more unit mess-ups.

And of course, today, I went down to camp. In addition to the usual screw-up involving my lost injury report, today added two new lows to my ORD problems. First, I discovered that my Certificate of Service is not ready. And Second, I discovered that my ORD date was off by 5 days. I was supposed to finish on 16, apparently. But they still let me take leave 17, 18, 19, 20 and supposedly come back on 21 to get my IC. Well done. Well done!

Well, I finally upped and wrote that complaint letter to MINDEF Feedback Unit.

Back from Bintan

So anyway I just came back from Bintan. Had a nice trip there with Key. It was FANTASTIC! Well, I haven't quite started work yet so we were penny pinching, but it was fun! We stayed at the Angsana, which is a nice four-star hotel there. It has really good service, the best hotel service I've ever had, I can honestly say. We did jet-skiing and snorkeling and tons of lazing by the beach, and generally had fun. We were rather hungry often because the prices were in USD, which really made the food quite painful on the wallet. But other than that, it was a fantastic trip.

I came back with this buzzing in my ear, thought it was water in my ear, but it just refuses to come out. Mom's going on and on about ear infection, and how her friend went deaf because he left it untreated, so just to find out I went to google it. Got an emedicine hit. Best part is, under treatment, it says,

Rest; avoid further scuba dives, coughing, sneezing, bending, and attempts
to equalize the ears.

Right. I'll try not to sneeze. Or cough. Even though I have the beginning of flu.

Anyway, next morning I went to see the Doc. He says I've got fluid in my middle ear, can see the membrane swelling, and most likely it came up through my nose and went in. Best to take some medicine to make the water go away, and in five days if still not okay he'll get the ENT guy to let the water out manually. Not sthg I'm keen on. But it's now two days and my ear is still ringing. It's pretty awful. Driving is kind of weird, feels off balance, and when I picked up the phone to call Key today and her mom picked up, the phone was on the off ear and the sound transformation deepened her mom's voice into an unrecognizable bass. Made me think I'd called the wrong number... :< And of course sometimes when people say things to me I can't hear them properly..
Guess I'll just have to wait and see.

just wanted to add some pictures up. This is the pic that chun keat submitted for that competition in NUS... heh.. we took it in Quebec, at this really cute full size wall painting. Chris is waving to the girl inside, and Chun Keat's just admiring the scenery..

ST published an interview with Khaled Abou El-Fadl today. It's quite an interesting article, especially for someone like me who has very little understanding of what Islam means to Muslims. In particular, I refer to his comments on cutting off of hands.. This was something I probably first read about in Jeffrey Archer's Kane and Abel, about some punishment that was inflicted on thieves in Turkey somewhere pre-WWII days.

I give a very practical example. In traditional Islamic law, there is a whole
set of rules on theft. If a person commits a thet because he is hungry, you
cannot sever his hands. If a person commits a theft because he believes it's his
property, you cannot sever his hands. There are about 30 such exceptions..
Extremists show no such reserve.

He also says,

Extremists give themselves the power not just to decide what is modest or
immodest behaviour for women, but also to enforce their notions, because they
believe that they act as God's agents. I argue that this type of thinking arises
from extremist assumptions. A moderate might form an opinion as to how women ought to dress, but doesn't believe that he or she has the power to force that code of dress, because looking at the (Quranic) text they cannot assume an absolute understanding of the divine will.

Hmmm. For some reason I find myself thinking about grace and law. Maybe, to one way of thinking, the thing between law and grace is that law, assumes that I understand what God's will is or isn't, whereas the idea of grace is that God's will is something that is beyond our understanding, and so we always have to seek His guidance and His will in our lives?

Old friends blogging too?

Well.. was just surfing the tomorrowed sites when I came across someone's cute story of being posted to the same school as their dad. Read the site, decided to surf the d00d's flickr pictures, and discovered! Hey this guy did the Wacky Walk in June 2003. Singaporean too! Looked at his name, and suddenly realized i knew who it was.. heh.. Left him a message too...

Stressed out

I really shouldn't be blogging at this time.. I'm so behind that I just want to scream for help. But too bad la. I just want to RELAX!

Eh.. Okay la. Just realised haha, the blogger convention is this Saturday, and Josh/Addy's wedding this saturday, so too bad for me, no convention. Super ultra busy.. Maybe I'm stressing out too much, cos rushing things out for the wedding, and for the website launch on saturday, and the AC attendance, and..

Just feel like I'm running so hard yet still falling behind. It's like the burn rate on my time is >24hrs, you know?

Well. To cap it off, stupid injury report thing is going haywire. Chief Clerk insists she sent it to PMC already, PMC says they haven't got it, no records of it arriving. CC insinuating maybe I should freaking redo the bloody report.

I think? It's just her way of avoiding an investigation into why the report was done last August and still not submitted. Report's probrably shredded already. PoS...

Bloody %$#@! rubberneckers

Singaporeans.. sigh. In the morning I was heading to camp to pick up some last minute work (I'm going to ORD! why am I still working?) from my boss, and I heard a comment from the Class 95 hosts about Singaporeans slowing at accidents to get 4D numbers. Haha, Singaporean humor.. little did I know!

A few hours later I'm heading back and the PIE near Paya Lebar area is clogged.. Start/stop traffic, then later abt 10km/h. Can't see why, there's a flyover coming up, and the congestion looks like it's over the crest. Should be accident right?

Right! As I'm driving by, I realise, there's no accident. Not on this side of the road at least. Just across the road divider was some accident involving at least three vehicles. And on this side? Clear as a sunny day..

Repeat: Bloody %$#@! rubberneckers!!

Hospital

Was in for physio today, carrying my new copy of American Gods by Neil Gaiman. On the way out, I was struck by the feel of the hospital corridors. NUH, not quite sterile and blue-flourescent kind of look/feel/scent. In fact, the scent of the place, while mildly antispetic, has a distinctly floral undertone, nothing like SAF medical centres. A full day there leaves you with a aromaticallyaudible scent you can detect at 10 metres. And the lighting is homely, a composite of authentic sunlight and orange-yellow walls that turn the flourescent light into something like the warm feel of tungsten-light-bulbs. Nevertheless, there's a kind of lifelessness about the place, a feeling, not of people recovering into the full bliss of life, but of people waiting to die.

Then again, what I read in Gods, resonates. It's some quote of an old quote, but it rings..

"Every hour wounds. The last one kills."

RI year of 95 gathering?

Sigh.. Junx was telling me about the gathering. But I just didn't feel like going! A lot of reasons, but I guess the main thing is my insecurity.. Because of the one extra year of masters, I'm probably one of the last to not be working yet. What would the discussions be like? I dunno. What I do know is that I'm shying away from it.. :<