Blog quizzies

Lol.. caught in the crossfire of a double tag..

1. Real Name: Chai Jing Hao
2. Nickname: Erm.. whatever u care to call me.. ballerina boy, xiao bai cai, genius, chai, bomberman, cai shen ye, ah cai..
3. Married to: Knowledge. Permanently.
4. Male or Female: Male. Though some people postulate that I actually am a super intelligent alien from outer space.
5. High School: RVHS
6. College: NJC
7. Short or Long Hair: Short. Very very short. Maybe not so short now though.
8. Are you a health freak: If you mean whether I'll will eat things that will severely damage by body, then yes I'm a health freak. Otherwise, I recognise that there is something called the marginal principle.
9. Height: 175 cm
10. Do I have a crush on someone: My heart is long since stone cold. Given over to the cold rational logic of thought and possibly crushed by my tank. But maybe the chance exists that I have one. Maybe.
11. Do I like myself: Hmm.. Now that's an interesting question that I cant really answer.
12. Piercings: What did say in point 8? Certainly I wont do things to harm my body.
13. Righty or Lefty: Right

FIRST'S
14. First surgery : Getting my arm repaired from a 'near fatal' fall from a bike in p6.
15. First piercing(s) : None at all. See point 12.
16. First person you see in the morning : ZZZ.. my bed buddy's silhouette
17. First award : Top in class during p3.
18. First sport you joined : Does mind sports count?
19. First pet : Possibly a fish.
20. First vacation : To malaysia. Though for a really proper one it would be to Australia, Melbourne.
22. First crush : er... sec 2? or p5? cant really pinpoint exactly.

CURRENTLY
23. Eating : nothing
24. Drinking : fresh air at home
25. I'm about to : book in zzzz...

YOUR FUTURE
26. Want kids : erm.. really dunno
27. Want to get married : if there's a right girl
28. Careers in mind : Researcher, theorist, professorial, or if times are really that bad, and the cold harsh truth of reality sets in, possibly some management type in public service.

HAVE YOU EVER
35. Kissed a stranger : tht depends whether who you count as stranger.
36. Drank bubbles : I highly doubt it.
37. Lost glasses/contacts : NEVER. Perfect eyesight. Well. Almost.
38. Ran away from home : Naively entertained such thoughts when I was younger. Lacked the guts, and ltr realised the stupidity of such an option.
39. Liked someone younger : If you count a few months... or a few years.. either way, both.
40. Liked someone older : If a few months difference, yea, if a year or more older, then no.
41. Broken someone's heart : never had such a chance to.
42. Been arrested : came very close. but then again, i was innocent. so not really counted right?
43. Cried when someone died : never. I seal my heart in stone. nt like crying would resurrect the person.
44. Liked a friend : haha yeah.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN
45. Yourself : yep.
46. Miracles : see my mood. chance is that when i need a miracle, i would believe in one. and chances are, tht iracle would occur. Not 100% though.
47. Heaven : Physics would tell you that other than water droplets, the clouds simply cannot support any more elaborate structures such as the godly seat for God.
48. Santa claus : nt really.
49. Angels : I really wished that such creatures are real, but sadly they are nt.

ANSWER TRUTHFULLY ~*
50. Is there one person you want to be with right now : oh yes, but unfortunately time, space, fate and opportunity is in the way.
51. Do you believe in God : My religion - Cold rational logic of the scientific method. If there ever is one, then I believe all religions are actually worshipping the same god.

Tag.. Will end here. No further. Though if you are interested, there's no stopping you.

Who are we to judge?

A lot of arguments and wars can be said to be attributed to reason that we are much to quick to judge others. Its the basic mistake of drawing a conclusion on the basis of a small sample size that is not representative of the whole of facts. My past few months in the army living close to other people has shown the acuteness of this problem.. Criticising that the in-charge is lousy, or laugh at the way other people talk, speak, make decisions, actions, etc. Sometimes, I find myself falling into the same trap of hasty judgement.

Who are we to judge? If you were one day given the same mythical ring of Gyges, a ring that grants its user the power of invisibility, would you be able to resist the temptations of power? Is it wrong if the user is corrupted in this case? If you say yes, that means you understand that the idea to steal or do other such activities is wrong. Or you believe yourself capable of withstanding the lure of the power. You who have never been tried in the same circumstances, will never know whether you truly is capable of remaining free of the temptation. Should you one day be presented the same ring, perhaps its a little too late now to reject it. Perhaps its even a greater pity that you cannot use it. Once you use it, it is only a fine line between moral usage and immoral usage.

It is precisely the same point here about judgement. How are you to know whether you can do better? Even if you really can do better, it may not be under the same circumstances. We tend always to think to ourselves too highly, and therefore, we are not as flawless as we seem to think ourselves. We overestimate ourselves, and thus we will make definitely make mistakes, if not the same ones, when it is our turn.

Our tendency to classify and dichotomize things into good and bad fails to take into account that there is really no solid definition for good and bad; nothing to compare against at all, except for cultural norms, and these have often proved to change fluidly with time. Certain things may be both beneficial and harmful, in different aspects, in different measures. If I might go further, I would say that all such things are like that, there is nothing that only consists of positively goodness, or 'badness'. Since there is no solid measure to say something is either good or bad, then why judge at all?

Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right.

Quid pro quo

What is fair in a society? Does it mean everything equal for everyone? Or does it mean that allocation for the majority. What if the minority is consists of thousands of people? Surely if you are one of the thousand people considered as the minority, you would feel unfair for whatever plight you are in. You look around you, and you are able to find a quite a lot of people in similar condition(in absolute terms) and you therefore wonder what the hell the government is doing.

The problem of fairness in a society is a perplexing and vexing one for there is no 1 good solution to it. The concept of what is fair and what is not needs a little defining. If by fair we mean equality, then that is a no good definition. Because by simple observation, the world is created unequal. By fairness, we mean getting what we deserve. But how do we judge how much we deserve? There is no absolute guidepost here, but only relative and cultural norms to guide us. The amount of effort put in, deserves what quantity of result, is a big question. And then, there's the problem of high quality effort, and low quality effort. Using brute force, but not actually accomplishing anything, does it merit any reward? Certainly we feel unfair in such situations, having expended so much effort, but only to find little output and hence little reward.

A society may allocate/reward on basis of output, or it may allocate/reward on basis of input. But which one is better? Allocation of rewards on basis of output, such as meritocracy, performance, profits, etc, leads to one group of people getting little reward. For them, the situation appears unfair. "Hey, I have put in alot of effort here, but why am I not getting what I deserve?" The problem is that quality is a big factor, and these people simply have only expended low quality effort, despite them of putting in a large quantity of effort. Others who expended high quality effort, find that they achieve the required output, for much less effort. Is this fair? If a society allocate/rewards on the quantity of inputs, we find that the resulting allocation is less than optimal, or even likely to impede the incentive for society to improve itself over long term. This is because there is no incentive to engage in finding new ways to improve quality of input. One simply puts in some low quality effort, draws a comfortable level of reward and life goes by day after day. After all, if one needs to improve the quality of effort, one needs to invest time and more effort, to learn skills, or do some thinking. Then the only times, when society will ever progress in terms of productivity, is when the aha! factor comes in, and that is a random event.

Recently, the price of rice has been shooting upwards. For the rice growers, the farmers, people who have writing and ranting about the oppressively low prices/wages of these farmers, it is good news. Finally some form of better life in sight. But what about the rest of us who do not grow rice, unable to grow rice? We have to endure with higher living expenses for we spend alot on rice everyday. So which is the fair situation? One where the people enjoys lower living expenses on commodities, but the people who sell these commodities have to suffer low income, or one where the living expenses are high due to high prices of commodities, but people who sell these commodities get to enjoy better living standards, thanks to rising profits.

Curious how the concept of fairness is so frequently founded on the basis the self-centered interests.

Endless road ahead

Its been a fairly routine week for this week. Wake up early, whole day of training, with lots of waiting time in between, and going back to camp extremely late like 12 am. Sleep. Then wake up. Endure guys, endure..

The environment outfield here is really sian. No matter what the weather is, its bad. If the day is dry, then its likely to get blisteringly hot and humid out here. The tank hull heats up and that makes clambering up and down the tank difficult. When the tank moves around, a sandstorm is raised, sufficient to induce bronchitis to everyone nearby. A fine layer of red sand(clay) settles on everything around here.. If the day is wet, then the sand becomes mud. While there is no more sandstorm around, the wet weather seriously inconveniences movement outfield, with mud being distributed around here there everywhere. Not to mention that due to the heavy weight of the tank, a surprisingly large number of mud pools are formed out here. While tank movement is not impeded by mud pools, poor infantry people walking on 2 legs as the occassion demands suffers. Oh yea, the mosquitoes out here comes in platoon sizes, all commando quality. Imagine it, a platoon of army guys, brought down by a section of red beret mosquitoes. Despite the fact that we are covered from head to toe by our long 4 uniforms, these moquitoes come equipped with extraordinarily long needles, capable of piercing clothes.

At night, without the usual comfort level of light to illuminate the darkness, chaotic movement sets in. The nightlife of insects buzz, including mosquitoes, which now bring out a whole battalion in search of fresh blood. However, when all in quiet, cruising at the back of tank, feeling the fresh after-breeze of a rainfall, with clear skies full of stars, I can find a refreshing sense of solitude. It would have been a nice situation if not for the fact that I had army training to carry out.

Seeking solitude amongst the starry nights.

(Un)Memorable Highlights of BMT

My current 2IC is correct, we definitely need some sort of record to remember 'fondly' the good old memories of the first 3 months of BMT and subsequent events in the rest of the 2 years of service to the nation.

So.. here goes, dedication goes especially to my buddy Timothy, whom has been sharing the troubles of training together.. Unfortunately, I cant be too precise with the description, else I would the violating the Top Secrets Act under the S'pore law..

Remember...
1. The first day coming into BMT? I was in the 'leftovers' platoon. Kinda reminds me of situation in primary and secondary and JC sch. where I am last guy to be picked for the soccer or basketball game.. Bunch of blur cocks(naturally) led around by someone which we found out that later was our ACSM. Parents came in by nice buses.. while we came in in tonners. -_- Subsequently, remember 3Sg Tan? Our sect comm, come to our bunk to settle us in the introduce us to life around in the army.. always so sian.. section also so quiet.

2. Remember field camp? The slack firing movement, the chaos at night.(I always and still hate being outfield at night with not a single photon of light around.) ESPECIALLY, the 3rd night when rain fell from the heavens after a nice guard duty with my buddy.. Remember Tim? Still sleeping soundly huh when disaster struck.. Haha, I think thats about the only occasions of events, when you see me with all the colourful language, learnt of course from the good old sergeants of the army. Oil palm plantation, pathetic shell scrape in 7 hrs.., night movement-pitch dark i tell you with one of the sergeants pretending to be a wild boar, the close guarding of rifle(one of the worst chore ever). Urban warfare- most fun to practice but sadly the highest mortality rate in a real war, jungle warfare- worst and fast becoming obsolete in my opinion.

3. Sit Test.. The first night.. Fancy asking me whether the time is 4 am or not, when its like only 11 pm la.. We definitely went to sleep very early that night.. but because of the rain and route march 16 km before that.. we couldnt sleep at all. The wind was super cold that night. Then there's the horrible leopard crawl through the mud, for a few pieces of almost negligible rubbish. (though I still think my PS used that punishment to save us from some other more horrible punishment). And the 2 klick fast march.. haha, never seen a troop of soldiers quite like our platoon snaking around potholes and mudpools.

4. There's always the long list regimentation procedure.. always popular is stand-by area, though for me now its more of a stand-by tank now. Bring everything in your cupboard down within 5 min when your cupboard is overflowing, messy, and you live on the highest floor on the block that is on the other side...

5. Range. 24 km route march. SOC. Grenade live throw. Will never forget the blast of the C4 blowing, hiding in the shelter of the bay, with my wonderful PC, the shockwave of the blast overhead.

6. Chionging to the toilets at night.. though being gracious I always let my section mates go first. The busy airwaves above Tekong as hundreds of people call home, or their girlfriends..

Oh and finally with much long suffering endurance of the sands of time, the Passing-out parade day.