Memento Mori/Memento Vita

Went for a wake yesterday, my uncle recently passed away from complications from his surgery. Life is short, and death is the only certain thing in it. Thankfully he passed on when my cousins were more or less capable of supporting my auntie and themselves.

It is said that life is a game. And in more than a few ways it is. Death is the one great foe in the game of life. It makes us lose. Death is the inevitable loss that everyone will face sooner or later. Hopefully later for most people. In life we always try to win, always trying to get what we want, in dreams, career, ambition, love and etc. Yet death comes and shatters everything, making grand fools of us all. A sickening thought. It need not even reach us, but just touch someone close, and our lives can be in turmoil.

In other words, life is a game where you cannot win.

Where is the point in playing a game you cannot win? Is it not often said that only fools play a game where there is no clear chance of winning? It is in fact not rational to play a game expecting to win when evidence shows that you will most surely lose. Life is like that. We are alive, and we live like we are going to win, or have already won, but we will lose, it is inevitable. Why not just give up from the start if we have no chance of winning?

It seems wrong to do so. There is a saying, that it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Perhaps. Perhaps we need not win in order for something to be of value.

In the unknown time between us and unknown death, we live. And perhaps we live not because we exist, but because we will die. We live like we will die, and that is what makes us alive. To exist with an end in mind. Perhaps sometimes that is all that is needed to feel alive. To know death is one, to experience death is another, but to live we must understand that death will come, and so we do everything we can to live, to defy it, to render it's victory meaningless, to make our loss irrelevant.

Remember that you will die, but also remember that you are alive. Live your life so well that even death itself will tremble to take you.

Lingua Latina

Yay I finally got promoted. Now I'm a Lance Corporal. With the extra $20 comes more responsibilities and more shit work. Damn. But I'll take the $20 anyway. Beggars can't be choosers. Passed my shooting. Wasn't really that bad, but still one day is lost to the lousy ARMY.

And guess what I'm going to be taking Latin Language classes come January. Brenda contacted me today about some guy teaching Latin at Tanglin CC for 10 lessons at $110. Quite a steal really. So we've both signed but for it and classes start on the 4th. Quite surprising that Brenda wants to learn Latin, haha I sure didn't expect her to come forward with the suggestion. I was looking and scouring through Classifieds for a semblance of Latin language schools, but haven't been able to find any. What a breakthrough. Can't wait to get started.

Actually Latin is really a dead language, but I still think that it's cool how Latin was the root to German, French, Italian, English and Spanish languages. I tried to study Latin on my own once, reading the Idiot's guide to Latin. But apparently I was more idiotic than an idiot and couldn't understand shit. SO. I guess I will be needing help. It's great that I'm going to be studying with someone familiar tho, makes it less boring.

No Memory

Wow I forgot my password the last few months. And by some random stroke of chance/genius, I managed to get it right. What a long time it has been. You know there's this saying that having lousy memories is as good as having none at all? Well, it seems that the person who said that may have hit the mark. (Ok there isn't such a saying, I made it up.) BUT. The point isn't who said it, but that it is actually quite true. (Or not.) NEVERTHELESS. (I like using conjunctions. ALTHOUGH I have no idea why.) I am becoming increasingly random, pointless, senseless, disorderly and sinking into madness and the pure extreme carnage of using too many adjectives and adverbs in increasingly chaotic and completely absurd syntaxes without the proper and accurate use of punctuation and the observance of phonetical and respiratory regulations.



It seems Army has taken a toll on my sanity. Or rather it seems Army has taken too much sanity out of me that only insanity is left. But anyway, after that horrendously long paragraph, today I wish to talk about a part of my life, money.

I AM VERY POOR ALL OF A SUDDEN. They say I'm going to be promoted soon, which means a measly $20 increase in pay. But that's not enough. I find their lack of monetary incentives disturbing.

This weekend...there's shooting. I don't get it. Why does my luck suck so much. They told me on last Wed that the 3 days I had to shoot. I found it ridiculous, so I went to take ATT B, which is an excuse from strenuous activities so I won't have to go. So they scheduled it this Sunday...just...my...luck.

What password?

So uh I forgot my password, which was why I have not blogged in such a long time. I'm kind of tired after repeatedly trying out different combinations of letter and numbers so I'll post something some other time..zzz

Re-education

Mmmmm...had night's out last night. Welcome, as always. Went to the Yishun Timezone arcade with Sin and Marcus. Bloody hell Marcus keep bragging about his Tekken skills, but lost consecutively to some random stranger. Loitered around the place playing various games, ranging from Daytona to Time Crisis, even to the old skool basketball hoops thingamajig. Going to an arcade when you suck at playing arcade games is a surefire way to burn a blazing abyss in your wallet. It was shitty la, I sucked lol. Hell, we all sucked. But it was a good way to spend the night, instead of rotting away eating roti prata at Jalan Kayu, where we might as well not go out of camp.

Today we had some 'cool' NE lesson. We went to the army museum and booked out from there, at 12.30pm!! (That's why it's cool.) Ahh, best week ever. I swore I saw some familiar faces among the OCTs there. But alas, my memory sucks. But in any case, I got half-day off on Monday, and now Half-day off on Friday. How awesome is that. Welcome to Holiday Camp lol. Oooh and I love the UN crest. Looks freaking cool. The Singapore one sucks as usual. I mean, if we're going to defend the country at least do it in style man. Attribute it to morale or whatever, but Aesthetic value is always a plus. =D

Vertigo

So I was listening to Coldplay's new album and was loitering outside my bunk in a somewhat contemplative mood. See the good thing about my camp is that there is no light pollution or high rise buildings (which only goes to prove the horrid 'rural-ness'), so the sky, at night or in the day, are comparatively brilliant. And once again, I realised how small we are. You know how when you look down from a really tall building and get vertigo? I looked up at the sky, and I got vertigo. All of a sudden I felt this great expanse of nothingness, imagination took flight and rationality surrendered all judgements. Rationality surrendered its sense of 'magnitudity', its sense of volume and it surrendered its will to navigate the expanse. Some great fear struck me in the chest, and vertigo was upon me like a pack of vultures. I saw nihilism's advent, saw through it to its demise, but like a plague that brings prophecy on it's wings, it returns. Then I remembered Kundera's words in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. "Vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves." It was then that I saw not meaning in his words, but beauty. The mess of lines scrawled across the pulp of a dead tree, bound together with as much tenacity as wind, was beautiful. I realised then, that the epithets and eludcidations we have come to construct, come to demolish and reconstruct, cannot explain themselves. the very language we have come to rely on, a mystery in itself. The ever-lasting quest for Truth starts without a clue what Truth is. The ever-lasting quest for Beauty, has no idea what Beauty is. The ever-popular quest for Freedom, does not know what Freedom entails. Man crawls around on all fours with his mind. The Truth may sit and stare at him in his face, but his pride, language and senses are turned elsewhere. And Truth mocks us all.

The human condition is such, in the realm of nihilism, all is such. The war against nihilism will continue, but even within the non-truths of nihilism, there are truths. There will always be exceptions. If all is up to chance, if man cannot do anything to reach truth, then it is in those limitations we see the strength, the beauty, of man. To spend an eternity reaching something unreachable is akin to martyrdom. If all man is but a mess of flesh and blood, if all can be reduced to such basic entities, then let it be so. But man can never deny itself of consciousness, even if one day it should too be reduced. Man can never deny the ideas that he feels necessary to uphold. Man may deny his choice to choose between upholding and otherwise, but he can never deny the existence of his ideas. The beauty is not in the idea, but in the nihilistic man upholding the idea. If Nihilism can deny us Truth and Freedom, it cannot yet wrest Beauty from us.

Roll your Fate

I want to watch one of the best villians on the big screen. THE JOKER! =D

That aside I was going to bitch about the SAF making my whole company go on forced leave. But nevermind, bitching was never my thing anyway.

In other news, I am finally catching up on my reading, with all the buzz and fuss in NS, I can't concentrate long enough to read the thick texts of Kant and Hume and the like, so I've opted in favor of the lighter novels.

I think I'm either schizophrenic or incredibly random.

I think I'm schizo.

Look at the structure of this. It defies every lawful and proper definition of a paragraph. But unless I'm paid two cents for this I can't give two cents worth of care lol.

This week will be pretty easy, so long as things go as planned, and I manage to avoid cleaning the toilet. It's quite ridiculous, they've asked me to clean the toilet on three consecutive days, and it isn't even dirty.

My 2IC's english sucks gigantic gargantuan balls. But he's funny. In a "I-would-laugh-at-you-horribly-if-only-you-weren't-of-a-higher-rank" way. But at least he admits his english sucks, which I think is very admirable and cool of him to do so. Unlike certain other, more obnoxious and self-delusional existences.

The army is like the best place for a parade of physical aliments that plague the body. I have learnt so many problems with the human body since I went in. Some life-threatening, some not. Some highly-exaggerated too. In any case, I'm still twiddling my thumbs waiting for my re-vocation. And waiting for SPORE!!!