So, it is with great amounts of resistance that i decided to attend foc. i hope that by doing this, i appear bold, courageaous, daring and valiant, that i can be willing to move outside of my comfort zone inspite of my discomfort with the very notion of ‘orientation.’ pfft.

i can’t bail myself out if things go horribly wrong (for example, being discrimintated for my lack of rara-ness, which happened in vj o1 anyways), because what is worse than not attending foc, is being remembered by half the faculty as “the guy who left.” it is therefore, in poker terms, an ‘all in.’ unless of course, the situation gets so bad, that i cannot care less.

it is thus, with such precarious circumstances, that i walk through the valley of the shadow of death, armed with nothing but my ipod, a book and maybe denys, if he decides to not abandon me to relieve his ogl days with his group (somehow, that image appears more and more likely each time  i think about it.) and begin repacking my bags, just shortly after returning to the country.

at this point, attending foc makes me feel like a fish out of water, and also where there’s   nearby lair of 40 hungry cats. i’m really not too sure what i’m doing, but i have some small hope that things will work out.

Touch Your Heart.

there is alot to miss about the taiwan trip and already, i’m having withdrawals. but plans to remake this adventure in a range of countries is already under way.

it is unfortunate that i am not fully equiped with photos (it is difficult to expect more from 6 cat high boys. then again, we weren’t the only cat high boys on the flight) and i’ll leave the picture posting (of whatever pictures i have) on facebook, but these are some of the signposts in the trip.

the “cultural high” of the trip was without a doubt the contrast between the chiang kai shek memorial and the 2-28 museam.

The part of the C.K.S. memorial which seemed dedicated to idolizing C.K.S. in as an expensive a way as they knew how. the grandoise of the place and the lack of even the attempt at tactfulness was astonishing for one of the world’s most active democracies.

we were very fortunate to have a really good tour guide for the 2-28 museam, whom gave us quite a thorough run-through on taiwan’s history, from it’s colonial days under the spanish, portugese and most interestingly, japanese (the jap soldiers on our shores could’ve well been taiwanese) to cks’ arrival to the 2-28 incident (taiwan’s tiananmen) to where it is now. it shed light to the complex nature of what taiwan is, what it wants and it’s contraversial relationship with china. our tour guide was a volunteer and the museam evidently was not too rich. and yet, it managed to be alot more sincere and personal than all the glitter the cks (lincon-modelled) memorial could ever be.

and there were the nightmarkets.

which were open mid-afternoon anyways. (less crowded then too) most of the reasons we chose taiwan as our holiday destination could be found here: beef steaks so big they spill over your plates, mee swa, bbq meat on sticks, taiwanese prata, mountains of yong tau foo (i kid you not: mountains.), beef noodles at every corner, pau pau cha that dwarfes ours at half the price etc. did i also mention that their kfc’s egg tarts puts ours to shame?

additionally, shopping was very fulfilling (for those of us that came to shop anyways).

anyways, part of the reason why taiwan seemed to be such a livable place was because the locals treated us extremely well, and that kind of lifestyle, is supremely attractive. the taiwanese are probably inherently friendly people, but i also suspect that the fluency of our chinese (or lack of it) as well as the uncertainty of what nationality we were from (american was the most common, japanese sometimes, hong kong was pretty common too and even german once 0.0)  warranted us special treatment as fairly affluent tourists, which i also suspect, might have worked against our favour when we tried to bargain for stuff.

and we also met a couple of singaporeans,

most notably, michelle chia:D

and of course, there were the people that made it what it is.

and i don’t mean it in the cliche way that it may appear to be and this is why photos can never really capture the full essence of our experiences. mark’s swagger or his ’show of gratitude’ to the farmers; or why robin will forever be tagged to ‘wanna be hero’ from now on; or why lum is the hulk (you won’t like me when i’m hungry) etc. it was one helluva of an experience we had, and even though i don’t have photos to show for it, i constantly replay those moments in my head, sometimes chuckling, sometimes just little smiles, but mostly heartily laughing on the inside, wishing we could do that shit again.

ok, enough of that sappy stuff. i think it was a holiday much needed, at an extremely affordable price! now, it’s just back to work and looking forward to the next time we get to go do some crazy stuff.

And so, it is with almost no preparation that i will be embarking to taiwan tmr morning, part eager, part nervous and part worried about the unfinished business back home. i seriously i hope i am not turning into one of those insatiable workaholics.

“It’s an incredible thing to watch history unfold in real time.”

yeah.

finally, a music player with REAL storage capabilities. it is truly cruel to deny a guitarist (and quite a serious one too if i may say so myself) from any music on long bus rides home. but now, all is forgiven.

edit:
my 1st gen ipod has been dead a year now. it served me well.

moz: *pats mel gently on the head*
mel: my neurons my neurons!

-mel explains how 4 neurons are lost in each pat.

“privelleged revolutionaries.”

mmm.

Switchfoot – Vice Verses

Let the pacific laugh
Be on my epitaph
With it’s rising and falling
And after all, it’s just water
And I am just soul
With a body of water and bones

i had expressed my dissapointment with the year so far to a number of people and it is pointless to regurgitate, now especially at this point where, a single call has changed that trend of events, hopefully for a sustainable period of time. (note: upcoming driving test). hopefully for good.

it’s funny sometimes how we pretend to be superstitous about luck. maybe, it is just i who play pretend. i can never quite forget the facebook quiz i took a while ago (which philosopher are you) where they asked

“True or false? We cannot reason to faith in God, it is only a choice to be made.”

to which i pondered for a while but upon reading the pre-set answers, i found the following answer to so suitably sum up my thinking and perception in life: “Very true, but it still doesn’t prove that God exists.”

much to my pleasant surprise, i was jean paul sartre, which i have little doubt had to do with my answer for that question.

evidently, i believe God exists, but the way in whic it is no wonder that i find myself reading Nausea, a work i first became interested in following an extracted piece given to us for prac crit in jc1.

i have long suspected that i am not quite the same a person as i was pre-national service. and in a good way. which is why i have never dared to talk too much about it since i’d hate to give the army credit. but i realized, after a ‘wii marathon’ why is it i have become so oddly hardworking since enlisting.

it is simply because, upon enlisting, i  realized how very precsious the liberties that we exercise everyday as human beings are and are often taken for granted, most notably, time. i decided pretty early on that while they may take away 2 years of my life, i could still make the most of it, and since then, life has been the mission and time the damsel in distress. for every activity that i participate in, i must calculate the marginal benefit weighed against the marginal cost in time spent. i suppose, with uni starting in barely 2 months, a greater sense of urgency has emerged such that i cannot fully enjoy the experience of playing a senseless wii game for too long a period of time before the guilt starts to eat me up.

it is indeed tragic how one traumatic experience can ruin a life forever.