(I’ve always wanted to write a self-reflection kind of blog entry to express what I feel about these 1 year 10 months, and the things I’ve gone through during this period. Finally! Here it is!)

For some strange reason I wasn’t as ecstatic as I thought I would be at the moment I collected my pink IC. Maybe I have already ‘left’ the place long before that day. For the past few weeks, I have been busy preparing what I call the ‘post ORD life’.

ORD has never been a destination to me. It is really just a door to the endless possibilities ahead. Suddenly I’m considering to get a toilet roll  to write my to-do list on it.

The first few months during BMT was quite tough. It was all about following instructions and punishment. Spending most of the time being cut off from civilisation is something that I learnt to adapt (initially endure) quickly. I have to admit, I miss the fresh air at Tekong. Life became better after I left that place.

On the first week upon posting to my unit (which happens to be located right smack in the middle of a neighbourhood), I told my commanders that I was willing to help out with anything related to design. That is my passion and I was not going to let it extinguish without even trying. Fair enough, I got what I asked for. Subsequently, all design related tasks from unit to formation and even Army level were automatically given (or ‘recommended’) to me. Even though I spent most of my time designing, it was still considered my secondary job as my primary concern was still, army.

I worked real hard; I delivered quality designs on time. Eventually I earned respect and trust from various commanders, who allowed me to exercise more creative control and freedom than anyone else.

And because I worked too hard (=PPP), I was often awarded day offs. I was also awarded a Letter of Commendation, Best Soldier of the Month and 2 Gold IPPT Awards (I know I don’t look like the sort who can achieve this, but come on..). All thanks to my desire to keep in touch with art and design as much as possible, as well as efforts to keep fit.

Frankly speaking, I already miss the free ‘freeflow’ food and drinks inside, no matter how bad they can be sometimes. I miss the free facilities like gym and karaoke (The system allows you to rewind and pause the song! How cool is that?!).

What about those friendship and bonds I have forged inside? Well, the closest army friends that I care about have already left before me (some to overseas, some ORD). I miss chatting with them and our makansutra food trips to various places.

Now I wonder how the hell I am supposed to keep myself disciplined to maintain my fitness from now onwards. I want to get gold for IPPT again!

National Service has indeed opened my eyes and introduced me to all sorts of guys in Singapore. I’ve seen scums who are huge waste of space but also seen quite a number of great guys.

Have I changed much? I wonder.

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Movie Reviews

Iron Man 2

Not as awesome as the first, but this sequel is a ‘good-enough’ movie that manages to entertain and get you ready for the next instalment. My favourite part of the movie? Definitely the suitcase transformation part. I jizz in my pants every time I watch it/think about it.

Kick-Ass

I expected this movie to be different. It’s a superhero movie about a normal guy who tries to be ’super. In many ways I guess most people are able to relate to him, and it’s nice that they try to keep it as realistic and down-to-earth as possible, as compared to movies where characters have superhuman/miraculous powers. Halfway through, though, things start to become formulaic and less realistic -_-. If you haven’t known by now, almost everyone’s favourite character of the movie is Hit Girl. She’s goddamn awesome and more kick-ass than Kick-Ass.

One of the best ways to understand a foreign culture better is to visit their local shops: to know what they are famous for, what they are selling and how they are doing it.

And then you find out how they try to make foreigners understand them.

The very first step would be translating words from Chinese to English, in an effort to make the city more global-friendly.

Being bilingual helps because you can tell whether the translation really works. Haha.

Sometimes Samuel and I wondered, ‘Did they sometimes come up with an English name to ‘translate’ it into Chinese, or the other way round?’

After all, it’s safer to be correct in English and then sound ‘foreign’ in Chinese.

The ‘Rich’ below doesn’t mean ‘rich’ in its Chinese ‘translation’. The Chinese words that read ‘Li Qi’ mean, well, ‘Li Qi’!!

Neither does ‘Chick’ mean ‘Qi Ge’!

It’s usually wiser to have just one English word for your shop name because nothing can go wrong, unless you make a spelling mistake. When you have more than one word for your shop name, ahhh that’s risk-taking!

Without examining the words closely, the first word kind of resembles ‘bullshit’:

This doesn’t really make sense right?

After googling a bit I found out that those English words are actually different clothing brand names. The Chinese name says ‘Hundreds of bizarre’.

Qi Shi Mei Shoes.

As of today, no one is interested to ‘come’ and ‘buy’ their ‘world tea shop’ yet:

Hmm how do you pronounce this?

Emperor Hotel. In short, eh!!!!

There’s this stall that we saw in Jiu Fen that sells sausages. It’s called the ‘Invincible Sausages’.

What’s so unique about it is the way the stall owner carries her own brand!

Cute huh! No extra charges for photo-taking!

There’s even a huge sunflower hat hanging on her back.

I wonder how they came up with the brand name ‘Lobster With Big Eyes’

Did they hold a meeting and go like,

“Smiling Lobster?”

“Nah, too plain.”

“How about Smiling Lobster With Big Eyes And Glasses.”

“I like the Big Eyes part! Sounds good!”

“Let’s call it Lobster With Big Eyes then!”

…

We saw a Mario who finally shaved himself!

This looks slightly disturbing…

Sleeping bottle!

Oh! By the way, if you know typefaces that were used for Chinese Horror movie titles, you’d have noticed that they usually like to use those that look like they are written with blood. The broken and fluid-looking type.

Something like this:

Looking at titles like this makes you want to adopt a deep and eerie sounding voice to read it out isn’t it? 美容尸~~~…

Guess what we saw in Taiwan.

A SCARY BEAUTY SALON~:

A SCARY GRANDMA’S SHOP:

Hong recommends… ~~ GRANDMA’S SHOP ~~…….

Did they actually think that using this typeface makes the shop look more authentic and traditional? Turns out that all these made us think of horror movies instead. Haha!

Will you dare to go in?

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City of Men

City of Men isn’t better than City of God, but it’s not bad! Was hoping for a sad ending though, more realistic that way.

7 / 10