//beconfused

It’s my birthday today - October 24!

I celebrate my birthday on October 23 since I can’t really do so on the actual day. The actual day would be the start of my new course in camp. First is the Basic Military Training course which starts on June 11, my brother’s birthday. This time, my course starts on October 24, my birthday.

There goes my eight-to-five job. I’ll be like most people staying in camp during weekdays. (Singapore practices a five-day week for civil servants and poor military people.) That would mean lesser blogging! Oh shucks.

Anyway, I would like to wish my egoistic self a happy birthday and may my wishes come true. Probably except the one that wishes my national service term to end on October 25 which is likely not going to come true anyway.

And I got a cake! It tastes quite good.

(Look! My yummy birthday cake.)

I don’t think you guys can give me any particular thing I suppose. You can send me e-cards and stuff though.

Hope to be free soon, hahaa… See you people soon.

It’s our national day today.

(The future is ours to make. Singapore celebrates 40th birthday.)

Today is Singapore’s birthday. I am really happy for myself since I get time off from army. If only Singapore can celebrate their birthday for a week or something; how about just 3 days?

I woke up in this national day morning feeling not very “national-day”. Where is the feeling? I don’t feel that it’s our nation’s birthday. The only thing to remind me is the national flag that everyone hangs around.

I have been stuck in army for 2 months and I don’t bloody know anything about national day. I am just clueless. Totally clueless. There are newspapers there but I don’t enjoy reading much national day news, it’s quite boring.

I just realized that Rui En is the singer for the Mandarin theme song of this year’s National Day Parade. The music video wasn’t too great and the song wasn’t as nice as the previous years’ I feel.

Well, anyway, happy birthday Singapore. Really, do consider my one-week holiday proposal.

[Singapore has lesser holidays than most countries and have only one day as the national day public holiday.]

I just returned home seeing Singapore flags all around, that is our government’s way of reminding us to be loyal to the land you are living in stuff like that.

It is to commemorate our National Day. We just call it National Day, it’s on the 9^th^ August, but those enthusiastic people has apparently prepared for the occasion a month ago.

National Day’s great because it’s a day we can all rest after working and getting the same pay after 10 years and realizing that the chicken rice has magically increased from SG$2 to SG$3 through the 10 years.

I look at the flags and don’t really care about them. The government seems to be getting richer. You know, every year’s National Day is just seemingly better than the previous. The decorations seemed to have increased.

Last year, I remember seeing the whole flat with National flags. This year, I see the same flat filled with flags and now there is an addition of a really huge one that is 6 times the size of the usual flag.

Now, they even try to give National flags around during National Day so that you can put them at your window and hang it out so your flat looks red and pretty. Every year, there would be more interesting gifts, nicer fireworks and stuff.

It’s okay, our government is rich. Perhaps they are those chicken rice stall-owners.

Happy birthday to my younger brother.

It is June 11 today. He celebrates his 14th birthday. I don’t remember giving him any particular gift. I chipped into his budget to buy some CDs that I don’t remember the names of. Too practical perhaps, but he is happy and I am lazy.

Today, June 11. It is also going to be the day I leave. How ironical.

On June 10 (yesterday), we had a simple dinner. It was a simple celebration. Really, I am not too happy to celebrate. Perhaps it is the most ill-positioned date to enter the national service - on my brother’s birthday.

I didn’t give my sincere wishings too. I am slightly troubled. Looking across the living room, I tried to remember the setting and decide to see any of the mess would be clear up miraculously when I return. I sure hope it would. My room is left messy, not on purpose, just due to laziness.

I took pictures of my brother, smiling happily. It is his birthday. I gave a smile. I sang the classic birthday song. Earlier, I joked that he should be singing an R&B version for his birthday song. He paused, thought and given up. No way he can pull off an R&B version it seems.

I told him to try a hip hop one instead.

Now, late at night, I am typing in front of my computer. This will be my very last post to this blog. All the rest of the posts you see are all pre-recorded already.

I wish all you guys well. I will be well too. Happy birthday to my brother once again. I want to feel June 11 as my brother’s birthday today and not the day I am missing from home for 2 weeks. Once again, happy brithday. Be well.

_(Happy 10th birthday, Yahoo!)_

Back then, when I first have internet access, the first site I visit is SingNet and that would be my internet service provider. My second site? Yahoo.com

Yahoo.com has grew a lot since then. It survived the dot-com crash, buy companies here and there. Came out with instant messenger, start selling music, changes home page look, added news content, briefcase and lots of others.

Take a look at Yahoo! back then on 1995. It’s so different from now.

Happy birthday to Jinyao, Yong Liang and I.

On October 23, there is Jinyao’s birthday. I’m sure his birthday wish is to meet S.H.E probably marry Hebe or something. S.H.E is a popular female group from Taiwan, China.

On October 24, it’s my birthday. I was at home eating my birthday cake that has kiwis, strawberries, mangoes and more mangoes as cake toppings. I had an early celebration with my girlfriend at Down Town East Escape Theme Park last Sunday. We enjoyed the rides there too.

On October 25, it’s Yong Liang’s birthday. I wonder how would his celebration be like.

Well, it’s back to studying. It’s sad that during our birthdays, there is studying involved. The holidays aren’t exactly here yet. There is still the examinations coming a few days later. I’m looking forward to the end of examinations the moment school ends.

Well, I am one day late for this because the previous day I was doing something very important, i.e. to play an online game with my girlfriend. Well, here it is though.

There’re several highlights of the National Day Parade (NDP 2004). There is the fireworks, the Indian president, the parachuters, last but not least - the goodie bag.

I recall years ago, some people go for the National Day Parade just to collect the goodie bag. They would get the free admission tickets, get the door gift which is probably worth around US$15, then leave immediately.

Now “security” measures have been imposed to discourage offenders. They decide to impose a rule that says once you enter, you stay and will not be allowed to leave the stadium.

It makes me wonder if the door gifts are really that fantastic. Well, let’s take a look.

The goodie bag, as the name suggests, comes with a bag. I would say this year’s bag is the nicest one that I have seen in the recent years. I am sure not many would bring this bag out after National Day though. Most considered it cheapskate. I wouldn’t mind bring this out if it’s without all the logos and stuff, it spoils the bag.

And in the bag, there is always a book that welcomes you, give you a little bit of history lessons here and there. It also contains the event listings and description to them.

Well, what about the introduction of the emcees? A free copy of 8 Days is included to cover it. The previous years, I recall seeing iWeekly which is the Chinese Language version of 8 Days. 8 Days is a local entertainment magazine published by MediaCorp.

How can a National Day Parade go without the state flag? Well, of course it’s included and a mini flag stand is handed out for patriotics such as my father to put it on top of the television set for worshipping purposes. The cap sucks by the way.

The fan is always but of the goodie bag just in case overly-pampered Singaporeans complained about the absense of air-conditional in the open stadium. There’re also tattoo for the nation’s die-hard fans. It can be applied and removed with water. I imagine a street gangster walking around with a body full of those, lol.

For audience participation, every year some toys are given. These are the basic ones. There is this drum and shaker. The shaker (tin can) looks really ugly by the way.

Since the National Day Parade happens in the night, torch lights are handed out so that you can wave them about and they’ll look nice on the telly. This year, they were made to look like Nokia phones, which is rather creative in my opinion. So a side note, the girl sitting next to my girlfriend holds a Nokia phone that looked quite similar to the torch light. So she’s got two, hahaa.

You bound to get hungry at some point of time so snacks are provided. Although they aren’t in generous quantities, they are enough to boost your energy a little. If you’re still hungry, well, you can buy hot dogs from stalls I believe, or you could prepare some fried rice and bring it to the stadium and sit around us to tempt us.

Enough of food. It makes you thirsty, so here are the drinks. I never tried before any of these drinks actually. One of which is Slim Water, I drank it and it taste like normal water. After weighing myself, I don’t think it works, in fact the water added weight to my body. I guess I’ll try weighing another time.

From the left, you see poncho, tissue paper and Sakae Sushi wet towel. Poncho is a rain coat by the way, it’s just in case it rains. I can understand why tissue paper is provided, however I don’t see the point of the Sakae Sushi wet towel.

It’s the true Singapore spirit, it can’t be without discount coupons. It’s everywhere, even McDonald’s issue them all around. I checked out the discount coupons, they’re not very useful. Still, nice print.

Get the wallpaper (284 kb)!

That’s all folks, I don’t think there’re any thing else in the goodie bag. And by the way, today is National Day for Singapore - August 9th. Enjoy your holidays. If you’re going to watch the parade, you better pray that it won’t rain. Those staying at home can watch it on television. At fifteen minutes past 8, there is the premiere of Singapore Idol. Do check it out.

Also, since you’re surfing the internet anyway, you may want to visit the National Day Parade 2004 (NDP2004) web site.