Archive for March, 2006
Apple and Orange
In a letter to ST's Life!Mailbag today, a Mr Jonathan Boon wrote that rising diesel prices is not an excuse for the sneaky tactic of waiting for booking during peak hours and quote "consumer shouldn't pay for the driver's inability to negotiate with the taxi company for lower rental" unquote. Then he went on to compare how the fuel prices are up but bus fares are not raised… Hellooo. Not happy right? Take bus la, or even better, drive your own car and let me take the taxi that you've snatched from me… From what I heard during taxi trips, taxi driving is a cut-throat business. While that does not justify the the sneaky tactics employed but hey, its a fact of life and some people will do that… And don't compare bus fare with cab fare… You want comfort, you pay premium… Don't compare apples with oranges… Now I bet the members of PTC are thinking: "Hmmm… I think its time for another fare hike, since the fuel prices are up." And next year the bus companies will post another record profit…
Republic of Singapore Mosquito Force
The mosquitoes over at Lim Chu Kang are sure damn fierce… Had a two day exercise there on Thursday and Friday and didn’t slept a wink on Thursday night… The mosquitoes were all over me, literally… I tried applying SAF insect repellent, didn’t work… Smoke out, didn’t work. Those damn things are pretty persistent. Not only the bites were irritating, their incessant buzzing around were too much… Simply too much… Ended up having to put on ear plugs before I get about an hour of sleep before day break… One of the worst night of my life… Their bites are extra potent too… My lips were super swollen at daybreak… And the swelling didn’t ease off completely till Friday night. The bite marks are still itching… Even today… Grrrr… I think we need to harness these mosquitoes and integrate it into our army… They’re a force to be reckoned with… We could fight and win any war with those mosquitoes…
Basic Theory
Finally hauled my lazy ass over to BBDC tonight to sign up as a private student to take my theory tests. Waited quite long for the registration and booked a test date on the 8th of May. Still quite a while away and since I’ve taken the Highway Code test in the Army, it shouldn’t be a problem for me.
Attack of the O RLY? owls
Was searching for the O RLY? owl when I came across this pics at O RLY OWLS. Pretty funny. (Yes, I do have *that* much time)
*Update* The old link went down… Here’s another site http://www.orlyowl.com/
PS: Sorry for the missing pictures… I forgot to relink when my webhost went down… Now its up! Hosted by wordpress
Burn baby, burn
A couple of stuff got burned today. Firstly, its my saturday… It was taken up by the battalion field live firing which I was involved in firing the GPMG. Went to Kidney Hill at SAFTI Live Firing Area this morning to shoot the GPMG. As usual with SAF doctrine, we were told that the bus will be moving off at 0630 and we were to fall in by 0600. Ended up we didn’t leave camp until 0700… Talk about “Rush to wait, wait to rush”… Fired at total of 250 rounds at one go. Felt quite shiok, its not everyday that you get to fire live rounds and its not at every live shoot that you get to fire 250 rounds at one go. Burned my finger next while trying to remove the MG from the tripod mount… Although any idiot would know that the MG would be fricking hot after shooting off 500 rounds but I had to depress the handle catch to straighten up the handle and remove the MG properly… So… OUCH! The next thing that got burned was E-Shaped Knoll at SAFTI LFA, the ‘butt area’ of our live shoot. When I left the holding area at Kidney there was only a small flame and some smoke on the knoll due to the tracer rounds igniting the dry grass but when I got down of Kidney hill about an hour later after lunch, practically the whole knoll was on fire. Quite spectacular I must say. For the last time I went there, only a small part of knoll caught fire and when I get to see it, the fire had been put out and left with only a small burnt patch. This time, the fire was still raging when I left the area.
The Roof is on Fire
Bird flu blues
Saw these two ads on Banter yesterday when I went to Harry’s at Esplanade with Hairol. The ads are about AIDS awareness and the captions are pretty funny.
Exercise your music muscle
Kenny sent me this interesting wallpaper the other day from Virgin Digital. It is made up of the graphic representation of different musical band and artistes. So far I’ve made out a couple of them. Bands like Sex pistol, Gorillaz, Pet Shop Boys, Scissors Sisters, Smashing Pumpkins etc. See how many can you spot 😀
*Update*
So its the hundredth time you’ve seen the wallpaper. You’ve cracked your brains out and still can’t figure out most of the answer. Well, you don’t have to pull your hair out now, here’s the answer, Virgin – Exercise Your Music Muscle – Solved.
*Update 2*
The music video to Exercise your Music Muscle. This one is harder… Only managed to spot “I shot the Sheriff” and “Hotel California”
Enjoy the run
The battalion conducted a 10KM run at ECP today so we booked out from camp at around 2pm and headed to ECP.
It started off pretty normal, with the usual waiting and safety brief and such. Quite shagged out from the 10KM run actually, since the last time I ran anything more than 10KM is eons ago… My knees felt quite sore a few times during the run but other than that, everything is quite normal. Finished the run in around 65-70mins I believe. Not bad for someone who really sucked at running.
After the run, dark clouds started to form. Anyone with a hint of common sense will know that it is going to rain soon and they should release us. However, our CO decided that it is the best time to talk to the battalion and he went on to rant on how we should tuck in our singlet when we run and how we should not stop to walk during the run… Anyone who have seem the running attire would agree that the singlet looks better when you tuck it out and I suspect that it is supposed to be tucked out… And for the walking thing, imagine this, you just cross the half way mark and your knees are feeling painful, do you: A) Stop to walk and let your knee to recover or B) Continue running back to the end point… Next, he went on to regroup us and do the “Silent and Effective” bullshit… By the time the whole thing ended, it had started to rain and when I got to the shelter, it started pouring bucket loads of rain… Fearing that the rain might not stop soon, my buddies decided to walk in the rain to the East Coast Lagoon Food Centre. When we got there, we were all drenched… Silent and effective my ass…
Physiotherapy
Went to TTSH this morning for my first physio. The therapist there first asked me a couple of questions regarding my injury, how I sprained my ankle, how many times did I sprain it, etc. He also made me do a couple of exercise to observe my ankle and checked my ankle. What he told me was that I have a chronic sprain ankle and might need to have a reconstruction surgery done should it be serious but I should try out physio first and if it doesn’t work then surgery will be the last resort. Hopefully my injury isn’t serious enough to warrent a surgery…
IDed by an iPod
Saw this on HardOCP:
iPod Identifies the Unconscious
Apple saves the day yet again when some poor girl was hit, rendered unconscious, and thrown from the road. How did the authorities identify her? Her iPod of course!
Various San Francisco-based news outlets reported this week that police identified an unconscious jogger, who was an apparent hit-run-victim, by contacting Apple Computer and getting information from the iPod she was carrying.
Thankfully, they had her info in there and they were able to identify her. Let’s hope Apple will implement the “Get up and whoop the ass of the person who just hit me” feature in the next update.
Seems like other than being a cool MP3 player, it has some other uses too.