met janice, joe (the skater) and han peng the climber all at borders today. shucks. went to the wrong bookstore to hunt for that big book that eunice mentioned on her blog...

on a positive note, i cleared the paper today, and dr vilma will try and see how she can get me to go for the shorelife program... yeah!

like what chester said, i think too, that the principal resigning over one hit on the head with a paperback (was it? or a hardcover? wasn't specified) book was really something. when people of my age grew up, all sorts of things happen, because generally parents didn't dare to complain. or rather, parents encouraged teachers to physically discipline their child if they misbehave. now? touch the child, m.o.e. will suspend the teacher, have an inquiry etc... as far as i know. yes i know, m.o.e. is my employer, but i'm not sucking up to 101% of the policies in play.

corporal punishment should be reinstated, but not trigger-happily, of course. it's meant for disciplining, not tekan for enjoyment. in the army, physical striking of the subordinate is definitely not widely seen around, but at least, there's the military laws that everyone isn't too clear about hanging over their heads for a count of insubordination. unfortunately, there is no such policy for students who choose to violate basic school rules - or should we rename them to school laws just to get it into people's minds?

the army has softened, now the education ministry has softened. welfare for the masses is good, but at the cost of discipline? i think that's totally unwise. my boys in school, thank God, are generally very well behaved and gentlemanly, with the occasional overzealous behaviour (come on, it is a boys' school i'm in after all) which distinguishes them from girls' schools. but to totally skip physical reinforcement of discipline for education is not going to work. a light bit will definitely help to prevent loss of authority, although i remember somewhere in my life i heard of this phrase "if you have to shout to get attention, you are without authority".

education now - touch one strand of hair, and get ready to face the music. hey, that's not for the students to know - that's for the teachers to know! generally parents are mostly understanding, but for those who are unreasonable, if they so insist that no one can touch their children in school, guess what can happen to them when they grow up and possibly drop out of school, becoming a delinquent, and getting into serious trouble. corporatizing m.o.e. to a more professional status, i agree, but totally do away with physical discipline? this i don't see the logic.

just finished a phone conversation with daphne, and i ended up digging out that old, old running log of mine. seems so long ago, that i was crazy enough to do 12x400m in 2:30 cycles. golly!

one day i'll probably go out cycling with her and carry tools, repair kits etc, on a discovery ride around singapore. haven't brought out my streetdirectory on rides for a looooong time now... anyway, i guess i found a swimming partner for workouts for the future - just make sure she counts and doesn't swim, haha...

must have spent way too much time in the pool yesterday - because my arms felt like they were partially weighted down with um... weights. almost had to struggle to do 43 armstrokes to get to the other end of the pool - not good!

i think i prefer the nie pool over a standard 50 meter pool anyday, it makes a great place to practice correct (or as-correct-as-possible) strokes to get maximal efficiency out.

met mao cheen at the pool - he was about to leave, i was about to swim - and we had a long chat. aiyah, he supposed to sms me his contact number... but i have yet to receive anything yet!...

just surprised myself while counting my strokes for a 50 meter length - 40 armstrokes for freestyle? i thought i counted wrongly... unless on my second actual attempt, i counted wrongly and hit 40 again!?! err... i'll validate the actual number again another day...

the icarus frame is just so sweet! s-curved carbon fiber seatstays, and a flat carbon fiber chainstay. did i say, flat? it's not round, oval or anything like that, it's like a 3mm thick flat piece of carbon fiber. it's just amazing! not surprisingly, the frame is named, eyecandy... *swoon*

the best part of it? it's a pink frame!...

one breakthrough i had for yesterday - i managed to cut down my stroke count to 20 for one lap of the nie pool! yessssss!!!

gonna sleep now. God is the only one who always is around me, giving me peace admidst the chaos.

headed for nie to hand up the assignment by 4pm. while on the train, i met colin as i was on the way to meet grace to return her her xd card and the recovered photos.

got home via service 107, had a nap while on the ride, and later rode over to potong pasir to return nivlek his 8-in-1 card reader. he's a very helpful chap, he loaned me his card reader for absolutely nothing and asking for nothing too!

just found this meaningful website about "casting the first stone".

last night i was out with joanne covering the smu "party in my place" bash. though i'm no pub/bar-resident, i must admit there was the heightened elation when i was shooting the revellers, as well as the dance moves by smu eurhythmix. sadly, a tragedy unfolded earlier in the day when part of nicoll highway collapsed - it was reminiscent of the hotel new world collapse almost two decades ago.

haha, yesterday in summary...

in the late morning i met this father with his daughter on the way to nuh for dialysis. this chance encounter, and the dialogue with them that followed, made me really think about life and a little of death. met up with a whole bunch of the diploma chaps, whom i didn't expect to see after so long.

headed to meet grace to pick up her xd memory card that had a problem. hope to recover her photos for her successfully. then i went to ura building, and looked at that massive singapore scale model. absolutely amazing. next up, gee hin chan. met cue, beefnuggets, and a few other chaps there, as well as two biketrial chaps. i then made a pit stop at stanley's, and had a short conversation with stanley and joanne.

next stop: sim lim square. bought a dvd+rw to test, hopefully it can be burnt at the max speed allowed on dad's tdk combo drive. and i practically searched the whole building (well, almost) and finally settled for 3 memory card holders from memory world. by the way, the incredible find of the day was actually sighting the diamond firegl 4000 32mb selling for only 52 dollars! err... it used to cost probably 3000 over dollars back in 97/98, and it uses the 3dlabs glint mx chipset if i remember correctly. oops. just checked, it uses the 3Dpro/2mp chipset from mitsubishi / evans & sutherland. wow. computing nostalgia. i remember wanting that back in my polytechnic days - it was the one and be-all card of its time. um... i'll leave this for another day.

anyway, i was surprised to actually bump into hanafia at tekka mall, along with his wife and children. man - it's been so long since we've last met - almost three years now! got home, settled down, had dinner, then went over to meet niklek to borrow his multicard reader, before i went to meet dr sng to get a handphone from him, and eventually passed it to anne at her place. wah. and my memory tells me the phone was just hot not too long ago - everyone seemed to have one.

nostalgia trip!!!

it was just like another of our underwater clubsnap gatherings. even before reaching adex, suntanguy recognized me on the same bus! small world indeed huh, same bus...

and here's a noncomprehensive list of who were there that i met up with: biscuit + kim, lanxx, beivied, siaoon, lovells19, dylan, laixi, soon theen, goondoo + wife, faith, joyce, philip, dennis, adrianna, as well as liza ashiek ridzal claire tricia mishon. so many people!

for the uninitiated, try looking at todd essick's website - you will be amazed!

also met ash to pass her the photos from the event from the previous weekend.

princess moon was a simple story, yet it evokes the early teenage emotions from my years past. heart-wrenching? not exactly, but the show brought a couple of tears to my eyes. and "how do you measure love? by the size of the hole it leaves behind." simple, but true words - cheers to the days of childhood innocence. it was a good move to leave out showing the truth behind the pink sweater though - that will leave a crater in my mind.

it was fun to try spotting all the locations for the show. try it with the other blueprint shows then! kudos to mediacorp for improving the quality of shows.

what is a booty?

bev told me it's the ass - i'd thought it's what pirates can call their loot as well. then i told her... how about the idea of pirates, after taken their loot, forcing the captives to walk off the plank, and the rest shaking their arses on the deck...

sick as a dead dog/cat today, got my "candies" from dr koh in the morning. it seems that for the past one month, today was my third visit already. even my antibiotics prescribed got changed to ofloxacin... whatever it is.

reminds me of when i was young, this certain doctor around my place in toa payoh, used to give us a sweet after consultation. literally put... so sweet of him... but that was probably 1984 or so...

had a little action shoot at toa payoh in the afternoon, shooting netball. if i'm not mistaken, chij got the "c" division champ after they triumphed over raffles' girls, and chij as well, got the "b" division champ, playing against dunman secondary. met joanne and one more of my vs senior/canoepolo player there as well...



right now i feel like poop because i've got a sore throat that won't go away, and rod stewart sounds just like me...

went crazy and decided to torture myself yesterday. cycled down to macritchie, met terry, peter and peter, and we ran 10k. i met heinz after the run, joined in the mr365 group for a short chat and drink, then i cycled home, burnt a cd with photos from last weekend's baptism, cycled to meet vincent and pass the cd to him, then went back for dinner. later, arthur needed my help to do some stuff on his bike, or he'd be marooned somewhere far far from home. what to do, but to help? price for helping? 2 cans of qoo...

finished the booklet that daphne passed to me containing answers regarding questions to the movie the passion of the christ - and that got me searching. one of the most impressive sites full of information i came across was this one that sells reproductions that actually can work like the real mccoy. trust me. once you've read it, you'll know that it's not child's play.

i've gotta watch the movie soon.

the past two days were hectic! yesterday i shot a drug awareness event that ash was involved in, then i went back home, snoozed, then went over to daphne's church to shoot the easter mass/baptism that was going on. as i was going in, i saw adrian with his family members too. the mass was super long, partially because of easter itself, but also because of the fairly large number of candidates for baptism. daniel was there too, and i also got to learn that paul, whom i was shooting with, also knows melissa from my course back in ngee ann - she was there in the flesh!

this morning, i went for another round of baptism shooting, for the chinese church. then went over to serangoon gardens with daphne for some long long chat. zongde popped by my house later on in the day to grab those rma-worthy hard disks as well... and i just had a chat on msn with wensi, and learnt that she's a pretty friendly lass, as much as she is pretty too.

after class yesterday, i went over to sp to meet chloe for lunch. while on the way to the campus, i had to lend my mobile to a middleaged auntie whose car has a puncture on the front wheel so that she could call for help. what to do, right? i was actually quite surprised (negatively) that there wasn't even a hazard/breakdown sign anywhere in the vehicle. couldn't change the tyre for her because i can't insure my own life, especially without the hazard sign to warn oncoming motorists. once she had established positive contact for help, i bade her goodbye, as i trudged my way into sp.

when she came, i was surprised to see that eunice was with her too. when we were about to leave foodcourt 1 (why it isn't called, canteen 1, is beyond me), we met sam, who's also a climber (small world, it seems every 1 out of 20 people in sp are climbers, partially because i saw very few people on campus yesterday). lucky chap is getting attachment with ace adventure for the oncoming race on may 29th.

chloe had to rush off for a presentation and a lecture thereafter, so i accompanied eunice who was blurrer than me on the campus to the convention hall to wait for zaki and janna. only relief came as i spotted a non-climber - vikki's guy kenneth - getting into campus for class. so good life, class so late one!... see? all the time, i'm only meeting the climbers. something's wrong - there's too many climbers in sp! help! we all popped by at trung-something, and i got another surprise when i met sha with another friend of his who popped into the trung-something via the backdoor.

eunice, janna and zaki decided to head for town, while i opted to stay around to revise through my growth & development module notes somewhere on campus. i was having a field day - wait, no - the mosquitoes were having a field day, hounding me for my urm... blood. where-ever i went to park myself down to get started in the notes, the mossies were following me. i don't mind a fanclub, but this was a little too much argh... i was revising through my papers when a girl called serene popped by and introduced herself as from campus crusade. so seems that she's from city harvest as well, and i don't know why, i just told her why i wasn't going back to church for almost one-half years now, when she asked. gotten a load off my chest, i'd say. in the end, chloe was probably suffering a pressurecooker effect when she had to finish off her work because the next day (today lah, duh) was good friday. i bade her goodbye via good ol' sms and made my way to np instead.

it was fascinating to go back on campus at 8 in the evening. never once, did i ever stay back so late, with a team of people to indulge in training, to work off the pressures of the day. i switched from watching the npcp guys (and gals), and over to the floorball players, then to the magnum force people. less-than-perfect equipment, and location, but training their hearts out. i never remembered doing anything like that before. i was a solitary long distance runner, with nothing but chasing pr's (personal records) one after another on my mind. never have i felt really belonging to a team before, in anyway. to date, i don't recall anything close to that either. i was always emotionally on my own. i'm targetting a secret project involving both canoepolo and magnum force next week - especially that would mark the end of my real civillian days from my thus-so-far carefree life.

the evening concluded with a short post training session with the np canoepolo players at k.a.p. where else would we go, right?

and i had a bout of depression that kicked in, that didn't allow me to sleep until like 3+ am today...

and i don't want to ever, ever go into a university. the local education scheme culminates in transforming bright minds into... employees.

just now during lesson, prof teo mentioned something regarding bonding between a parent and a child during the growing years, and that would in long term seem to give rise to a close relation between a maid and a child if the child were to be borne by the maid instead of the mother, which is a commonly seen practice these days.

this gives me a new revelation - could there a such a possibility? when we were young, we had the close proximity to our moms (naturally, of course!) and later on, as we grow up, at teenage, how often do we still get embraced the way that we used to get when we were younger? hardly - it would have been too embarrassing at that age for most of us. so being humans and having the affectionate side of us, could that be the reason why we would seek out a partner of the opposite gender (those who prefer the same gender, it's fine by me, but i'm not getting myself involved ok?) to seek that embrace to feel loved and get the sense of self-worth?

who were you embraced more by when you were young? my guess is that whoever hugged you more when you were a toddler, you'll be closer to him or her.

golly. controversial stuff eh? but that is nothing compared to what i learnt that happened apparently in november last year. hmm.

oh, i shot at temasek polytechnic last night for a talent-time finals, i was the um... "accidental" photographer. i was actually shooting for little green frogs, when i thought, might as well help them anyway. canoepolo babes michelle, lindy and betsy were there too...

this saturday, i'll be helping ash to shoot a community project, and daphne for her church's baptism, both free-of-charge as community service. and i thought i can get away without people asking me if i do wedding photography...

by the way, divers alert!

last night, after class, i had dinner with candy at canteen 2. why canteen 2? because she didn't want to walk all the way to canteen 9, that's why!

i woke up this morning remembering last night, and inadvertently, i was reminded of yimei. that was so long ago - back in 2000. then i recalled the pendant that i gave to her then, when i was trying to woo her. she was the only girl i ever, ever gave anything to, though the value is not much, but that was 99 out of the 240 bucks i got during national service then.

now reflecting back on what handbag told me about my actions - i tend to throw myself wholeheartedly at something for a period of time, then i'll move on to something else with all my gusto, though i must add that i don't ditch the thing i was dropping to a lower activity level.

when i gave it an analysis, the reason was, when i wasn't attached, i had the extra time and energy in my hands, that was why i diverted my focus to running (1996-2000). then i went into a lull period of nothing being able to garner my interest, until november 2001, when i picked up my crummy logitech webcam. i spent countless hours taking crummy shots all the way to october 2002, when i got the "up" to the oly 4040. and the story continues with the canon. looking at my pattern, it seems to show why i'm pretty likely to develop a crush easily for some girls. argh.

now i'm pretty serious into improving my photographic skills, but i don't want to have the "been there, done that" feeling i've had with running, and biathlon/triathlon. where's my motivation?

had a good time shooting at the singapore gymnastics open at bishan over the weekend. got to meet up with st1100, peterlim, and finally got to see nemotohp in action. great action, fantastic company, wonderful gymnastics!

in case you're wondering, yes, my computer is still d-o-w-n.

was looking for my ntu pal's face + name in the miss singapore universe namelist, but i failed to find her. what i did notice though, was the massive assortment of names the finalists had. reminds me of the exotic name this brazilian soccer fan dad, named his child with the child's full name bearing all the 11 names of the players of the then-brazil squad. or maybe if i modified my name to "70-200 f/2.8 l is seh suan". nah. canon's not paying me to name myself also...

my computer's still screwed up, can't seem to install an operating system on my ibm 120gxp, after my ultrastar 73lzx just plainly refused to spin up at power-on. thankfully all my photos were stored on the two ide hard disks... phew!

going for the seasons in the sea underwater photography exhibition later today, after i pop by dr koh's. i've got phlegm, a damned sore back (much as bad as i told chloe just on wednesday), a gastro-cramp in the wee hours which i didn't expect because i didn't eat much last night, general fatigue (usually my camerabag's feels just slightly weighted, now it's a big brick...) gotta seek medical aid...

by the way, back at nie yesterday, the rain wasn't gonna be called rain anymore. it was raining waterfalls from the roofs!