“These walls are funny. First you hate ‘em, then you get used to ‘em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That’s institutionalized.”

– Red, from the movie ‘The Shawshank Redemption’

Suddenly, it seems that there’s a white and empty boulevard ahead of me, and every tick of the clock resonates loudly.

I’ll be disrupting from my national service the week after, and starting school another week past that. From now until next Thursday, I’m clearing what leave and off I have accumulated over the course of this year.

It’s a strange feeling having so much free time all of a sudden. There’s no one to yell at you about where you’re supposed to be, what is it you’re supposed to do, and what is it you’ve supposedly done wrong. It is as if I’ve been kept in cold store for the past two years, and now I’ve been violently ejected out of it.

I’ve made myself adequately clear in the past how I disliked my period of military service, and the negativity of the experiences I had. Now that I’m outside, or almost outside of the system, I miss it. It is a routine that I’ve initially hated, but gradually grown accustomized to it, to the point where it becomes the norm.

It’s a strange world, isn’t it?

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.

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.”

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!

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?

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.

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.