Sunday, September 28, 2008

J-POP KARAOKE

Went to a Japanese Karaoke with my weiqi friends today. Haven't been singing for a very long time, so my form wasn't very good... But I was very happy to see some new songs there, and I also got to try out songs that I've never sang before. My singing still has a lot to improve, haha. I guess my voice is the type that "cannot last", as it dies out very easily.

Thanks to Yurika for organising this! Even though I was upset about the incidents happening in my camp, it's nice to spend some happy time with my friends. Oh yeah, I think we will be the first group of people ever in the world to play weiqi in a Karaoke room! Can you imagine that?

Going back to camp tomorrow. Must remind myself that I cannot afford to make mistakes, and must take my work more seriously now. There are still 4 days before the Mind Sports Games. Let's hope a miracle would happen.

Eating dinner.

Yurika and wenjun. He's really into the game...

Jerry singing. Actually his voice is not bad:)

Cheese!

Don't worry, I'm not drunk, and I will never be.

Nice karaoke!

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Mind Sports and a Tragedy

I thought that the previous book-in is the unhappiest one, and yet I was wrong. So many things happened during this book-in. So many unhappy moments...

首先是我为参加智运会向兵营请假的事情。第一届智力运动会将于10月3日正式开幕,而为了参加这个历史性的比赛我从8月中旬就开始向兵营请假了。由于我今年的Leave只剩下两天(每个人一年只能请14天假),所以我要参加的话只好通过一种特殊的Leave,叫做Fully Paid Unrecorded Leave (FPUL)。我估计这种Leave就是专门给代表国家比赛的选手们用的。添了表格,将围棋协会写的信给了长官之后,我以为这件事就顺利解决了。谁知道,过了几个星期兵营都没有给我答复,连Yes or No都不说。直到这个拜三,他们才告诉我这个假没有被批下来,因为新加坡体育理事会(SSC)并不支持我申请FPUL。SSC建议我通过自己的Leave去参加比赛。

问题是,我就是没有自己的Leave可用所以才要靠FPUL的呀!星期二我还在高高兴兴地跟我北京的朋友聊我去智运会的事呢,结果隔一天就收到这么个消息...一想到我不能去北京参加比赛,我就感到很伤心,简直可以躲到一个角落哭。我知道我去北京肯定会被砍,赢不了棋,但这可是难得的机会啊。而且,为什么我几个礼拜前就开始申请,他们在比赛前7天才答复我呢?在这么高科技的时代消息难道还传得那么慢?我也不明白为什么申请FPUL一定要通过SSC。毕竟我是代表新加坡的呀,SSC支不支持有什么关系呢?这可是第一届智力运动会啊。如此隆重的比赛简直可以跟奥运会和残奥会媲美,偏偏他们不让我去参加...还有,我们新加坡围棋军团已经连续那么多年参加了世界比赛,拿到过不少好成绩,去年的东运会还拿了二金一银,为什么SSC还是不肯接受我们?

我觉得这件事也不可以怪任何人,要讲也只能讲这是整个机构的问题,无论是SAF还是SSC。但愿以后会有所改善吧。我跟我的长官谈过,他说他还会再帮我争取一下,看能不能帮我请到假。围棋协会的杨老师和吴家田先生也帮我跟SSC谈了谈,请SSC给兵营写一封信证明我是代表新加坡去比赛的,希望有所帮助。真的很感谢大家的支持!虽然我已经做好了最坏的打算,不过我还是会努力争取的!上天保佑~


I thought my incident was bad enough to be considered a tragedy, but something worse happened. 我兵营里又有几个人因为做错事而被抓去Detention Barracks (DB),其中一个还是和我蛮要好的朋友。我不知道为什么他会做错,可能是一时糊涂吧。发生这种事情,我也无言以待,只能替他感到伤心。这种悲剧,是没有人想看到的,也没有人希望发生在自己的身上。临走的时候远远的看了他一眼,想跟他打声招呼但手却拒不起来。就这样,他们静悄悄地被警车带走了。

看到这种事发生在其他人身上,我不禁想到什么时候会轮到自己。兵营真是个危险的地方,稍微不慎就会被关进去几天。看来,我以后做事要更加认真,更加谨慎了。

朋友,保重吧。

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Departure




Departure (Piano Solo) from the famous anime Rurouni Kenshin (るろうに剣心).

One of my favourite animes! And I think the soundtrack used in this anime is great. One of the best I've ever seen. Maybe this is what makes this anime so attractive, other than the wonderful storyline.

This track was used many times in the anime, but the most significant scene should be when Kenshin (剣心) is leaving Kaoru (薫) and the rest and travel to Kyoto to do what he needs to do: stop Shishio (志々雄). Hence the name, "Departure".

Therefore, I am dedicating this video to all my friends who went overseas to further their studies. I hope you can achieve your aims and graduate happily, and just like Kenshin returned to Kaoru in the end, return to our home one day.

Stop Criticising China!!

This book-in was a rather unhappy one. I went to camp without knowing about the "China Milk" incident, and I even tried to buy a packet of Dutch Lady strawberry flavoured milk to drink. I only knew that this product has already been "condemned", together with many others which are suspected to contain milk produced in china. Wow, this case is getting more and more serious, I thought. But then everyone suddenly started to say bad things about the country itself. Sentences like:" It's like this because it's China.", "Did you buy China products?", "Is this thing made in China? Luckily it's not." were getting heard more and more frequently, and a lot of jokes were made based on this. "You think this is China is it?" "Don't worry lah, we are not in China." "Of course he does that, he is from China."...

I tried very hard to contain my anger instead of talking back to them. Most of time I kept quiet instead of laughing with them. But isn't there something wrong with the way they view other countries? I mean, the whole incident occurred because of a few (well, many, actually) black sheeps among the producers, right? Why is there a need to condemn the whole country? Just because China has been receiving good reputation recently and hence they must take this chance to bombard China?

Doesn't Singapore promote racial harmony? This is also evident in the army. But since we can treat the Indians and Malays with respect, why can't we treat those from China with respect as well? We are not even from a different race, and even our origins are the same! Why don't the Singaporeans know that we speak the same language and have the same skin colour? Sometimes I really get fed up about the way they look at China and people from China.

I don't deny that Singapore and China has different ways of doing things, and the quality of China products are not very high. But hey, can't you at least spend a thought for other people? Can't you think about the feelings of those who were born in China? What if people from other country talked bad things about Singapore and joked about Singapore right in front of you? How would you feel, assuming that you are a loyal Singaporean?

Sometimes the comments can be really be very hurting... Jokes are jokes, but there should be a limit, shouldn't it?

Friday, September 19, 2008

Move House

After much consideration, I still decided to move from sohu to here. Sohu is really slow, and it doesn't seem to be much more compatible with firefox. Using IE is really troublesome, yeah...

Still familiarising myself with this thing... Don't really know HTML, so I think I'll stick with fixed templates.

我知道用blogspot的话在中国的同胞们看不到,所以我也会把我在这儿写的内容贴到校内网上,有兴趣的话可以去那儿看。

Time to say goodbye to my previous blog:
http://trunterzx.blog.sohu.com