Exams results - a pretty lousy biomedical engineer but a biomedical engineer nonetheless.

Terrible, terrible results.

But ah, at least the scare and suspense is over. Back to reality and finding something else worthwhile doing.

Meanwhile it's just kendo, swim, monitoring the emails and trying to find something worthwhile doing. Rejected the previous job since I thought it wasn't really worth the spur of the moment working while potentially having injuries due to kendo the day before work. Serving customers while having kendo foot problem definitely isn't gonna score points, so meanwhile I'm still waiting for tuition assignments to take up. And so far, those I've got aren't that good either so I didn't take them up. Still waiting.

Meanwhile, I've got my laptop prepped up for media editing - Audacity, Adobe After Effects, Photoshop CS6, Movie Maker, Sony Vegas 12, etc. All just waiting for that push of a button to start media work. Anytime.

...maybe I was getting ahead of myself. Anyways, to keep my holiday occupied, I've gotten myself a Logistics post for this newly set-up Big Martial Arts Carnival committee - but really, what I wanted was a publicity post, but ah well. It makes no difference, since I should be able to tank both sides of the work - what with the publicity cell - I prefer to call them "wings" - actually approaching me for help. So I said okay, and here I am. Really wanna get to working the late shifts, at least it'd give me something that I can say I can do best among all of my usual abilities that turned dormant ever since the holidays started.

Better throw me something worthwhile doing - I'm getting bored!

Holiday Mode - yet again without a proper aim

Sooo.... it's the end of the Year 1 exams just two weeks ago. And maybe I'll just head back to the urban hermit lifestyle again. No, I'm honestly going to head back to the urban hermit lifestyle. Or hikikomori mode. Or whatever suits your fancy naming style.

But argh, that's just plain sad and boring, achieving nothing for the next three months - what a waste!

I'm going to step outta my own comfort zone, do something out there. Starting with the regular kendo practice, I'm gonna get a job out there - no office jobs for me, I'm sick of them already. And then, I'm gonna do a little bit more of online study in my spare time. And I have just the avenues for them.

For starters, I've enrolled for online courses in Coursera, and they're probably more about learning stuff for fun than actually getting a certificate of achievement. Learning something outta your own faculty is sometimes cool, and I reckon I could use a bit of calculus revision since I didn't really do this well for math during this uni exams last semester, and I reckon its effects will start eating into the modules next year. Never hurts to be prepared, right?

And there's the ever annoying job hunt. No office jobs, this time! Time to actually stick my ass outta the chair and actually do retail work or something that makes me move around.

Well, it wasn't the case two weeks before, actually. Before the exams I actually wanted to participate in the BME Summer of Code offered by my faculty, which actually does programming in C++ throughout the summer holidays before school starts. Trouble is, the reply and notification period was during the exams - how would anyone be free enough to read emails during crunch time during exam prep? And so, I missed it and suddenly found myself to have a large pocket of time left empty.

Nuts. And my usual allowance was cut in half so I wouldn't splurge. Aaaaand holidays are EXACTLY the reason to splurge. Tch.

Alright then, a job it is for me then. Can't keep asking for money anyway, time to make myself useful too, so I went for job hunting. First job was for a cashiering job at Singapore Expo, but they wanted people with no commitments, so that was a big bummer, considering that there was still kendo practice for me and all. Besides, I wasn't so keen on disrupting what I started out on to begin with.

Second job was for promoting mobile apps, but the interviewing lady rejected me because I wasn't proficient enough in using iPhone. I mean, seriously, in this day and age?? I mean, though I use Android phones only all this while, but hey seriously, just how difficult can operating iPhone get anyway? Gimme 2 hours fiddling with an iPhone, I'll get your stuff up and running in no time, but nah. I'd rather prefer she enjoy her ignorance of the existence of digitally-flexible people, saves us both time and money.

Aaaaand so. I found myself hanging around at Ministry of Food - and I wasn't that particular about the pay either. I was still daydreaming about the prospects of being among the working crew inside a restaurant or cafe - I still have ambitions of setting up my own restaurant bar and picking up some nifty recipes - all while trying to finish this teapot of ocha they served for the next two hours. And it was like - I don't know. Luck maybe? Ministry of Food was hiring part time waiters. Why not?

Next thing I knew, I signed up for the job. Hopefully that'd gimme something worthwhile doing instead of rotting at home.

A Period of Self Reflection amongst Exam Mayhem

Guess I just had to do this, huh. In the middle of the friggin' exams...

Life hasn't been kind to me lately. Yet I consider myself more fortunate than most on absolute terms.

Still, sometimes my head can be my own demon. Conquered it many times, yet there is still a dark shadow still lingering somewhere. I am afraid to face it. I don't know this darkness, and I don't know what will happen to me should I succumb to the darkness which I don't know.

Ever since this semester, I've been telling myself that I'd strike a good balance between kendo and studies, but as time went on, it proved impossible, and I can't tell whether it's because of my own volition or because of circumstances that I didn't put enough effort into what I considered to be something I hold dear to me.

In either case, I have had this loose joint injury on my right hand since the start of the year, as a carry-over gift for not blocking a strike properly with the shinai during the annual year-end kendo training camp. Doctor said I had to skip up to 6-8 weeks of kendo to allow this injury to heal. Still, being the stubborn guy I am, I continued training, and it hasn't really healed much.

It doesn't hurt as much now, but whenever I swing the shinai now and then, the same intense pain still comes back. Is this injury gonna be permanent? I don't know.

I don't have many people I'd call friends so far in my life, unlike most people by my age would have. And kendo discovered me when I was about to go my lowest in life a few months right after I finished NS. Through kendo, I got to know a lot more people who made kendo club look like a kaleidoscope of different personalities and made me feel I belong somewhere. Me who cracks terrible jokes, socially awkward, an adult at the age of 22, yet doesn't know anything about being an adult at all... Sometimes I look at myself and I lament at the mess I am, yet despite all the differences I feel like a part of them. At least for the beginning.

And when the training gets tougher, I find my body difficult to adapt to the faster paced training that was said to characterise kendo. I want to train harder, fight harder, move faster, be stronger... Yet for every training I attend, I find myself always lacking in something. Lack of speed, lack of stamina, lack of zanshin (alertness). With each training I feel that I fall behind further while the others are steadily improving, and my body feels like it can give way anytime soon even before I get to the gikeiko (sparring) towards the end of each training session.

It's almost as if kendo is telling me that I am not suited to do kendo. And I got lousier at maintaining my grades. They started to fall behind by much more than I expected myself to, even though I had a strong personal commitment to the club. It's as though each step of the way, you keep encountering failure, never a single moment of success.

With my training getting more and more irregular because of erratic school work and the stupid unplanned-for project work hours I had to sacrifice training in place for, I now feel I can't keep up with the rest. At all. In terms of camaraderie, I am no longer as close to them - they have their supper groups, chats, etc. And most of them made it into exco. I long to be among their number as well, but sometimes, well...

I feel like a failure sometimes. No, almost everytime I go for kendo. Is that what I came to kendo for? And it is not just kendo - the heavy schoolwork and now the exams have started. And it's always getting more and more hopeless by the day - how do I keep my morale up amidst all these things happening to me?

I ask myself - was it the injury that made me think like this? Or was there something more that I failed to realise all this time during kendo? Or am I just incompetent enough for kendo?

Kendo aside (it was a pretty big part of my university life so far), schoolwork is always never-ending, and it only gets more and more uphill. Always feeling hopeless after each and every tutorial - like the feeling you get that you could've gotten the answer to tutorial question if you used the following solution steps, and yet when you actually do it you can't solve a single question in that week's tutorial.

I smile at my friends, encourage them to continue to stay strong and never give up, but inside I scream.

I scream.

Can I get any better than what I already am? Or am I just gonna be stuck in the rut all the time, falling behind everyone else while they exponentially improve? How will the future turn out to be? Why the hell am I working so hard for? Why do I continue to stay in kendo? Why am I even thinking like this in the first place?

ORD LO! Time to stand toe to toe with harsh reality

It's finally the time I've been waiting for. Finally ORD. And enjoying every single moment of it.

For a start, shortly after 1 week after ORD, I got myself signed up for driving lessons, and now I'm multitasking between studying driving theory and doing my best in my new job I got at Pacific Conferences, just earlier this Thursday. Awesome. Now I'm getting somewhere. And soon it'll be my 21st birthday, and the day after will be a 3 days 2 nights holiday out at sea at Star Cruises. How's that?

Sure, everyone's asking me the same question - will I miss those days in army? Yup, but being civilian is waaaaaaaayyyy better than being some random grunt in the army. In the past, I had to do lots of shit in the army, and being paid $650 a month as a NSF Corporal didn't help much. Now I'm earning twice that amount, which would probably make my own personal finances a bit healthier and much more financially independent. Well, at least until I go to uni anyways...

I hate having to ask people for money, even more so from my own family. After all that money disputes arising from my father's problem gambling in the past, I decided that enough is enough. Nobody controls my finances unless I allow them to directly intervene, and I most certainly ain't gonna give away my financial independence this easily. I will make sure I clear my family from debt - one way or another, even if it takes years. I used to spend heavily during my teenage years, now it's time to make a difference for the sake of my family.

Sigh, this gotta mean I'll never be able to see a bank balance healthy enough for me to buy a flat or car or raise a family of my own. Even if it does, it'll take years, and by the time I eke out a decent living, everyone else would be already having their own businesses, wealth and the like... Still, one thing at a time. No rest for the wicked. Chiong all out for survival, or die trying.

A entertainment shrine in my own house...?

Another boring day in camp. One day closer to ORD. Well, at least there's the Annex Room to hang around in. Simply put, this Annex Room is the company mess room. "Why hang around with those dumbfucks at the Yacht (battalion mess hall) when we can do so in our own Annex Room?"

Not probably the best place of choice, but it's about the closest thing to home when you see those sofas and the big TV with the PS3 in this place. Ultimate combo. Enough said. Oddly enough, it's made me think of my future living room.

Okay, maybe not all that odd. When I can afford my small little piece of land in a HDB (highly dangerous building) flat, it's not gonna be all that big and spacious - too much hassle to clean up. But it's gotta be a no-nonsense home theatre with, of course, a PS3. Or whatever newest gaming console there is in the market.

Maybe Mom'll kill me for getting a PS3 during uni period, but heck. It's not like I'll be playing much by the time I get that machine either. Look, I've got a PSP and the games are getting damned boring or insanely difficult. I just wanna have fun. Heck if I'm the lousiest player out there.

With my family shifting house this coming May, I might just get a chance to do so, but there's just something shiok about having your own personal space with the choice to do whatever the hell you want with it, eh?