Holiday!

Upon entering the alternate reality, when we have no idea what's in store for us, it's a rite of passage for almost all to go on a sweet holiday package not offered to outsiders. Information as follows, take a brochure!

16D/15N Te Kong Delight

offering:

• unspoilt greenery

Trek through the unspoilt primary jungles of Singapore, witness the good, the bad, and the nasty (mother big centipedes that can bite off an ass or two). These jungles are also where you will learn your camping skills and attempt to do stargazing at night.

• swimming pool with sea view

This is quite impressive, it's the only swimming pool in singapore with a sea view. Too bad it's not often that we use it.

• guided tour along Te Kong coastline

This takes place quite early on to introduce the various amenities available to tourists. Subsequently, every morning you are able to enjoy the scenic view when you do a leisurely jog as part of the health and fitness programme.

• all meals included

Can't say the food's good, but it's free what more can you ask for?

• modern department store

This store has most modern conveniences that one needs, but the queer thing is that most of the things are in green or black, but these colours are always in fashion so not to worry.

• watch sunset and stars with friends

So throughout the course of the package, there'll be some ceremonies that occur in the evening and this is the time when you can just stand there and look at the stars. If you're wondering why i keep talking about stargazing, it's because there are so many you can see, as opposed to singapore.

• training programme for optimum fitness

You also have a fitness programme that is tailored for you. It's really progressive training.

• Life coaches with many years of experience

This is of course the best part. It's always the people that make the difference. And the wisdom of the coaches cannot be questioned. Here's their various snippets of wisdom in reaction to everyday events.

When some bugger does something stupid:
"stupid got no medicine".
A profound observation that, in spite of all the advances in medicine and technology, there's no cure for stupidity. With that, he has identified a global problem of vast scale that modern society has not even begun to solve. An oblique critique of the medical system today.

Fun fact of the day:
"by the way, fuck backside very pain".
Yea the lesson ended with this very random and totally irrelevant fun fact. But nonetheless enlightening. I mean, who would know before he said it?

Philosophy on love:
"True love is injection in the middle section without objection"
The source of heated debate for centuries, and we're no closer to an answer, but the coach gives his esteemed opinion.

Scolding someone:
"defunct sperm product"
Finally, one insult that insults the father. Mothers have been having it bad what with all the insults like motherfucker and son of a bitch. This is the age of gender equality.

Praising someone:
"Jonathan's a good boy, he's a virgin"
We didn't really have to know that.

On patience:
"of course must wait la, even pregnant also must wait 9 months"
The usual response to something like this is laughter, then '...' then??? what the hell does pregnancy have to do with anything we're doing?

Synonym for "All of you guys":
"Every father's mother's son"
I have no idea why they would substitute a shorter phrase for a longer phrase, but i assume it's to add emphasis on who they're addressing, and to wake up the people who are sleeping before continuing.

On pain:
"Fuck also pain, no pain no gain, the beauty is at the end"
a rather warped way of using no pain no gain, but effective in conveying the message.

On the wrong attitude:
"Everyday wake up 'Cheebye another day!'"
A comical way of depicting pessimists, but a gross exaggeration because even the diehard pessimists don't start cursing first thing in the morning. But i can imagine this is a good way to vent it when life really sucks that much.


And of course, when inspired by such great language, even young guys come up with memorable quotes.
King kenny:
"The worst 3 days of my life are coming to an end...the 4th is about to start"
well king kenny wasn't exactly an optimist, but this is very quotable.

Come to think of it, despite the fact that virtually all the quotes are grammatically flawed, it was a great lesson on effective communication.

So it was quite an attractive package, though it paled in comparison to the Brunei Bonanza and the Thailand Thong Party that were to follow in terms of adventure. Well, personally i gained some insights after going on Te Kong Delight. Some of them confirm the way i see the world, some of them adjust the way i see the world, and some of them turn me upside down and make me see the world that way.

Hygiene:
The package taught me that hygiene really isn't important. If i already said that in previous posts, i was kidding then. So this time, my hands and fingernails were muddy and all, and water was really meant for drinking, not washing, so with my muddy hands, i took a biscuit and popped it into my mouth. One day, two days, nope no diarrhea. So essentially, all the things that we do for hygiene in our everyday life are somewhat redundant.

Hair:
Have you wondered why Singapore has failed to produce a single rock star? Yea, actors, playwrights, poets, we have them all, but why no rock star, or at least one that i have heard of? That's because singapore guys have a serious lack of hair. Rock stars need hair, because

a) they need to cover up their ugly faces, if only for a moment
b) it can amplify the fact that their heads are grooving along to the music too. In a music hall, if you're botak, the audience sitting some distance away can't really tell whether you're moving your head along or not.
c) hair allows them to have more choices for fashion. If you have hair, you can dye your hair a rainbow hue, come up with funny hairstyles like 10 pigtails, but if you're botak, what are you going to do, paint your head?

Unfortunately, fate hasn't been kind to singaporean guys. Since young, there has been strict hair discipline. In school, there are always hair checks, and the sad thing is you don't know how mild the punishments actually are until you have graduated from school. For example, schools can give you detention but they can't give you confinement. So, in schools, we cut hair, and in te kong, we shave hair, and after that it's too late to be a rock star, or the testosterone catches up and theres a receding hairline. So that's why Singapore has no rock stars!

I Love Parades!

One thing about the alternate reality is that there are many different types of parades. But generally, a parade involves you showing yourself off to someone, presenting the best possible image. Still they differ greatly.

a) defaulter's parade

The tradition of this parade began in 1883 in the British Army, when a soldier was unable to repay his debt to his comrade, and was made to march at fast pace around the camp as punishment. Thus evolved the practice of employing defaulter's parade as the preferred form of punishment for stupid offences. Today, proud participants of the defaulter's parade hold their heads up high as they march at breakneck pace and turn round and round on the spot and then vomit. Yes it's that violent.

b) show parade

Just as the name suggests, it's for show. That's for offences like if you show up in slippers, with an ugly afro, an ugly mohawk or the like. Then you'd have to rectify your problem (trim your afro into the shape of a helmet) or say you're sikh and then show the guy who punished you what a changed man you are.

c) passing out parade

I always had this idea that the passing out parade would be a mass of people fainting at the same time, kinda like a party where everyone overdoses at the same moment, though that would take some coincidence. But it's not. Passing out parade usually means you can finally get out of the place you trained in, usually not known as a happy place.

d) master parade

Master parade is just a parade conducted when the dude feels like it. So you dress your best, and try to be the cellophane man in chicago, meaning invisible. No long hair, nothing out of place. And pray that no fire burns (means no weekend burn)

e) commissioning parade

The greatest thing that the commissioning parade has taught me is that a great mass of people doing the same action, whatever that action may be, makes for a great spectacle. So let's say you have 500 people on parade, and they all scratch their asses in the same way at the same time, that would make for a great show too. That is the power of military precision. At the same time, it tells me that people only watch the first few rows, and if you're at the back, you can pretty much screw up the parade anyway you want cos nobody cares. But we all screwed up anyway.

Explorations of the Alternate Reality

Blogging is like taking a dump. Except that i take a dump way more often than i blog. Hopefully, this exception can be remedied by the inspiration that the travels into the alternate reality has given me. 5 notebooks worth of shit, that's how much inspiration i have, it's a miracle i'm not exploding. Now i shall state a fact about the alternate reality.

In the alternate reality, different species wear berets of different colours. These are seemingly random choices coming out from crayola colours, but they are not. The colours are in fact an ingenious contingency plan in case electricty fails. Do take a look at the following pictures.
























Traffic lights! Sorry, wanted to use some real pictures but couldn't find any.

Something out of nothing

Q: What happens when a few young officer cadets get commissioned by the President?

A: They go right back to a blog that has been long dead and try to revive it, because as second lieutenants of the Singapore Armed Forces, it is their duty to be responsible for the training and welfare of the men that they are in charge of.

--

Okay that might be somewhat random. The question doesn't make any sense, and neither does the answer. And you might be thinking a blog isn't exactly a man. True that.

Then again we at TCS believe that everything occurs illogically, thus whether the past few paragraphs makes sense or not is immaterial.

What matters is that we're back. Back and hopefully here to stay.

Like a group of soldiers watching as the sky darkens and a heavy downpour commences, delaying their start to yet another tiring exercise. They know that the rain is back, and hopefully here to stay.

It's never easy to start posting again. You might not know it but actually I've been trying to post since Sunday - because I haven't posted for too long. I have this theory that blogging is like taking a dump.

(Please don't read on if you just had your meal.)

If you don't shit for too long, you get constipation. Same thing in blogging. Therefore it can be pointed out correctly that I am suffering from blog-stipation. Just look at how I type (granted you can't see so I can lie to you anyway) - I'm typing slowly, jerkily and wondering what comes next.

If you eat the wrong food, you get diarrhoea. Referring to my earlier posts, a dose of something nasty or amusing sets me off. I get all excited and post like I've never owned a blog before. Maybe I'd offer you a post worth ten finger-rolls of the mouse. That is bloggrea.

Quite so, yes.

Well YL and I were chatting a little, trying to see who could be inspired enough to post. He made an effort to post just there, but he didn't want to show off his new post yet so he saved as draft. That is called holding it in, or the hokkien peng would call "kek" - which suspiciously sounds like the.. thing produced from the above-mentioned metaphor.

It shows that as long as you have the determination and effort, you can always hold your crap in.

As for me, I'm bone dry of inspiration but I opened the Blogger window. And I made sure I had to type something. That's like going to the toilet and camping there, knowing that after so much constipation you just have to shit out something.

And here you are. The effort will pay off, trust me.

(This experience is similar to what I had back in SAFTI. I really could not force anything out in the excessively smelly toilets of Delta Wing but upon applying brute force and camping in the toilet, I finally did it. Even though it wasn't much it's better than nothing.)

Don't let constipation beat you. Make sure you have a healthy.. toxin-clearing habit.

Blog-stipation won't last forever. We're going to have healthy blogging habits.

Watch this space, this post will be going down, down all the way to the bottom of the page. Just like the s**t being flushed down to the bottom of the sewage.

We are back. (if Rockson can post once a year well SO CAN WE.)