If you are tired of reading things about the new year, this would probably be a good time to leave. But then again I am not about to go into some big-ass resolution making mode, partly because there isn’t much sense in making any resolution simply for the sake of making resolutions.

Last year I wrapped things up for 2010 to welcome the new year of 2011. Similarly, this year I would wrap up my experiences in 2011 and give closure to this long year which some would claim to be the worse year of their lives while others loved their time in 2011.

In 2011, I graduated from the National University of Singapore with a First Class Hons degree. It went well despite my really bad experience for my FYP. Till now I still feel sick in the stomach as I remember my FYP days. Thinking back it was rather risky of me to do the things I did, and I might have lost my First Class should things go any lousier.

In 2011, I applied for different types of jobs from RSAF, DSTA and also CSIT. I sat for my first 1 hour plus interview in CSIT with 3 interviewers and actually enjoyed my time discussing on my NS experiences and how I thought about the different lessons in them. 2011 saw me deciding on a career choice and embarking on it.

2011 saw me getting attached to a wonderful girl through a series of events. How I was initially introduced to a different girl and then my current girlfriend kept bugging me to see how things progress until in the end we got together instead. My life has been very different with her around; just the last few weeks we celebrated Christmas countdown and New Year’s Day countdown together.

In 2011 I began my career in the RSAF on the 6th of July, and I am currently less than 4 months away from finishing my course before being posted to the base to do some real work. There are many things that I have learnt along the way which seemed very interesting and I hope I will enjoy my job as days go by.

This is also probably the first time that I am sick through the crossing of year 2011 to 2012. There’s this bug going around in my workplace, and many of us have flu and cough. In such a confined space with not much ventilation, it is not surprising that this is a common problem among everyone.

It is now 2012 and a whole new life begins for some people who have chosen to do a reset of their lives. For me I will just continue to live my life the way I want to, and I hope as time goes by, I can look backwards and connect the dots. Happy New Year!

I would guess regular readers have dwindled down to but a few. I have not been updating as much because of the nature of my current job, and hence there is nothing to read here. In addition, there are many things that I cannot blog about or write simply because of the image I have to uphold for my employer.

It does not take a genius to find out that generally people expect more from civil servants simply because their salaries are paid from taxpayers, and every citizen is a taxpayer. Hence there are a lot of things that people expect to be done their way and that their way is right. In reality there’s always a thousand way to do something, and misunderstandings always occur when people think that they have this level of hierarchy over other people.

I’m considering if I should stop blogging, and whether I would have the energy to continue blogging, especially since how I would continue to stay in subsequently and then I won’t get to use the internet much too.

Just a quick update, I’ve progressed on from OCS to AFTC in Paya Lebar, and thankfully I have a friend who is able to drive the few of us west-siders to Paya Lebar every morning, helping us to save some bit of time which translates into more sleeping time as well. Life there is lectures and more lectures every single day, and examinations upon examinations. But it is not as physically demanding as in OCS, so much so that I guess we have become a little weaker, and people are getting sick day by day. I guess getting stuck in the classroom for long hours isn’t exactly great for human’s health and wellbeing?

I’ve started on my New Year shopping, with two new shirts bought yesterday with Joycie. Life has been great with her, and she complements me in the areas that I’m not so good at. She helps me select shirts that are nice and then gives me her opinion on each individual shirt so that we could decide together which looks better and which doesn’t. Particularly, we focus on shirts that make me look older rather than younger, and this would mean that the type of shirts would now move towards a particular direction?

We also took the opportunity to exhaust the Taka vouchers provided by Citibank. I got a Cologne set for $97, and I paid only $7 for it. It comes with this free bag that’s not exactly something that would intice me to buy. We bought the fragrance because we both liked it best after comparing it with the rest of the brands.

Joycie also gave me a Braun Buffel Wallet which we selected together. After deducting some amount from the vouchers, it is still quite an expensive gift for a student to pay. I’m really happy with my new wallet and I have already started using it. I hope this wallet won’t spoil easily so I can use it for many years.

Somehow the shopping spree helped to raise a bit of morale.

I thought I would just write a short post on moral courage, which seems to be sorely lacking in society today. I feel that Moral Courage is the courage to speak up against people in powers if you feel that what they did is not right. I specifically choose the words “not right” instead of “wrong”, as “wrong” seems too strong a word. Chances are there are times where the person might have done something which is not desirable, and can be improved, so I termed it “not right”.

What I think is this: Our lack of moral courage stems from how we are educated as kids, and our lack of basic responsibility that comes with maturity. If we were never encouraged to speak up in class, we wouldn’t speak up to raise suggestions to improve current processes, flawed as they may be; or just slightly cracked.

Case in point: We always do reviews on what happened in the day; how we can improve certain processes or dynamics. At these times, it is great to have participants speak out on what they thought were the bad points and how they thought it could be improved.

I once did raise a point up during such reviews, and the situation was this: As trainees, we have to maintain sufficient hydration to reduce the chances of heat exhaustion during physical training like runs and exercises. As such activities are usually conducted in the morning, we are always required to drink water the night before (at least 500ml). What usually happens is that sometimes you drink right before you sleep, and hence you have to wake up and go to the toilet; which is rather detrimental to good rest. Otherwise you can choose to hold it there, but then you wouldn’t be resting rather peacefully would you?

Would a suggestion of drinking water some time before we sleep be a good enough solution? I think it would, and it would definitely help everyone. If it was a valid safety regulation in your company, would you have raised the issue?

Or perhaps the question is: Would you raise the issue knowing that you might get condemned by peers whose mentality and maturity are different from yours? Considering how people who are usually more vocal gets sidelined from the “group”, I think most people are contented with just not speaking up.

What if the situation was more severe? If we couldn’t find the courage to speak up for lesser events, would we have the courage to speak up for other situations? Or would we just encourage the “suck it” mentality?

As future leaders in our respective fields, companies, and what have you, it is always important or rather imperative to have this reflection process within ourselves and within our groups, and to encourage people to speak up, so as to constantly generate new ideas and improve company processes.

I would just like to end off with something I thought:

It does not matter what position you hold in an organization, be it a junior staff or just a cadet, but the behaviour and actions that you carry defines you and defines how valuable you are to your organization. Like a small ant being able to carry 50 times its weight, a small staff can carry an idea improving productivity and morale that grows exponentially.

After the three weeks confinement period in OCS (which wasn’t exactly 3 weeks since there was Deepavali celebrations last Wednesday), I am now going to book out at the end of every weekend!

My body’s been aching a lot, probably due to the different softness of the pillow at home and in camp. The neck is always aching so i bought some Salonpas patches in case things get bad. When you get older, you start to feel that you are not in your prime when aches keep coming to you.

I had my IPPT test again and this time round there is a reasonable improvement. I had 10 chin ups as usual (4 points), but my shuttle run improved to a 10s which is 5 points, standing broad jump to 239cm (4 points, from a usual of 225cm), and my sit ups were maintained at 41 (5 points). This would mean that I’m in the running for Gold if I could run 9:44 and below. However my timing was 11:22 a week ago, and meeting that is impossible.

But, setting a goal is not something that is impossible, as long as it is reasonable. My first goal was to hit less than 11:20, but the other goal that I would really like to hit was less than 11:00. So I kept running, trying not to slow down. I tried breathing techniques, landing on the balls of the feet etc, and I am fairly confident that by the time I completed my 2.4km, it is a little below 11:00. The official timing given was 10:39, but they did clarify that a mistake was found, so I am expecting something close to 10:59 instead. I will know on Monday!

OCS has so far taught me many things which were different from the NS experience. It wasn’t taught to me in the classroom, but more of a constant reflection process where you try to think of what you observe, and what could be the reason why some things are done by other people. And then you wonder if there’s a difference in mentality and then you find out why. In a way, the training to become a specialist and an officer is vastly different, I find. Specialists are trained to micromanage; we take care of the men and talk to them a lot. We make things happen on a day to day basis, and make sure that everyone is always ready. Officers do a lot of planning and give much thought to everything that is being done. There is more responsibility and matured thinking involves that is different on a specialist level. In a unit the officers probably don’t mingle with the men as much as the specialists do; they just let the specialists run the show. It is indeed interesting to see things from both points of view and it is indeed a character building process where you transform from one to the other.

However sometimes it does feel anguishing when the younger people think differently from you. It is more of the opinions and attitudes kind of thing, and it is something that is hard to bridge, considering you alone have 6 more years of experiences dealing with people, and that includes more years of serving in the SAF and working in the unit way. There are still many people who live by the mantra “suck it up” instead of trying to make things happen to improve the organization. Perhaps one day when they mature, they would slowly begin to change and then the organization will also prosper at the same time.

I do realize that this post is just a collection of random thoughts, which I was rather lazy to sort out into a proper post with proper structure etc. But I guess what matters is that I wrote how I feel so that I can come back to it in the future to kick start my reflective process of OCS training.

That’s the uniform I would be wearing to OCS tomorrow. And I think it’s a little bad to post this after so long of no updates, only to say that I won’t be updating for the next 3 weeks because I will be in confinement.

Yes there’s Deepavali celebration going on, and I would be out for a day, but there’s so much other things to do that it doesn’t seem right to blog. I would be too tired to blog anyway.

It will be two weeks of Common Leadership Module where I would be down with the Army and Navy people, as well as the 19 year old kids going to OCS at the same time as me. There will be turn outs, the dreaded 5m confidence jump into the pool, and other exciting events, before I move on to the Air Wing in my final week of confinement.

It’s all back to school and mindless enduring of physical training, stuff that makes you stupider, the joke that NSmen make.

I will only graduate and commission next year, and this is the rank that I would be wearing once I graduate. Hopefully it will not be in the green pixelated uniform!

It’s time for another round of search terms review. I have taken the search terms used to reach my blog in the past 1 month and here are the few “more interesting” items listed:

1) change name bakerzin to bakerzin

What is that seriously? Is there even a name change?

2) chinese drama whole story

What kind of drama is that guy even looking for?

3) ee4302 joke

Hahahah I didn’t know there’s a joke about a module which you can find online

4) fyp ca1

Seems like many juniors are getting stressed. Indeed it is that time where the first CA report is due to be submitted and presented.

5) ignorantsoul london weight management

I should start to sell ignorantsoup for the ignorantsoul.

6) is whatsapp included in singtel bis plan.

If this question is asking if using whatsapp is included in the bis, the answer is no. Singtel bis, if I remember correctly, is only for Blackberry apps pre-installed on your device.

7) nus degree is bull shit

Go to hell sir. It might not be a top degree like Imperial College or Cambridge but it’s definitely not bullshit.

taiwan pron videos

Haha. Oh please this is not a pron website. Why would such a search term come here anyway!

9) Where to buy c-peel t166

Hi, if you would like to buy c-peel t166 from me, I have a second hand set which I used for a month as a transition phone before I switched to my blackberry. Do leave a comment here and I will get back to you.

And so the AFEs decided to have a chalet one day, which was rather last minute since we were doing the planning only a week in advance; most of the chalets were fully booked and only the one at Downtown East was left. Since the main attraction was to have a nice bbq, it was decided that we would only have a bbq session and that it would be held in my condo, if there was a bbq pit available.

Everything was done rather last-minute-ly, with the bbq pit being booked on a Tuesday, pit paid for on the Wednesday, food being ordered on Wednesday and the event being held on Saturday itself. We had to confirm the number of people, decide how much food to order, and settle any tiny details. Which was great since we had a really wonderful team of people who are able to take lots of initiative. Kudos to the west side people I guess?

And then on Saturday, a couple of us west side people came earlier to Jurong Point to buy some drinks, mushrooms, bacon, satay sticks (which was never used, wtf) and ice packets. Then we moved everything to the bbq pit at my house while waiting for the rest to come.

Joyce also came to my house, and at the same time, visited my parents for the first time, as well as see my sis through Skype. It was a pleasant meeting and she helped me wash the mushrooms and lettuce and wrap the bacon across the mushrooms.

The event went well somehow, and there were so many people that I didn’t need to bbq at all, and food just came to me. Those who had girlfriends brought their girlfriends, and the girlfriends all sat together to talk like a wives club. Every boyfriend seemed to be bringing food for them and showing how nice they are.

In the middle, Joyce showed me this from her Facebook and said that I fulfilled most of the following.

【男人深爱女人的九大表现】
1.在你难过时,他会不安
2.你高兴时,他很高兴
3.他常给你买东西,却舍不得给自己买
4.他一般会顺你的意
5.他很照顾你的家人
6.他有时也生气,但不吵架,过后会及时交流
7.他很注重你的感受
8.他在亲朋好友面前总夸奖你
9.他为人坦诚,对你几乎不会撒谎

Kind of nice.

The event went well until a sudden downpour killed the fire at the bbq pit. Thankfully all we had left was some stingray packets, and most of the food were already eaten. It is the first successful event where we all came and bonded together along with our girlfriends, and the start of many wonderful events with my bunch of AFE colleagues.

But aren’t we being a little over sensitive at times? I’m talking about the latest feminism hoo-har on the internet, where London Weight Management showed this video where it seems to suggest that fatter woman won’t make it in society.

I agree its demeaning, and LWM should just be shot for this advertisement, but woah let’s just be less hostile towards it yeah? Just to bring up food for thought, I wondered, isn’t it demeaning for the men as well?

I mean, hey it portrays men as such figure-only people that we judge people’s working abilities by their size, and stop loving our women because she isn’t that stick thin like other women. Hey, we are not that shallow alright? If you are going to open your mouth to say “isn’t it true that looks play a factor?”, just shut it cause women do it to us men too.

I’m not going to degrade this post into a post where I belittle feminism or try to stroke for men-ism, but let’s just think of it this way: when we feel outraged, I think its better not to view every single thing as sexist. There’s always the other side of the coin.

Just the other day our former minister mentor asked a female phd student if she has a boyfriend and all hell broke loose. Is it sexist to ask that? Sometimes I wonder, had it been a male phd student, would he have been asked whether he had a girlfriend? Would Mr Lee similarly advise him to get one? With the situation being dire, that we are marrying later or not at all, and not producing babies fast enough, perhaps they are trying to get everyone to be more focused on building families. So why is it sexist?

Then AWARE said something which puzzled me. That the fact we have less paternity leave signifies that society views women as the primary caregiver, and hence the feminist women is still relevant in fighting for such rights?

I wouldn’t mind having more paternity leave, but how is that a strong reason to show we are a sexist society? From the friends around me, I discovered that most of us don’t bother whether our future wives know how to cook, or whether they are going to work or stay home. Society seems to be liberal enough that we condition ourselves to care for our kids as well.

Or is AWARE not aware of why maternity leave need to be that long? I am not a women, neither have my close friends given birth recently, but isn’t giving birth a tiring process where the female needs more rest to recover in comfort? The men, on the other hand, only needs to accompany their wives in the delivery segment; they can very well be fit to even take IPPT the next day!

Alright so my point is this: the feminism movement needs to tone down a little and fight for areas where women are indeed being looked down upon or not taken care enough. It should not be a movement to push women’s rights beyond men, not that I think it is doing so at the moment. But to tell the truth, sometimes we men feel disadvantaged. With the woman’s charter and all, we feel: if the woman wants to be equal, then be equal. Not that “all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others”, if you get what George’s saying.

Just a brief update so that this blog doesn’t seem so dead. Lol. It’s been some time since I did an updates post here on my blog.

I had my ippt yesterday, my 2nd attempt in two weeks cause the first was cancelled due to the wet ground after the rain. Technically it didn’t count as an attempt.

I was quite worried and nervous since I hadn’t done well for ippt and I was worried that I would not pass. The static stations were scary. What if I couldn’t pull up? Or I got a cramp for sit ups. What if my broad jump sucked. Or that my shuttle run skidded? I wasn’t that worried for 2.4 because I did train for it.
Ended up I got a 225cm (3points) for my first attempt in sbj using a new technique. My shuttle run was 10.2s(4points) due to a short skid at the part where you pick up the blocks. At my chin up station I did 10 pull ups (4 points) and for my situps, I did 40 (5 points) with 18s left. So I had 16 points when I needed 15 to pass. 18 for silver.

I ran a timing of 11.22mins (3 points) for my 2.4km run and it brought my total to 19 points. I got a silver grading! There’s a 100 dollars award but those who took ippt in august hadn’t gotten their money yet.

As for today, I had an hours of additional sleep since I was going to watch the SAFSA badminton match as a supporter for the RSAF in Kranji camp. We were vying for the championship.

The match was exciting as we lost the intial two sets. We won our mixed doubles and lost one set in the mens doubles. If we had lost one more set we would be 2nd. Luckily we won the 2nd set and it proceeded to the 3rd set where we cheered like mad and finally won. At that time we were tired with two matches each. It went down to the final set mens singles and we won effortlessly.

Hence by a stroke of luck we won! It was quite an exciting moment as a fresh member of the RSAF. Somehow I thought it was a great way to bond with people within the individual services and formations.

Yep that’s it. Hope it’s been a pleasant read!

Recently, there has been talk asking the Ministry of Education to increase the number of places in Singapore for undergraduates. MOE has chosen to not increase places at the moment, instead asking questions that make much sense, like whether there is enough capacity for more graduates in this country.

Seeing how some of my friends haven’t found jobs yet – I’m a fresh graduate, class of 2011 – I, too wonder if giving more places make sense. What if we increase the number of jobless graduates? Would one day the average graduate have to do work that doesn’t require the standard of a degree? Or the analytical skills that comes with it?

I saw a post today on TOC that asks a valid question. Why do we bring in so many foreign talent on degree passes then? Are they taking up spaces that could have been given to a local graduate from our universities? But then the other voice calls back, and asks, does giving people the chance to become graduates necessarily make one smarter? It is undeniable that people are different. Some are born smarter than others, or nurtured to become better. At the entry stage before they enter universities, they might have been smarter than us. If, after going through university, those foreigners are smarter than the additional X% that we allow to enter our universities, then what now?

As long as the additional X% don’t do as well as foreigners, it makes no sense to shut foreigners out totally and increase spaces for more undergraduates. And, seeing how some of my coursemates and juniors always scratch their heads and feel so demoralized whenever the semester ends, I wonder if people academically weaker than them would have a better time? It’s an exaggeration but, it does seems a little torturous to put academically weaker people in that position where they cannot grasp the concepts, get pass degrees and end up not finding a job.

If, these X% ends up working in lower paying areas comparable to before they had a university education, then where does the education benefit them? You pay fees but your pay doesn’t increase, does it make any investment sense?

This post sounds elitist, but I am not trying to be one. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but it makes sense. Unless we realize that foreigners we bring in would be lousier than the X%, then we got a foothold to base our arguments upon. But that is a matter of perspective. In the interests of our nation, I think any foreigner who cannot do as well as our lousiest graduate ought to be send home – that is, after all, a matter of survival; survival of the fittest at work.

So then, will anyone write articles or do case studies to show that the foreigners brought in are lousier? Will anyone hit the argument where it is needed most? Surely if we continue whining, everyone would treat you as noise, and you have no one to blame but yourself?

And to show a different point other than the number of university positions, I want to raise an example. I didn’t get a scholarship, and lots of foreigners are getting scholarships. In a way I thought it was right for the companies not to offer me on when I had applied, as I was not as smart, mature or far sighted than those peers of mine that made it there. And if it was any comfort, I think I did better in life than I would have been if I took up a scholarship and got bonded. There’s always people smarter than me, I accept that. Time for us to face the truth too.