They say everyone should have a goal in life

So, I was at hmv listening to an album when someone called me on my handphone, and reminded me I have a 24-hr stay-in duty the following day. They dont leave you alone, this military organisation, they dont stop ruining your life in every possible way.

I consumed 5 days of leave over the past week. Here's what I did, in a nutshell:

* Played computer games
* Retuned my body clock to a 2am-8am sleeping period
* Had my first morning jog in months
* Read the papers. (Not skim through it)
* Casino Royale and Happy Feet. Crystal Jade. Love town on weekdays.
* Completed Why read the Classics? and The Elephant Vanishes
* Bought Kafka on the Shore and The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl
* Bought U2's Best Singles Album--at long last
* Listened to Keane, Travis, and other pop-rock artistes while lazing about on the bed in the afternoons. Delightful.
* Made some progress in some writings
* Lunch and high tea at some hongkong cafe. Was cold, was drizzling outside. Talked alot.

A simple stayover at my place later on. Duty starts tomorow. Sunday gone. Back to work thereafter. Question: Why must a stayover be arranged on the night before a weekend duty, where I've got to wake up early? Because the army ruins your life in every possible way.

Casino Royale is nice. A trifle bit more emotions, a trifle bit more twists, loads of first-rate action. Makes me want to play poker now. Daniel Craig isn't so bad, he grows on you. Still prefer Pierce Brosnan though.

Happy Feet is ok. Impressive visuals, plot ran smoothly though its depth could be questioned (what were you expecting anyway?). Like Ramone. Mumble should have just died in the zoo enclosure.

Here's a track by U2. It's the kind of people's classic that everyone should have heard before. Nothing suave, nothing impressive, but it stays with you on lazy afternoons and the like. I believe I would be singing it when Im 73 years old. Speaking of which Im going to need to earn US$100 million to buy myself a 21-day stay in space. Help would be much appreciated. My birthday's on the first of june.

Religious people how?

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic.

If you were in a position where you have to kill an innocent child to save a million lives, would you do it? In all probability, I dont think you would. Humans are weak. We have emotions, and in cases such as this they corrupt our rationality. The irony is that even when equipped with this prior judgement we find ourselves hesitant to commit the act. We would find ourselves grieving over the loss of that one life instead of celebrating the continuation of a million others.

I posed this question to several of my friends and in return they asked me many others. Are they sinful people, for example, are friends and family members included in that group for another. It's almost as if there's a need to contemplate the weight of a life against a million others. Or perhaps they were just delaying the final decision they know they will ultimately make. It's like we need to find some kind of justification for the death of that 1 child when the statistical difference is all the justification that should really matter.

Haha

..the Lunar nobility go around naked and as if this was not enough they carry round their waist a bronze pendant in the shape of the male member. ' " This custom seems so extraordinary to me," I said to my young guide, "because in our world the sign of nobility is to carry a sword." But he was not astonished at this and simply exclaimed: "My little man, how fanatical are the grandees of your world, wanting to display a weopon which symbolises the executioner and is only designed to destroy us, in short the sworn enemy of all that lives, whereas they want to hide the member without which we would not be alive at all, the Prometheus of all living beings, the indefatigable healer of all nature's weaknesses! What an unfortunate land yours is, in which the symbols of procreation are the object of shame while those of destruction are held in honour! And yet you call that member the 'shameful parts', as though there were something more glorious than giving life and something more infamous than taking it away!" '

- Cyrano, as cited by Italo Calvino in Why Read the Classics?

Funny as it is, he does have a point there..

Only God's love is true.

Um.

Remember to start saving money

365 days from today, we're going overseas. Possible destinations include Europe, Japan and Australia. It would be a good break. I know it would be. It better be. Because 365 days is a long wait. I know at the end of it all it will seem short but at the start of it all it seems long. Very long. Way too long. It won't be over before you know it because you'll be dragging your feet everywhere you go. Time only passes fast when you're on the fly. When you're flying. But it's not easy to fly. It's easy to catch a flight but it's not easy to fly by yourself. Can you fly? I doubt you can.

Because if you could you wouldnt be reading this. You would be out there somewhere among the clouds flying. You would be flying over the icy peaks of Kilimanjaro or the Himalayas. You would be flying over the Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon and looking at all the little specks on the ground pointing at this and that with their mouths agape. You would be flying to the West End to catch a play by Shakespeare before settling down for some Wagnerian music in Germany. You would be having an American breakfast, danish cheese and mongolian milk by morning; raw salmon, salisbury steak and english scones by afternoon; shark's fin, belgium chocolates, turkish sorbet and scotch whiskey by night, after which you would be flying to the North Pole for a spectacular sight. You know what's that spectacular sight don't you. You know it. Alot of us here know it. It's just that we'll never see it in our lifetimes because we can't fly.

365 days from now, we're going overseas . Remember to start saving money.

Hmm

A superior of mine once uncheerfully commented that, throughout his 2 year course of serving the nation, he had only scraped up 7 days of offs. In the next 12 months of slavery to the SAF I intend to double that number through whatever means I have at my disposal. Under this new initiative I will be looking forward to, on average, 1 day off every 4 weeks, and there is certainly no reason why I should not strive to improve this target to 1 day off every 2 weeks in the time to come.

I hate the army. Ive never wanted to get away from anything so much in my entire life, talkative females included.

On my way home I accompanied a friend to a temple and took a divinity lot out of curiosity's sake. It read: "Imagine a mirror one thousand years old were to brighten again", and I thought that sounded quite poetic.