Just an Audio Clip

Just a few days back, while enjoying a 5 minutes lull from our back breaking project, my colleagues and I were listening to an audio file being played back on a friend's Nokia N-Gage.

It was hilarious, well at least my colleagues and I thought it was hilarious. The audio clip is about a local guy playing a mobilephone prank on a foreign worker here. We all laughed till our sides almost broke open. So I got my friend to send it to me via email.

I want to share this file with anyone who is interested in listening to it. I got the file hosted on Putfile - Free Multimedia Hosting.

However, the audio clip is full of vulgarities. Its the way the two fellas uttering the vulgarities that is funny. Please DO NOT access the audio file if vulgarities turn you off.

You have been warned. You can listen to the file directly by clicking here

Back to square one.

Ok, I've decided to change back to my original layout and design. Well, not exactly. I've removed the ads and other cumbersome javascripts.

The link style was adapted from Nic's Blog.

Not much posting for this week. Almost fully occupied with reading Lee Child's The Enemy.

N.A.S.A.

I think I've developed N.A.S.A - New Age Soldier Allergy.

As I've mentioned, I was on duty on Saturday. My shift was from 8am on Saturday till 8am today, Sunday.

This morning, one of my tasks was to dispatch 02 soldiers to another camp located elsewhere on the island at 0700hrs. One driver was detailed to drive them to their reporting location.

The standard arrangement was for these 3 guys to report to me at 0645hrs before I send them off at 0700hrs.

Well, the 2 soldiers reported to me at 0640hrs, all well and good, ready to depart. However, by 0650hrs, the driver was nowhere in sight. A call was made to the driver's company line office but his colleague said he was already on the way to report to me. So I waited.

At 0710hrs, I received a call. From the driver. Here was how the conversation went.

Driver: "Hello ? Ops Room ? I am the duty driver. The dispatch detail will be late 'cos it is raining heavily."

I was already irritated by the driver who did not report to me on time. I nearly exploded when I heard his "opening speech".

Me: "What ? Are you giving me an order ? Or are you instructing me what to do ?"

Driver: "No, no. Our superior say we can delay the detail if the weather condition is very bad."

Me: "Which superior ? What's his rank and name ?"

Driver: "Our Specialist"

Me: "Get him on the line"

Driver: "He's sleeping"

Me: "Do you have any printed instruction on what he said ?"

To which, the driver said: "Hello, I talked to you nicely. Could you talk nicely back to me ?"

That was the last straw for me. What right did he have to demand that I talk nicely to him ? Just because he talked nicely to me ? WTF ?

Me: "I want you to report to me right now. In the Ops Room. This is an order."

Driver: "Ok." Hey, whatever happened to "Yes, Sir!" ?

10 minutes later, in the Ops Room, the driver stood in front of me as if his backbone wasn't there. Alright, I could overlook this point. He walked in the rain to reach the Ops Room. However, he actually had the cheek to ask me again: "Staff, I talked to you nicely on the phone, can you talk to me nicely or not ?"

Me: "Why must I ? Do I owe you this courtesy ? "

Driver: "Yes! Because I talked to you nicely what, Staff."

I was really boiling over. I stared right into his eyes hard for a full minute and I said icily to him.

Me: "You were supposed to report to me at 0645hrs. Now the time is already 0720hrs. 2 soldiers are waiting for their dispatch and 2 other soldiers at another location are waiting for your vehicle to fetch them back so that they can book out and rest."

Driver retorted: "But I was already in camp at 0645hrs what. I was at my company line office."

Me: "You were already in camp by 0645hrs and why didn't you report to me then, instead at 0710hrs ?"

Driver: "Oh 'cos its raining what."

I almost bit his head off. Grrr...

Me: "You could have called me at 0645hrs and told me that its raining heavily and you wished to delay the dispatch. But you didn't. And you are asking me to talk to you nicely ?"

Realisation hit him and he looked down "Sorry staff. It was my fault."

Me: "Apologising to me is useless. You should apologise to the 4 soldiers who are all waiting for your vehicle. Go."

With that, he left.

What was that all about ? Soldiers nowadays are so pampered. Superiors can no longer scold or tell them off unnecessarily. Gone are the days when every order is responded with "Yes, Sir!" Now when an order is given, soldiers ask "Why ? " Back in the good ol' days, we would have been punished with at least 20 push-ups. Scold our young soldiers now, no matter inclusive of vulgarities or not, they'd run straight to their MPs and those who are directly involved in the scolding, would be investigated.

Perhaps I should have let it go. Or was the control freak in me trying to take over, just like what Alison commented ? I'm not sure myself. I mean, this is the military, for crying out loud. Its not like a walk in the park where people smile at one another and exchange polite greetings.

Anyway, I'm left with 20 more months of my contract, and I'm leaving. I've had enough of these "thinking soldiers".

Dreadful weekend coming up

I'm supposed to feel happy, relieved and relaxed because its Friday evening.

But I'm not feeling even one of those.

Its THAT time of the month again.

I'm going to be on a 24-Hr shift duty from Saturday 8am till Sunday 8am.

There goes my Saturday...

That's not all. I've got another one coming up on 26th Sept. That is not going to be as bad 'cos its a Monday.

Special Occasion

Today is a BIG BIG day ! Its my wife's birthday today. So I'm on leave. -wink-

To my dear wife, Lina, if you are reading this post,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY !!!

Oh sorry, that was in Webdings fonts. Haha. Here's the actual message :

HAPPY BIRTHDAY !!! *muack*

Formation Training

Remember my post "Air Weapon Training" ? What happened after that was my unit's Rifle Team came in 3rd placing. There were a total of 64 Rifle shooters from 8 different units. My score of 201 out of 300 earned me a 9th place ranking. The highest score was 248 out of 300, which is very very tough to attain unless with consistent practice.

My trophy:


My 9th placed score earned me a chance to participate in the Inter-Formation competition, which is going to be a whole lot tougher than the inter-unit competition. We'll be going up against the Infantry, which consists of the Commandos and Guards. The thought of firing alongside with these hardcore soldiers gives me the jitters.

Anyway, here are some more pics of the indoor range. Notice that the pics are much clearer than those pics in the previous post. Silly me took the previous photos with the setting switched to "Macro" on my mobilephone camera, which blurs up the image of things in the distance. I just discovered I could get a clearer pic by switching the setting to "Normal". I'm such a dork.





The top-left pic shows the vast area inside the air-conditioned range. The top-right pic shows my lane for today.
Middle-left pic shows the setup stage before preparing to load the rifle. The middle-right pic shows the foul smelling jacket that I'm supposed to wear because it stabilises my rifle supporting arm. The bottom-left pic shows the target at a distance of 10 metres away from me. Can't really see the target, can you ? Haha. The bottom-right pic shows a close up of the target board. This particular target board's score was my personal best for today. 20 out of 20. Perfect score ! Pity, its the only one out of 20 target boards.

Ok, I admit a couple of pics have been posted in my previous post before. I just want to put them up again because these are much clearer.

The Inter-Formation competition is going to be held sometime in November. So I guess I won't be publishing any more posts on my training until the competition day.

Wish me strength and luck!

Complains complains...

I was having breakfast at McDonald's at Bukit Panjang Plaza this morning. It was almost full house, packed with elderly people, adults, teenagers and of course, kids. This was the situation: the adults were rushing to grab seats for their elderly folks and young kids; teenagers were rushing to grab seats just to study; and the kids were screaming and yelling about what they want to have for breakfast. They call this a fast food joint. I call this an air-conditioned fish market. Its a Sunday, for goodness. Isn't Sunday a day to relax and take one's own sweet time to do whatever ? Oh I'm sorry, I'm in Singapore.

Nevertheless, we got our seats, just near one of the trash deposit corner. I finished my portion way ahead of my wife and was enjoying my cup of steaming black coffee while observing the bustling crowd in McDonald's.

Looking at the noisy ensemble, i was wondering how can those students study in such an environment ? The noise level was close to being ear piercing and irritating. How could they concentrate ? My wife and I had to raise our voices a few decibels to make ourselves heard in our conversation. This is so weird. I could understand if students were to "escape" to more soothing and relaxing environments like the viewing gallery at the airport, to study. But give me thousand and one reasons why studying in a noisy and crowded fast food restaurant helps. The one and only reason I can think of was, they are honing their level of concentration. This is bullshit.

The two things that they are doing are:
- hogging of precious seating and eating place,
- causing inconvenience to other patrons with their huge bags, files and folders placed on the floor.

They don't care if people are staring at them, shaking head at them. They just order a large cup of beverage and sometimes a large portion of fries, and they can seat there studying, chatting, laughing whole day long, while hungry patrons are left standing around waiting for a place to seat and eat. I pity those who have to dine there alone. They usually have to order first and find a seat later. On a Sunday, they have absolutely no chance.

Tell these students off, and there's a high chance that you'll get to see a face so dark that it looks like a hurricane about to be let loose.

Championship Drivers

Gee, yesterday I wrote on Singapore "Elites". And Today, I met up with our very own locally bred "Championship" driver(s).

This "Championship" driver(s) breed is a usual sight on local streets. They are commonly known as "Taxi Drivers".

This is another group of people who never fail to irk people.

Just this evening, I happened to be crossing a junction just outside Bukit Panjang Plaza. I was crossing a 3-lane road when the green man came on. When I was just 3 steps away from the middle of the junction, one SMRT taxi approached from the 1 o'clock position and it seems to me that the taxi is swerving to his right. Coming right at me. My eyes never left the taxi as it approached nearer. Somewhere deep in my heart, there is a small voice telling me that the bugger of a taxi driver was not going to stop even though the green man was still flashing in my favor.

He didn't stop. Just drove through the junction, like I wasn't even there. The driver even cleverly looked in the opposite direction because he knew I would be staring right at him.

Seriously, although I've been learning to control my temper, this was one of the special cases where I allowed myself a no-holds-barred explosion of temper. Well, of course I could not resort to screaming at him or attempting to throw a few punches or kung-fu kicks at his taxi. I cursed under my breath, crossed the junction and I stopped to see where he was headed. To my delight, he made a turn further down the road and made a right u-turn into the 4 year old estate's driveway. I walked right down to the pathway running adjacent to the driveway, stood on the edge, and whipped out my mobilephone, selected the camera function and aimed right at the taxi. He approached me, and I thought to myself, "end of the road for you, sucker" then I clicked the "Snap" button. To my dismay, utter dismay, the picture taken was the side body of the taxi. My phone's camera simply did not respond quickly enough to capture the registration number of the darned vehicle. I was so mad and so disappointed. All I could do was walk away in fury.

Taxi drivers think they are the cream of the crop. They think they are king of the road. Just because they are making a living driving people around on the streets of Singapore, they have the right of way. They zip in and out of highway lanes, tailgate cars, trying to vy for the empty space in front of any moving vehicles. Realise the familiarity of it ? Again, struggling to be first, struggling to be faster than everyone else. But of course! These are Singaporean Taxi Drivers!

I was never ever impressed with our local taxi drivers. Perhaps kudos to them for their knowledge of the complex network of roads in Singapore. But thats all there is to it.

I must say that this post certainly sounds offensive to readers who might have friends, relatives or even family members who are taxi drivers. I'd like to apologise first, if I've offended any of you by doing so, but please advise them to be more considerate for other road users if they have not been so previously.

Singapore "Elites"

I've wanted to blog about this since last week but I've totally forgotten about it until my wife talked to me about an incident, reminding me of which.....

I'm talking about people here, especially those waiting to board the MRT train and LRT skytrain.

For the MRT, at every stations' platforms, there are yellow lines drawn, aligned with the train doors' width, purpose of which are for indicating where passengers should stand before boarding the train. Law abiding citizens usually stand and wait behind the yellow lines for the passengers to alight before boarding the trains. However, in every society, unexplicably, there will be a handful of goons, they seem to be simply lost in their own world, and just plant themselves right smack in the middle of the opened doors' walkway. Seems to me that their top most priority is to block the pathway of alighting passengers, thinking that they will split on these goons' left and right hand side so that the goons can walk straight into the train, leading them to their 2nd priority: snatching whatever available seats left.

Appallingly, these goons are usually the young, middle aged and working class people. Sad to say, 90% of these are males. I deem these people complete idiots. From the way they dress and present themselves in public, they understand and speak at least simple English. What don't they understand from the phrase "Please stand behind the yellow lines to allow passengers to alight before boarding?" Little wonder why Singaporean girls are shunning local men.

The situation isn't any better with the LRT stations. There are no yellow lines drawn, but I have come to believe that even with the yellow lines, they serve no purpose. People will just stand where they like, which is right in the middle of the pathway of alighting passengers. The worst situation happens at Choa Chu Kang LRT station 100% of the time.

What has our society become ? The endless struggle for right of way, empty seats, being first in the queue. It is because of these self-centred souls that elderly aunties and uncles have to literally "fight" so that they would not be shoved around by the insolent brats.

I think the only way that they will learn is by imposing fines. Only then will they be "persuaded" from being the brats that they truly are. I believe imposing fines will definitely work. We never ever had a case of people misusing systems that come with a monetary penalty if caught.