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Mas came back for a few days for a meeting in Singapore so i broke my tradition of not watching movies in cinemas to watch the incredible Hulk. HULK SMASH!! GROWL!

Its actually pretty good! hahahah. some tips on anger management came in and i remembered the time when i actually did meditate. pretty interesting. The movie was fast paced with little crap along the way. Alot of action special effects made the movie very acceptable. At least from a guy point of view. Could feel liv taylor’s emotional turmoil when she realized bruce was alive. She’s really very attractive. But i thought lord of the rings kinda made her a goddess or some sort so it probably stuck.

Bruce was really the ideal guy you would want to be. Smart. Really smart. witty. fit. strong. got the babe. charismatic. socially adept. heroic. And a good temper yea.

His adversary the blonski guy was incredibly interesting. He lives by winning, the action, his thirst for power was insatiable. I doubted for a second whether someone would risk his life to be as strong as he was. Although this was pretty much a comic movie, the fact that people who would kill to get their share of power are aplenty. Which partially explains the sad state our world is in.

Oh. and i ate quite a bit of popcorn too. should have taken the combo online.

On the first day of ICT, i faced the first issue and a test of my influence skills. While on hindsight it wasn’t that difficult to handle, it did remind of why i had felt an invisible hand of stress looming over me. I did manage to get Khoo to eventually go for signal training but he left at the first opportunity, which i probably had little control or desire to stop him. After all, these are but small battles(if they can be considered as so) as compared to our long term relationship for the next ICTs. I should believe that there might be an appropriate chance to talk about this.

Had a dream.

I knew that people adapt to situations and their environment, but to see it firsthand was something different altogether. We are all smart people. Hardworking and responsible too if i might say. At work. But then we return to camp and a mutation takes place. We become lazy, unresponsive and generally unwilling to be the helpful and clear-thinking guy in the workplace. If i can avoid it, i will. That’s how it goes. The willingness to do right things seems to be triggered by rank. The higher your rank, the more willingness and responsibility you take up. I am reminded of how i felt just like a recruit with the short hair and smart 4 while on the trains and buses. I wanted to get rid of my uniform as quickly as i could, which was kinda paranoid, but still wore them home.

Gary said “shipping line is just like the army, countless lessons abound”. It prompted me of how little i had learned as compared to how much i could have learned. You can’t describe the army experience in a sentence or 2. Even if you take a few days, the lessons will still flood you. And then i came up with the Tian Ren jie theory.

While specs and men are similar and classified as Ren, officers are a separate breed altogether. The challenge of being an officer are two-fold. They receive orders from above. some of which are not very logical, which they have the responsibility to explain to the the people. There’s a lot of planning involved, which frees them less time to interact with the Ren jie. specs are commanders as well but close interaction with the men means they aren’t that far away from the men. officers, should they be of lesser communication abilities, find that influence and control is a far-away dream. I agree that officers should have a certain line drawn between themselves and the ren jie. But the line is very unclear. Too close, and you risk being seen as “one of them”. On the other hand, people will not follow if the message is unclear or delievered poorly. I find myself thinking in his shoes sometimes. Its seriously not easy when you lack the charisma to lead and have communication skills that aren’t exactly stellar. Yes you tried. But on the ground, there’s tons of people who will not make way for people that tried and are not successful.

As an officer, your special task is to identify quickly and clearly the objective, the trends, perform analysis on company performance and objectives. Formulate strategies to dealing with them. When things don’t work out. It goes back to the officer. And the 2nd part of the story is now that you’ve got the strategy or intent, how do you explain in a way that everyone can identify with wat you’re saying? Who can feel inspired to carry out our duties. Its not easy juggling many things at one time.

I am very lucky. To be able to do the things i want to do and have the liberty to take the next breath, meal, education. While some problems seem really big when actually dealing with it, it is of little consequence to our end goal sometimes, which make it irrelevant. Giving thanks is a wonderful way to begin your day.

We missed out marksman target by 2 points. It was pretty demoralizing as i rank about thinking of the 200 bucks all day. Well, i don’t care that we got more hits than the morning or what source out teammates got. If i had shot 2nother 2 shots from the night shoot the 200 bucks wiould have been ours.

While lying on my bed after the lecture, i remembered how tired i was during 103. Everybody was real tired and we all needed to sleep. Everyone slept like babies.

Are people who have little education resigned to a future with little hope of achieving success in the same way others have? Education is known as the great leveler as it breaks people out of the poverty cycle and gives them the power to do something. We mix around with our friends most from our school which also means if you’re in a not so famed school, chances of you mixing up with rich kids who spend their time doing tuition when you’re busy caring for the family is very very slim. This was Mateen’s pet topic too and i can see how our education system has contributed to such a situation. It cannot be easily differentiated as right or wrong, as as with most things, the truth is often subjective depending on the angle. I’m doubly glad that even though we were not well off, i managed to scrape my way to NTU and finally graduate. This sets me up for later in life where such developed skills like analytical skills and logical thinking have shaped me to be the person i am.

When things go wrong, we look and say things like “Its not my fault” This practise of looking outside of yourself to find the solution is not healthy at all. However should you decide to take responsibility for it, you change yourself and find out which part of you went wrong. Even if it turns out it really is someone else’s fault, you become a much better person just by learning from previous attempts and become a much more worth person.

We can take mini-steps to the completion of our goals and move us along at a much more stable footing to achieve it. To change many steps at once just means that you’re going to give up soon after the supposed “will” has worn off.

To heed my own advice, i should keep out the negative stuff out of my blogs since all these posts are publicly available. Looks like the personal diary is still in demand after all.