLY! There is only one – one – answer the poor dude/babe can possibly humanly give you. And it really breaks the momentum of stuff to have people ask you this. I have been guilty of this my entire damn life and now i realise how… stilting it is. How on earth will a waiter take your order when his hands are full of dirty plates?

JEEEEEEZ. These last coupla days have turned me into, permanently, the model fricken customer at any fricken restaurant. I will be really really nice from now on to waiters and waitresses unless they are just plain lousy. and even then if they’re newbieish ill like help them out.


BTW whoever’s out there go play ACE COMBAT FIVE on the playstation. it is the first playstation game i can remember which made me cry. and its not soppy soppy “awww” cry. its a really good flying game and the storyline is amazing.

anyone who’s served in the army with buddies would cry if you saw (played) that scene in ace combat. i wont spoil it for you but it happens in the middle of a mission and you can hear your wingmen sobbing in the radios and you really cant help but at least shed a tear when it uh, happens.

one of the most involving storylines in a game ive ever played. truly a masterpiece in every single way. get it! sheesh.

work is tiring and its just been two days.

i spoke to a friend at her shop yesterday though and well, i think if she can juggle two jobs and work at two places on the same day, im sure i can handle this. which is relatively lighter. plus im an able bodied guy. and well i need to be independant and what not.

geez too tired n sleepy im gonna get some good rest tonight or will regret it by weekend when start waitering.

time to get off my ass n start working for myself. like don corleone.

sheeeeeeeeeesh. too tired for words.

and before i forget or delete the message in my phone where this is stored… here’s the original uh, outfield-inspired linguistic outburst from me… its horribly silly i think, and not of very good quality at all but what the heck; censorship is for pussies and politicians…


Morning dew covers my hammock;
The azure drops turn crystal in the lunar light.

Birdsong’s symphony rings in my ears,
Like a bell.
The chattering insect cacophony’s strangely soothing,
A lullaby to sweet slumber.

Lovely mosquitoes,
My blood is for you!

O Outfield!
Thy pleasures baffle those left to rot,
In a cold and lifeless metal bunk.

Pity! I’d wish my friends were here with me.
Were I not enthralled so,
In the throes of outfield utopia.


… choppy stuff, i must admit. To put it into perspective, though, I shall explain the circumstances of this uh, piece’s conception.

This was written a couple of months back while I was in durian-less Mandai at The Five Track Junction with my 2 men, on enemy simulation support to SMI. We had woken up at five in the really wet misty morning, walked in excess of 2 km around the place – I paced – and i just realised i was using proper letter casing and punctiation so i will stop now.

ahem anyway that morning haha me and my men – alain and ryan – had to lug big-ass “figure 11″ target boards around mandai at five in the mist. and after i had emptied a magazine full of blanks into my hammock when an enemy attacked in the night (since i had forgotten my blank cartridge pouch)… only to realise early that morning that in my sleepiness and fumbling-in-the-darkness i had shot a tennis ball sized hole in my “lovely” hammock.

anyhow. yeah. and in that state, lying on the road at 630 am waiting to be ‘recovered by SMI, inspiration struck.

unfortunately, it struck at an inopportune time when my mental faculties were bogged down by cold, fatigue and hunger. and hammock-mourning.

here’s a little something i wrote during my last morning in camp, while waiting to get thrown into mosquito haven itself, lim chu kang.

O hateful jungle of insistent insects,

Once again thread I in thy dark and dingy depths.

An eternity away from any sweet maiden;

and worse still, my Playstation.

hey everyone.

i came back home yesterday – friday – to a rotting smell in my kitchen. and immediately dropped down on all fours like any good soldier would do… and searched for a dead rat, lizard, whatever… and found none.

but looking up at this basket of vegetables, i saw that a brown liquid was dripping out from underneath. moving away a coupla normal-looking veggies, i uncovered the source of the putrid smell: an unidentifiable brown blob. looking closer, and vaguely recognising its scent, i realised it was a squashed onion, left to rot for the three days i spent out-field. and it was oozing rotten brown liquid.

it gets better though. having to rush off for my ORD dinner, i didnt clear the mess till i returned home later that night. last night. and upon closer inspection, the onion.

its brown,
bulging squishy wet flesh exposed,
had hundreds and hundreds of little white dots embedded inside,
just beneath the surface of the rotting shitty brown blob.

and the white dots moved.

holy fucking hell, right?

that right there was where i nearly lost my dinner. the singlemost sickest thing ive seen in my life, up close on my kitchen table, a festering mound of rotting vegetable – it HAD to be an onion i swear if it was a cucumber it wouldnt’ve been so horrible – writhing in little maggotty white fly juniors…

sheeesh imagine if i had been outfield another two or three days imagine if they ERUPTED from the shitty brown lump of festering vegetable oozing primordial soup?

the singlemost disgusting thing ive seen, coupled with the most horrible smell EVER. i cant even exaggerate cuz words wouldnt even come close to describing how disgusting it was.

it even beats the old Chopsticks ‘n Cockroach Incident. haha ugh.

no, no no i have NOT gone feminist. though the title sounds like some really silly feminist bull-crap. i am here to explain something which i realised today:

men are insensitive pricks. we’re dumbasses toward the fairer sex.

and its not our fault;
its just revenge.

for what, might you ask?

just this: ” Hey Adam! Have a bite of this apple… it’ll make you smart like the Big Guy…”

weeeeeell much good that did.

so for thousands of years we’ve been having a chip on our shoulder.

its in our genes; the memory of a paradise of lovely fruits and naked people who dont know they are naked. think about it. we coulda still be there, revelling in our ignorant nudity. one… big… nudist… colony… with eva longoria and beyonce and…

so girls, im sorry but when you tellin your girlfriends how mean some guy was to you, you aint got no idea what kinda beef we got. we got MAD beef with ya’ll. haha…

okay folks here’s my essay on kung fu movies; wrote it but didnt submit it for my University of Chicago application… but now ironically this might put food on the table for moi.

Kung Fu Movies

If there’s one genre of movie that you’d ask me out to which I’d practically leap out of my seat to watch on any day, whatever the mood I’m in, it’d have to be a kung fu flick. Nothing – nothing – lifts my mood and gets me going better than a healthy dose of gorgeously choreographed, suspend-all-grey-matter kung fu action.

Like every Asian child, I was interested in martial arts; so Bruce Lee was, by default, my idol and role model. Bruce Lee’s Way of The Dragon was the movie that got me hopelessly hooked to, well, artistic violence.

Who can forget the now-classic gladiatorial fight between Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris in the middle of the Coliseum in Rome? Arguably the most sophisticated fighting scene in history, two worlds collided in this fight scene in more than one way: more than the obvious clash of East versus West, the fight also exhibited the stark contrast between Lee’s patented Jeet-Kune-Do and Chuck Norris’ modern karate style. I still remember watching the fight scene over and over again as a kid, in a vain attempt to learn a thing or two from the martial arts masters to use in my next Taekwondo lesson.

A more recent chop-sock obsession of mine would have to be The Matrix trilogy; three movies, which have, over the past few years – for better or worse – revolutionized the kung fu sequence. The first Matrix movie was especially groundbreaking in its blend of panoramic gunfights, spectacular kung fu and slow-motion special effects. The now oft-used term “bullet-time” was thus coined from Keannu Reeves’ then never-seen-before slow motion bullet dodging sequences.

The Matrix was more than a mere kung fu flick; brimming with enigmatic, philosophical quotes, it was also a bold satirical allegory on autocratic society and a stern warning against our increasing technological dependence. But I paid absolutely no attention whatsoever to any of this when I watched the movie for the first time – the action was just too mind-blowing amazing for any coherent philosophical thought to form.

I now look back at the first Matrix movie with a bittersweet sense of nostalgia: back when it was made, its special-effects-enhanced fighting sequences were exhilarating and revolutionary. Unfortunately, the unforeseeable success of The Matrix has so raised the bar for fight sequences in movies, it launched an entire line of pretenders who have tried, largely in vain, to emulate The Matrix’s success.

In recent years, moviegoers have been reduced to being subjected to an insistent gauntlet of the shallow, special-effect-heavy action sequences which try much too hard to emulate The Matrix’s groundbreakingly spectacular battle scenes. The Matrix’s two sequels themselves are, sadly, guilty of this very crime; both movies bludgeoned audiences with flashy special effects in pale attempts to distract us from convoluted, contrived storylines and nonexistent acting masquerading as summer blockbusters.

However, the advent of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies have restored my faith in the future of kung fu movies, foregoing blatant use of special effects for poetically understated but highly entertaining cinematic violence and a succinct plot structure. The result? A cinematic monument par excellence. Tarantino is himself arguably the world’s biggest fan of the action genre, and in both movies pays tribute to every kung fu movie ever made, from classic Bruce Lee style yellow jumpsuits to katana wielding yakuzas, stylish Japanese anime to mountain dwelling reclusive sifus. Kill Bill is more than Tarantino’s testament to the rich history of the genre; a throwback to the golden age of the kung fu flick, Kill Bill truly stands out as a martial arts masterpiece in this era of glitzy dazzle-fests and substandard action flicks .

I remain a hard-core kung fu fanatic, however, despite the genre’s general recent decline and increasing dependence on special effects. I watch movies to unwind and relax, to enjoy the escape from the reality’s complexities; I do not watch movies to feel suicidal when the credits of a depressing Nicole Kidman movie begin to run. Watching Jacky Chan leap from rooftop to rooftop brings a smile to my face more than any cutesy Meg Ryan or Julia Roberts feel-good romantic comedy could ever hope to achieve. To me, kung fu movies lift my spirits and entertain me to no end, and that’s all I ask for when I fork out my eight-fifty at the ticket booth.