My family is fucking screwed up. No, not the dysfunctional, slightly off-key kind, but the darker, more serious kind. I have harboured, entertained, and almost carried forward thoughts of running away and doing something crazy (read: anything in between suicidal or brilliant) but alas, WELCOME TO REALITY.

I just wonder how childish adults can get. I’m certainly no epitome for maturity, but the way my parents are going at each other, I could fill in nicely as a counselor for them. It’s retarded, the way things are progressing. Whether I’m nonchalant or affected, I’m certainly not being given peace and quiet.

This is getting fucked up. Fuck this.

rants galore

I wish my parents would stop ringing me up every two milliseconds after evening when I’m out.

I think Lord of Avernus and Axe are getting imbalanced; they should be given significant nerfs.

I hate people who jump to conclusions and continually theorise “I’m..”-style. “I’m older than you and I’ve seen more than you – you should believe whatever I say.” “I’m a psychologist – I know you’re lying so admit it.” Fuck you all.

I hate people who jump to conclusions anyway – they could have spent a few seconds looking a tiny bit further into the matter before shooting their mouths off.

I like Left 4 Dead a bit, but I detest the fact that I get a cranking headache after I play the damn game for any longer than fifteen minutes.

People should stop picking Ryu at Street Fighter games – he’s overrated as heck.

I hate how bus stop signs claim that the frequency of a bus is “8-10 minutes” but what actually happens is that every half-hour, three of the same bus will beeline towards the bus stop.

Finally, I abhor mainstream music. Everywhere I go I hear “Low” or “Soulja (LEARN HOW TO SPELL, BITCH) Boy” or “When You Look Me In The Eyes” – it has to be one of those nonsensical musically-deprived noise passages. Rap is awesome when people actually think of lines, be they catchy, clever, meaningful or whatever. Rap stinks when it goes all commercialised, when people use words like ”shorty” every four syllables, and when it’s accompanied by awful-sounding synth tracks.

The Jonas Brothers will never have a chance at awesomeness though. They are the worst band on earth by a light year or seventy.

a lot of lan

Today was the first time I took up the five-hour package at IRC. It cost me eight bucks, a load of energy, and quite some straight thought – I had images of beer-throwing pandas and blue-skinned female archers swimming in my head for a couple of hours after leaving the LAN shop.

This was on top of yesterday’s four-and-a-half, albeit un-straight, hours of play. These few hours of play have cruelly exposed my complete lack of practice at DotA. The CS was fun though - I took a fancy to the all-snipers map despite my ineptness at moving crosshairs over virtual heads and clicking left-mouse-buttons thereafter.

Within the Warcraft III user base is a bunch of random people with a bit of time and imagination. These very individuals have come up with games like Pudge Wars, Wintermaul TD, and Escape From Gay Heaven, and in the process made Warcraft a far more interesting game than what it was to begin with. I had actually experimented with the World Editor back when I still had Warcraft on my computer, but none of the ‘games’ that I created had any aim, plot, or entertainment value as we know it. Perhaps now that I’m using a relatively new laptop, I should install Warcraft again and maybe re-hone my DotA skills.

Tomorrow there’s band practice – but thank goodness there isn’t any practice this coming Saturday. My recently-purchased second Metallica shirt will have its first run-out tomorrow, anyway. I like wearing band shirts to band practices – it serves as a stark reminder of the sheer narrow-mindedness of so many people over at where I attend band rehearsals. Those people need to be exposed to.. different things.

tiresome and tiring are two different things

Playing soccer is certainly tiring when done for long enough, but never tiresome, at least to me.

Eating the same food every day is tiresome, but in most cases not tiring.

ACJC band practice? Surely tiring, and definitively tiresome. I am able to attest to this having attended a grand total of three rehearsals with that group so far.

Yesterday’s rehearsal started at about ten-thirty. Before that, Hisyam and I met up at good old ACS(I) to formulate and execute the Master Plan. I must say it went fairly smoothly, at least for the best part of yesterday’s time at ACJC. The practice itself, however, completely sapped whatever energy and enthusiasm I might have had prior to it. Combined rehearsal was well-helmed by the conductor and whatnot, but the sheer dryness of the music, married to several other unspeakable factors, contrived to drive me into a state nigh sleeping. Lunch break was spent with Hisyam first eating, then heading back to the Great Old Secondary School to catch up with seniors and peers alike.

*I miss ACS(I) like mad*

Then came sectionals, in which there were two distinct segments. One was helmed by Person D, an ex-ACS(I) and current ACJC member. The other was supervised by Person E, whose gender would never allow administration into ACS(I)’s secondary-level forms. (Note: No actual names will be provided due to the threat of flames, fire and high people). The part that Person D took was informative and useful, and importantly, slightly beneficial. The other part, however, was a colossal waste of precious time; it would have been better spent with indivdiual practice methinks. Thankfully, that was the very last part of the day’s practice.

So after the whole bore-fest ended, Hisyam and I met Amos and Dennis – who had just finished practice with the IB band – and then went to Clementi for dinner. The over-dinner conversation served to remind me of what I had missed about ACS(I), and further amplified by sheer disgust at .. something else which too cannot be mentioned. After that, Amos and Dennis went home. Shaun Ng and a friend of his arrived, and together with Hisyam and I went to play LAN and then pool. Fun times – I had never previously played LAN and pool in the same day. Left 4 Dead is a nice game, a quite viable time-killing option in my opinion. Sadly, my tendency to pick up headaches after playing first-person shooters will deter me from obtaining this game.

I MISS ACS(I) A LOAD.

Up And Coming Recording Projects

In the works are:

-Comfortably Numb [Pink Floyd] (Solo)
-Some blues jam shit
-Master of Puppets [Metallica]

And in the longer term:

-Domination [Pantera]
-Creeping Death [Metallica]
-Sweet Child O’ Mine [Guns 'n' Roses]

And if I continue to delude myself (read: in perhaps a couple of years):

-Damage Control [John Petrucci]
-Cliffs of Dover [Eric Johnson]
-An entire Metallica medley

I VOW TO NAIL THESE SONGS/SOLOS AND HAVE THEM ON MUSIC FILES.

These few days have been especially draining, in more ways than one. I’ve been given a lot to think over, and it hasn’t really done much good for me and others around. More than once I’ve hoped for everything around me just to cease to exist for a while, just so that I could collect my thoughts and try to function at the level I’ve always been known to.

Evidently none of the methods that I’ve tried have helped: failures include listening to loud music, playing loud music, singing loudly, spending endless hours on the computer yelling at the screen for no apparent reason, and more.

Just fuck off. Stupid world.

fuck this!

I got 11 points for my O levels. No it’s not a case of ‘fuck life’, but I’m obviously disappointed and (still) more than surprised. I won’t be reminiscing and making excuses – it’s useless doing so. I just hope now that whatever school I want to get into will accept me. :/

A Math – 2 points
Chem – 3
Physics – 3

Something went wrong for sure. Where the wrong went, I don’t quite know.

contrasts

Today began with my first (and highly possibly, last) rehearsal with the ACJC band plus a lot of DSA/appeal applicants. The sectionals was boring, but I guess necessary. The combined was supervised by an admittedly hugely competent conductor, but it did nothing to spark the interest either. I nigh fell asleep on several occasions during combined rehearsal. Though on the plus side, I did get to know better the ACJC section – they’re generally nice people, but utter bores too it seems. I think it’d take monetary rewards to get them to do something like play cards during sectionals, for example.

After the rehearsal, at around four-thirty, I headed alone to Lionel’s place for the class barbecue - sheer fun it was. From the good, unhealthy food to the silly hand games and theological discussions, I (and the rest of whoever turned up) had loads of fun at the event. Pity we didn’t dunk anyone in the pool though.

Results come out in a day or so. I’m not particularly nervous or confident; I’m just looking to get the whole shambles over and done with.

events

On Monday some of the band fellers and I went to Pulau Ubin to cycle (in my case, to learn to cycle, having never ridden a bike prior). It was good, fast, occasionally slippery fun, but not without its minor blips. Two of us had particularly nasty falls, and I was one of the two. Still, it did little to dampen the overall mood – most of us were just caught up in laughter at Justin Du’s antics.

Following the biking trip, we headed for lunch, then Du, Hisyam, Shaun and I went to play LAN at City Hall. The DotA was fun, the Uther’s Party mini-games more fun still.

And today, there was a meet-up at Henry Park. The teachers seemed quite bemused at the resumption of work, but were more than glad to sit around and chat with us ex-slaves ex-students. Following which there ensued an inane but completely hilarious trip to Kasi’s place, which ended up with us all playing Monopoly. Needless to say I ended up the richest guy left standing. Perhaps I could translate my business savvy and powers of persuasion into a real life situation. Then again, maybe not.

Then most of us parted ways – I went to play pool with Jerry. Obviously I got creamed at pool over there, though I did win two games out of eight through a combination of luck, fortune, and providence.

I’ve oddly been starved of time and energy to post on this figment of web space, but at the same time been able to hone my guitar skills non-stop. I should hope that in a few months, I’d be at the level where I could play live gigs.

My first band rehearsal in five months (!!) will begin Saturday morning – I’m trying out with the ACJC band. It should be a starkly different experience to all of the ACJC/ACSI rehearsals I’ve been through – of course due to the fact that the person who makes these rehearsals - to say the least – unique will not be there. I envisage a morning of enduring the shitty tone that I’ll produce, then enduring a couple more hours of sitting around inanely to add to the hundreds I’ve racked up.

I’m tired. I need sleep. Screw you all.

sandy beaches

Yesterday’s Sentosa outing with the henryparkers was a blast. We made do with the fact that only 17 people (out of a possible 30) turned up, went to the beach looking like lost souls, and played. We weren’t extremely well-equipped, at least in terms of ‘beach gear’ – it seemed that every man and their dog possessed a volleyball of sorts. Except us.

At 12 we gathered at Harbourfront Station, then headed to obtain our day-long passes. From there we proceeded to the monorail station, which brought us our first big laugh of the day. To ensure we would enter the monorail as a group, we deliberately missed the first one that came, seeing that there was a fairly healthy crowd queuing before us. Then we camped at the entrance door. The next train arrived – some of its passengers wanted to get off at the entrance door. A group of teenagers in the monorail stared at us as if to say “How inconsiderate these fools are! Can’t they step aside and let us pass through?”. The entire staring game lasted about two minutes, long enough for us to be able to realise the sheer hilarity of the situation, point at the idiots in the train, and laugh our guts out. They must have been a little displeased when the entire passenger body exited the train – at the proper exit door behind them.

From there, we went to the beach and played and played and played. Some, unfortunately, had to leave early. So only eight or so of us remained to have dinner at Carl’s Jr at VivoCity. Following which, four of us (Kaushik, Jerrold, Shao and I) went to Paradis Centre at Dhoby Ghaut to play pool. That for me was the absolute highlight of the latter stage of the outing – we were literally able to laugh at nearly every shot played, such was our lack of form and practice. I personally hadn’t played pool for about a year prior, but I guess it made little difference, seeing as I was not at all good at it anyway.

The whole trip was fun – and it left me exhausted. I couldn’t post this on the night I reached home.