Basket.

Even by the surreal standards my life sometimes achieves, this morning was an odd one. I was doing the 6-8am sentry shift at Khatib Camp's main entrance, and guess who waltzes in at about 7.30? The very same nasal-voiced Chua Seng Khim who attempted without much success to teach A01C A-Level Economics almost exactly two years ago. I could only stare as he walked past me without showing any signs of recognition (understandably). It was an encounter odder than meeting Geraldine Chong at a Buona Vista bus stop (last August) or Aaron Loh at the same apartment complex my junior resides in (last July). It seems I really have a penchant for such chance meetings/sightings.

But what came next was even stranger.

I booked out at about 9.15 and was on my way to the MRT station when I was stopped by this little old lady. The instant she began speaking, I knew she was from China. She pointed to the fruit trees that exist within our camp perimeter and asked me, in Chinese, whether just anyone could enter the place. She also remarked that the ripening fruit smelled very good. I told her that this was an army camp and only open to authorised personnel. At this point I was only thinking that she was a nature-loving Chinese emigre hippy, nothing much out of the ordinary. Then she suddenly begins talking about Falungong. She expounds on how it is merely a philosophy for healthy living, how the atheistic and oppressive Chinese government is trying to crush it and how one should embrace its principles wholeheartedly because it can only benefit body and soul.

I am taken by surprise (understatement) by this abrupt turn of events. It took all my reserves of self-control to stop myself from looking shocked, which I think might have been rather rude. I put on a neutral expression and listened to her for a few moments before she concluded and went off on her way.

The whole thing was just so unexpected. How often do you meet a harmless-looking (actually, harmless, in fact) old lady on the street who turns out to be a Falungong adherent and attempts to convert you to her... beliefs? And with such innocuous opening lines too.

After all that, I near the MRT and meet a rather comfortingly common Singaporean weirdo - an old man holding an umbrella who walked past me and began suddenly muttering loudly to no one in particular. Now that did it. I fled up the stairs into the train, the arrival of which had been perfectly timed to coincide with mine, to begin the journey home, where I was determined to stay for the rest of the day. I won't meet any ghosts from the past, Falungong adherents or the merely-ordinarily odd here under my own roof.

I should have written about our class gathering at Sean's house last week, um, last week, but I inadvertently forgot to. Perhaps lack of sleep worsened my notorious absent-mindedness.

Anyway, it was a barbecue and attendance was a lot better than it was much of the time we were still schooling. Mercifully, it was a relatively cool night (more often than not these days the hours of darkness have been balmy affairs) and we were able to spend a fair bit of time sitting around talking. Perhaps bonding as a class again. Following this, a number of us went down to catch a late screening of Batman Begins; upon completing the short sojourn to the cinema across the road, Roger discovered that he had left the tickets behind. He redeemed himself by going to get them and returning in record time. With officer cadets of such finesse, the defence of our noble Republic is in safe hands indeed.

The movie itself was good, but I have neither the time nor the energy to do something for it like I did for Downfall (which I still love to bits). We returned after it to sprawl around Sean's room and exchange views, anecdotes and reminiscences until about 5am, whereupon everyone wordlessly agreed that we could not do without sleep after all by nodding off almost simultaneously.

I went home on Sunday and promptly had an amazing stomachache. Maybe it was the curry. Or maybe a compatriot to the not-fully-cooked chicken wing I complained about and Angeline nodded at unsympathetically. But it's not a rare occurence at barbecues.

I returned to camp on Sunday night cursing the silliness of having to climb 3 floors to sign a book, come back down, walk all the way across a carpark and road and climb 5 more floors to get to my bunk. The fact that it was one of those awful balmy nights made everything worse. Sweat is all well and good, except when it can't dry.

The week that followed was nothing out of the ordinary, except for the exchange of views between my bunkmates and I, such exchanges of which are becoming more common. I am atheist, leftist and fairly liberal-minded. Ranged against me are Christians, rightists and to me, uptight conservatives. We have found plenty to disagree upon, from the separation of Church and State (I think the idea that religion actually gives state officials a moral standard by which they may use to govern is quite frankly ridiculous) to the recent issue of the Singaporean student (which I think most of us know of) who posted a... risque photograph on her weblog. Obviously they are opposed to abortion, and to sex before marriage. But I must commend them for displaying no signs of homophobia, and for respecting my views as much as I do theirs. And so we get along. It is good to discuss such issues once in a while. Keeps the mind sharp.

Work-wise, I spent much time winning and losing at Chinese chess, taking out the trash (that sounds too American for my comfort) and maintaining the antiques that constitute most of the Singapore Artillery's target acquisition capabilities. This included using sandpaper to de-rust cable reels, which thanks to intermittent rain and high humidity were covered in a thick layer of iron oxide. In the process of carrying out my patriotic duty, I inhaled vast quantities of the afore-mentioned compound, an action which I believe did the power of good for my respiratory system and will no doubt contribute immeasurably to my future good health.

And so, in our own ways, we struggle and muddle through life, with all its sharp bends and potholes you can't see in the dark. A book I read part of (the part before they began going into "Christ is the saviour", um, stuff - nothing against Christians or Catholics, but really, that isn't my thing) this week put forth that the worst thing one can do is get used to how things are, as opposed to one's vision of how things should be - ie to get used to a non-ideal situation. It is an intriguing proposition, but I don't see any other way to live life than to get used to taking whatever it deals one and making the most of it.

Can you imagine only now getting the photographs that were taken at your Secondary 4 graduation ceremony? Because that is what happened to me this weekend. Two-and-a-half years after the event, my brother (the photographer then) apparently discovered them in some obscure corner of his hard disk, and dispatched them to me.

It is a little eerie to look at the pictures. Two-and-a-half years may not be in absolutes a very long time in the big scheme of things, but with how much can change within such a period of time, events of two-and-a-half years ago might as well be events from a past life. Everyone displayed in the photographs have changed, some in mere external appearance, others in a lot more ways than just that. I read the ending of this particular story a lifetime after I read the rest of it. It gave me a sense of closure, accompanied by the poignancy that always comes with endings - although I closed the book a long time ago.

Books. Stories. We all love a good story. Most of the time, when people converse, they are actually exchanging whole strings of stories with each other. Ever noticed that? And we all enjoy it so much, especially if it is a story that involves real, live characters - people we know and are close to.

I wonder at this human love for stories. Is it hardcoded in us? Perhaps it is because our whole lives are basically episode after episode of many and varied experiences - a collection of stories. Whenever we share our experiences, or share others experiences, we are storytellers. Everyone has a thousand tales to tell and at least one perfect for any given occasion. Some remain untold forever. Others are told whether the characters like it or not. Whatever the case, I suppose nobody is actually a "boring person" - they all have tales to be told about them.

This is a world of stories, hopes and dreams. We hear so many and tell even more. Sadly, there isn't always a "happily ever after". But if you ask me, any resolution is better than none at all.

Dennis Bloodworth dead at 86

And we mourn the passing of yet another great man. Rest in peace.

"Berlin is a city of warehouses. 'Where's my house? Where's my house?'" - Anonymous German officer

"I hated Blondi. Sometimes I would kick her in secret, and Adolf would wonder about her behaviour." - Eva Braun

In my opinion, those were the only two humorous lines in the movie Downfall, which I had the pleasure of watching today. As such, I am mystified as to why certain members of the audience found more cause than this to burst out laughing in the course of today's screening, sometimes at utterly inappropriate moments.

But more on the idiots later. Let's go into the movie first.

Quite simply, it was an excellent work. One of the best historical films I have yet seen and right up there with Gettysburg as far as I am concerned.

I must commend the cast in particular. I cannot fault any of them for their performances. All played their roles superbly. Of note:

Bruno Ganz as Adolf Hitler - A superlative performance indeed. Virtually all reviews of the movie mention how good he is, and he is indeed very, very good in the role of the German dictator. The director seemed to want to show Hitler as a complex character, instead of the one-dimensional genoicidal maniac most publications make him out to be, and Ganz carried off this portrayal brilliantly; no mean feat. He is suitably apoplectic when showcasing Hitler's famous fits of rage, as delusional as the real Hitler was when pushing around imaginary armies on the map and manages tender moments with Eva Braun and Traudl Junge expertly. The human side of Hitler is made real to us, as is his temperamental, terribly unpredictable nature - one moment he is gently forgiving Junge for being late, the next he is coldly declaring that he has never showed compassion for a fellow human being and that is the way all should act. And this is all to Ganz's credit.

Alexandra Maria Lara as Traudl Junge - The closest thing this movie has to a main character; it begins and ends with narration by the real Junge. Lara plays Junge as an innocent young woman raised under Hitler and National Socialism and devoted to both the cause and the man right to the very end, albeit not without her doubts. It is a good enough portrayal, as Lara conveys to us the distinctly mixed feelings Junge had about the man who gently called her "Kind" (child) and yet was known to suddenly erupt in explosive rages and who effectively decreed the annihilation of the German people. The two very distinct and contradictory sides to Hitler are illuminated by her reactions and feelings to both these sides.

Juliane Kohler as Eva Braun - Hitler's long-time mistress and later wife, Braun is well-played by Kohler, who crafts a character that seems to be constantly running away from reality, yet has lucid and poignant moments of her own. From the time when she holds a party as artillery shells fall all around the Fuhrer's bunker, happily singing and dancing even as Berlin is torn to pieces and the Russians come closer and closer to her final reflections to Junge near the end (where the above-mentioned line is delivered and she wonders how well she actually knows Hitler), Braun, like Hitler, possesses two very distinct sides to her personality. One refuses to face reality, and the other can read the writing on the wall all too clearly. Kohler carries off the split personality for Braun as well as Ganz does for Hitler.

Michael Mendl as General Helmuth Weidling - Mendl plays the Commander-in-Chief of the German forces defending Berlin, and does a fantastic job. He brings off the fatalism and resignation of a doomed general leading a doomed army perfectly; it is, to make an understatement, not a job he wants (not a job anybody wants, for the matter), yet he has to do it. And he does the best he can even as the Russians press harder and harder and a raving Hitler thwarts his commonsensical battle plans, devoted to the very end to Reich and Fuhrer, even as both crumble before him. Very, very well-played.

Corinna Harfouch as Magda Goebbels - As the wife of Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels, Harfouch is brilliant. The scene where she goes around poisoning her children in their sleep is one of the most moving pieces of cinematography I have yet seen (more on this later). Although she does not have many lines nor appear all that much throughout the film, she played the role of a loving and devoted wife, mother and party member trapped by ideology and in a loveless marriage perfectly.

Director Oliver Hirschbiegel and screenwriter Bernd Eichinger did a job every bit as good as the cast; the film's pacing was expertly controlled such that I never felt bored or was left breathless. There were no cheesy or useless lines, and some comedy even. Hirschbiegel avoids the usual portrayal of Hitler as an inhuman, genoicidal Antichrist, and shows us Hitler the human being, the poor, helpless, prematurely aged, deteriorating shadow of a man who alternates between the pit of deepest depression and resolution that the Allied armies will be smashed and victory achieved. Nazi Germany is also not characterised as an Evil Empire like it usually is, but instead is showed as a nation defeated in war and utterly ravaged by it - a portrayal made all the more poignant by our knowledge that the German people would after the scourge of Nazism suffer another close to half-century of painful division living under the shadow of a third, probably nuclear, world war.

The overall mood of the film is dark and bleak, as you might have guessed, and the director keeps this up very well throughout. War is shown as it is in reality: a terrible business with much cruelty and no glory involved. "Deserters" are shot or strung up by the SS and SA without mercy, and boys as young as 12 and men as old as 60 are sent into battle against overwhelming odds with little more than single-shot Panzerfausts. It is tragic to watch them die, shot down by Soviet troops or by each other when the situation is realised to be hopeless. In one scene, a girl with pigtails in the uniform of the Hitler Jugend hands a pistol to her male counterpart and asks him to shoot her. He does, then puts a bullet through his own head. It is a gut-wrenching moment; neither can possibly be over 16.

The fall of the Third Reich is dealt with brilliantly, played out as a grotesque tableau. An Eva Braun seemingly on the edge of sanity holds a party, replete with makeup and evening gown, in the Reich Chancellery even as Soviet artillery shells fall all around. A delusional Hitler sits at a table poring over a map and insisting on counterattacks by non-existent armies that will crush the overwhelming Soviet forces around Berlin as his generals look on, knowing the sad truth but scarcely daring to speak it. The female pilot Hanna Reitsch pours out her devotion to the Fuhrer and her belief that he will lead them to eventual victory, even as Soviet forces methodically reduce the once-great city of Berlin to ruin. And then we have black jokes like the one I quote above. "You must be on stage when the curtain falls," Albert Speer tells Hitler. And that is what the downfall of the Third Reich ultimately is - a play, a tragicomedy to be more accurate. In the end all one feels is "sick", like Junge tells Gerda during Braun's aforementioned party. Yet it is also all so pathetic that you cannot help but sympathise with Hitler and company.

Other scenes and things of note:

Magda Goebbels poisoning her children. A superbly-worked scene, one of the most moving pieces of cinematography I have yet seen. Harfouch plays Magda as a devoted mother who truly loves her six children - yet is such a fervent believer in National Socialism that she sincerely cannot see a future for them after the fall of the Third Reich and its ideology. As such, she feels she has no choice but to kill them. Throughout the entire scene, one can see the pain on her face as she enters the room, then kills her children one by one. It is a tragic and incredibly poignant scene.

Weidling collapsing after he orders the Berlin defense forces to lay down their arms. A scene of potent symbolism, to me signifying the final end of the Third Reich.

The Russian soldiers. Although they barely make an appearance, the director somehow manages to showcase their plight as well. In uniforms just as shabby as the defeated Germans', they have also the same haunted look in their eyes, despite being the victors. Small wonder, with the plight of the common Russian soldier scarcely differing from that of the common German.

The historical accuracy. Downfall is without question one of the most historically accurate movies I have ever seen. Even the actors resemble the characters they play. Bruno Ganz is a dead ringer for Hitler, and Alexandra Maria Lara's resemblance to Traudl Junge can be seen when archive footage of the real, elderly Traudl Junge is played at the end. The actor playing Himmler, too, is an incredible lookalike. All uniforms are to my knowledge as accurate as can be, and the ruined Berlin looks convincing enough.

To sum up, Downfall is a superb movie that more than adequately depicts the final, grotesque downfall of the Third Reich, avoiding the usual pitfall of characterising Hitler and the state he created as absolutely evil and yet showcasing in brutal detail the evil Nazism did do. It is a tragedy made more tragic by contextual knowledge - a defeated Germany and its people are doomed to suffer a half-century more of painful division under the shadow of nuclear war. In what I think is the ultimate tragedy, despite the suffering, pain and hardship wrought on an unimaginable scale, despite fifty million deaths and untold millions more maimed physically and mentally, despite six years of unbelievably bitter, brutal fighting, the Second World War did not mean an end to war. The tragedy of a devastated Berlin, its people suffering terrible privation, is doomed to repeat itself over and over, as it has in the years since 1945 and as it will in the years to come. It is a stark and harrowing reality.

Now, enough about the film and more about the idiots who did their damned best to ruin it for me. The Ugly Singaporean, it seemed, was out in force this afternoon.

First, the aforementioned fools who laughed out at the most inappropriate moments. I have no idea what the fuck they were laughing at, honestly. Whatever the hell it was, it was bloody distracting and spoilt my viewing of several scenes.

Next, the fucking assholes whose phones rang during the movie. Yes, there was more than one. Fucking hell, I just cannot understand why people can't just turn off their phones for 2 hours, or at least put them to silent. It's as if the world will end in a plague of flesheating locusts if they do that. For the Good Lord's sake.

And then there were those who got up and left at the end as they showed what happened to the real personalities who were portrayed in the movie. Incredibly distracting. Can't you just sit still for a few more minutes? Fucking hell.

I think I would have had a much more pleasant afternoon if I hadn't watched this brilliant film with an audience of idiots and inconsiderate bastards.

Tommorrow this very blog I created mainly as an outlet for myself will have seen me through two whole years of trials and tribulations, triump and tragedy. And it has served its original purpose well beyond my wildest dreams.

Elsewhere, life drags on as it has been doing for the past few weeks. I'm currently collecting taxpayer money for doing little more than "Move these stores from (here) to (there), then wash them" or "Deploy the system, check whether (x) is working and (y) is clean". Or feeding the goldfish at the goddamned battalion lobby. And of course SAF Day, which has given me a very obvious tanline on the forehead and showed me how high on my arms I usually fold that No.4.

But I guess I shouldn't complain. A boring life is the best life one can hope for, sometimes. Looking forward to the weekend as I usually do.

Sixteen years now since the Tiananmen Square Massacre. I realise I dedicated the post on this selfsame day one year ago to those who died for the true egalitarian ideals of Communism, and I shall do the same here, even though they were not in the majority in the square that night of 3-4 June 1989.

Tommorrow is one year since Ronald Reagan died, and Monday is the 61st anniversary of the Normandy landings. Famous dates coming thick and fast. Where does all that time go?

Finished another slack but tiring week. Looking forward to another class gathering tommorrow.