Agger-do !!

Is he a Brazillian? What a goal on Kop's 100th birthday.

Running

It's been quite a while since I ran. The last time should be somewhere in April when I ran with Heng at Bedok Stadium. After coming back from the mob briefing, I realised that I still had 10 more cycles before I ROD. It's better to keep in shape than having to go through all the RTs later. Anyway I'm getting too fat nowadays and really need some excercise.

I ran on my own on Thursday evening. One round around Bedok Reservoir is 4.3km and my timing was 25:35. I know it's rather slow but I manage to keep a constand pace throughout. This Saturday we didn't have our usual football session so Shahid got me to run at Bedok Reservoir again. This time round I clocked 23:56. Quite an improvement from the last one.

I think I gonna run again on Monday. Hopefully I can book my IPPT date soon...

Louisa Rocks ah....

Finally I got the FTB photos from my faci Kelvin. I decided to choose this to post up here because it's the best lit one. Anyway don't be fooled by the photo. We are not garang at all (except for Pratik). However the group is bloody fun to be with. Louisa you rocks!!

School so far...

This week is the start of the academic year 06/07. I returned to school after a forced 2.5 years hiatus yesterday. My only lesson of the day was Stats. It was rather dry but I surprised myself that I was able to go through the 3 hour lesson without being disengaged.

There were a couple of familiar faces in the stats class. Chun Boon was my first 3 months classmate. Kok Hsien was my class rep in JC. Marcus was in the same BMTC platoon as me. It turns out that my preassigned classes are exactly the same as Kok Hsien's. While it's good to have someone familiar to be with in the same class, hanging around with Kok Hsien isn't what I envisage for my SMU life. We are on different wavelength and hardly hanged around together during JC. Basically beside academic stuff we got nothing much else to talk about. Haiz.. but it still beats knowing no one at all.

After my stats class I hanged around before meeting Kendrick they all at Bugis for lunch. We were supposed to meet at 1.30pm but they only arrived after 2pm. It turned out that Qinyao misheard that Shahid would only released at 1.45pm and went to print his notes. The rest had to wait for him (incl. me and Jeremy) but if he had any remorse he didn't show it. He insisted that Shahid told him the wrong timing (while the rest heard 1pm). Nevermind though. I was famished when we finally got to start eating.

Qinyao was repeatedly teased by us because of the garang cheers he did at Jiesheng's birthday. The main instigators were Shahid and Ho Teck. The people sitting near Qinyao didn't dare to do anything too funny as Qinyao's flying hankie is super powerful. Soon one thing led to another and we even came up with a cheer for Qinyao our charismatic leader.

Qinyao! Are You Ready?!?!

We say Qinyao no 1
You don't believe you very cham
What say you say i say

You say Qinyao no 2
We say you very kuku
What say you say I say

You say Qinyao no 3
We kick you up the tree
What say you say I say

Alright I admit that we were juvenile but it's still fucking funny. I couldn't contain my laughter throughout the whole lunch.

Today's Creative Thinking was in the afternoon. My professor is Magaret Chan, if anyone can recall she is the actress from Masters of the Sea. Some parts of her lessons were rather interesting and we even had to do a mini talentine within 20 minutes. However many of the words she used during the lecture were too bombastic for me to comprehend and my mind began to wander around. There was also this stress factor of needing to speak up in class. My thoughts were way too slow and it seemed that the rest always had something (not necessarily constructive) to add on.

I almost got a big fat zero for my participation in my first CT lesson. At the end of the lesson I just reminded her to collect our gradings of the talentine performaces and she actually accorded me participation points for it. Oh my god.... I never expected that but it's okay. Welcome to SMU where it's not necessarily better but definitely different.

Poor Poor Liverpool

Today I went to the Pasir Ris Camp for the mobilisation briefing. Last night we all were discussing whether we should be wearing no 4 or just go there in our civillian clothes. In the end we decided that since we orded already we should just go there in civillian. Most of us agreed to meet at Pasir Ris Interchange at 11.45am for lunch. There would be shuttle bus that brings us from there to the camp.

I met up with many of my friends whom I never seen since I ord. Quite happy to meet up with them and most of our discussions were about school life. Pasir Ris Camp is located at a super ulu place and it's hard to reach there without your own transport. I saw even more familiar faces there and was surprised of how much some had changed. The most surprsing one must be Kevin Tay who ballooned since last October. His whole body and face were swollen. That was really a far cry from the days when he was awarded the golden bayonet. Civillian life certainly was too good for him. Maybe since he's going to be our reservist CSM, he wants his size to be the same as Tan Kian Tiong's.

Before the start of the briefing the brigade RSM kaopehed us about some of us not coming in no 4. We all knew that we could get away this time so we didn't give a hoot. I didn't pay much notice to the briefing but I knew that I had to report in FBO on 7 October. Super sian but it is part of being a Singaporean. I was given the appointment of detachment 2ic. After reading the job description it seemed that it came with a heavy responsibility. However from what I deduced, even if I didn't do anything, I won't get into any trouble.

After the briefing we were taken to a tour of the place where we will report during the mobilisation. I couldn't be bothered to remember anything because I know I will forget by then. I was very glad that it ended early and went to play pool with Swee they all. After dinner I rushed home to watch the Liverpool match. I already missed the first half when I reached home. I heard from my sister Liverpool was crap and both Carra and Riise were injured. Not the best of start but I hope that second half will be better.

How wrong was I proved to be. Within seconds of restarting the match Sheffield United scored. What the fuck was Aurelio doing... Felt rather pissed about it but I was still confident that Liverpool had the capacity to come back. We did equalise through a dubious penalty but that's the closest they came whole match. Overall we were poor and we need to improve to qualify for the Champions' League group stages. We will always remain as pretenders if we can't win supposedly easy games against lesser opponents. We always screw up against direct opposition like Sheffield United and Rafa needs to work a way to rectify the problem. I'm praying that the other big four will drop points this weekend.

The Season Has Began

I just watched the Community Shield. Great start to the season for us but it's noted that only one team (Chelsea last year) won the league after winning the Shield the in the past 9 years. However I'm still over the moon with the victory. I'm cautiously optmistic of the season ahead.

Before the match Mourinho was talking about Liverpool can forget about their title ambitions if it can't even beat half-fit Chelsea side. Despite all his mind games, Mr Jose will have to admit that we are still able to challenge for the league. When our line-up was announced I was super surprised. I thought that Benitez wanted to show Mourinho that our 2nd team is also capable of winning.

Liverpool created more chances early on and Riise's goal was truly stunning. He ran the whole length of the field after Chelsea's corner and whack the ball in from 25 yards. However, minutes before the break Shevchenko showed his class after Liverpool failed to execute the offside trap. Carragher made an atypical error which allowed Sheva through and his finishing was top-class. The equalizer did deflate us a little going into half time and Chelsea started stronger early in the 2nd half.

Alonso Gerrard and Bellamy were introduced midway into the 2nd half and Bellamy set up Crouch for the winning goal in the 80th min. We managed to keep Chelsea at bay and held on till the final whistle. Momo is already a fucking legend and deservedly the Man-of-the-Match. It was a hardworking team performance and Benitez mentioned it in his post match interview that this would give us the confidence to take on the other big teams through the season.

I observed that there were empty seats on Chelsea's end and there were actually Chelsea supporters cheering after Riise's goal. Most of their supporters left before the trophy presentation and gave little encouragement to their players. If Liverpool were the losing team, I'm sure that there would be much more fans who would stay behind to cheer on their heroes. This really shows that Chelsea has few true fans and too small a supporters' base to become a truly big club. Money can buy you good players and short term success but hardly get you any loyal supporters.

I absolutely love Steve McMahon. He is bloody biased towards Liverpool and is always frank with his assessment of the club. The post match analysis was interesting and both Steve and Paul Masefield highlighted that Liverpool is playing with a system where any players coming in must fit into. On the other hand, Mourinho couldn't fit the players into the formation he used in the past 2 seasons and hasn't came up with his best formation and first 11. This is really good news for the other clubs in the league but Chelsea can still count on indiviual quality on their bad days.

Despite the World Cup the close season seems long and I'm glad the season has finally kicked off. We have made improvements in our squad and there's a chance we will be able to challenge for the title. We must be able to win those lesser teams week in week out and match the other big teams when playing them. I had experienced many false dawns in my years supporting Liverpool but I hope this seaon will be ours to remember.

You Will Never Walk Alone!!

Finally.... No More Camps!

I just came back from the SMU Freshmen Teambuilding Camp this afternoon. This is the final camp I will be taking part in before school starts and I'm rather glad. There will be no more childish games (read tiu tiu tiu) and embarrassing forfeits. Of course there are positive things that came out from these activities; I managed to know more people before school starts and get to understand the school better through the seniors I met.

I always thought that this would be some kind of orientation camp like those conducted in JCs with all the mass dances and games. In the end it turned out to be more like a leadership camp where we had to participate in various teambuilding activities. I had taken part in a similar camp back in JC; but I forgot most of the solutions and the skills I was supposed to learn.

In the past I always heard of my brother complaining about the Indian scholars in his JC class. From the camp I had a rough idea how he felt and wondered how he went through his 2 years studying with them. Indian scholars are REALLY very different from us. It seems that most of them have a lot of opinions and want things to be done their way. In other words they are like dictators. I was absolutely glad that both Indian scholars in my group are not doing Business. I just can't see how I am able to work with them.

If given a choice I'm sure that most of my group members will rather not participate in the activities. Since being practical people we knew when to conserve our energy and not wasting them on meaningless activities. We were definitely not the most enthusiastic group and hardly show any interest in most of the task assigned. However when we had to do the activities, I think we all tried our best.

The guys in our group were always cracking jokes and talking rubbish. There's an Allan Wu look-alike among us who had to wait for Li Lin to come before he would do his forfeit. We came up with other hilarious stuff such as saying that the 2 Chinese nationals in my group were a couple and drawing funny things on our faces. Actually our group was very fun and I'm sure in a different environment we would definitely have more fun together.

Our facilitator Kelvin tried to get us do the debriefs and discussed the mistakes we met which espectedly had little success. It could be our loss but I don't see the need for them. On the first day he was talking about integrity after one activity. I guess that he could see me rolling my eyes. I'm sure that people without integrity will want to have some after being preached. There's nothing personal against Kelvin but I guess maybe it's just me being cynical. Kelvin is a nice guy and tried to accomodate all of us. He got the message and we just play-acted during the supposed debriefs for the rest of the camp.

At the end of the camp my group was tasked to do the area cleaning for the rubbish dump place. The volume of trash generated was stunning and the condition was really appalling. One of the group members Jurena was complaining that since everyone had a part in creating that mess hence everybody should help us clean the mess. It reminded me of a similar incident about 2 years ago when I complained that the specialists littered our platoon garden with cigarette butts. I guess my thinkings had changed quite abit since then. Just spare a thought for those washing the absolutely gross toilets. Oh my god. I can't even think about it.

I'm SIngaporean meme

Tomorrow is Singapore's 41st birthday and I read about the I'm Singaporean meme on the Straits Times' Digital Life. It is interesting and I decide to do my the same thing for this entry.

What makes me a Singaporean? I think that the ability to complain makes us all Singaporeans. We will complain about anything that doesn't go our way. Rude salesperson? Complain. No more free parking places at Botanical Gardens? Complain. Taxis that don't stop? Complain. Raise in oil prices? Complain. Dirty toilets? Complain. The lousy fence at Kolam Ayer CC that cannot prevent the ball from rolling down to the drain? Definitely must complain. The list goes on forever.

Complaining is really uniquely Singapore.

This Week (So Far)

I saw the reactions for my last entry on some of the others' blogs and my tag board. Glad to know that the Victorian spirit is well and alive among the 4C'01 guys.

I went to buy bag on Sunday evening. I was supposed to meet Shahid only but was really surprised to find him with Mus and Suf. They were nice enough to tag along with us for a while until we parted ways. I got my bag (finally) and went home to prepare for the Business Camp aka Bondue Camp the next day.

I didn't know which group I was in when I got there. I knew that Kenny (my classmate from 2C) was in my og but couldn't locate him. In the end one of the facilitators helped me. Kenny really looked quite different from the last time I saw him. Time really flies. I got to meet my facilitators and the other group members before we began the first activity of the whole camp.

We had dance rehearsal for our first activity before going out to play the Amazing Race. We were the last group to return and were made to do some silly forfeit. There was bidding for the venue and items for the next day's charity drive in the evening and our group was successful in securing the items and venue we wanted. (Thanks to Yihan and CK.)

Second day began with the career services orientation and after that we went for the charity drive. I was hopeless in persuading people to buy stuff but luckily my partner covered for me. We were done rather early and even had the time to go chill out at Gelare. We had buffet dinner before attending the Dance Night. Our section's dance wasn't bad but Section 1's was better. There were other games for the night as well and I think that the whole business school knows who's Georgia is already.

The night was obviously still young and my group combined with group 10 to play the drinking game. I wasn't really keen but since the girls were okay I had to join in. Rum with sprite and whisky with green tea was the poison for the night. I think Ken Ang will love this game. I drank quite a bit but it wasn't as bad as last Friday's. I really need some time to get used to the SMU's culture.

The last day comprised of group games. Out of the five games my group won 3 drew 1 and lost 1. Not too bad but we were nowhere among the top in the overall standings. Some of the prizes didn't make sense too. How the hell section 2 was the best section will probably remain a mystery.

I didn't speak much throughout the whole orientation. Everyone were thinking that I'm very shy. (Luckily not dao.) Finding stuff to talk about isn't easy. It happened not only to girls but also to the guys as well. I think I know what's the reason. I'm just being protective of myself. Saying nothing beats saying something wrong. I don't want to embarrass myself. If I were to say out everything in my head, I would have offended everyone within the first hour.

I met up with Shahid, Ho Teck, Kendrick and Kok Wai for supper last night. Certainly I had no problems talking cock with them. We knew one another so long already and it was really fun trading all the insults and silly jokes. I was certainly not shy while with them but it's a totally different story when I'm with a group of people I don't know or unfamiliar with. I really need to work on that.

By the way it was the 3rd consecutive night that I had supper and there's one more tomorrow evening. Supper is very unhealthy and I'm already feeling the effect. I must quit having supper.

Today I went out with my og after the academic talk. I think I managed to put in more words than the 3 other days combined. Alright it's exaggerated but it's probably somewhere there. I'm more familiar with the the group members now so I'm able to talk a bit more. Melvin's advice is to talk shit with people you just met. It sounds a little hard but I may give it a try during the Freshmen's Camp next week.