Basket.

First time in 2-and-a-half years of having this place that I'm overhauling it. Reason? The archives seem to fuck up the sidebar. The only way out was to stick them at the bottom. Hope you guys like this new format.

More on the GEP issue... I wrote this in to TODAY later last night. Doubt they will publish it though.

I refer to the letter from Ms Michelle Qiu, which in turn was written with reference to your article "A gifted student? Sorry to hear that" (Nov 19-20).

Ms Qiu is obviously a person of great intelligence and fully deserving of her place in our nation's premier academic programme. This is certainly borne out by the fact that she did not find the GEP "curriculum pressure-packed". She is definitely among our nation's brightest prospects, and will I am sure hugely further the prosperous development of our great country.

However, her article does contain several flaws I wish to point out.

I quote, "You see, GEPers (as we call ourselves) are more mature than most mainstreamers, the result of being the the GEP. The mainstreamers think we are snobbish - when they stereotype us, they are being immature."

With reference to the above paragraph, she is undoubtedly right in asserting that the so-called "mainstreamers" (said, I note, like "peasants", or "serfs") are "immature" when they stereotype GEP students. However, does she not realise she is stereotyping GEP students, as being more "mature", herself? And how can she fail to realise that she is actually being snobbish, a charge she denies in the same paragraph, when she refers to non-GEP students as "immature"?

This is also not the only time she conducts such an oversight. Later in her otherwise excellent letter, she goes, "We were all mainstream students before the GEP. Most of us found it boring in mainstream classes, as we knew most of the curriculum and it was easy to get good grades. But when faced with someone at our own level, we step up our efforts to compete."

There can be no better way of saying "I am smarter than you." She can be proud of her own sparkling intelligence, but there is absolutely no need to put down the "mainstreamers" in such a manner. I believe that paragraph constituted being "snobbish".

And lastly, she crowns her magnificent work of art with, "Would we be able to do that in the mainstream, where everyone follows the trends or the person who is the 'coolest', and everybody starts gossiping if anyone talks to someone of the opposite sex?" - which is stereoptyping the "mainstreamers"! Can Ms Qiu not see the irony of this concluding paragraph?

By her previous impeccable logic, she is being "immature" because she is stereotyping here. I am mystified as to how such a savant as Ms Qiu can manage to overlook so many flaws in her letter, flaws which even I, a lowly Express stream student in my school days, was able to catch? Perhaps she could reply to my comments and dazzle me once more with the brilliance of her mind?

http://www.todayonline.com/articles/85604.asp

I read the second letter, and my thoughts were along the lines of how any person could possibly be so stupid and so intelligent at the same time.

"You see, GEPers (as we call ourselves) are more mature than most mainstreamers, the result of being the the GEP. The mainstreamers think we are snobbish - when they stereotype us, they are being immature."

See the way she contradicts herself in the same paragraph? Beautiful. So the plebeian mob of "mainstreamers" is "immature" and below your Imperial Majesty's station? Honestly, how the fuck can you not see that you are merely confirming what others think of you? Call yourself "gifted"?

"I didn't have many good friends because I found my classmates to be immature."

Translation: I was a social outcast and utterly failed to develop any meaningful social skills because I behaved like a complete bitch to my classmates. I cut myself and cried myself to sleep every night because life was such a deep, dark hole that worst of all, I knew deep down to be of my own making.

"But when I entered the GEP I was impressed with my classmates and now we can't bear to part ways."

Translation: I met the similarly socially inept after I entered the GEP, and we got on well because we all suck at socialising with other people.

"Unless someone is transferred out of the GEP, or changes schools, we have the same 52 or so classmates throughout the three years. This forces us to become good friends."

The fact that the load of you behave like you are too good for the unwashed rabble that is the "mainstream" helped a lot too. When actually, the "gifted" can make a point, contradict it and fail utterly to realise that all in the same paragraph.

"We were all mainstream students before the GEP. Most of us found it boring in mainstream classes, as we knew most of the curriculum and it was easy to get good grades. But when faced with someone at our own level, we step up our efforts to compete."

What? I beg your pardon? Again? Did I hear... something about... not being snobbish?

"The GEP broadens our experience."

Yes, it certainly does, because it puts the lot of you into a special programme for six years where you are confined largely to meeting and interacting with people just like yourself!

"Would we be able to do that in the mainstream, where everyone follows the trends or the person who is the 'coolest', and everybody starts gossiping if anyone talks to someone of the opposite sex?"

Yes - this is her paragraph of crowning glory. I'm sorry, did you speak out against stereotyping earlier? Well, I guess it is ok for the gifted elite to stereotype the unwashed masses, but it is definitely not alright for the rabble in the streets to start doing the same to Your Imperial Majesty and her consorts!

"Nobody except us, the GEPers, could know how much fun we have being in the GEP."

As far as I am concerned, you can stay there and have your fun. The non-GEP streams don't need people like you.

Honestly, this person is supposed to be among, what, the top 1% in the country? This socially-inept reject with a grossly-inflated sense of self-worth and a missing sense of irony? I don't care if she could prove Fermat's Last Theorem before she could walk, the fact that such people are considered among our nation's brightest prospects shows that there is something seriously wrong with our system.

I have argued against the GEP here before. I think Little Miss Princess here proves the points I made back then. All it does is produce people like her. Who think they are very smart, but in reality, are dumber than lampposts.

But maybe it's a good thing, after all - the exclusivity of the programme means I'll probably never come across a queen bitch like this one. Yes, the GEP can stay as the storehouse for the socially inept and ironically deficient.

Yes, it is Wednesday and the third consecutive day that we've barely got a peek at the sun. It's a strange feeling waking up in the morning and literally shivering my way to the toilet. I guess if we can laugh at foreigners not being able to take the high tropical temperatures, they can laugh at us for shivering in sub-30 degree weather.

Despite that, I have a predilection for cold grey days. It's on such days that I do most of my thinking and reflection, and for good reason. Plenty of my most significant memories are from days like that, with the result that cloudy skies and freezing pinpricks of rain are permanently etched within my subconscious. Fine, warm days are just a little too generic, I guess.

I'm just wanting the year to flash by, for now.

Just about everyone now has probably heard about the world-renowned pianist who dodged National Service to become just that, then returned 28 years later and got nothing more than a paltry (by his rich fuck standards) fine.

It is, of course, a ridiculously light punishment. Under the Enlistment Act, people who evade NS can be jailed up to two years and fined $5,000. Yet he gets off practically scot-free with only the fine, which I am absolutely sure he will have trouble paying, what with being a world-renowned pianist earning more money than I may ever see per year. It's horribly unfair to everyone who has ever had to serve, including the current lot. What kind of message, indeed, is the government sending here? Become someone with a valuable enough skill and you can be exempted from the full force of the law, in addition to being welcomed back to the country you so selfishly refused to serve as a national hero? Where is the meritocracy here?

I would be less harsh if he had a better reason for draft-dodging. But no, it was because he wanted to focus on his career without the two-and-a-half year disruption. Well, because all the successive 20,000 or so batches of NSFs are perfectly willing and happy to put everything they have planned on hold for two-and-a-half (or two) years and go to shitty Basic Military Training on shitty Pulau Tekong, after which they will be posted to some shitty camp or shitty command school where they will proceed to waste two shitty years! I'm perfectly content to be sitting here in my bloody office in camp using this fucked up computer to type a fucking blog entry all about this idiot because I have just about fuck-all to do! I completely have no wishes to go to university instead to further my education and develop my future career!

What an incredibly self-centred asshole. While 20,000 of his peers served their national obligations by going through all the hardship that military training entails, he stayed comfortably in England and made a fortune. While successive batches followed them, he made a global name for himself. Yes, I am sure the initial decision not to come back and serve was as "painful" as he said it was.

Please, throw the fucker in jail. For two years at least. Because if so many thousands have had to waste their time over the years, he bloody well has to as well. Or MINDEF will just be saying that they can be bought off with base coin.

Because I am currently going through books at a tremendous rate (2-3 of any given size and/or thickness per week, due to the fact that I have just about, oh, nothing else to do), I had to drop by the library again today. I confronted its shelves of history books and realised that I've just about read (and in many cases, re-read) every single one there worth the reading. Tempted by Hobsbawm's enormous semi-autobiographical account of life throughout the 20th century, I drew back due to its great size and weight. That's not a book I would be lugging to camp. Khruschev's biography drew my attention, and I've read some of it - I brought it to camp the week I suffered my accident. Then there were the various volumes of "HITLER". Or "HITLER & STALIN". I didn't even touch those.

Then again, I've never been big on biographies/autobiographies. Maybe it's because I believe history as a subject is so much more than just one person, no matter how great. In the end they just bore me.

I also do not just voraciously devour any and all history books I come across (as some might believe). I pick and choose my material with some care. I'm into military history, but technical details of weapons bore me. My interest is skewed towards the narrative side of history, but I've come across some excellent analytical authors - the genius, of course, being Eric Hobsbawm. In the end I simply read what I enjoy the most.

Jurong East Community Library also has a very impressive comic/graphic novel collection. I would be a little more enamoured yet if most of the comics it stocked was not worthless shit like Cathy collections or funny local Asiapac series like "The Celestial Zone". Not to mention all the manga. I'm just no fan of comics which are not either a) funny or b) thought-provoking. Or hilariously violent, for that matter, which is why I love(d) The Authority despite the fact that most (all?) of what they do entails smashing huge invasions of creatures hostile to Earth and humanity, and cracking terrible jokes while they do it.

This is why the RJC library still has/had the best comic collection in all Singapore. Because it's not cluttered up with all the pitiful excuses of comics like "Herman" (whatever the fuck it is, because I've never heard it any place else, it isn't funny or thought-provoking or thoughtlessly violent, so it is trash).

Speaking of comics and libraries, someone wrote to the forum page that day complaining that her son brought home a comic book from the library that had gratuitous violence and nudity inside. Oh shit, obviously it's the library's fault that your 10-year-old borrowed an adult comic book that was in the adult section and obviously not meant for children? Why, I certainly am not going to have the nerve to suggest that maybe you ought to practise being responsible for policing your own children, madam?

Of course, it's not like I don't already know that for most people, the easier path out of a problem is blaming others, rather than admitting their own mistakes and taking responsibility for the consequences.

And to the idiot who wrote about Arafat and the terrorist exhibition: Arafat was a terrorist. For most of his career, at least. There is nothing wrong with sticking him up there.

People.

Another day in the office... like I said before, I'm positively being prepared for a career as a low-level corporate executive that I have no intention of ever being. Cubicle, computer, paperwork, filing cabinet and all. But it's all good - it's the best way to serve.

In any case the boss isn't around and won't be for a while yet. Life is a bit of a breeze now.

Don't think I should have said that though. Whenever I say things like that, the fates contrive to make me regret it. With a vengeance.

Yesterday I also contrived to further render my left hand useless, with the aid of S1 and his penknife. You know something? When you first get injured there is always no pain, and you wonder if you really got injured at all. Then you look and there isn't a shadow of a doubt. I thought the trailer leg only grazed my finger too. Then I held it up to the light. I'll still never forget the surreality of that moment.

I've had plenty of time alone with my thoughts. It's possible to think until you fall asleep then have some very odd dreams.

Then again, real life can be a lot odder than any dreams you can ever have.

Yesterday was an odd day because of the date, as I carefully counted out the "1"s while filling out the keypress book. "111105". I nearly went over once or twice. It was also Armistice Day but I already covered that.

Today I'm stuck with ops duty, my first but probably not last. It is just about the best kind of duty though, what with being cooped up in a spacious air-conditioned room with a large screen TV and a Pentium 4 with a fast Internet connection all day - and freely allowed to make use of it all. I think of the contrast between that and lurching around the camp on sweaty nights with an M16 slung around my neck, a live magazine of five rounds in my SBO and my No4 plastered to my body. Honestly, guard duty really fucking sucks. Or maybe things are better now, I don't know - they have new bunks, at least, as compared to the tiny (roughly half the size of our RJ TS, cramped enough that was) container room with a dripping air conditioner and a perpetual variety of different but equally odd (the kindest word I can find) stenches.

Then again they probably still live in mortal fear of being spotted for minor infractions and creatively punished. Like the time when my dear partner decided to hold his rifle in his hand while returning to quarters from the rear gate. The CSM spotted him and we had to do it all over again. The rear gate is 15 mins from the front. I was not very pleased.

As it is, the job is cushy and I know more about the duties and responsibilities of the DO than the man himself. Who tried to enter the Orderly Room on a Saturday and was surprised to find it locked. He'll learn. If he doesn't he'll just get more practice. And I don't know why but I just speak Chinese most of the time in camp. Even if people open in English.

Now I'll just wait for 2006. Hope the year can end nicely for me, for all - cross your fingers. I'll cross what's left of mine.

Nearly ninety years ago today, the greatest conflict then known to mankind officially ended. After over four years of slaughter on the fields and cities of Europe, World War I (technically, only the fighting on the Western Front, to be truthful) came to an end at 11am on 11 November 1918 - the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The end of the war was also the end of an era - Europe had been changed forever by the conflict. Four of its great empires, Imperial Germany, Austria-Hungary, Tsarist Russia and the Ottoman Empire, fell, and from the debris emerged new states, political unrest and civil war. France, although victorious, was irreparably damaged, losing 17% of her young male population in war casualties; her national spirit broken. The British Empire emerged seemingly strong, but in actual fact broke and breaking up; within less than two decades the fear of another such terrible conflagaration had these two victorious powers grovelling before Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. Russia was convulsed in her own bloody civil war, from which was to emerge the USSR that would dominate, ruthlessly, most of the rest of the century. Of the major combatants, only Japan emerged better off than she had been before the war.

The outbreak of war in 1914 had been the beginning of the end for the Long Nineteenth Century; the armistice of 1918 finally brought the curtain down.

By some coincidence, I this week finished Paul Johnson's sweeping Modern Times, in general a history of the Short Twentieth Century (to borrow from Hobsbawm), minus World War I. Unbelievably comprehensive, the book manages to deal with practically all major issues on all continents and major states between Versailles and the early 1980s. A section added later deals with the rest of the momentuous 1980s and the 1990s, including the fall of Communism throughout Europe, the Gulf War and the scientific revolution of genetic engineering. A very absorbing read and definitely one of the best history works I've ever gone through.

Now if I could only get myself to finish some Hobsbawm, who is undeniably brilliant but whose style of writing is something of an acquired taste.

I just love history more than ever.

Weblogs (I actually detest the word "blog" and positively hate "blogosphere") are becoming a huge thing here in camp, it seems. Many of my colleagues have taken it up, and more are getting interested in it. This is facilitated by the fact that my unit has no less than three easily accessible Internet PCs. I look on benevolently as they remain in the stage where it is new to them and hence fresh and exciting.

My own place, of course, has been up two-and-a-half years. I have changed nothing about it for two years, although I've thought of it.

Perhaps that says something about my personality. I've never liked change, unpredictability or uncertainty. Despite the amazing amount I have written about my drab office job/NS life, I much prefer stability & routine. I am not afraid to say that over the years I have built up a reputation for reliability and responsibility among those who know me. If I make a decision, I stick by it the best I can - and live with the regrets later.

I really am very poor with beginnings and endings. Change, of course, entails both. I can never figure out how to get something started, and I need a long time to decide how best to end something. It is, of course, the beginning and the ending of most things that are most fraught with uncertainty. The middle part is usually routine. I excel at stable routines, and what i've come to realise is I can't live without them. If I try to do things randomly, it will settle into a fixed routine of sorts after a while. Believe me, it's true, I've tried. I prefer to have things settled way before the actual event - such as group outings. I would genuinely love it if every time, I could get the time and place to meet days before. And I will turn up at the appointed time or earlier, barring unforseen circumstances, even though I know my companions will almost certainly be late.

This is somewhat reflected in my world view, which has been termed "fuck care". I definitely try not to go out of my way to concern myself with many things, especially things that I do not think are any business of mine or matters I do not think I can assist in in anyway whatsoever. One of my favourite words is the Russian nichevo - "it can't be helped". If it can't be helped (and most things cannot), let it happen and live with it. Why try to change the world? It's easier to adjust yourself to fit in. It's easier to meet all that comes with resignation and get used to the new siuation.

I love stability to a fault, in fact. There are a goodly number of times where I haven't been proactive enough and end up not getting what I actually want. Instead I learn to deal with the loss. In the end I'm not very passionate at all about most things, except of course my deepest of interests - History. Sometimes, instead of trying to make friends or seize opportunities, I simply bury myself in my history books. It may have cost me some, I just don't know.

Stubborness, I suppose, can be a good thing or a bad thing. I'm stubborn to a fault sometimes. I lose out because of it, then I get used to losing what I've lost. In the end everything just settles and I make a routine out of it, then I get on with life.

I suppose every personality type has its good and bad points. The dynamic try to change the world and become its leaders. I'm not one of them. I just want to go on with a life doing what I like best surrounded by people I can trust and confident in all my friendships. I don't like leading, and I think the only good trait in the area I've got is being meticulous. That and maybe a sharp tongue. I just want to quietly put my life into a routine and live it with as few interruptions as possible. To be accepting of everything fate chooses to fling, good or bad. To make my own decisions and stick by them come what may. To maintain all my relationships and always stand by those I trust. And trust them to do the same.

Ever finish an entire novel in one day? Well, I did, yesterday. That's the trouble with specialised occupations sometimes.

In any case, I've become an office drone, a cubicle-dweller of the sort mocked in Dilbert. With a stupid green uniform and without the instant coffee. Excellent preparation for a corporate career I am totally disinterested in, because I do literally sit in a cubicle with a desk, a computer and a real live filing cabinet, which my much neater predecessor left behind in a fantastic state but which I am beginning to stamp my disorganised mark upon.

I do wonder how the administrative arm (though I think "tentacles" is a more apt description) of the SAF rates for efficiency. Imagine trying to run a company where all your junior employees are in it against their will, are disinterested in the motivations and aims of the organisation and are being paid a fraction of a pittance for their labours to boot. Let's not even go talking about profit; it can't be easy to get a lot out of these people. It makes one wonder what, exactly, are the motivations of people like us - is it fear of punishment, sheer boredom, a sense of duty and responsibility or simply because we enjoy it?

But I guess that when you have billions in taxpayer money, all this doesn't much matter.

Maybe that's what's so soulless about Singapore; we don't often care much about why exactly we are doing something - we do it because someone said we had to. We don't try to understand how something might be beneficial or harmful, or why exactly it must be done; we just have a go at it and either ask questions later or don't at all. Sometimes, if we do ask, answers are not forthcoming (to put it lightly). "But this makes zero sense..." "Well, you know what, fuck it, we have to do it." That little exchange can describe our whole system, from education to National Service to beyond. There are just too many things we cannot comprehend the justification for but we do anyway (Project Work readily coming to mind).

I think it breeds a fatalistic, resigned attitude among a lot of us. The idea that one's own fate is completely out of one's hands. Because we do things we find silly simply because it is required of us, and if the effects turn out to be detrimental, there is not a lot we can do about it but live with it.

Apathy may also be another side effect; that famous Singaporean apathy towards current affairs and pertinent issues. We have no control anyway, right? Actually, I do think it's right. We can't make a difference, the claptrap that the Feedback Unit wants to feed us notwithstanding.

Take, for instance, the news that Singapore was ranked 140 out of 167 countries for freedom of the press, below Sudan and Russia (but still above such bastions of liberty as China, Iraq and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea). No one from the public cared, or so it seems. I certainly saw no letters about it in the ST Forum. But that may not be people not caring, because the ST Forum is rather... discerning about which letters it chooses to publish.

This can illustrate several points: a) The Singapore public really does not care, because as usual this is not something we can affect, or b) People cared, but the Straits Times, living fully up to the ranking, declined to publish their writings, or c) This really isn't a pertinent issue, and those Western imperialists can go screw themselves.

So we can choose between apathy, dictatorship or xenophobia. Great, isn't it.

Not that a population that will keep their heads bowed and put up with everything that comes their way isn't a good thing. It makes for remarkable efficiency and hardiness. But then they want us to be creative as well. I think that's a little too much to ask.

Sometimes, I honestly detest technology. Like when the fucking office computer (which by the way is bloody ancient) refuses to start properly, when the photocopier records phantom paper jams or now (ie a few days ago), when the goddamn fluorescent light in my computer room decides to suddenly start flickering. Non-stop.

Technically I can still use it, but because I have watched a few too many horror movies which use this cheap device, I don't think that's advisable, especially since I tend to work into the small hours. And it's hell on the eyes anyway.

As such, I am stuck with my faithful egg-shaped lamp, which not being fluorescent, is a lot more wasteful and energy-consuming. It also gives me the feeling that I'm typing by candlelight. Somewhat romantic. Or maybe I can pretend I'm part of the Blitz. Hm.

Anyway, I think or people talk about "next month", and I realise that "next month" is... what, December. December 2005. It seems a little unreal, but today is November 5. Somehow, when I was still schooling I had less trouble accepting that time had slipped by so quickly. Maybe it was because of routine. Every year was basically the same. You went to school on either Jan 2nd, 3rd or 4th, the holidays came at more or less the same few dates and the school year ended with final exams. Routine just gets ground into you and sometimes you can forget momentarily what year it is.

That's not to say I'm unhappy this year is finally ending. It means half my service term will soon be over, and that is terribly encouraging. It's even time to think beyond it.

I am still luxuriating in block leave heaven, but it will end soon like all good things eventually must. And bad things too, I'll add to be fair.

Today I crossed the sea for the first time since I had to go to Tekong, and for a far more enjoyable reason. It was a little odd at first thinking I was taking a boat ride to play mahjong, but it was a refreshing change anyway. Fast becoming my mahjong kakis are Zihao and Conrad, with the fourth guy interchangeable between a good number of personalities, and we had another very enjoyable afternoon, although if we had been using real money instead of chips I would be a textbook illustration of how ruinous a vice gambling can be.

It was Pulau Bukom we went to, where the Shell oil refinery is. Nice little islet, although most of it is cordoned off. Would have liked to stay the night if it was allowed.

In the event, I'm back here at home writing here like I'm used to doing, and thinking too much, like I'm also used to doing. It's some life.