Pkchukiss – Reality Wine

A commenter left this under The Temasek Review’s report on the school fee hike for PRs in order to hype up a sense of exclusivity of citizenship. I find this so apt. If you treat your own people badly, what makes you think that the new people you’ve attracted would think about coming under your wing?

The Goatherd And The Wild Goats

A Goatherd, driving his flock from their pasture at eventide, found some Wild Goats mingled among them, and shut them up together with his own for the night. The next day it snowed very hard, so that he could not take the herd to their usual feeding places, but was obliged to keep them in the fold.

He gave his own goats just sufficient food to keep them alive, but fed the strangers more abundantly in the hope of enticing them to stay with him and of making them his own. When the thaw set in, he led them all out to feed, and the Wild Goats scampered away as fast as they could to the mountains.

The Goatherd scolded them for their ingratitude in leaving him, when during the storm he had taken more care of them than of his own herd.

One of them, turning about, said to him: “That is the very reason why we are so cautious; for if you yesterday treated us better than the Goats you have had so long, it is plain also that if others came after us, you would in the same manner prefer them to ourselves.”

[Comment on Temasek Review's article on measure to hike school fees for PRs]

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From Techcrunch’s article about the fallen partnership between Fusion Garage, and themselves:

We didn’t learn about this until last Summer because Singapore media, including blogs, are largely controlled by the government. Embarrassing stuff just isn’t reported.

I’m a Singaporean, I blog. Therefore, my blog must largely be controlled by the government.

Now, why the hell am I paying for my web hosting? The government should be paying for it, since they are controlling what I’m writing. Oh yes, and I’m being controlled to say that “Michael Arrington sucks!”

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It doesn’t have to be to put them out of power. yaevlejunce‘s article succinctly summarises the arguments for voting against the PAP in the next elections.

I, for one am keeping my vote a secret. Privacy mah.

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Going back to army produces this fundamental shift in your core being as to make you a less effective thinker. I mean, who else walks to the SAF e-mart, purchases some running shorts, queues up, pays for it, leaves the e-mart, goes to the canteen for teh-bing, and then goes back to the e-mart to buy running t-shirts?

I mean, it is perfectly reasonable to expect a person to report to location A, board a vehicle to location B, retrieve certain equipment, return to location A, wait for something to happen, board vehicle to location B again to return the equipment, then board the vehicle back to location A again, and then leave for home from there. Isn’t it?

Engaging the mental faculty while inside reservist has its use, and is needed if the entire platoon just wants to finish everything, and then go back up to bunk to sleep. I, for one dread thinking whenever I go back. Because the first thing that comes to my mind is the utter grit and dirt of jungle activities. The sweat and dirt really gets to you if you allow it to creep in to your mind, because that’s almost all you really can think of when you’re spending hours outside in the field.

Gu-niang-ness aside, thinking about it just causes me to yearn for the clean and breezy bed at home (or even back in bunk). Keep it up for a few hours, and it is enough to drive a sane person crazy. So, to maintain a healthy mind, many of us switch off mentally while we’re out in the field.

The trouble comes when reservist ends, and I have to re-engage my gears for work. Hell, it’s real work that I’m being paid for, and my passion; but keeping the brain on brakes for one week would have really created a metaphorical hurdle for me to cross. And that hurdle is the inertia that’s keeping me from really getting up to speed. I expect to shake off the sluggish feeling soon with enough time, and dive back in to the flow of things back at work, but it’s really, really uncomfortable to be shifting gears like that.

Thankfully, reservist comes once a year; if it came more often than that, I’m going to have to change my handling strategies. Maybe bitch about reservist more on my blog.

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It’s that time of the year, and I’m not referring to Christmas.

That’s because it’s time to wear green and stop thinking again

Ah… Wait, I’m in reservist, so why should I stop thinking? I can think about what food and games to bring in to play next week. Someone’s already bringing Saboteur, so what can I bring? Any suggestions?

My major agenda for this in-camp training is to pass my IPPT. Because I sure as hell don’t want to go for RT. Imagine dragging yourself down to one of the three RT centres located far away from civilisation, immediately after work? No thanks, that would really kill me.

To prepare, I’ve been doing 2.4km runs 3 times a week, although my timings are still too damn poor. I’ve also switched to a new running route, because I hope that a change in scenery will signify a new start? I don’t know. I did a manual measurement of the distance once (it’s a 3-lap of a 4 minute-a-lap route), which brings it up to approximately 2.4 km.

Erm. I hope.

Because my last timing was 12 min 56sec, and I really, really hope that I’ve been covering at least the full 2.4km. Short of running on a stadium track, there’s absolutely no way for me to know.

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