Forever is quite a...large concept, isn't it? nothing really lasts forever...paper ages and eventually crumbles into dust. even things carved into stone can get worn away. i guess most plastics are forever, since they're non biodegradable, but that's not the point. i'd say that in 100 years' time, the vast majority of things that i (or any other regular person) did in my (our) lifetime(s) will have been forgotten...unless i somehow invent the cure for cancer or something. but then that wouldn't make me exactly regular by that time.

sorry for that digression. what brought this on was that i was just doing some reflection, and thinking about best friends. in my life so far from primary school up till now, i think that there are about a grand total of 15 or less people whom i've ever called my best friends. i know it's somewhat stupid, since "best" is an extreme and implies that there can only be one of that thing at any given time. somehow that isn't the case for me. i've had multiple best friends in my life. for my best friends, i expected those friendships to last forever at those points in time. ironically, or perhaps predictably, i don't talk to my primary school best friends any more. in fact, the last time we saw each other in real life was probably PSLE results day. although i did kind of follow their progress...one went to anderson secondary school, then VJC (the school which rejected me), then NTU. the other went to our affiliated secondary school, NYJC, then NUS life science. no idea where they're both working now though.

you could argue that well, what does a primary school kid know about friendships? let's move on to secondary school, then. i think you've heard me say it before...most of the people from secondary school with whom i still keep in contact today made very poor first impressions with me, and probably me with them too. funny...that's how most of my secondary school friendships started. anyway. in secondary school, i had a few best friends, but one to whom i was particularly close, even up till J2. it was to the extent where we used to meet every sunday to go play pool in the dhoby ghaut area. i even stayed over at his place occasionally, and we did talk about becoming blood brothers once both of us turned 18, by doing a traditional (and unsanitary) ritual of sharing a cup of wine into which we'd previously dripped blood. thank goodness that never materialized. a couple of memories particularly stand out, the first of which being him comforting me when i got a C5 in my first attempt at the chinese O-levels. he'd got an A2, the bugger. i also remember that that was the day the prime minister changed...12 august 2004. the other memory was that the day before my enlistment, i called him and we spent like an hour on the line. i was telling him how unsure/afraid i was, and what if the training was too tough, and how i'd never been away from home for so long, and all that stuff that comes before army. his enlistment date was only a week after mine, so i imagine similar thoughts were going through his head. somehow he still found it in himself to be reassuring. our last contact was last month, when i messaged him about possibly meeting for dinner. his answer was rather non-committal, which didn't really get my hopes up.

my JC best friends are very much still in my life now, in that i see them more than once a year. there's one particular person i want to mention, though. that's a girl from my first 3 months class. i don't know why, but we got along pretty well. she had a history of dating cat high guys, but we were only close friends at best. i guess she kind of understood me, though i don't know if i could have said the same in the other direction. there was this interesting story which i don't think i've told here yet. we had a chem lecture, and she was sitting in my vicinity, half-asleep. someone else asked me to explain what the lecturer was talking about, so i did. that other person couldn't get it, but she woke up towards the end of my explanation and understood my point perfectly. admittedly she was talented in chemistry, too. when i asked her about it some time later, she said, "your explanation was so clear ah". i don't know. it's stupid and random, but i thought that we might have had some sort of connection. not that i'd ever date her, but still. she decided that JC life wasn't for her, and subsequently went to poly, then NTU. the last time i met her in real life was after army, when we went to united square. she's married now, and i wasn't invited to her wedding. it was for the best, i suppose. goodness knows we've drifted apart after so long. not like we were very very close anyway, and we have very few mutual friends. being excluded from the wedding allowed me to avoid a lot of potential awkwardness, which is good.

for university, my closest (and therefore by definition, best) friends are the chem kids. even then, there are some of them to whom i'm closer, others not so much. at this point in time, i'm really hoping that our friendship lasts into the future. i think it will...i haven't seen any signs of instability or stuff like that. we know each other's partners too (not that i have one right now...), so that's another strengthening factor. an even bigger plus is that i have a professional relationship with some of them, in that one of them's my financial advisor, and a few others are fellow grad students, so we help each other out. although i'm optimistic that our friendship will last, and i would most likely be quite badly affected if some of the more important friendships there crash, i guess that i'd get over it eventually if something like that happened. after all, linking back to the very first point, very few things are permanent in life.

and on that note, my JC best friend and his girlfriend are having a rough patch. well...not exactly. they've more or less broken up already. she needs her alone time, and doesn't want him to be all clingy and stuff. he's suffering through it. as his friend, it sucks to see him going through all that. rational me really wants to tell him to quit because i think the girl is being a bit...unreasonable. as in, she wants everything her way, and doesn't spare much thought for my friend in the process of getting her way. there's a severe imbalance in the relationship. i get the whole give and take thing, but in this case, it's one side doing all the giving, the other doing all the taking. i've said it before. personally, even under the best of circumstances, i wouldn't date her. but anyway. this is only his second relationship, and his first serious one. i've been telling him that whole statistics thing...like, what are the odds that your second relationship is your last/permanent one? he's still not willing to give up though. i'm just wondering, what's making him hang on? to expand on that, when should someone give up on a relationship? from my experience with the ex-date, i think it's time to give up when one party has lost interest, and the other party has done everything in their power to maintain it, but has failed. that's what happened to me. but it's still kind of different. my not-really relationship only lasted 2 weeks. my friend and his now-ex-girlfriend had been going out for a bit more than a year, so that obviously counts for more. i don't know. i don't control his life, so it's his decision and he has to live with it. i mean, sure i'll feel bad that he's feeling lousy, but i can't magically make him feel better. guess some things have to be done, and some lessons have to be learnt the hard way.

on my end, i've been meeting a few more people, both online and offline. there's someone i'm kind of interested in, but that person is insanely busy. besides, we've only been on one outing/tentative date, which i personally thought went decently well. considering that it was just the one outing, i don't really know if that's counted or not. good thing is that person is still willing to keep the conversation going, though there are REALLY long breaks in between (they don't check their whatsapp that often). but i'm heartened. it's been good signs so far, and i'm hoping that things maintain until our next scheduled meeting in october. or if i'm crazy enough, i might surprise them on the mooncake festival, which happens to be next sunday, in case you're keeping track or want to know. they did say that they're partial to mooncakes, after all.

in addition, i've also been talking to and meeting other people, just to make more friends. i've had a couple of major observations in the course of all this. first, age is not necessarily an indicator of maturity. i mean, there are 18 year-olds looking for a life partner, and there are 30+ year-olds who are still looking to hook up. slightly related to the first point, the second point is that people can be hell of a superficial. i mean, i understand that it's an individual life choice, and i also understand that i have the freedom to stay away from such people. and i should. unfortunately, the animal/primal part of my brain is still attracted to them, because such people often have various parts of their anatomy as their profile picture. but well...it's a test of my discipline and wisdom, i guess. reminder to self: such things often end up in even more heartbreak. so stay away!

sidetrack. i wonder whether it's possible for two people of different societal, economical, and educational backgrounds to be friends, or a couple? not trying to be elitist here. the thing is, people with different backgrounds don't really have that many common topics. that's a generalization, of course. but let's just use a couple of real-life examples, from my experiences so far. i went out with someone as friends. this person is 20 years old, and in poly. took 7 years to finish O-levels, i kid you not. but still, they're a nice person, but the conversation was a bit...halting. i found it a bit difficult to find common topics...perhaps because we were slightly out of phase, and/or i'm a poor conversationalist. but we talked, and i ended up enjoying myself over dinner and a little walk...though i was the tiniest bit annoyed as that person kept remarking on how expensive stuff was, and how sinful certain food was. at the extreme, there was this foreign NTU student who i went out with as friends as well. they seemed nice and all over whatsapp, but they're only searching for physical gratification. not quite my thing. i mean, that person is smart to the point of being a bit of an overachiever, but somehow, there was no emotional depth when we talked. all they were concerned about was telling me how they caught an STD, about how their "buddy" is hooking up with another person from the same country. thanks, but no thanks. too much drama and risk.

to provide some contrast, the person who i'm sort of seeing also doesn't seem to have a degree. they graduated from NAFA, which offers both diploma and degree courses, so i can't deduce their exact qualifications. didn't find an opportune time to ask, either. perhaps next time. could be my attraction to that person, but i felt that we connected. more than the two examples above, anyway. of course i've had some rejections as well, which still sucks, but somewhat less so now. there's one exception, and i don't know why i can't seem to get this person off my mind. like i'll message them on and off, but conversation has turned a bit unpleasant recently. although people normally try to present a personable front to new acquaintances, perhaps the fundamental nature of some people are just buay gam with others, and i should learn to accept that. it's no big loss to either party if we never speak to each other again. just have to remember that.

wrapping things up, i suppose life continues as normal. my professor has shown some doubts in my research, which normally wouldn't be a good sign. but they way he talked to me about it actually served to motivate me to find an answer to the problem. his people management skills kind of impresses me, and i guess i'm happy to be part of his team. more searching for answers next week, and i guess i'd better start putting parking coupons on. perspective: one parking summons = more than a month's worth of parking coupons. just stick to the rules.

-random thought of the day: Writing by hand is enjoyable!-

Seems like i've severely depleted my luck reserves. got another parking summons, this time for parking outside the gym (yes, without coupon again). never got busted there before. well...i suppose i got overconfident. looks like it's back to the coupons. you know, when i do display parking coupons, i never know if the parking people come round and do their job. after all, they don't leave thank-you notes or anything. so i never know if i could have gotten away with it. that only happens when i don't display coupons, and return to no summons. but when the summons comes, it's heavy. maybe i should be a good boy and just do the whole coupon thing, troublesome as it is. after all, there are better ways to spend $30.

aside from parking, another major drain on my finances is (going to be) my computer. my graphics card decided to join my recently-deceased keyboard on the lorry as well, so that's one more item i have to replace. my SSD is kind of running out of space too, so that might be worth considering. i think i'll set aside like...$1200 total? have to dig the money up from somewhere, and perhaps do a recce around funan. but that'll be in the later part of the year...like late november or december. hopefully my bank account won't take TOO much of a beating.

the upside is that i've been keeping with the daily ritual of gymming and eating healthy/clean...mostly. there's improvement in gym, as in i can sustain more taxing movements. still feeling tired like mad during the sets, but i'm recovering a bit faster too. wonder whether that's because my endurance is improving, or because i'm not giving my all any more? might be a mixture of both. diet is a bit more of a challenge...you'd be surprised at just how many things contain sugar. doing a strict no-sugar diet is all but impossible...or maybe my willpower isn't strong enough, or my sweet tooth is too strong. thankfully, the no/minimal carbs part has been going pretty well. despite being asian, i don't really get rice cravings. exception being that if the rice is japanese, or chicken rice rice. it's amazing how their rice is on a whole different level! but there are so few good and affordable japanese places in singapore, i can keep the craving at bay. you know, actually i've been thinking. diet does matter. but does what you eat matter that much? look at it this way...everywhere in the world, there are both underweight and overweight people. just that the proportion changes with the region. let's say you compare africa with america. while an overweight african would be much much harder to find than an overweight american, i'm still sure the former exists. granted that africa is largely not that developed, and a fair proportion of the population doesn't have access to quality nutrition...so that might not be a good comparison. ok. let's take japan for example. most of the population is of acceptable weight and below. yet, japanese people have rice and noodles as staple foods! so perhaps what you eat is less significant than how much you eat. wonder if i'm making sense. just a random thought.

seems like we'll be moving house soon! i have tremendous mixed feelings. going to school (and gym) will take longer, meaning that in order to beat the ERP, i'll have to get up even earlier than the current 6:30am. cost of travelling will increase also, in the form of more frequent trips to the petrol station. not to mention accessibility...but i suspect i'll only really start to feel that in 2017, if i don't get another car and don't renew the COE of the current car. hmm. maybe on-campus accommodation might be feasible then? that's still some distance in the future, so let's not think about that right now. looking at the positives, it'll be a new environment! and i get the driving force to REALLY sort through my stuff, see what i can afford to throw away. which reminds me. i should go get some big boxes from the toyogo warehouse. not only will they be convenient for transporting stuff, i can also store stuff that i don't plan on unpacking in there, where dust and other weird things can't get in. should look into that. plus, i THINK i'm getting my own room this time, so i have some creative freedom, like painting the walls or whatever. cam't be certain yet, but it never hurt to hope. i think that i'll go for a more minimalist approach in the new place. bed, fan(s), computer, maybe a separate work desk, and some display items. with any luck, there'll be an attached bathroon and air-con, but let's not be greedy. if i had to prioritize though, i think bathroom first. i've survived without air-con for 26 years and counting. plus, i have power fans. perhaps i should start packing soon...like next week. or using the coming public holiday on thursday, and maybe lengthening it into a super-long weekend? will think about it if my reaction succeeds.

right, then. it's way way past my bedtime. should go sleep, and hopefully wake up in time for judo tomorrow. i'd wanted to blog about meeting people of different backgrounds and educational levels, but that can wait. sleep is top priority now.

-random thought of the day: Is a difference in educational level really a deal-breaker?-

Couple of things are weighing heavily on my mind right now...first of which is politics/the election. i've said it many times, i'm not a political person. that's why i think it's a bit weird that i'm caring so much about this election. "so much" here is relative of course. i didn't volunteer with any party or go to any rallies (but did catch some on youtube). so...i don't know why i'm affected so much.

perhaps i should clarify my background. that might help to explain my stand on politics later. i'm more or less middle-class, with a decent "job" (well, not really a job but it's close), so i don't really have trouble making ends meet. in fact, i can afford a few luxuries that lower-income singaporeans would have to think twice about before buying, if buying those luxuries is even within their budget. i'll be honest - i haven't experienced poverty, and living on $5 a day is a challenge that i don't think i can pull off. thankfully i'm reasonably healthy, so i've rarely had to visit the doctor in the past few years, and i've never been admitted to hospital in my life.

as a result, i'm not affected by government policies that much...at least i think i'm not. i'm earning enough to cope with the cost of living...also because i spend quite within my means. so as far as standard of living is concerned, i can't complain. i can (and will) complain about the quality of life, however. there are policies i don't agree with, like the 6.9 million population, destruction of cultural heritage sites, and basically pursuing economic growth at the expense of everything else.

on top of that, i feel that those in power have let the power get to their heads. a common metaphor is the ivory tower, which i tend to agree with. how can a minister who earns millions of dollars a year understand the plight of a family that's struggling to make ends meet? it would be nice if they were sympathetic and tried to help. instead, there are so many instances where help is callously refused, even though the person has sufficient funds in their CPF. and what makes it worse is that the citizens are often told to work harder, faster, smarter, whatever, as if that would miraculously solve all problems. what if we're working as hard/fast/smart as we can already? i'm not saying that we should be a welfare state, but i'm saying have some compassion, man.

don't even get me started on some of the moronic statements and double standards made by some ministers and MPs. facebook glitch for a twitter post? privileged parking? NS salary can't be measured in dollars and cents? i don't even want to list any more things...you can easily find tons and tons of material online. and then there's the issue of "useless" MPs, who barely speak during parliament. i'm no expert on these things, but assuming parliament meets once a month, i'm sure over 5 years and 60 parliament sessions, speaking up just once shouldn't be too hard, right?

to be fair, i'm not saying that all opposition should win. i'd be surprised if ang mo kio fell, honestly. there are good politicians in the PAP, and those good politicians deserve to stay on. but for some (most) others...not so much. i'm seriously surprised and disappointed at the results from certain GRCs and SMCs.

well...i guess that singaporeans get what they deserve. i wish i was in another GRC, so that i could have made a difference. for me, life will go on, and i hope no ridiculous bills get passed in the next 5 years. if anyone who voted for the incumbents to stay in power dares to complain about any of the government's decisions, i'll slap them. seriously.

the second thing on my mind is that it's really not my lucky driving month. just got another summons for not showing parking coupon. yes, i made a mistake and should bear the consequences. i'm not complaining about that. just complaining about my rotten luck. well...$30, no demerits. guess i can use it for my OCBC 360 account payment. that's the only bright side i can see here. hopefully some money comes my way in the near future to offset this.

-random thought of the day: Do the damned progress report!-

What is one piece of advice that you would give to your younger self?

that's a possible question that facilitators make you think about during introspection/reflection sessions. for me, my piece(s) of advice would be: work out, open up, meet new people, start dating, all while continuing to do well for academics. the stupid irrational thing is, i kind of blame/am annoyed with my younger self/selves for not starting sooner. do you see how warped and stupid that is!? because if i'm blaming myself, i should have done something about it a long time ago! otherwise i guess you can see where this will lead...30 year-old me will blame present me, 40 year-old me will blame 30 year-old me...it'll never end. so i guess it's good that i'm getting started now. hopefully future me will be happy/grateful with what i'm doing at this point.

my facebook friend just posted a rather inspirational post about his weight loss journey. he lost 31kg over a span of some years, and is 5kg away from meeting his goal. i guess it doesn't come easy. i have an ideal weight in mind, and to get there, it means i have XXkg to go. not easy, but not impossible. i don't know how long it'll take, but as the nice coach at the gym mentioned, i can't expect instant results. more than that, i shouldn't have weight loss as a goal. instead, he recommended that i focus on other things, like how i'm improving in terms of number of reps, or weight of load. thinking about it, it does make sense. there's been visible improvement in the month or so i've been working out there. compared to when i started, i'm using heavier weights for most of the the exercises where loads are required, and for simpler stuff like push-ups and pull-ups, i'm doing more reps and with better form. but there's still a really long way to go. i can maintain excellent form (excellent for me anyway) for like the first set and a half...depending on the routine itself, of course. after that, it becomes a struggle. well...i guess i should remember 2 things: (1) it's not a competition with anyone except myself, and (2) baby steps. the fact that i've seen improvement already should be (and is) a positive indicator. just maintain. on the diet front, i'm watching what i eat, but not to the extent of counting calories or anything that extreme. trying to follow their guidelines on portion sizes and eating times as well. nothing dramatic. i kind of gave the food prep idea up. a little bit too much hassle, so maybe only for times when i'm feeling extra hardworking. just have to make better food decisions when buying from the canteen.

suddenly lost the mood to blog, so i'll stop for now. don't think there's anything much else to say anyway. reminders to self: stay positive, focus on progress, take rejections with truckloads of salt, and know that i'm not to blame for how other people feel. chatting online doesn't mean we'll end up as life partners. people come and go. all that stuff. take heart.

-random thought of the day: Practise good posture!-