I'm sitting here, pressing the letters of the keyboard , idly , lazily . Comforted by the fact that I dun have to mug for any mid yr exams or be at some stupid island blaming my stars for being confined in camp.

I always knew I had a lazy streak in me, but it was never apparent during my schooling days. Yes, I indulge in slacking sessions once in a while. But the Layz monster in me ,which had been pretty dormant, has awoken recently and become so big that it scares me. I hold my bladder so that I dun have to make so many trips to the toilet even though the toilet door is just behind me. I dun feel like going down for an exercise because I am lazy to put my clothes into the washing machine. I am lazy to step out of the house because I have to put on my shoes.

People like me have to be ordered around. I am lazy to check and correct my shitty engrish grammar. "Laziness casts into a deep sleep, and an idle man will suffer hunger. The sluggard buries his hand in the dish, but will not even bring it back to his mouth." Proverbs 19:15,24 . And i am the sluggard.


Of all the laziness, my fav is the laziness of comfort orientation -which is just trying to stay comfortable and cozy. Every time I lay on my bed, I will stretch for the sheer pleasure of seeing hearing and feeling my pajamas(?) slide against my legs and my legs against the bedsheets. I like the feeling. Of being a sybarite.

In the East, laziness often manifests as flopping down in the sun with one's cronies, drinking tea, and letting the days pass by. In the West, laziness will be lying on a beach enjoying the languor of a siesta or ensconced in a sofa flipping the channels with the remote control.
For lazy asses like me, we know that whether we flop or rush, and wherever on the globe we happen to be, the comfort-orientation brand of laziness is characterized by a profound ignoring. We look for oblivion: a life that doesn't hurt, a refuge from difficulty or self-doubt or edginess. We want a break from being ourselves, a break from the life that happens to be ours. So through laziness we look for spaciousness and relief; but finding what we seek is like drinking salt water, because our thirst for comfort and ease is insatiable.

As there is a great truth wrapped up in
``diligence,'' what a lie, on the other hand, lurks
at the root of our present use of the word
``indolence''! This is from ``in'' and ``doleo,''
not to grieve; and indolence is thus a state in
which we have no grief or pain; so that the word, as
we now employ it, seems to affirm that indulgence in
sloth and ease is that which would constitute for us
the absence of all pain. --Trench.

Euro 2004 seemed to have downplayed all the other sports, including the major events like the NBA finals. Zombies shuffling their feet around after staying up almost every night, from the sergeants to the sweepers on the road. But as usual, I dun really care about soccer. Its more interesting to watch how sports have evolved. "playing soccer" doesn't hold the same connotations as taking up a sport to keep themselves fit. It just implies taking time off from the pastures of turf city and turning the attentions and money to the fields.
The only sport that I keep track of is the Nba games. Its fast. Its entertaining. Its cool.During the finals, the team that wasn't supposed to win won.
The triumph of the underdogs. Detroits crushed lakers. It seemed like Norma Rae, Seabiscuit and that slingshot-wielding dude, David, rolled into one.
Hey, the script writes itself.
If Detroit is the unofficial underdog capital of the country, then America is Underdog Nation, in self-image if not reality. It's what pop culture has taught us.
It's the little guy who always triumphs in the end. A spunky Nemo plans a daring fish tank escape with a little fin and a big heart. The Pistons defeat the Lakers?It fits the model.
The underdog is an extremely powerful myth in our society. It's a thrill to see people who are under adversity beat the people who are supposed to defeat them.
If you can survive the slings and arrows that life throws at you, you can become stronger and more successful than you ever imagined. It's the kids who are lobbing dodge ball missiles who'll one day get their comeuppance.
Underdogs find strength in their weaknesses and know things a top dog never could.
No. 1: Low expectations can be a good thing.
No. 2: Underdogs are always hungry.

Pangolin Tsai

Another rare sighting at the school of ammunition down at rifle range road, which is contiguous with the bukit timah nature reserve.
No,I didn't spot fucking gay monkeys. Although I did see a a monkey orgy, bunch of monkeys wreaking havoc on a sergeant major's car, I have seen enough of monkey-wreak-havoc movies and done enough primary school compositions, rewriting the hackneyed plots of monkey pulled pigtails of girls in classroom to find monkey rampage and pillage commonplace.

Was taking a stroll uphill when I spotted a pangolin. For those who dun know what a pangolin is :- it's an ant eating mammal with large imbricated horny scales as its protection. Dun ask me how to tell the difference of a pangolin from an armadillo. I only hold a young zoologist badge and I cant recall how long ago was my last visit to the zoo which does not house a pangolin.

Anyway I was surprised. 'Wads the creature doing here?' It seemed lost. Maybe he lost his way while trying to register at the armour camp. I couldn't figure out the location of its eyes ,everything looked brown. I closed my eyes and flinched when I pictured the pain of the coitus of its species. Perhaps only hedgehogs will understand the ordeal.

It was curled up in a ball and resembled a pile of dung from far. Even the spruce cone appearance resembled the fissures of excreta. The pangolin was motionless. A few of us went forward to take a closer look. Its eyes were closed. And it had just defecated. The shit laid closed to its anus like a newborn pangolin baby. Was it dead? Or was this crepuscular creature taking a rest before commencing its nocturnal guard duty?

I was lost in my vacuous thoughts as everyone started jogging back for lunch. I quickened my steps, glanced at my watch, mentally counting down the hours before book out, happily singing the linkin park song to myself...

It starts with-

One thing I don t know why, it doesn't even matter how hard you try...
All I know,
Time is a valuable thing watch the clock go by as the pangolin swings,
watch it count down to the end of the day...

A touch of zen.
I reported to the school of ammunition today. To find myself sitting..and sitting.
I sat to wait for lunch. After lunch, I sat to regulate the flow of the food down my digestive tract. I sat. I have never sat so long in my entire life. Its even more enervating than the SAT test that I sat.
Buddha remained under the tree for forty-nine days, neither eating nor drinking. I sat under the training shed, with my legs akimbo and stared at the dense undergrowth in front of me. Monkeys scaled the fences with ease and walked the barbed wire with such funambulism. Then the monkey king appeared. Then the monkey queen appeared. Then they started screwing. My jaws dropped. I was shocked by the spontaneity and the audacity of the monkeys. Buddha meditated and gained enlightment.
Some zen from me. Monkeys copulated and i gained entertainment.

Fat, tender crustaceans lay in their shells on a bed of fluffy egg-fried rice, smothered in a sauce that was at once refreshing, delicate and tasty; flavoured with lemon, chilli and crisp veggies that actually looked like they had until very recently been growing somewhere. You start to salivate. 'Where should I start from?' You notice a prawn hiding beneath a small lump of rice. You use your fork to tease the prawn out of its hermitage. You take a morsel of the prawn. You pause to admire the body of the decapitated prawn. On inspection, you spot a thick brown disgusting line on the back of the prawn. Out of curiosity, you ask your friends/family about the mysterious line.

'Anybody has any idea wad this shit is?'
Someone answers 'Prawn shit la'
Another replies, 'Vein la. Nothing one. Just eat, wont die'

You oscillate the limp prawn on the spoon as you vacillate over the fate of the prawn. With much dubiety and timidity, you shove the prawn aside and cover it with the uneaten parsley, trying your best to make it look as natural and untouched.

I have been plagued by this question about prawn shit or vein for a long time. As long as philosophers have been metagrobolized by the egg and chicken conundrum. I decided to end it all. Here's what I found from a cookbook.
"The easiest way is not to worry about it. In general, small and medium shrimp do not need de-veining except for cosmetic purposes. In larger shrimp, sometimes the intestinal vein contains grit; then you should prefer to remove it"

In short, it is neither the shit or main vein. Its their shit vein.

Save me from The avalanche of cliches
Watched a movie with my friends on Monday. It was the first movie I was going to watch in a cinema after..ten weeks. The screen at tampines mall only indicated two shows. Harry potter and the prisoner of atlikazamofqzban and the day after tomorrow. We settled for the lesser of the two evils. I was genuinely enthused by the title of the movie. Because its one of those awfully creative titled films that will bound to trigger off washedout,jejune,stupid jokes like :

"Eh wan to watch the day after tomorrow the day after tomorrow? "

Ok,I;ve digressed. In The Day After Tomorrow, global warming is causing the polar caps to melt, ocean currents to spin, temperatures to drop, and a band of stalwart actors to deliver the corniest sort of disaster movie dialogue. "Unpack the snowshoes! We're walking from here!"

You get the drift.

However,the pictures were good. They were like those ripped from national geographic remixed with those "Caught on Camera" disaster flicks. Unfortunately, there is a story, an assortment of characters and a batch of contrived relationship crises whose dramatic transparency punctures the visual splendor like nudity with squares.

Before watching the film, I only knew that tornadoes had eyes. I was wrong. They have brains too. The smart tornadoes that hit Los Angeles know to zero in on the city's most famous landmarks. All would be forgiven if The Day After Tomorrow were the fun kind, and for a while, it was. Then it became the dull kind of bad. After the storm passed and the freeze hit, the film was only half over and already out of tricks. It was the first time I walked out of a cinema, dreading that I had paid for it. Because it only left me thinking about the day after tomorrow the day after tomorrow the day after tomorrow...and I will be in army once more.

Maybe.

Attempted to entertain myself with the crowd at the Passing out parade yesterday, perusing row by row, detail by detail. Much to my disappointment, i didn't find any spectacular spectators. Maybe it was the spectacles. Maybe I was a little tired. Hmm. I thought the reviewing officer-tampines Mp, Ms Irene Ng was outstanding. A genteel lady and thoroughly elegant in her manner. At least, she kept my eyes transfixed on her for about ten minutes. Still miss..what a pity.

The cue for the caps to be thrown came. Our caps went up. A fleeting moment of joy..my smile vanished as I saw my cap completing its projectile motion much faster than the others. Maybe I was standing too near the centre of the earth and the gravity was too fucking strong and resulted in the premature ejaculation of my cap. Grr.

Finally I'm out from tekong officially (well I have to return to take my soc test). I'll touch a lil on my bmt experience cos that's wad people like to blog after they have passed out. I'm still experiencing this feeling of a big fuck when I walk around. There is this air in my head that has yet to be deflated. I have to constantly jerk myself ..back to reality. As a private, I still have to salute to the old man with the white hair and white suit and his stick outside KFC.

Army has taught me to be grateful and thankful. Things that I have obliterated and taken for granted as a civilian ,even trivial ones like walking my own way. And not having to be in tandem with people.