MRT? no thanks

I had a very bad encounter at the SengKang MRT today. As usual, i was heading for my student's house to provide tuition for him. When i reached the underground tunnel, i spotted a gate with no one queueing up. Instinctively, I headed for the empty gate. As i was about to reach there, a boy came rushing from nowhere shouting that the gate was empty. As he was quite a distance away, i reached the gate first. I was standing in front of the right side of the gate and so the boy went to the left side. His parents came over shortly and his father stood on my right.

He was an old man who had a mix of black and white hair on his balding head. He mumbled something that was audible to no one except for me. It was the kind of message that you would want to send to the person involved as a sign of provocation. For the provocative message, he was mumbling something about 'standing in front of the door', blah blah blah. I couldn't really make out what he was saying for the rest of the message as i wasn't expecting it either. For one thing i am sure, he was unhappy with me for standing right in front of the right gate. Anyone living in SengKang should know that the train reaching SengKang from Punggol MRT will always be virtually empty during non-peak hours. There is also a 0.01% chance that a person would be alighting. It was sort of an instinctive habit for everyone to stand in front of the gate in SengKang MRT if the gate was previously empty. Obviously, he did not have the logic and common sense to think before he shot his mouth off.

Less than a minute, there were signs of the train approaching. He spoke to his son in a loud and harsh tone, demanding him to cut across my path to grab the seats on the right. Another provocative action if you ask me. I wasn't intending to vie for the seats as i knew the whole train will only be 5% occupied. When the gate opened, i remained where i was standing, allowing the boy to run across the path ahead of me to get the seats. I admit i was very digusted at how the old man manipulated his son, using him as a tool for revenge at me. It made me suspect the saying 'Maturity grows with age'. Anyway, i wasn't really bothered by the old man's immature thoughts and went on to get myself seated. While i was adjusting myself to sit comfortably, i noticed that the old man was taking several glances in my direction and mumbling something to his wife.

His third provocative action of the day triggered my angst. Maligning others and acting like a barbarian time and time again had to be the most provocative chain of actions i had ever encountered. I stared at him long and hard for the rest of the ride and he dared not look into my eyes, only taking a few quick glances for the rest of the journey. He even tried to change seats with his wife who was sitting opposite of him in an attempt to run away from my vision. Refusing to give up, i locked my eyes on him.

I was ready for a verbal confrontation with him to get an explanation. I walked up to him and asked him in an unfriendly manner regarding what he said about me just now. At that point, i was still sane enough to control my thoughts and actions, but not for long. He whimpered in a weak tone, repeating the earlier part before we boarded the train, but remained in silence when asked about the latter part despite me asking him repeatedly. Seeing him cowering helplessly, i gave him an advice, branding him a coward and asking him not to speak without thinking, and walked off. Things did not end here and got worse.

As i was turning towards the exit, i saw him pointing his finger at me again. Talk about coward s who only dare to do things behind people's back, he was a professional. This time i stomped towards him, asking him what was the finger for. He did not answered and tried to wriggle his way out of the conversation. Just then, his wife scolded me 'Siao eh', helping her cowardly husband to cover his wrongdoing. I snapped. I put her words into my mouth and shot them back at her. I felt rather guilty after that for acting on impulse but i was extremely infuriated at that time. Luckily for me, the intercom echoed, indicating that the train was reaching Serangoon MRT station soon. That was my last sentence before i alight from the train for the bus-stop, but the foul mouth of hers did not stop. She went on to scold me, saying i was a crazy guy looking for a fight. HELLO, i was just purely demanding an explanation from her husband for his immature and irresponsible acts and she falsely claimed that i was picking a fight? Throughout our conversation, never did i once thought of making the confrontation a physical one. As the gate opened, i walked out without bothering about the pair of uncivilised barbarians. Discretion was the better part of valor and i knew i stand no chance again them. I was taught to never argue with idiots, as they will put you down to their level and beat you with experience.

It is shocking to see how has Singapore turned into. In the past, our ancestors worked so hard without complaining and were modest while sharing the right values with the younger generations. In the modern society, parents are spoiling their kids, enforcing the wrong values and teaching him to do all the wrong things. My friends and i have spotted this trend long ago and have discussed about it then. This incident further fortified my analysis. Cases of students disobeying authorities and even beating up principals were increasing exponentially as time goes by. In the past, we were taught the correct values, but not the kids now. We can't blame the kids for their actions as they were not given the proper upbringing by their errornous parents. Adults should be mature enough to be responsible for their actions and set a good example for their children. Taking a look at the society now, most people are only capable of pushing the blames to the teachers, schools and others. Instead of repenting, they chose to commit mistakes after mistakes. I fear for the development of our Homeland as the increasing adoptation of the new set of values is the main culprit to our continuously decreasing rating as a country as a whole. Something needs to be done to set the values right before we backtrack to our doom.

永保安康

曲名：永保安康
歌手：吴宗宪
专辑：永保安康


她轻靠我的肩 车票握在手心里面
窗外风景变换倒退 思绪回到有你的从前
像小说的情节 你我曾爱的浪漫缠绵
用了心想要完成每个誓约
祈祷爱情可以永不变
叹 世界太多变 如今是她和我依偎 我
怎能不抱歉 听说你仍紧锁着心扉
我好挂念 我好挂念
我仍关心 你的一切
只是很单纯 像朋友久违
想要知道 你都顺遂
我会想念 我会想念
我会祝福 你到永远
若你也记得 那些昨天
永保安康 是我们最后诺言

NTU Freshman Orientation Camp (FOC) Day 3

Fun and retarded. These are the 2 words i would use to describe about the camp so far. How so? Today, i had alot of fun with all the games and performances- not very happy with the 'breakfast' game though. 'Breakfast' is a game about the normal stuff you would do in the morning, like washing your face, taking a shower, eating bread, blah blah blah. In the game, we were acting like clowns again to entertain the people down there. I will not go into detail about it as it did not really affect what happened later on.

Later in the afternoon, we were told to do our matriculation. Finally a time when we can put aside our stupid 'sit down doing nothing but cheering' and sit down to have our lunch quietly. As usual, the same o' GLs were very demanding, as if they held a lot of authority. I will further explain this later in this entry. As i forgot my matriculation password, i had to go to CIDS to reset it. It was a blessing in disguise as my morale was at an all-time low. There were two other girls who went with me as they had trouble logging in their accounts too.

We had a talk about how we felt about camp and our GLs. As i suspected, the girls were different from the guys when judging if the camp was fun and good. Sharon told me that enthusiasm was what was needed to make the camp enjoyable. I fully agreed to her statement, but i had my own set of thinkings. Camp would be fun if it took off at a slower pace with more build-ups and interacting bondings with each other. Xiting, another girl from my OG, agreed with me on this point. It was fun to talk with both of them and we had lots of fun together too.

Shortly after we had matriculated in the library at NTU, we were brought back in a lorry to join the others. The next programme was treasure hunt and i was very excited about the game. I love making critical decisions and solving puzzles. That is why i am very interested in the Mensa Club in NTU too. ^.^ We played the game to the fullest, from paying huge sum of ransom to borrowing huge amount from loansharks, we eventually went on to 'win' the competition by doing all the forfeits and earning the bonuses given by the kind programmers.

While we were playing the auction game, my female GL, Jin Teng, approached me. She asked me if i could make it on the Friday night. As it was such a short notice and she did not help me cause by not revealing the real duration of the events that will be taking place on Friday night, I asked her to hold on. Apparently, she told the other male GL, Kelvin Kok, and he approached me shortly. Guess what he told me? He told me to go for the Friday night stuff which will ends at around 3am with me being in the hall. He was either an idiot or a retard. I told him that i needed to give tuition on Saturday morning which starts at 11am, he still told me to go for the Friday stuff in a forcefully and unfriendly manner. I told him about the responsibility i had for my students and he replied telling me 'you might as well don't go lar' in a very barbarian manner. All i wanted was to leave early and they used such unfriendly tone in dealing with this matter.

Are they retarded or what? Is playing more important than responsibilty and studies? This had been the way they had been reacting in a lot of cases. They would force you to leave later and come back earlier or even to the extent of forcing you to cancel anything that you will be having during the duration of the camp. Wasn't camp supposed to be fun? What the F were those 2 retards thinking? They were the ones who ruined the camp in my opinion. Exerting their enthusiasm and authority on us right from the very first way showed their immaturity. I could take him out with a single punch but considered not to as i hoped that my personal grudges with the retards do not affect others in the OG. Fighting was never a solution to a problem and it was pointless to waste my effort on retards too.

Luckily for us, we had 3 GLs. 2 down and we were left with one. The one left was Stanley. From my POV, he was a guy who was very understanding and a great leader who was able to put himself in other people's shoes. Instead of using the preaching and brute force method to confine the people in the OG, he gave us alot of options which was greatly appreciated by everyone of us in the OG. He was able to make very good decisions without being overly-enthuasiastic. He took things slowly and that was what i thought was needed for a group of strangers to start bonding.

Anyway, it is very late now - 3:20am. I need to wake up at 7am... And it will be the 'amazing race' tomorrow. Time for me to sleep and conserve energy for the big event. I will update this asap, ^.^

NTU Freshman Orientation Camp (FOC) Day 2

Bleahhhhhhh. You must be asking why did i give such an opening. The answer is simple, the orientation camp is boring. Yup, its boring, but not all of it. Not to put down the effort put in by the Group Leaders(GL), but i personally felt that the cheering stuff was a little bit overboard. I was bored out of my wits whenever the girls are so enthusiastic about learning a new cheer or song. If you know me well enough, you will easily discover that i have a very poor memory and obviously hate to dictate stuff. Executing the cheer is one thing, having to remember tons and tons of cheers and songs is another thing. I have difficulty in memorisation and facing the demands to learn a cheer every one hour (on an average) did not help. If you ever need an evidence to back it up, scoring a remarkable D7 in 'O' level biology examination is something i am proud of. I was the first person to fail biology in my secondary school, which made me a legend of sort. That aside, i find the games rather interesting. Being a typical guy, my andrenaline reached the peak when i am involved in a competition. Judging from my level of commitment and participation in competitions, it separated me from the rest of the world. I was an individualist and am still one. Do i need to add that i am a perfectionist too? Its an in-born trait and i could do nothing to curb it as tried before. To me, i simply love the trait that i was bestowed with from the moment i left my mother's womb. It helped me build up my confidence and being optimistic when facing a very challenging problem. It has its side effect though. I might be seen as an authority-hoarder often and to a certain extent, will scare those who don't know me too well.

We had a very long day today, going through alot of stuff. The deepest impression in my mind is when i was playing a game with a girl from another group. The game goes like this. The ankle of both players were tied together with a ruffian string and were both given a cup each in an attempt to fill a pail to its brim. Almost everyone in hall 9 had a partner, so its not hard to imagine how chaotic the situation was. At first i had nothing much to talk to the girl. Thats something which i do not want to go into - inability to communicate with new friends. There was always a barrier, which made me look so shy in front of people who are not close to me. But once the barrier is broken, they will see another side of me. Anyway, back to topic. Later when we started to play the game, we had some difficulty in orientating the movement towards our destination. Thats when things changed. I started to follow her closely and in no time we were able to overcome the communication barrier. Although we did not talk much about ourselves during the game, but we were enjoying ourselves(not sure if she did enjoyed... i take it as a 'yes' judging from her expressions though ^.^). She was rather cute and kept apologizing when our movements had small hiccups. Definitely a girl who will 'smite' your heart anytime anywhere.

Sigh, i am very tired for now, 4:09 at the moment. I am going to end my sharing here, a rather short one. I will try to update this as much as possible though. Some people worth mentioning are my GLs and some people in my OG. They were a bunch of cool people and it really hurt me having to end here rather abruptly. Anyway, i doubled the number of cuts and wounds today... hopefully it wouldn't be the case for later today... MY SPECS!!!