Saturday, July 31, 2010
Interview with local actor-model Nat Ho for Channel 8 drama With You
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
If this was news, it would have lost its timeliness: An overdue comment
The doctors say I have to abstain from alcohol to stay alive.
You would’ve realized if you’ve hung out with me. But on Friday night, as most – seniors and freshies alike – rushed to catch both the last monorail out of Sentosa and some overdue rest from five days of surreality, I got myself drunk, without being sure why.
I think this is it.
Maybe I was numbing myself. The sense of loss was overwhelming. Four is the accumulated number already, in the blink of an eye. You see, no matter how hardcore we tune ourselves into and, let’s say, keep coming back, going through FOC as a student can never be matched. The existing conditions of being able to come to school and seeing your juniors and freshies, the very people those awesome five days were spent with. By FOC 2011, I would be a graduate (fingers crossed), and there probably won’t be,
“Teh peng, what is STARS?”
“Teh peng, should I take Hedwig?”
“Teh peng, ‘ah fang’ tonight!”
anymore.
I can’t claim that FOC is my baby like Marcus can, but bar a few, you have no idea how attached I am to it.
If you had spared yourself some time to read this, ask, would you come for twenty consecutive days (four straight years) of FOC? I had played stupid games, been dunked at Siloso, slept on cold, hard concrete, covered the island in Amazing Race, and tahan-ed those long nights, from freshman year to just last week.
People come back because they feel invested in FOC, like former maincommers. I was never one. I was in CI Club in my second and third FOCs, but I was also there as an AGL and then SA. With that I can say I’ve lived the freshie experience four times over.
Mee Tai Mak, Linguine, Bocelli, Jagerbomb.
The worst, however, was that lack of closure that enveloped me after Starry Starry Night last Friday. Over the five days it has subliminally dawned upon me that this would be my last, not helped by the fact that Marcus, Shixiong and Zak had announced their retirements.
I worked myself into letting go.
I must admit I frowned a bit when MTMer Jeanette was still all-action, but I think I did a pretty good job. I tried not to tell but show. I tried to impart and advise, not control. I was going around to cover the last few holes I missed out last year as the incumbent school president. Plus I reckoned people are gonna care more this time about my opinions. After all, a Final-Year.
And so, as everyone spoke, hugged, cried and took photos, I silently walked off. Without making any sort of speeches. I must let go, I told myself.
Then I regretted it like hell.
No it’s not some egocentric send-off I want, but I missed the most basic of closures I deserve. I didn’t tell Jagerbomb, or freshies in general, young individuals I see so much potential in and which I once was, that this would be my last.
You would have noticed my much more laissez-faire approach this FOC, but still Jagerbomb, you are my last OG. Cast in stone and forever linked, this story reads “Mee Tai Mak, Linguine, Bocelli, Jagerbomb”.
On another note, MTM, Linguine and Jagerbomb all finished second (Bocelli was the anomaly really). I’m sorry Zak but I’m too competitive to not be bothered by this. Like I say, Amos is now a legend because he has won Best OG four years in a row. My biggest regret is hence probably that I’ve never come out tops.
Which was why… (wait for it) …I ran for OGL this year.
Not many people know that. And I’m not embarrassed or ashamed of it. They say if you wanna get something done, you gotta do it yourself, right? I had one intention and one intention only – to raze the field and finally bring home one victory in my last year. I reckoned having gone through half a dozen FOCs I should know enough. The masterplan even included a fellow OGL carefully handpicked – my 2009 fave freshie Jo Quek.
I admit it’s a tad unfair, but heck lah.
Then Ivan, Sarah and Marcus reinstated fairness LOL by rejecting me. Oh well, it was a decent try.
In any case, since I’m on it, regarding A Song For Viola, I’m not oblivious that I rubbed some the wrong way. But as much as you had your own interests to protect, as the incumbent I not only needed FOC to be the best it could be, I had to preserve CI Club’s and in general the school’s reputation. However much I meddled, I never regretted anything. To be honest, souring relationships was an easy tradeoff if it was for the good of the bigger picture. Along the way people have lost respect for me but I don’t care cos it’s mutual. I have my flaws. The problem is too many people (especially in this school) criticize without sizing themselves up or walking through the fires themselves. At least I stand/stood up and be counted.
The time spent doing the things I did in school made me learn a lot more about myself, but I rest easy because I had always endeavoured to do what was right. Guiding principle: Whatever I do I must be able to live with myself.
Before I sign off,
To MTM:
OMG we’re doing FYP. It was only like yesterday! RSVP-wise only me, Jeanette, Zak, Shixiong, Cheryl Ong, Thaddaeus came (and Titus’ special appearance at NSRCC!). None of us can deny the OG imploded/exploded (like don’t know when). Once in a while Jea still mourns it. No point dwelling now. Thanks for the memories. They are very dear to me.
To Linguine:
Echoing Marcus, seeing almost the whole OG at last year’s Starry Starry Night moved me so so much. As your AGL, you’re like my babies. And as your AGL, I feel the most ownership over you lot. Linguine might not be the most high-profile people in school, but the dedication and loyalty in you cannot be written off. And I thank you for that.
To Bocelli:
Similarly, I feel really comforted to see so many of you grow. Doesn’t matter we finished last, the potential in Bocelli is unbelievable. You guys are everywhere, some are in JCRCs, while RSVP almost looked like it was run by Bocelli. For an OG I didn’t do that much in, I’m extremely attached to Bocelli. That says a lot about what kind of people we have here.
To Jagerbomb:
I tried to remember all your names, didn’t I? Please say hi when you see me around school ya? Some cynics say FOC is just a welcome ceremony, but I’ve seen that it can be for life. Don’t let the friendships die.
“ntuwkwscifoc”
as we like to call it, will always mean something. ‘Teh peng’ will just be a passing face that slowly fades away, but FOC and all its glory will endure.
You would’ve realized if you’ve hung out with me. But on Friday night, as most – seniors and freshies alike – rushed to catch both the last monorail out of Sentosa and some overdue rest from five days of surreality, I got myself drunk, without being sure why.
I think this is it.
Maybe I was numbing myself. The sense of loss was overwhelming. Four is the accumulated number already, in the blink of an eye. You see, no matter how hardcore we tune ourselves into and, let’s say, keep coming back, going through FOC as a student can never be matched. The existing conditions of being able to come to school and seeing your juniors and freshies, the very people those awesome five days were spent with. By FOC 2011, I would be a graduate (fingers crossed), and there probably won’t be,
“Teh peng, what is STARS?”
“Teh peng, should I take Hedwig?”
“Teh peng, ‘ah fang’ tonight!”
anymore.
I can’t claim that FOC is my baby like Marcus can, but bar a few, you have no idea how attached I am to it.
If you had spared yourself some time to read this, ask, would you come for twenty consecutive days (four straight years) of FOC? I had played stupid games, been dunked at Siloso, slept on cold, hard concrete, covered the island in Amazing Race, and tahan-ed those long nights, from freshman year to just last week.
People come back because they feel invested in FOC, like former maincommers. I was never one. I was in CI Club in my second and third FOCs, but I was also there as an AGL and then SA. With that I can say I’ve lived the freshie experience four times over.
Mee Tai Mak, Linguine, Bocelli, Jagerbomb.
The worst, however, was that lack of closure that enveloped me after Starry Starry Night last Friday. Over the five days it has subliminally dawned upon me that this would be my last, not helped by the fact that Marcus, Shixiong and Zak had announced their retirements.
I worked myself into letting go.
I must admit I frowned a bit when MTMer Jeanette was still all-action, but I think I did a pretty good job. I tried not to tell but show. I tried to impart and advise, not control. I was going around to cover the last few holes I missed out last year as the incumbent school president. Plus I reckoned people are gonna care more this time about my opinions. After all, a Final-Year.
And so, as everyone spoke, hugged, cried and took photos, I silently walked off. Without making any sort of speeches. I must let go, I told myself.
Then I regretted it like hell.
No it’s not some egocentric send-off I want, but I missed the most basic of closures I deserve. I didn’t tell Jagerbomb, or freshies in general, young individuals I see so much potential in and which I once was, that this would be my last.
You would have noticed my much more laissez-faire approach this FOC, but still Jagerbomb, you are my last OG. Cast in stone and forever linked, this story reads “Mee Tai Mak, Linguine, Bocelli, Jagerbomb”.
On another note, MTM, Linguine and Jagerbomb all finished second (Bocelli was the anomaly really). I’m sorry Zak but I’m too competitive to not be bothered by this. Like I say, Amos is now a legend because he has won Best OG four years in a row. My biggest regret is hence probably that I’ve never come out tops.
Which was why… (wait for it) …I ran for OGL this year.
Not many people know that. And I’m not embarrassed or ashamed of it. They say if you wanna get something done, you gotta do it yourself, right? I had one intention and one intention only – to raze the field and finally bring home one victory in my last year. I reckoned having gone through half a dozen FOCs I should know enough. The masterplan even included a fellow OGL carefully handpicked – my 2009 fave freshie Jo Quek.
I admit it’s a tad unfair, but heck lah.
Then Ivan, Sarah and Marcus reinstated fairness LOL by rejecting me. Oh well, it was a decent try.
In any case, since I’m on it, regarding A Song For Viola, I’m not oblivious that I rubbed some the wrong way. But as much as you had your own interests to protect, as the incumbent I not only needed FOC to be the best it could be, I had to preserve CI Club’s and in general the school’s reputation. However much I meddled, I never regretted anything. To be honest, souring relationships was an easy tradeoff if it was for the good of the bigger picture. Along the way people have lost respect for me but I don’t care cos it’s mutual. I have my flaws. The problem is too many people (especially in this school) criticize without sizing themselves up or walking through the fires themselves. At least I stand/stood up and be counted.
The time spent doing the things I did in school made me learn a lot more about myself, but I rest easy because I had always endeavoured to do what was right. Guiding principle: Whatever I do I must be able to live with myself.
Before I sign off,
To MTM:
OMG we’re doing FYP. It was only like yesterday! RSVP-wise only me, Jeanette, Zak, Shixiong, Cheryl Ong, Thaddaeus came (and Titus’ special appearance at NSRCC!). None of us can deny the OG imploded/exploded (like don’t know when). Once in a while Jea still mourns it. No point dwelling now. Thanks for the memories. They are very dear to me.
To Linguine:
Echoing Marcus, seeing almost the whole OG at last year’s Starry Starry Night moved me so so much. As your AGL, you’re like my babies. And as your AGL, I feel the most ownership over you lot. Linguine might not be the most high-profile people in school, but the dedication and loyalty in you cannot be written off. And I thank you for that.
To Bocelli:
Similarly, I feel really comforted to see so many of you grow. Doesn’t matter we finished last, the potential in Bocelli is unbelievable. You guys are everywhere, some are in JCRCs, while RSVP almost looked like it was run by Bocelli. For an OG I didn’t do that much in, I’m extremely attached to Bocelli. That says a lot about what kind of people we have here.
To Jagerbomb:
I tried to remember all your names, didn’t I? Please say hi when you see me around school ya? Some cynics say FOC is just a welcome ceremony, but I’ve seen that it can be for life. Don’t let the friendships die.
“ntuwkwscifoc”
as we like to call it, will always mean something. ‘Teh peng’ will just be a passing face that slowly fades away, but FOC and all its glory will endure.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Interview with actor Zhang Yaodong for Channel 8 drama The Best Things In Life
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Interview with local actress Rui En for Channel 8 drama Unriddle
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Interview with local actor Terence Cao for Channel 8 drama The Best Things In Life
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Interview with local actor Andie Chen for Channel 5 drama Fighting Spiders 2
Friday, July 09, 2010
Explosive round removed from Afghan soldier's skull
By Elisabeth Bumiller
The New York Times
The New York Times
The patient arrived in critical condition last month at the Bagram Air Base hospital in Afghanistan, with what American military doctors at first thought was an all too typical war injury: metal shrapnel from an improvised bomb lodged in his head.
A CT scan showed that the piece of metal, about 2½ inches long, was probably a fragment - again, not at all unusual.
But as the patient, an Afghan soldier in his 20s, was prepared for surgery, the chief radiologist, Lt. Col. Anthony Terreri, took a closer look at the CT scan. Stunned, he realized the object was an explosive round, primed to go off.
"It looks like we have a problem here,'' he announced.
To say the least.
In a joint telephone interview from Bagram on Friday, members of the Air Force medical team recounted the tense hours that followed Terreri's discovery.
Maj. John Bini, a trauma surgeon and a veteran of homemade-bomb injuries from two previous deployments in Iraq, immediately evacuated the operating room. Only the anesthesiologist, Maj. Jeffrey Rengel, who put on body armor, was left to watch the patient.
The surrounding hallways were secured, and a bomb disposal team was urgently summoned. All electrical monitoring devices in the operating room were turned off for fear of detonating the round. To keep track of the patient's vital signs, doctors turned to manual blood pressure cuffs and a battery-operated heart monitor, and they began counting drips per minute to estimate the amount of the intravenous anesthesia they were giving the patient. "It was taking anesthesia back about 30 years,'' Rengel said.
Within a half-hour, the bomb disposal team arrived and confirmed, based on the CT scan, that the patient indeed had unexploded ordnance in his head.
"They said, the way these things are set up, this type of round has an impact detonator on the front of the charge,'' Bini said. "They just said, 'Don't drop it.'''
With that for reassurance Bini put on body armor as well, and he began the process of surgically removing the round from the patient's head, joined in the operating room only by Rengel and a member of the bomb team. He cut through scalp tissue and made a large incision encircling the round, which was lodged under a piece of skull bone and jutted down the right side of the patient's head. Within 10 minutes, he pulled out the live round.
With care, he handed it to the bomb technician, who put it in a bag and left.
Did Bini breathe a sigh of relief before handing off to a neurosurgeon?
"I didn't even think about breathing a sigh of relief,'' Bini said. "Technically, it wasn't a very complicated procedure, and I had the confidence that I wasn't going to drop it on the floor. This is something we train for - although it's a very uncommon event.''
In fact, Bini had taught students how to remove live ordnance from patients in sessions at Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, where he is stationed when not at war. He just had never expected to have to do it in real time.
Bini said that in the nearly nine years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, if someone else had removed an unexploded round from a patient, he had not heard of it. He said that a quick review of the medical literature found fewer than 50 cases over the past half-century.
The patient, who was not named by the doctors, has since been discharged from the Craig Joint-Theater Hospital at Bagram and is recovering. Although the patient has brain injuries from bone fragments, Bini said the Afghan was able to walk, talk and to eat on his own.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
what lies ahead
"creativity has meaning only when there are boundaries and limitations to be broken. when there aren't, the so-called creativity is just anyhow doing something. people only can appreciate your creativity when they see you've gone beyond some sort of boundary.
like painting, like photography. there are known standards. you need to surpass such standards for people to understand and accept your creativity. this is relativity. no matter how you wish to perceive creativity as an individual piece of artwork, when it is meaningless, it becomes insane."
Marcus Goh, during the hours-long chat at 'ah fang' with Shixiong, Suf and myself, night before my exam.
wise words. blew me away.
wise words. blew me away.
Monday, July 05, 2010
the real, African version of K'naan's World Cup 2010 song, Wavin' Flag
Born to a throne, stronger than Rome
But violent prone, poor people zone,
But it's my home, all I have known,
Where I got grown, streets we would roam.
But out of the darkness, I came the farthest,
Among the hardest survival.
Learn from these streets, it can be bleak,
Except no defeat, surrender retreat,
So we struggling, fighting to eat and
We wondering when we'll be free,
So we patiently wait, for that fateful day,
It's not far away, so for now we say
When I get older, I will be stronger,
They'll call me freedom, just like a Waving Flag,
And then it goes back, and then it goes back,
And then it goes back
So many wars, settling scores,
Bringing us promises, leaving us poor,
I heard them say, love is the way,
Love is the answer, that's what they say,
But look how they treat us, Make us believers,
We fight their battles, then they deceive us,
Try to control us, they couldn't hold us,
Cause we just move forward like Buffalo Soldiers.
But we struggling, fighting to eat,
And we wondering, when we'll be free
So we patiently wait, for that faithful day,
It's not far away, but for now we say,
When I get older, when I get older
I will be stronger, just like a Waving Flag,
Just like a Waving Flag, just like a Waving flag
Flag, flag, Just like a Waving Flag
Saturday, July 03, 2010
Interview with actor-host Yuan Shuai for Channel 8 drama New Beginnings
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)