‘Cause nothin’ lasts forever, even cold November rain.

Music: Whispering a Prayer- Steve Vai

November, 7 more months to ORD. recently, there has been a very strong desire to quickly ORD. i getting quite sian of the whole army routine. regimentation can be really really really frustrating sometimes and there is nothing too practical one can do about it. opportunity cost is a very relevant thinking in the army.

with regards to ORD, i was thinking of coming up with 2 long list of consequences, categorising the pros and the cons of the event. but i figured it will be a complete waste of time and effort. after all, no amount of content in either list would possibly change the fact that 11 June 2010 will bring ‘Chapter- I am a (NSF)soldier’ in life to a conclusion. then, it will be the start of yet another new journey, one which i got no concrete plans quite yet.

but i got some ideas, some a little far-fetched, some expensive, some down-to-earth, some straight forward, blah blah blah. but nothing too idealistic, Charlie reminded that extremely intense ideology should be avoided because it cabbages up one’s mind. so i seriously don’t know man, what will happen after ORD.

but for now, i am happy to read my books, surf the net and listen to all my favourite music.

i am very grateful for my life.

So, according to the second law of thermodynamics, 凡事等久久就有？

As far as our deep understanding of the universe is concerned, the greatest discovery in thermodynamics is the so-called ’second law’, which says that heat always flow from a hotter object to a cooler object when the two objects are placed in contact. It sounds blindingly obvious; yet this simple rule has been described as the supreme law of nature. Its tells us which way time flows, and that things wear out.

There are two classic examples which highlight the importance of this law. First, imagine a cup of coffee, into which you drop an ice cube. The ice cube melts, as heat flows from the hot coffee into the cold ice. You never, ever, see a cool cup of coffee start to get hotter, all by itself, while an ice cube grows in the middle of the cup. This is what we mean by saying that the second law defines the arrow of time. If you made a film of the melting ice cube, and ran it backwards through a projector, everyone who watched the film would know it was running backwards.

There is also an example of things wearing out. A cup of coffee with an ice cube in it has more structure than a cup of cold coffee, just as a house has more structure than a pile of bricks. Like the melting ice cube, if you leave a house unattended for long enough it will turn into a heap of bricks. But no matter how long you leave a heap of bricks unattended, it will never form itself into a house. This kind of structure possesses a quantity of information. The lost structure is like lost information, because the cold coffee has no ‘memory’ of the fact that some of the liquid used to be an ice cube, just an a brick has no ‘memory’ that it used to be part of a wall.

Being slightly perverse, physicists actually measure information in a negative sense, and give negative information the name ‘entropy’. The second law of thermodynamics can be expressed most succinctly as saying that entropy always increases- things wear out, ice cubes melt, houses fall down, people die.

But there is one strange feature of all this which we ought to mention. The second classic example of the second law at work is based on imagining a box of gas with a partition in the middle. One half of the box can be pumped out, so that it is empty, with no atoms in it. The other half is full of atoms, tiny little spheres moving rapidly and bouncing off one another in accordance with Newton’s laws of motion. If we pull the partition out of the way, the atoms will spread out to fill up the entire box, and the temperature of the gas will fall as they do so. But if you start with a box full of gas, you will never see all the atoms move together up into one end of the box, leaving a vacuum in the other half.

Or will you? Boltzmann calculated that if the atoms are moving about at random there is, in fact, a very tiny chance that all the atoms in the box will happen to move together in this way. The chance of this happening is so small that it would take billions upon billions of years for it to happen. And this gives us another perspective on the universe. Low entropy states are possible, but they are extremely unlikely.

……

In one of those early paper, published in 1903, Einstein thought that he has found a proof that the second law of thermodynamics must always hold. The second law, remember is the one that says things wear out. In modern language, Einstein thought that he had proved that the arrow of time is built into the laws of physics, although he never used that expression himself. But he had failed to appreciate one of the key points in Boltzmann’s argument, which jumped off from a comment made by Johann Loschmidt, and was published in 1877, in a paper Einstein cannot have read in 1903. This made it clear that the second law is not an absolute law of nature, but only has a statistical validity.

Remember the box of gas, one half full, the other empty, with a partition in the middle? We talked of pulling the partition out and letting the gas fill the box, then waiting for a very long time to see if the molecules of the gas might ever move together into one end of the box again. We said that, according to Boltzmann, this might happen, after a very, very long time. It would be as if we watched a pile of bricks, for a time much longer than the age of the universe, and suddenly it did assemble itself into a house. During such processes, the flow of entropy is reversed and the second law is violated- in the case of the gas in the box, the gas would get hotter as it squeezed itself into one end of the box. Time, by our everyday standards, would be running backwards.

Taken from Einstein- A Life in Science by Michael White & John Gribbin

“The greatest guitar player I’ve ever seen” – Eric Clapton

i didn’t know Tommy Emmanuel will be playing a concert in Singapore yesternight until i read the feature on Monday’s Life section. but the 600 seats available has already been sold out and my WTB effort on SOFT forum was futile :(

i remember i first watched Tommy Emmanuel on this random DVD i borrowed from the Esplanade about 5 years ago. he played Classical Gas and i was amazed by the whole intensity of his performance. his finger-picking style was something i never knew existed, juggling bass line, rhythm, melody and percussion all at one time. Tommy is essentially a one man band.

you can only imagine how excited i was when i found out in 2006 that Tommy will be coming to Singapore, to conduct a Masterclass and play a concert later that night. of course, i didn’t hesitate to skip school and subsequently spent 1 entire day at Victoria Concert Hall, engrossed in Tommy Emmanuel goodies. Tommy was super nice, like SUPER nice. he was happy to share whatever he knew with the audience, he tried to entertain all our requests for pictures, autographs and whatever not. plus, he is this guy full of wit and good humour.

that night, i was seated on the floor of Victoria Concert Hall cause tickets were sold out. not that i will complain, cause i was on the floor in front of the very first row, watching Tommy play under his nose! it’s no wonder why Eric Clapton hails Tommy as the greatest guitar player he ever seen. Tommy has got awesome charisma and stage presence, i was absolutely overwhelmed by his performance, it was mind-blowing. so since then, i had this whole Tommy Emmanuel experience etched in my mind. and yea, i can pretty much recall every single detail of that day so vividly.

Tommy came back again the next year, played at Esplanade and i was damn excited to watch him again. i couldn’t attend last year’s concert cause i was stuck in Tekong if i didn’t remember wrongly. and this year, i can’t believe i missed it because i didn’t know about it. sucks man. but never mind, it definitely seems that he will be back again next year judging from the trend.

i know i look damn kuku, but hopefully i will get to take my 3rd picture with Tommy next year. i will also print the above 2 pictures huge and let Tommy sign on them. oh yea, and perhaps wear the same jacket again. hurhur.

Misjudgement

my 2 days finance course was concluded by a 30 questions MCQ paper. it was an open book test, we were allowed to discuss, and look around. so i got a handful of answers from this middle aged uncle who sat beside me, dressed in civilian. i thought he is probably some retired high ranking finance officer, there for refresher purpose. plus, he finished the paper so quickly and confidently. best of all, he was happy to share his answers! it turns out that most of his answers were wrong though, and i probably would have fared better ti-kam-ing myself.

Me: Sir, where are you from ah?

Uncle: HQ NCC.

wahlauehhh NCC you know? those secondary school boys and occasional confused girls, and uncle himself probably served the army more than 2 decades ago.

Update for life and such.

in the SAF, one of the nicest things to do is to go on course. you get to stay out, siam all the whatever bullshit in camp and ok la, kinda learn something new. plus, all these courses are typically quite relac. so yea, i ain’t complaining about attending this finance course for 2 days this week. just that i forgot to bring my boots, beret, and uniform back when i booked out last Thursday and had to go back to camp again on Friday just to bring all these items back. spent 3 hours to and fro k, fuckking noob shit.

last week, my family had to send mum to A&E because she was feeling really unwell. the doctors did a MRI scan and confirmed that the recurrent tumour has indeed grew bigger and an invasive operation will be inevitable, in order to remove the tumour. looking back, its been 3 years since mum first got diagnosed with a benign brain tumour. throughout this time, she has been extremely fortunate to have went through a series of successful operations and treatment. however, they haven’t been able to eradicate the root of the problem, sadly. so yea, hopefully with this operation on the 25th of November, everything will be good and well afterwards. i am optimistic.

the family has went through a lot, but its really not as bad as it seem to be. mum has always recovered 100% from the operations and live life as per normal. personally, it has never been clearer, the importance of being healthy, of a credible medical insurance (which we lack, but never mind now) and probably how with love and support from the family, we can pull though anything together. and like what Charlie reminded, there is really no point in drifting into a state of self-pity when sad things happen in life. i think its amazing how he likens the habit as a form of mental hygiene. mental hygiene, there must be so much to explore and decipher what actually constitutes a so called hygienic state of mind.

its going to be November again. i want to go out and take pictures with Kristy, catch up with Alicia and Gracie at somewhere nice and meet Hafiz this Saturday. you know, i am never the person to initiate a conversation on messenger, leave a comment on your blog or post a random message on whoevers’ facebook wall. but i really do miss many of my dearest friends very very much.

to all the people i love, i hope YOU are doing good :))

another week closer to ORD, yay!

“It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.”- Sir Winston Churchill

I quote the wit and wisdom of Charles T. Munger.

“Self-pity can get pretty close to paranoia. And paranoia is one of the hardest things to reverse. You do not want to drift into self-pity. I had a friend who carried a thick stack of linen-based cards. And when somebody would make a comment that reflect self-pity, he would slowly and portentously pull out his huge stack of cards, take the top one and hand it to the person. The card said, “Your story has touched my heart. Never have I heard of anyone with as many misfortunes as you.” Well, you can say that’s waggery, but I suggest it can be mental hygiene. Each time you find you’re drifting into self-pity, whatever the cause, even if your child is dying of cancer, self-pity is not going to help. Just give yourself one of my friend’s cards. Self-pity is always counterproductive. It’s the wrong way to think. And when you avoid it, you get a great advantage over everybody else, or almost everybody else, because self-pity is a standard response. And you can train yourself out of it.“

- Excerpt from Charlie’s USC Gould School of Law Commencement Address, on May 13, 2007.

The Cutting Edge Journey

8 more months, HUAT AH!

cheng cheng, we must endure!

Fighting!!

so, i won’t be joining my friends for Ex. Wallaby at Australia this Nov after all. mum’s scan in August indicated significant tumour growth, so she may be headed for another operation in Nov after a second scan. hopefully the tumour will stabilise, decrease in size, so an operation won’t be necessary. after all this time, we have all learned to deal with reality and take things one step at a time. so life carries on as per normal, really. other than that, life has actually been pretty decent. relac is the way in camp after all the Wallaby packing, so i got more time to sleep, read, write, think, daydream and surf the net. i also still got 15 days of leave+off to clear until the end of the year. so yeaaa, i can’t wait for December, for block leave, for Christmas. i am optimistic that ‘09 will still be a good year after all :)

How nice

if everyone can be healthy like our Minister Mentor.

In some sense, we are the epitome of carefreeness

Recently, the bunk got messier. Thanks to the comfortable resting area as seen right in the center of the bunk.

also really addicted to PSP games. i think its sinful to spend too much free time PSP-ing. i got a PSP too, and its probably the only PSP in the battalion that has NO games at all, zero. instead, its 4GB of youtube goodness, and some of the nicer random photos i took before.

i am now a fan of Girls Generation, this group of 9 Korean girls. they are superb dancers, got some really catchy tunes, and can be either cute or sexy. you just gotta love them!

Girls Generation- Gee (SUPER CUTE)

Girls Generation- Tell Me Your Wish (DAMN SEXY)

we are also still trying our best everyday to make Raymond’s back straight. he has got some serious issues with his posture and we are all very worried for him, therefore the extreme measures.

K.K is going off for a leg operation. we show our ‘i got your back’ love, quite literally.

K.K, I and Jin Yuan. Jin Yuan is going to extract his wisdom tooth and be on M.C for a whole week, which means i got to take over his finance job. bad news cause i really know nothing much about the system.

we quite lovee to cam-whore actually.

9 more months to ORD. lets enjoy NS while it lasts!

Say you love me!

hello, i hope everyone is doing great! i am on 2 days M.C at home, resting a bout of flu, and nothing feels better than to indulge in the comfort of home. after all, home is really the sweetest place to be at. fast huh, i have actually served more than a good half of my 2 years national service already. the year has been, so far so good i guess. with everyones’ effort, we have cultivated a second home at our bunk, with good humour as foundation and the ‘i-got-your-back’ spirit as building stones. if you ask me, i think its the perfect balance and i bet i am probably staying in the best bunk in the entire SAF.  i know how lucky i am to be surrounded by this bunch of great guys, really.

10 more months to ORD and we are already talking about how we will really miss the army lifestyle. then again, no doubt its thrilling to think about the prospect of regaining the freedom to go overseas own time own target style. i have been reading up on destinations and travel is definitely top on my list after i ORD. of course, there is also the serious topic of education, you know getting a degree. i am thinking about it and thinking about it, we will see how it goes then. all right, time to sleep. i am really conditioned to sleep after 11pm nowadays. take good care, my friend!

Recently,

i like to keep things to myself.

The people who make everyday possible

Race the night

on my way home today, the taxi uncle asked if i am Malay. a bit on the random side, but then again, understandable, thanks to my fresh tan acquired from the past 3 days of outfield activities. it could also be due to the fact that i wasn’t responding to my 2 other friends rather hilarious racist conversation. i was really tired plus i am almost always grumpy on long bumpy taxi rides.

the Adidas Sundown Marathon race is finally here, after i registered myself since early February. the race will flag off tomorrow night at 11.59pm and i am really looking forward to the 42.195km run. i haven’t had the chance to train as much as i would have loved to but i am still pretty confident of completing the distance tomorrow, unless a really nasty injury knocks me out in the middle of the run. i really do enjoy the feeling of being drenched in sweat after a hard run nowadays, the feeling is seriously damn shiokk.

June will be a good month :)

Protected: The stolen roll (part II)

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The stolen roll (part I)

i shot a secret roll at India, with my family’s old Yashica compact camera.

these girls collect all kinds of random items in their baskets. our unwanted water bottles, cow dungs, strings and whatever not. they will then balance the basket of items on their head as they walk away. the boys seem to lead a more carefree life. they know where our training grounds are exactly, and will appear every single day to ask for biscuits.

one of the most amazing scenes i came across at India was this. a family herding about 50 camels to another location for greener pastures, presumably. all their luggages were on the camels while the entire family of men, women, and kids just kept walking and walking.

part II is a more exciting series on vehicles and stuff.  i will have to lock the post up since i am pretty sure some of the pictures cannot be posted openly. ask me for password!

Life in HQ

May is going to be a relatively busy month for me. the combat company i am attached to is on 4NTM standby duty, which stands for 4 hours notice to move out once we are activated. as such, we have all been busy preparing our vehicles, putting our equipments in place and stuff. the biggest problem i face is communication with my driver.

i just don’t get him sometimes, or rather, lets say, most of the time. he is always in his own world and is probably the most incredibly stubborn person i have ever met. i don’t know, but sometimes his behaviour really makes me suspect he is mildly autistic. even though i am already pretty used to his working style, he still never fails to push me to my limits every now and then. owell.

come May, i will have served NS for 11 months! time flies man, i will be a 1 year soldier soon, half way through National Service and counting now to ORD, ever patiently.

i have some random pictures to share, of my bunk and the people i live, eat, and shit with. really precious images k, cause cameras are usually not allowed in camp.

our 8 men bunk.

i admit i am the messiest guy in the bunk, messy but not dirty k.

also the bubble tea addict, bubble tea makes me happy. battalion’s top 42 runners get a can of 100 plus each, courtesy of Commanding Officer. i came in 39th that day, yeahh, i know, damn cheapskate.

damn typical relac scene in bunk.

we will be bidding farewell to these camouflage uniforms. next week, we will all don the new pixelised camouflage uniforms, i swear they are damn fucking ugly.

people always comment i look nothing like the guy in the picture.

my buddy. his character is something like the quirky retro guy pasted on his cupboard.

and sadly, maybe gay.

one of the reasons why we all look forward to May. Raymond is in the background, he is the one with the legendary tattooed dick. AHA, insider joke. kidding k.  i don’t think his dick is really tattooed.

i found a puppy loitering at our block the other day. it was sooooooooo damn small and cute!

we couldn’t find his mum, so had to take him in for the night.

vick was nice enough to adopt and bring him home the next day :)

end with a group picture of HQ S4 branch :))

Cheap thrill

its battalion’s CO’s (Commanding Officer)  evening. they got the SAF’s Music and Drama Club to come in to do their dance and songs and stuff. not to forget really lame and cheap-thrill games like cross dressing. i am not suppose to be in the mess room now, using the internet when everyone is suppose to be at the hall. you see, you can do anything, but just don’t get caught, like the rats. we caught two healthy rats on the first night of action. the cage that i bet on got one of the rats, so i get 6 apple shooters the next time the boys head to zouk. i can either drink them myself or arrow someone else to drink them.

i love cheap thrills.

Gonna catch them all

i just helped my camp bought 10 rat traps. those metal cage kind whereby you hang a bait in there, then wait for things to happen. i must have looked stupid walking through the neighbourhood with 10 rat traps. people looked at me as though they haven’t actually seen a rat trap before. well, some of the students probably really haven’t, but i am sure they could at least identify those as rat traps. the daughter of the boss was pretty pretty, and nice. she told me i can consider using dried cuttlefish as bait. the trick is to burn the cuttlefish first, to intensify and saturate the ‘aroma’ of the cuttlefish. if i fail to catch a rat after a couple of days, i should lay the base of the trap with a piece of cardboard. rats nowadays are smart enough to analyse the terrain and not enter a rat trap despite the seduction of the bait. we had such a good chat, she was happy enough to give me a 10% discount. which is equivalent to buying 9 and getting 1 free, not bad at all. hopefully they manage to catch some rats with the trap.

:S

the battalion is going for its first full troop exercise. oh man, not counting India, i haven’t been outfield since my Tekong field camp! its been a good 8 months since i last chiong sua~  hope i don’t get lost out there since my topo skills still ain’t quite there yet. other than being the vehicle commander, i am also the photographer again, yay. not too bad being a Armour soldier, i get to load all these up my vehicle, such a blessing (: bet Hafiz will be so jealous. (must remember to add in 2 cans of rambutan/pineapple and longan)

Reminder

march is drawing to an end, which means a quarter of the year has passed silently. following up, there will be Good Friday and Labour Day to look forward to. then, the grand occasion of being a 1 year soldier come 12 June. people who have been through National Service always advise me not to count the days. it has the effect of making time go by slower, or so they say. but this school of thought seriously doesn’t quite applies on me. the more i look at the calendar and plan ahead, the more i realise time is passing really fast.

no doubt, i look forward to ORD, to finishing an important phase of my life. but i am also worried about not emerging the better person i set myself out to be before i enlisted. i am scared, of time passing too fast, too subconsciously.

1 year 2 months to ORD. who says its a lot of time? not for me, i got a lot on my agenda.

Taj Mahal

Taj Mahal was incredible. i was there for an hour, running around like a crazy hyper-active kid with his camera. its a pity that over the years, pollution has caused the white marble monument to take on a yellowish tint. nevertheless, the Taj is majestic and beautiful. it wasn’t easy to photograph the Taj. it was really crowded when i was there and there were lots of exposure decisions to make :S but i am really glad to have been there, bonus being the sunset! the next day, we went to Agra Fort. from Agra Fort, the Taj was there in the distance, basked in the glory of early sunrise. really a scene to behold, i only wish i had more time there. owell, perhaps i will visit the Taj again next time.

Incredible India!

i am all packed and ready to go. frankly speaking, i am feeling pretty neutural about the whole trip. neither am i terribly excited nor worried about stuff like food, accomdation and the training. i just can’t wait to see Taj Mahal, Agra Fort and experience the railway of Delhi!

YSS photographers

its been almost 2 years since i joined the YSS photography group. beyond photography, there are so many others things i learned from this bunch of guys. thank you for all the guidance, advice and love. cheers to our friendship!

First Marathon

Dear Jia Jie Tok

Thank you. You have registered for Adidas Sundown Marathon 2009 successfully. The Confirmation Slip below is for your reference. Please kindly print it out for your race pack collection.

ADIDAS SUNDOWN MARATHON 2009

Name to appear in certificate Gender Jia Jie Tok Male Race ID Race Category 42M10126 Marathon (42.195KM) – Men\’s Open

OHH PLEASE

WAHLAUEH, I AM SERIOUSLY GRUMPY ENOUGH AND I GOT TO LOSE ALL THE BRILLIANT STUFF THAT I JUST TYPED AT HOLY 3AM.

THEY ALWAYS PROMPT ME IF I ACCIDENTALLY HIT ON ANYTHING THAT NAVIGATES ME FROM THE ADD-NEW-POST PAGE. THEY ALWAYS USED TO AUTO SAVE A DRAFT PRETTY EFFECTIVELY. WHAT HAPPENED THIS TIME??

FUCK IT AND GIVE ME A BREAK MAN.

Protected: The Master Plan

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Gong Xi Huatttt Cai

Protected: Its impossible to express such emotions

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I am soooooo happy, I feel like crying.