Perpetually Bored

If I were to appear as a messed up individual from the first day I arrived, that would be the expectation of me, and no one would bat an eyelid if I failed to deliver.

However, if I were to perform optimally since day one, but on one day, unable to deliver a particular piece of work, the wrath of the brass above me would be incurred and all their fiery anger and resulting consequences brought to bear upon on me.

Compared the first and second case. The former would be multiple failures with little or no consequences, whereas in the latter, it would be one tiny road hump, but with drastic consequences.

The conclusion drawn is that it would be far more beneficial for one’s well-being to fail consistently rather than occasionally.

Expectations are such a strange thing.

I don’t really have a list of things I want to accomplish in this year, nor even a few rough bullet points. This year is turning out to be one of those whereby I’ve to make a number of major decisions regarding my life, but I don’t feel quite ready for it yet. However, one of the directions I’ve been meaning to steer towards is to lead a minimalistic lifestyle.

Previously, I’ve touched a little on topic through my post regarding my varying levels of connectivity. This time, I’m getting rid of things which are more tangible, and physical.

I was greatly inspired by two articles, the first about a family who lives in a Yurt out in the Alaskan wilds, and another, a challenge to declutter by getting rid of non-essentials, leaving only 100 items. I currently already don’t leave too much a footprint, with the most space consuming items being my computers and collection of books at home. Weekdays I spend living on a military base, with only a set of uniform, a towel, a few changes of underwear, toiletries and my ipod. Essentially, that is the baseline of what is the absolute minimum. Everything else is just clutter, and optional.

That being said, I do have a number of ‘leftovers’, such as clothes that I no longer wear, stationary that are no longer relevant (like the rulers that lets you draw all kinds of funny shapes), lots of electronic and computer components that I saved because I imagined that they might come in handy (which didn’t), etcetera, etcetera. Time to nuke all that crap, and what better place to start clearing fluff than with fluff itself?

Goodbye, my collection of random stuffed animals from childhood. May the The Salvation Army find you new homes.

I seldom partake in sports, and the one time I did, which was yesterday, I injured my right wrist while bowling. It’s the worst place that I can possibly suffer an injury. It hurts when I type, and it hurts when I use the mouse. Looks like I’m out of action for first-person shooter gaming.

It was an activity I reluctantly took part in only after much persuasion, and I walked away regretful. As Calvin would say, “Every time I’ve built character, I’ve regretted it.”

After an individual has completed their mandatory two years of National Service here, most of their personal documents that have accumulated over their period of service gets destroyed. The earlier half of this month saw people many from my unit completing their period of service and leaving behind two years of internment in what is essentially Auschwitz.

Being one of those that still had a long term left in the service, I had to clean up their mess. Most of the afternoon was spent shredding documents after documents of these people who left service in the past month. I could only imagine how the members of the Stasi felt on 15 January 1990, destroying every single document possible as those pesky counter-revolutionaries and capitalist sympathizers marched on the building.

Boy, it was intense work!

The past few weekends I have been home, I have been touched by a few acts of my friends. First was Ultann getting me the Bloodthirsty Choker from Shard of Hate. He ran the instance almost daily for that. Then was Stargrace getting me into the raid over on Oasis for my mythical updates. Today, Latharek persuaded his raid to give me a pair of T4 gloves that no one on the raid could use.

I have a very close social circle and few friends, but those that I have are truly amazing. It is easy to lose one’s direction in life’s fog and fail to appreciate that there are people out there who think and care about us, and I’ve been guilty of that on many occasions.

Thank you all friends. What would I do without you?

A bunch of things happened over the weekend, including an event that wa rather tragic and would have a significant and lasting impact on my life. I won’t go into detail because I can’t open myself to such a degree of transpancy, but I probably am not the same person today as I was yesterday.

Setting the above aside, Calreth participated in a leviathan raid over the weekend. Leviathan, who resides in the Chamber of Destiny, is one of the three epic mobs required for the Wizard’s epic weapon, along with Imzok in Protector’s Realm and Druushk in Veeshan’s Peek.

Don’t celebrate just yet. The outcome of this raid is still quite uncertain. Leviathan is a tricky mob. The raid starts off with clearing trash mobs which drops fish (Yha-lei) skins that would allow a person to, I assume, disguise themselves as food that Leviathan would attempt to consume.

Once trash mobs are cleared, most raids would then make their first attempt at leviathan himself in what is termed as a farming fun. At this point, selected members of the raid take turns putting on the fish disguise and being swallowed by leviathan, killing some kind of stomach creature to collect explosive vials. Once a sufficient number of vials are accumulated, the raid then wipes itself and begin the actual kill attempt.

The whole idea behind this is to get swallowed by leviathan just like in the previous attempt, but this time, detonating the vials farmed inside him, causing massive internal damage.

We didn’t get to the second attempt because we ran out of fish suits at this point. The trash mobs that drop them respawns, but takes a few days. Hence, it’ll be Tuesday morning (GMT +8) when the next attempt would be made. Hope that goes well.

Also, I finally had the chance to run Runnyeye: The Gathering (RE2). RE2 has been out for months now, but I could never quite slot myself into a group there, except until now. Ultann and Kasul (it was his first also) came along and we blasted through the instance rather quickly. The internal layout is exactly like that of Runnyeye, except populated with different, and much higher level (83 seems to be the average) mobs. It was a fun filled trip.

After about 3 weeks of quarantine and confident in camp, thanks a series of poorly implemented measures to initially, contain the spread of H1N1, and then subsequently, to prevent stationed troops from being exposed to H1N1, I’m home again.

It wasn’t a pleasant experience, but it was during these hours that I realized how important my friends and family were to me. My parents brought me supplies to ease the difficulty of staying away for such a long period, and the few friends that I had helped kept my spirits up. I’d especially like to thank these people: my mom and dad, Giada, Stephanie,  Brenda and Jade for all the support they have given. I wouldn’t know what to do without you folks. Also special thanks to my bunkmate, Daniel and Marcus, for helping me make light of the whole situation.

In a time where keywords such as ‘recessions’ and layoffs’ steal the limelight of every major news program and most people are kept worried if they might be the next casuality of an unforgiving economy, the lack of job security can be a scary thing.

Where I am, I am almost oblivious to the fact that there is an economic crisis out there. There can be no better illustration than that there is a cyclone around me, and I live right in the eye of it, oblivious the wreckage that is going on. Events of the outside world has very little impact on the life of a soldier spending 6 days a week stationed in the barracks. At the same time however, being in the eye of the storm also traps me in there, and I can’t leave. I have one thing few people have these days – job security, and too much of it. I’m assured a job for the next 1.5 years. I can’t resign. I can’t be laid off. On the contrary, if I perform poorly (such as being send to the detention barracks), I get even more job security (extension of service period).

Too much job security can be a scary thing.

The arrival of Chinese New Year came with a few discontiguous off days from the army, the most that I’ll probably receive for a long time to come. A day off the previous Friday, the regular weekly off on Sunday, followed by Monday and Tuesday, which corresponds to the first and second day of the Chinese New Year. Chinese New Year festivities last for fifteen days, with the first two being the most important of all, since this is when people would visit their relatives and close friends.

I don’t know what to do with all that time. Today’s Tuesday and it seems that I’ve wasted the entire duration of my off pass doing absolutely nothing. I’m starting to dislike holiday seasons. The problem with them is that there’s too much cheer in the air, too many smiling faces, and I can’t get into the mood of that. Holiday seasons seem to serve as a reinforcement to my feelings of  isolation and disconnection from the world.

I haven’t been writing not because I don’t have anything to write about, I do. So why don’t I? Two reasons mainly.

One, it’s because what I have to say are too personal for me to be comfortable to leave hanging out. I’ve a huge paranoia about people using what I say against me, especially on the Internet where everything is logged and archived. Judging by the tendency of public figures having their past dug out and used against them, I wouldn’t say my paranoia is all that unfounded.

Secondly, I just can’t seem to find the energy to talk about things. This is one of the most happening periods in the world, and I’ve a lot  of comments on current events, ranging from the inauguration of US President Obama to Singapore’s 2009 budget and handouts (which I concur with the comment from an opposition that “people would be hard pressed to decide to spend it on salt or sugar”). Phrasing them into words however, it feels like a mammoth effort.

I hope the rest of you are faring much better. Happy (Chinese) New Year to all.

The past few times that I’ve lifted my pen and place the tip of it against the paper of my diary, a question pops into my head, “why do I want to keep writing?”. I think people write because they want to store a memory of an event that they could look back on one day, similar to that of taking a photograph.

Looking back at the events of the past weeks, there isn’t a single thing that I would like to look back on in future, assuming I get there. Just like how no one takes a picture of another person in tears, I hardly have anything pleasant to draw from. Should I still choose to pen down those unpleasant feelings which seems to be getting worse each day? And to what end? What would I accomplish by doing that?