Sin City

Aaargh!!!! What is it going to take for me to watch this show!!! Looks great. but R21. And my friends cant seem to be able to decide on any timing to meet to watch.



Jessica Alba is.... ok maybe hot. I dunno. I rather Penelope Cruz... and that SEXY voice...

??? interesting.

Did the following quiz... had the result-

?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??


Aphrodite/Eros

How true can this be? Looking for "The one", for sure. Its hard to find someone like that, but i guess i'll keep trying.

Meanwhile its a really really corny intepretation......

Interesting post...

Muahaha.


http://rockson.blogspot.com/2005/07/nkf-boss-got-cheebye-12-months-bonus.html

Surfin' the waves of the Blogosphere...

Slave to the Music

Two weeks ago... tragedy struck!
I walked into my office, plugged in my MP3 player, and to my horror, discovered a foul change- sometime over the weekend, the speakers had burned out!!! WHERE WAS I GOING TO TUNE MYSELF INTO MY MUSIC??? This set a tone for a disturbing week... the office seemed so quiet... Like disaster waiting to strike. I cannot vouch for myself, but i think i was quite cranky over that episode... Until i found out- It was only the main speaker that was damaged- the other one could plug to my Zen without any problems. A little soft, but any sound is better than nothing at all.
And once again, all was right with the world...

Also, i just realised... Im allergic to people with bad manners. Not rashes and scratchy allergic, but RAGING FURIOUS AND MURDEROUS allergic. I think its a good thing. I like to help people. But people who don't even bother to ask before taking things, people who hang up on you because they think they're busy and cannot afford to spend time to say "sorry, i need to go, bye"... Now those are people who i have a bone to pick with. Irritating bastards. Go live in your own world, get out of mine.

Temporary Rationality

Again, its been a while. i hate blogging once a month. Should do it more often.

Jack-style...

Rumours,BattHQ.Goddamn whore of this fckin Batt. TES wargaming funfunfun...didnt tell because its not winning or losing that matters, its how hard they fight. Shouldnt have bothered to wake up and work last week, it didnt make sense. Friend recovered from heat exhaustion, worryworryworry. We didnt know until it was almost over. So sorry... Streetwear. Quality over quantity. Shopping and Fcking. Love and sex are two different things. FullMetalAlchemist. Law of Conservation. To receive, you must first give something of equal value. Thats life. Goals. where are mine? Guild Wars. 180hrs in 55 days. Waste, obsession, or just fun? Goals again. Why am i doing what i am doing? Someone told me a suprising answer,which i didnt expect him to be able to. Even assholes have a direction. Wheres mine? God no im not suicidal. Far from it. I have been blessed with many more options.

God its been a while...

Man. Im lost.

What am i doing? Why am i doing this?

Its hard to record confusion and a lack of purpose. But im trying my best. I've lost focus. Thats all i have to report. NoMen. NoReason. NoLove. NoLife. The only constant thing that has remained is my muSic. Its not a question of addiction, its a question of enJOYment. Its the one thing that keeps me sANe. I cant hide from MY lying eyes. Where is the pASSion? the CONviction? I feel like im living a LIE. Indecisiveness and inaction hides a lack of MOTIVATION. So what if i go out and enjoy? What am i relaxing from? I have yet to convince myself that i deserve the rest that i deserve to get. MeaningLESS. Servitude through paper pushing. Superficial friends. Morality and magic pens. Lust for sale, sold! Long talks with friends who were always there, but i had ignored. To you guys- im sorry. Im not as good a friend as i want to be. Thanks for always being there. I have no GOD. I have no FAITH. I have no reason to carry out my job. Or its not so much in my mind that its at the tips of my fingers. Need to think. Not BURNout. Not STRESS. Its...

Direction. where am i heading?

No sense in raving. No sense in ranting. I need MY time. There are more ways to enjoy yourself besides a drunken frenzy, or dark and wild places. Sort myself out. Why should i care, why should i do? Thats something i need to answer to myself.

Episode III

My life in this batt seems to have taken a turn for the busier. There is a lot of crap a 2IC is supposed to do. And having scored three extras for leaving a stamp on the table isn't going to help it much. Over a week, i think i managed somehow to get 3 CDO duties, as well as 2 BDO and 3 extras. Hmmm....... something doesnt seem quite right here. And my company is on standby next weekend. Im going to see more of camp than of home. Immediately after the standby we're going on deployment. Sigh. More and more i long for the simple life of a PC. At least there were the men. Now it seems an endless barrage of assignments and duties. There are lots of things that need to be done. And it has come at a most opportune time...

DO duty sucks. I was supposed to go and receive Junwei when he came back from the states. Haven't seen that bugger in almost 4 years. wait, more than 4 years. Wonder how much he had changed. i bet we all did. It must have been quite a shock. Haven seen my Sec sch mates for quite a while either. How much have they changed?

I was chatting with jo the other night. we'd come a long long way since we carpooled to school 6 years ago. A long journey that changes all of us. She was commenting that all of us had grown up. Some more cynical, some more jaded, some completely awry, some just out of whack. Has this life we led corrupted the thinking of young minds? Or is it the penetrating tendrils of society and the stark harshness of the real world that hardens our thinking?

For me, it was army that facilitated the transformation. Coming in as a young, green recruit, i enjoyed BMT and the camaraderie that existed between my platoon mates. We all were the 'scholar batch' and thus enjoyed some privileges. That i do not deny. But does it make us any inferior to other more 'siong' companies? i think not. Then came OCS. Once more, i ended up in the 'scholar batch'. This time it was different. We were whacked beyond our limits, beyond recognising, and many times beyond reason. Why? Because life is a BITCH. Yes, thats it, life is a BITCH. You put in your 100%, someone else doesn't, everyone gets the shit that flies from the fan. And furthermore, its not always the most qualified or the one who puts in the most effort that gets the place of respect and honour. It seems to me, at the end of my course, that most of those graded better were ball-carrying, boot-licking, apple-polishing bastards, who happened to know a way to get what they want by any and all means possible. Even if it meant total disregard for the rules and for others. To them, the end justifies the means.

And now, in this batt...... sigh. somehow i managed to see the symptoms before everyone else did. There is something dreadfully wrong. Its spreading... the sense of unease and dissatisfaction. Or is it the gradual awakening to the truth of the real world? "Welcome to the desert of the real world," Morpheus said in the Matrix. Is it that when we are young our world is but a collection of illusions that we hold to ourselves? And the price of growing up is the stripping of these illusions, the revelation of the real world.

You know, maybe bat2 was right. young, stupid. Not green, but stupid enough to believe that green is all that we are.


"So this is how freedom dies. To thunderous applause."

Its been a while...

Wow. Almost a month. Went on deployment, came back. Had the most rude shock in my life on the last week of deployment. The news came in a SMS. "the new guy? Yeah, he'll be taking your platoon." I was stunned. I didnt know how to react. Suddenly i felt bereft. Cut adrift. Left out in the deep blue sea. How can you justify breaking a relationship with your men that has been budding for 2 months? i was just getting to know them really well. And now... Bereft, alone, drifted. Looking back, i will miss the moments shared as a PC with them. It was definitely one of the most engaging experience in my life. Like the girlfriend i never had. Learning about what makes them tick, hearing their problems, helping them through the tough times, enjoying the good. At least im still in the company. Although i initially wanted to be a 2ic i did not expect it to happen this way. Its like the baby and the lollipop. To really make it sting, give it to the baby, then take it back a little later. The frustration, hopelessness and anger just piles up... Nothing can reveal how i feel. Maybe i'll change my blog title again. I realised...... i do give a flying f***. There are things that matter a lot to me.

Keep movin' on...

Next week we leave to carry out our primary mission.

The men have promised me that on deployment they will always be the best they can be.

Its difficult, no doubt. But its a task we have to do.

With grim determination and attitude...

Million Dollar Baby

My god, this is one hell of a depressing show. Never thought it would be that bad. Its a good show, but the ending is fucked up. So much for happily ever after.

Thinking of the old times...

Starship- Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now...

Looking in your eyes I see a paradise
This world that I've found
Is too good to be true
Standing here beside you
Want so much to give you
This love in my heart that I'm feeling for you

Let 'em say we're crazy, I don't care about that
Put your hand in my hand baby
Don't ever look back
Let the world around us just fall apart
Baby we can make it if we're heart to heart

Chorus:
And we can build this dream together
Standing strong forever
Nothing's gonna stop us now
And if this world runs out of lovers
We'll still have each other
Nothing's gonna stop us, nothing's gonna stop us now

I'm so glad I found you
I'm not gonna lose you
Whatever it takes I will stay here with you
Take it to the good times
See it through the bad times
Whatever it takes is what I'm gonna do

Let 'em say we're crazy, what do they know
Put your arms around me baby
Don't ever let go
Let the world around us just fall apart
Baby we can make it if we're heart to heart

And we can build this dream together
Standing strong forever
Nothing's gonna stop us now
And if this world runs out of lovers
We'll still have each other
Nothing's gonna stop us, nothing's gonna stop us

Ooh, all that I need is you
All that I ever need
And all that I want to do
Is hold you forever, ever and ever, hey

And we can build this dream together
Standing strong forever
Nothing's gonna stop us now
And if this world runs out of lovers
We'll still have each other
Nothing's gonna stop us
Nothing's gonna stop us, whoa
Nothing's gonna stop us now, oh no

Hey baby, I know, hey baby, nothing's gonna stop us
Hey baby, woo, nothing, hey baby
Nothing's gonna stop us now yeah


....................
Love this song. so much hope, so much commitment. Me and you against the world. *sigh*

Why am i Wasting My Life?

Jerry rammed home a point today. We were talking on the train about what next weekend would entail. I pondered: What was i going to do?

I realised that i didnt have a clue.

Where were the carefully laid out plans that i wanted to do? Where are the goals that i want to achieve in the rest of the year? Not even that, where are the goals i want to achieve for the next month? I had foundered, and lost my direction. Drifting aimlessly across the seas of life.

Its time to take action. Noone is going to prompt me to do anything. Im sick of just letting things happen. Its about time i took my life in my own hands.

Steps:
1. Set my 1,3,6 month goals.
2 Get a game plan out.
3. Put the plan somewhere i can see everyday.
4. work towards goals.

By the way this is personal, not about my platoon, not about my unit. Just me. Me, me, me. For once.

Morality and Medicine

Extracted from www.atlasshrugs.blogspot.com
From The Wall Street Journal

Killing Terri
By JAMES Q. WILSON March 21, 2005; Page A16

Terri Schiavo is not brain dead as far as anyone can tell. If you are brain
dead, you have suffered an irreversible loss of all functions of the brain. If
agreed to by at least two physicians, that means you are legally dead, such that
your organs can be harvested to help other people.
Instead, Ms. Schiavo is in what many physicians call a "persistent vegetative state" (PVS). That means that she lacks an awareness of her self or other people, cannot engage in purposeful action, does not understand language, is incontinent, and sleeps alot. To be clinically classified as being in a PVS, these conditions should be
irreversible. But from what we know, some doctors dispute one or more of these
conditions and believe that it is possible that whatever her symptoms, they are
not irreversible.
Her condition is hardly unique. In 1995, when the American
Academy of Neurology published its report on people in a persistent vegetative
state, it found that there were as many as 25,000 adults and 10,000 children in
this country who suffered from PVS. Based on the best studies the Academy could
find at the time, some adults in a vegetative state 12 months after a
devastating injury or heart failure could recover consciousness and some human
functions. The chances that such a recovery will occur are very small, but they
are not zero.
If they are not zero, then withdrawing a patient's feeding
tubes and allowing her to die from a lack of water and food means that whoever
authorizes such a step may, depending on the circumstances, be murdering the
patient. The odds against it being a murder are very high, but they are not
100%.
* * *
Many people, myself included, have allowed life-support
systems to be withdrawn from parents who have no hope of recovery. My mother was going to die from cancer, and after all efforts had been made to help her, my
sister and I allowed the doctors to withdraw the devices that kept her alive.
She was dead within hours.
My case, and that of countless other people who
have made that decision, differs from that of Terri Schiavo in two important
ways. First, the early death of my mother was certain, but no one can say that
Ms. Schiavo will die soon or possibly at any time before she might die of old
age. Second, all the relevant family members agreed on the decision about my
mother, but family members are deeply divided about Terri.
These differences are of decisive importance. When death will occur soon and inevitably, the patient does not starve to death when life support ends. Since there was no chance of our mother living more than a few more days, what my sister and I did
could not be called murder. When death will not occur soon, or perhaps for many
years, and when there is a chance, even a very small one, that recovery is
possible, people who authorize the withdrawal of life support are playing God.

And in Terri's case, they are playing God when they do not have to.
Her parents have begged to become her guardians. Her husband has refused. We do not know for certain why the husband has refused. I doubt that he
wishes to receive for himself the money that still exists from her insurance
settlement and, apparently, he has offered to donate that money to charity.
Perhaps, being a Catholic, he would like her death to make him free to marry the
woman with whom he is now living. Or perhaps (and I think this is the most
likely case) he does not want his wife to live what strikes him as an
intolerable life.
The intolerable life argument has support from many doctors and bioethicists. They claim that a person can be "socially dead" even when their brains can engage in some functions. By "socially dead" they meanthat the patient is no longer a person in some sense. At this point their argument gets a bit fuzzy because they must somehow define what is a "person"and a "non-person." That is no easy matter.
By contrast, physicians have unambiguous ways of determining whether a person is brain dead. This means that brain death is a very conservative standard and, if it errs, it errs on the side of preserving life.
Some people believe that all of these issues can be resolved if everyone signs a living will that specifies what is to be done to them under various conditions. The living will is supposed to determine unambiguously when a "Do Not Resuscitate" sign should be placed on a patient's hospital chart. Terri Schiavo had not signed a living will. If she had, we would not be facing these issues.
* * *
But scholars have shown that we have
greatly exaggerated the benefits of living wills. Studies by University of
Michigan Professor Carl Schneider and others have shown that living wills rarely
make any difference. People with them are likely to get exactly the same
treatment as people without them, possibly because doctors and family members
ignore the wills. And ignoring them is often the right thing to do because it is
virtually impossible to write a living will that anticipates and makes decisions
about all of the many, complicated, and hard to foresee illnesses you may
face.This is a tragedy. Congress has responded by rushing to pass a law that
will allow her case, but only her case, to be heard in federal court. But there
is no guarantee that, if it is heard there, a federal judge will do any better
than the Florida one. What is lacking in this matter is not the correct set of
jurisdictional rules but a decent set of moral imperatives.
* * *
That moral imperative should be that medical
care cannot be withheld from a person who is not brain dead and who is not at risk for dying from an untreatable disease in the near future. To do otherwise makes us recall Nazi Germany where retarded people and those with serious disabilities were "euthanized" (that is, killed). We hear around the country echoes of this view in the demands that doctors be allowed to participate, as they do in Oregon, in physician-assisted suicide, whereby
doctors can end the life of patients who request death and have less than six
months to live. This policy endorses the right of a person to end his or her
life with medical help. It is justified by the alleged success of this policy in
the Netherlands.
But it has not been a success in the Netherlands.
In that country there have been well over 1,000 doctor-induced deaths among patients who had not requested death, and in a large fraction of those cases the patients were sufficiently competent to have made the request had they wished.
Keeping people alive is the goal of medicine. We can only modify
that policy in the case of patients for whom death is imminent and where all
competent family members believe that nothing can be gained by extending life
for a few more days. This is clearly not the case with Terri Schiavo . Indeed,
her death by starvation may take weeks. Meanwhile, her parents are pleading for
her life.
Mr. Wilson has taught at Harvard, UCLA and Pepperdine and is the
author of "The Moral Sense" (Free Press, 1997).

Highlights added by Atlas Shrugged, Citizen Journalist


My Comments
Who can be morally trusted to hold the rights to someone else's life?
I didn't hear much of this Schiavo case until today where i caught a glance on the papers. My GP teacher would go totally ballistic at the negligence of my general knowledge. But this incident would have provided grounds for many insightful articles and comments from students. I would not be surprised if this was one of the debate topics in my GP class in school.

I cant remember why i loved GP so much. I still do. The cut and thrust of opinion, the dazzle of debate, and the academic thoughts that dominate morality in an ideal world.

Now to rephrase the first sentence of my comments:
Can you trust a person to be morally responsible and answerable to the lives of 27 men after less than a year of specific training?

Thats something only time will tell.

Kindred spirits?

RE: http://bayzone.us/blog/2005/03/darker-side-of-army-life.html

Looks like im not the only person who believes in this way. Why has life come to this? People call this maturity. I call this bullshit. If learning how to make other people do work so you don't have to do it even though you are responsible for it is a necessary life skill, im preparing to worship the next meteor in the hope that it will crash into Earth and reduce this society of selfish and narrow-minded people. On average, i believe that the decency and niceness quotient of the universe will rise. Or are selective meteors too much to hope for? I know a few people who deserve a whack over their head, at the very least.

Cidade de Deus

Gritty. Earthy. Leaves a faintly dirty taste in your mouth. Everyone who has too positive an outlook of life should see City Of God. Artistic stylewise its good, acting and narration is great, and the premise of the film is disturbing, to speak the least. Although the dirty taste was probably from my lunch.