Today, a very good friend and brother got married in a simple ceremony at the church that he attends. This is the second wedding ceremony that I have attended since I have grown up. Before growing up, the last wedding ceremony or dinner that I attended was when I was below 10. Since then, nobody did get married as I am the earlier batch among all the relatives. Ever since entering adulthood, friends around me have started to find the other halves and now it is at this age, at a quarter of a century, that people are getting married and invitations start coming in.

Kunquan was my friend and brother during National Service. We knew each other from a long way back. I remember during the times when we were posted into Guards, we shared the same bunk with two other guys. It was then that we started to know each other much better. He was sent for the GPMG commanders course before coming back and doing GCC with the rest of us. After GCC, we got posted to Alpha company; he was in Platoon Two as the MG commander and I was in Platoon One as the Assistant Platoon Sergeant.

We shared many common memories together and were close then. Nowadays, we only see each other during reservist. Somehow everyone has gone a long way since then, and we have all drifted apart. Yet the common identity I shared with him as a Guardsmen made me feel that I have to be there to give my regards and blessings to the newlyweds. Somehow, this sense of camaraderie and brotherhood just will not die.

Kunquan and Jingya knew each other since JC days, through National Service and then married today. It just feels like a long love story, so pure and true. Deep down inside I knew I was a little sad that it couldn’t be the same for me. Frankly speaking, I was very happy that the two of them have found this strong love for each other, and it is indeed heartwarming to see them come together in this very special day.

Since the both of them are Christians, their wedding ceremony was designed to have the concept of the church strongly in it. It started with the bride coming in with her father, and then the couple stood in the front. Then the emcees sang a few Christian songs praising the Lord, and everyone stood there. When I heard the back singing along, somehow it just felt like one big giant celebration of love for the couple and for the God that they believed in. Some of the songs sounded so familiar, as though a part of me was Christian and that I had sung or heard those songs before.

The pastor came forward to give a speech – a very long one – to give advice to the young newlyweds. While I cannot understand the logic since it was Christian themed, but I guess somehow it felt beautiful.

The couple then said their wedding vows to each other. Then the pastor asked them the important question and both of them said “I will”. The parents of both sides were also asked if they agreed to the union and they agreed. The rings were exchanged, and nice things were said along with the ring presentation ceremony. Before the rings were exchanged, the pastor blessed the rings.

Somehow I just felt that it was all so beautiful. The meaning behind the vows, the exchange of the rings; it all made so much sense in a beautiful way. Somehow I was drawn and attracted to this concept of having a church wedding even though I am not a christian.

After the groom kissed the bride, they took photos with their friends and family, and the rest of us went down to the buffet reception. Seeing my friend marrying at my age, somehow I just felt a little old; and I cannot help but wonder, when will my turn come? I know that things cannot be forced, and things should just come naturally. I’m very happy that my friends are able to find someone to live the rest of their lives with, even though I am sad that I am unable to do so.

Weddings are just such a special occasions that I feel so happy to be invited to. Maybe this is because it is one of the first few weddings, and perhaps I would soon get sick of it when I have multiple weddings per year. But I would still try to attend each ceremony / dinner that I am invited to for my closer friends, as I think it is great to celebrate this event that is so beautiful and pure.

Perhaps one day, perhaps, that I would be the one doing all the invitations. And then one day perhaps, I would be able to step into the ballroom in my No 1 uniform, with my wife-to-be and walk through the sword party ceremony that my officer friends helped to create.

Have you ever thought about giving back to society? In a way, I feel grateful for whatever society has given me. I had a great life (possibly due to my optimistic nature that sees everything as a good thing rather than a bad thing), having gotten a great education and grades along the way, meeting many new people, getting in and out of relationships, getting a wonderful job that pays well. It does look like Life is Great (alright that sounds Great Eastern-y). But the main point is, since a few months ago, I thought about giving a small portion of my salary back to society in the form of charity. I wanted a convenient way where I can donate my money monthly like an auto-deduction mechanism. An effortless way to give back to society.

Many modern charitable organizations provide such services. NKF, for one, has been collecting donations ($5 a month?) since many years ago, from the TT Durai era up till now. However since charities have gotten a major hit from the numerous sagas (Golden Tap in Durai’s office & Horses as pets + porn collection in Ren Ci), confidence in the charity industry has been hit, hard.

I wasn’t actively looking for a charity to help, since I haven’t gotten my pay yet. However I guess it must be fate that a charity volunteer approached me as I entered the outskirts of Lakeside MRT station. I was wondering if she was an insurance salesperson and was about to tell them that I have already settled my insurance needs with a really wonderful agent (more about this in another post), when I saw that it wasn’t an insurance company but the Singapore Cancer Society.

Since I had already stopped to listen, plus cancer treatment is a real pain in the ass to pay, I decided to help in whatever way I can, since God gave me such a wonderful opportunity to sort out my life in terms of having this job with this pay. My take home pay was already higher than many other people’s gross pay, so I might as well use the extra bit of money for some good. Hence I decided to give $38 monthly to the Singapore Cancer Society payable through my credit card. I was rather apprehensive as I think I am going to change a credit card soon, but the nice lady informed me that I could just make a call anytime to update the credit card number, so I thought it would be alright.

That said, I am not a person who would just blindly give. I would then continue to read up on what the cancer society does, and hopefully find some more information on how it allocates its funds. They did inform me on how the funds are allocated, but I want to find an image or something that I can put up. If one day I find that another charity is more in need of the money, then I would switch charities.

Besides, $38 a month is the lowest figure available. If one day I get a pay increase, perhaps I would be able to give more too. Either that, or give towards another charity of my choice. Maybe one day when I am down on my luck, someone else would show kindness to me and help me through tough times too.

If you are a recent fresh graduate from a local university, do consider giving a small part of your salary (1-2%) to a charity that you think will benefit from the money. We are all able to fork out this little percentage of money to help the people who need the help. Considering the amount of subsidies given to us by the government in terms of education, health care etc, this is one way in which we can help our society take care of people who are less fortunate. This 1-2% would definitely be less than the subsidies that we have all enjoyed as we grew up to become young adults and fine people of Singapore. I urge you to start thinking about this and start doing.

I thought I should just share some photos of my commencement which are taken mainly from friend’s camera. I took it off Facebook and shrunk it so that it doesn’t take up too much space and would load faster on my reader’s screens. The photos are just there to brighten up my seemingly boring and wall-of-text-ish blog.

That’s it. Not much words, just a post with a few photos. The rest you can see from my Facebook provided my friends didn’t restrict the privacy settings.

Or so claims NUS. Today is my commencement ceremony, or to people from other universities, today is my convocation ceremony. NUS deliberately changed the ceremony name to reflect the idea that we are commencing a new phase in life; a total change from just plain studying.

Just yesterday I was not feeling the excitement over graduation; today, well, I guess I still didn’t feel the excitement. However I did feel nervous right before it was my turn to receive the degree scroll from the Dean of Engineering, somehow it just felt like that was the moment it all came to an end; where we have to do it right and smile properly for the camera, else the moment would not be captured properly and 16 years would have gone to a waste.

There seemed to be an awful lot of First Class Honours in my cohort. It took up on full page with a dual column for names in First Class, followed by roughly four pages of people from Second Upper, Second Lower, Third and a Pass Degree. So if you just count, it is probably about 20% of the cohort. Which is huge because some other departments don’t get that much; there is only one First Class Honours graduate in Civil Engineering, for example.

I left home early in the morning to go to NUS with Nelson to take photos all around school; namely in the University Cultural Centre as well as Faculty of Engineering. We went to take photos with the people who graduated in the morning as well. The weather was hot and the air cons weren’t good enough. The thick academic dress made it a fact that we would all sweat and wet our shirts inside.

In the afternoon, my commencement ceremony started promptly at 3pm. There was the singing of the national anthem at the beginning and the end of the ceremony, with the ending one being the shorter one-verse version. I just felt it a little strange as there were a sizable number of foreigners in the room, and only a handful of Singaporeans would probably feel the meaning of playing the anthem.

After the ceremony it was a huge photo taking session. My parents bought the NUS graduation bear as a gift, and the price increased when they promised they wouldn’t after I asked them explicitly during the collection of the academic dress “Will the price increase during commencement” and the answer being a short but firm “no”. Bullshit.

We also bought the plaque (is that the right spelling?) which states my degree and the classification. I haven’t thought of where I should put it, or whether I should bring it to office in the future, but I guess at the moment I would find a spot at home. Maybe I should hang it up proudly. Now there’s a graduate in the house.

The photo taking ended after an hour or so; hence I should expect people to start tagging me earliest tomorrow. I just got tagged from a photo belonging to my friend’s commencement in the morning. Afternoon photos should come tomorrow earliest I guess. There are many cameras from different people, hence I didn’t really use my camera.

There was an ECE graduation night event with food. I thought it was just a food session, but there were activities before the food session, and the activities were just meh, although kudos to the people who spent effort putting it up. I was kind of paiseh that my family was there sitting through the event, it looks like not alot of parents were there. But at least then I got a ride home, else I would be even more tired after the entire thing.

Now it’s back to work tomorrow! As I mentioned to my friends, it is time to face the reality that I am no longer a student and I cannot have the luxury of waking up at 9am and having 4 hour breaks in between lessons. It is work and more work, and then I will move on to building a family, which means work after work ends, and it will be a never ending cycle until my kids are grown up and graduated.

Pictures when I have time to collate and put them back. I will show my certificate and my graduation bear. The stupid graduation lion was sold out tho. And I saw someone who dressed a monkey toy up as an Engineering graduation monkey. Quite creative.

Till then~

Over the past few days, my life saw a real commencement than the one that is going to come tomorrow. I finally commenced work as a working adult, in the job that I had fought so hard for and finally attained. I met up with 9 other individual AFEs that were in my batch and wanted to start work earlier. The other 66% of the people didn’t want to start so soon. It’s like a continuation of the DSTA 10. Now its the Air Force 10?

The past three working days were a period of relaxation as many issues had to be settled, for example contractual issues, the surrendering of my Pink IC (Yes now I am no longer a civilian officially), the pasting of the sticker to reflect my new Military status (Military Expert as opposed to WOSE formerly), getting posted to Paya Lebar Air Base in the Air Logistics Department and getting the required signatures done for the initiation process, as well as making of my temp pass so I do not need to exchange passes at the main gate.

In the past few days I made friends, joked around, and all of us kept looking at the used car websites, just for fun because, we joked, that it is a pain in the ass to walk 15 minutes from the main gate to our work place. When we all got our temp pass, these jokes just died down on their own. However, our common consensus was that we would probably still do our own research, but the actual buying of a vehicle would still be 1-2 years away, and only when we got posted to our bases.

I had to wake up early everyday to travel to work. You don’t see white collar workers waking up this early. Military personnel in uniforms, school children who had to go to school on their own as well as teachers and blue collar workers flood the MRT every morning at 6.30am. By the time I reached my workplace, it is already 8am. I take 3 hours to travel everyday; perhaps it is time to find something productive to do. Honestly I was slightly annoyed by my iTouch converted phone since it cannot receive whatsapp messages on the go. It is indeed irritating. Perhaps in the end I would succumb to a Blackberry, but that is in January next year.

We still haven’t had our uniforms since everyone dealing with logistics had their hands full on the upcoming NDP parade, hence I should expect to don my No3 with my ME4(T) rank in August? That’s about one month more to go.

Tomorrow is the date when I would (finally) have my commencement ceremony in the University Cultural Center. Most of my friends have had their commencement ceremony in the past week, notably Jia Hao, Zong and Dom from SoC having it on Tuesday, and then Wai Kit from Business on Wednesday. Engineering was the earliest last year so now it has been relegated backwards.

I wonder how I would feel tomorrow. The graduation that everyone has been looking forward for, suddenly seemed to be something I am dreading. People feel happy about commencement because they (finally) graduated after 16 years of hard work, but I just don’t feel the exhilaration. Maybe I always had a smooth studying journey and I never thought it was too hard work. Or perhaps I was never very excited about graduating in the first place. Commencement should just be called Ceasement as everything ceases. Your freedom to slack and lie around at home; your time to meet friends etc has all been taken away. And a huge burden of responsibility falls on you now.

I’m not too excited probably because I never once did visualize the ceremony as a way to motivate myself towards the end. I’m not excited to go up and shake the Dean’s hand (whom I have not seen in real life) and collect my certificate from him.

Or perhaps I was never excited about such events since PSLE’s collection of results day. I wasn’t happy when I got my 4As in NJC. I was there at the location just thinking I could have done better. Why is my name not up on that list. Haha. I’m just always asking why am I not better.

Tomorrow is a day where people would kill for to swap with me. An exaggeration perhaps, but the meaning is there. After working hard, alright it’s not that easy, for four years, we all finally graduated, and I even got a great honours, something I should feel proud for, or should I? Considering that graduation with a First Class Honours is merely proof that you are smarter / more hardworking than the people who are left behind, but in reality you are much stupider than those who made it on overseas scholarships and are able to come back as a scholar to be promoted on the fast track above you. Crude yeah but that’s reality. Not that people with lower honours are less smart, mind you, just a general feeling that there’s nothing much to be happy about since there is a long way to go.

The goal of my life was never so much as to attain good results in university. It is merely a stepping stone to the real things that matter. It’s just a checklist that I can tick and then it’s time to move on to my career. To build it, to get a promotion, to get more money, to fulfill my dreams and objectives.

I guess this isn’t the type of commencement blog post that you would be expecting to see isn’t it? Which person in this world doesn’t feel excited over graduation, and a good honours to boast about? Haha. Perhaps once you stand in the shoulders of giants, you will realize there is an additional head there to climb. You’re there, but not there enough. Sorry but this is not good enough. I felt the same way in NJ, perhaps it is the same feeling now. You’re just never good enough.

I guess this is the reason why I am here. I cannot afford to be complacent. I cannot allow myself to fall from the shoulders and rest at the hips. It took me so long, with so much effort to climb up slowly to this place, but all it takes is a little complacency to fall. I guess it is time to out do, out last and out survive.

There will be many happy people tomorrow. I would too, since I get to mingle with friends and take photos with them. In a way it is a little sad that they would move on with their lives, and we would all be very busy with our careers, so much so that only closer friends would remain as we don’t have time to catch up with every single one of our friends, and boy are there many friends in university.

Read a friend’s blog about her career and how she chose to be a teacher. In a way I’m feeling quite proud that she has chosen to become a teacher not due to the traditional reason that people cannot find jobs so they end up at teaching. Perhaps this is because it resonates with me. I always hoped people who sign on didn’t sign on because they couldn’t find a job elsewhere. The regulars always joke that the economy is bad so there’s 10 of us.

I always think that you should find a job that you want to do. Don’t go into it just because the money is good. Teaching and being in the military is something sacred and important. In your hands are the lives of the young ones in Singapore as well as the lives of everybody in Singapore, be it Singaporean, Permanent Residents or Foreign nationals. We have to have a high sense of pride in our job because it cannot be replicated elsewhere, and there is a huge sense of purpose with us.

Oh, a discussion popped up between a few of us in the Air Force 10. Whenever people ask us why we chose to sign on, we just tell them that the pay is high. But in reality we don’t feel this way. The pay is part of the reason but not the main one. We had a good takeway from our NS experience; we believe in the importance of defence; and we are here to make a difference. I guess I feel proud to surround myself with such fellow regulars. Perhaps one day the organization would transform itself to 4G and beyond, in a way that would make everyone impressed with it.

It’s commencement tomorrow, and everyone’s lives would really begin commencing (hmm weird phrase of language). From there, let’s hope that everyone can find a job or a career that they feel happy working in, and contribute to this tiny island the way that they can. Congratulations class of 2011 and hopefully some of us can make it big out there in the vast world that we live in.

My new furniture from Ikea came on the 5th of July. I had changed my furniture as I didn’t think I would need such a huge desk since I have graduated and am not studying anymore. What I truly needed was more storage space, especially since my mum relegated my pants, jeans and shorts to the non hanging position cause I got too much clothes. I still don’t think I have too much clothes, but since they are all folded now, I might as well get a drawer configuration too.

My parents also got me a new desk chair which has better back support from the relatively-cheaper old chair that I used for some time. Here’s a photo of my room before the new furniture came.

I had spent the entire late afternoon + night assembling the chair, the desk, the add on to the desk and then the drawer. It took so long cause mistakes were made and time had to be spent correcting those mistakes.

This is the final result:

The desk is much smaller in terms of the length and breadth, and I like how it has the add on where I can put my CDs and extra decorations. I can even put my photos nicely on the top. It did give me more room inside my room though. Perhaps one day I shall convert the remaining areas to some relaxing corner.

I’m very happy with my drawer too, as there is more room for everything. It isn’t a very solid drawer as Ikea typically boasts of easy to assemble furniture that is cheap, and solid drawers require more wood and metal screws. I cannot put heavy stuff like my textbooks in, so I am going to reshuffle my book shelf and move the lighter books in.

On a side note, I’m going to work tomorrow. Like finally!
On second thought it is already 6th July so I’m going to work today YAY!

I had a lim-kopi session with an old friend whom I haven’t met in a few months. We would go out for supper once every few months just to catch up and talk. It is indeed boring staying at home all the time, so I was glad to be able to go meet him for a chat.

And then the first shock came when I realized he got attached. It’s like all of a sudden, although I soon realized I was at fault for not noticing his new facebook photo; although there wasn’t any faces in that photo, but the nature of the objects in the photo gave some clues. But that isn’t the point of my blog post.

Through talking I realized my friend is kind of a free spirit; I’m not sure how free spirited he is as compared to Georgie, but he is quite a spontaneous person in the sense that he might go on holidays without planning much details like where to go; whereas I am the type to plan so that I know where I can possibly go. I like the feel of being in control.

Which brings me to my main point, that is, your partner has to be similar to you in these sort of character issues. I mean, if your partner is someone who likes everything planned nicely, then she is probably not going to be happy with a spontaneous trip where nothing is planned. So you will end up having to look for someone with the same temperament?

And that it is not wrong if your partner feels differently; they just have different ideas from you.

Ok I do not know what is the point of writing this in a blog, but I just thought I’ll share this quite duh observation. Kthxbye.

I bought my iTouch 8GB on Sunday 26th June 2011 through the Apple online store. It is a refurbished unit sold at $248 nett, and I bought it because I needed a non-camera phone due to my working requirements; the Air Force is a military organization hence information is sensitive there. It arrived yesterday, 28th June 2011, which is quite fast since it took them only one working day to send the iTouch out for shipping. DHL Express ensured I received my iTouch first thing in the morning at 9:15am.

You didn’t read wrongly, I bought an iTouch whose purpose is to replace my iPhone. In the next few days, I would get the CPeel adapter that would “convert” my iTouch into an iPhone by giving it sms, phone and GPRS capabilities. It might not be as great as an iPhone, but at least it can still be used.

I wanted a phone that I can use my whatsapp on, since it makes no sense if my friends send me whatsapp messages but I can only read them on the weekends. The other possible contender is the Blackberry phone, yet it does seem that you require a Blackberry plan for most of the functions. Since I am unable to purchase a Blackberry plan, I might as well do this modification so my iTouch can serve the same purpose as my iPhone.

The refurbished iTouch is nicely wrapped and secured to the iPod box through film wrap.

The contents inside the box are shown above. Since I have the USB cable already from my iPhone, I kept it as a spare in case the existing one gets spoilt. The earphones are also kept since I have my in-ear phones that I bought for my iPhone.

When I buy the Cpeel Adapter, I would then take more photos to show everyone.

The DSTA 10, which is how I named the 10 of us who went for Industrial Attachment last year, meet up for food and ice cream tonight. It had been longed planned; the last time we met as a group was on the last day of our Industrial Attachment and we went for a round of drinks.

It was a time of nice catching up, although not all of the 10 are there; there are only 7 of us, and the HR ladies who helped us during the IA was there as well. Hence it became some kind of informal feedback session about the process of applying for a job at DSTA in our final semester.

We went to Saizeriya, apparently a Japanese restaurant selling Italian food like pasta and pizza. The branch that we went was the City Square mall one, at Farrer Park Mrt on the NEL or purple line. The food wasn’t that great, or rather it sucked, but it is cheap so I guess it’s not that bad huh?

I had the mushroom soup, which was so-so. I liked the Reeds Cafe one at NUS better. I also had the seafood spagetti, which plainly sucked because the seafood wasn’t fresh and the tomato sauce didn’t enter the noodles so the taste was just meh. There was this thing where you can add $2.40 for free flow of drinks, but the drinks was just not up to standard. The soft drinks are not fizzy enough and tasted rather plain. Overall a disappointment; probably saved by its price.

It’s nice to catch up with everyone again. It seemed that only one of us went back to DSTA to work out of the ten.

Of the ten:
1 back to DSTA
4 Air Engineering Officers
1 possibly LTA under MRT branch
1 in Keppel FELS
1 in HDB
1 in Singapore Power
1 in the midst of applying for the Singapore Police Force

It’s a little weird how we didn’t end up going back to DSTA. One of the reasons is that they gave some of us a really hard time during the first interviews, so much so that it was appalling to see the difference in the intensity of the interviews. Being a former intern does not give any privileges too.

In another weird way, all but 1 is working in the private sector? Ok maybe 2, since Singapore Power is also private. The rest are in the civil service. I wonder if it has anything to do with our initial decision to join DSTA as an intern.

But no matter what, it does seem that it would be hard to meet up again once we all started working. Perhaps we would be so overwhelmed with work that the next time we meet is at least a year later?

Hopefully we’ll still find in ourselves the energy to come together and catch up. Perhaps a few of us would be driving already by then.

I’ve done up some slight modifications to my blog. I guess that was rather redundant to say since anyone who reads my blog would probably realize the change in the colour from black based to white based. I have had that design for a very long time already. When I checked the CSS file, it seemed that it was created in 2007, although I didn’t think it was that long. I thought it was in 2009 or something. Should be about 2 years already.

I poured through some books and websites to come up with my design. It took me a long time to come up with a new design because I was procrastinating. Since my new computer came and I installed my Adobe CS4 on my computer, I thought I might as well do it.

It is considered a slight modification because most of the parts are still under construction, especially the links at the top. This is because I have not created those site yet. I have also not properly done up the side bar, as well as the about me page, which probably needs a lot of updating and planning. I want this new design to encompass who I am as an individual. This blog will not only be a blog but a home page. I have also decided to blog more regularly, although I might find it difficult once work begins.

Since I have already bought a new computer, it is also time to learn C# to start building my financial planner software. Hopefully it would be good to use and other people can then use it to plan their finances as well. I dare not hope people will use it, but as long as it makes my life easier, I suppose why not? It would also be an interesting experience that I can talk about with other people, although it is a rather nerdy topic. I don’t go around telling people I can design simple websites, and that I once created a tuition site. Some people might be impressed but some might just think “meh”.

Overall I hope to finish the design of the blog within the next few days. Hopefully I can then begin programming my software by next week!