i think it's time to say a few words of thanks...
to a very special person...

and He's right up there now...

this year has been pretty good so far... and i think mere luck and hard work have exhausted themselves quite long ago...

there's got to be more than that at work...

straight distinctions... i know i studied hard... i can well remember now the things that i gave up then...
but still... thank you... i know you did something there for me...

all the best tutors in the school were my teachers...
by chance...?

i got where i am now... i got the chance... a pretty precious one at that... to pursue my passion and love...
and that i really have to say a big thank you for...
that's really something you know...

there's a total of fourteen of us in there... out of 1600 soldiers...
i really don't think the chance throw of the dice alone could have gotten my name down on that list...

now to the rest of you mortals reading this...
i know that i don't normally come across as a particularly religious person...
i'm not...

religion is a guide... and a human one at that...
it's a device... a mechanism of humans to cope with the unbearability of the unknown...
religion is perhaps as important as schooling...
and God... even more important than wisdom...

i'm not religious... you all know that... but despite that i still know that there's got to be something up there...

i seldom talk about it because it's such a complex thing... so many sides and facets... all so sensitive...

anyway... don't think that i feel that religions are useless and religious organisations are all seriously wrong...
there's plenty of things to be gained from such memberships...

but my studies... all the things i've seen and read and learnt over the years have shown that to give absolute power to interpret the words and intent of the Absolute... that often results in tragedy...
there've a lot of wars fought in the name of religion... many lives forsaken... i don't think that things were meant to be that way...

if someone says that we've got to do something... think a certain way... that some are martyrs and others fools... that an act is condoned or condemned...
we shouldn't just believe him... even if he says that his words come from Him...

ultimately what i'm trying to say is that religion hasn't always been perfect... and even now it's still far from perfect... but that's no reason to reject the supernatural, the omnipotent and, really, what i feel to be the undeniable... that's no reason to discard the essence just because of a flawed vessel...

anyway... for the rest who think that this is seriously weird...

just take it that the real Nachtilera will be back in a few days...

Iranian bloggers denied freedom of expression.

What's freedom of speech and expression to you if half the world still can't critique, debate or even reply...?

Do something about it...

ello everybody...

(oh look i alliterated...
oh well i admit i am a little dotty today...)

thank yous to everyone who gave me a present, called, messaged, or remembered my birthday...
thank you!
haha...

anyways...

bought myself a copy of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (no not Mr. Affable Technicolor "it's what's inside that matters" Cartoon Hulk but the one-and-a-quarter inch Complete and Unabridged kind [and yes the italicization just reeks of upper-class British snottiness doesn't it...? oh well it is, after all, Wordsworth Classics...])

(meanwhile, in the distance,)
QUEEN E. : I find that hardly appropriate! Off with your head!

ME: heh... sorry Queenie dahling... didn't mean to offend-

(and even more distant,)
BLAIR, T. : Shut up! Off indeed! You and that terrorist whatshisname! Whatever Bush says!

(and finally, in a squeaky, mid-adolescent voice,)
H. POTTER. : AVADA KEDAVRA!

All characters referred to in the preceding lines are completely fictional, and any resemblance to anyone living or dead (or copyrighted for that matter), is completely unintended.

legal matters aside...
i got myself a copy of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame from a nice, musty, used book store...

no the books are second-hand, not the store...
well actually...
hmm...

irrelevant matters aside...
i got myself a copy of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame from a nice, musty, used book store...

yes it was really nice and really musty... not in a not-so-nice kinda way... but in a nice kinda way...

duh...

no that's not upper-class British snottiness... that's just for emphasis...
upper-class British would never utter the word anyway...
(yes that... is upper-class British snottiness...)

as i was saying...

i got myself a copy of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame from a nice, musty, used book store...
yes it was really nice and really musty...

what...?

i did tell you i was feeling dotty today...
people never listen... or read in this case... they just gloss over everything...
goodness...

that's why i have to keep repeating myself...

so it was really nice and really musty... kinda reminded me of an old bookstore... something like the one in Diagon Alley...

you'd half-expect an elf to come trodding out from beneath the shelves sweeping up cobwebs...

how very idyllic...

and thus i expect that my nights from now on will be burnt curled up on my bed reading all about a deformed monster and his angelic devotion to a gypsy and the angelic minister with his demonic obsession with the gypsy and the gypsy in love with the captain whose name sounds like a girl's...

Phoebus...

wokay...

hello there everybody...

ahh... the feeling of going out and coming home late and knowing that you can do the same for tomorrow and the day after is one that i truly relish...

seeing that i'm now free of the darn island which for so long had been my only source of blogging material... i shall indulge in what i best remember i did before...

indulge in my ego...

happy birthday to me!

haha... yes now would be a good time to hire an assassin, show him a furtively taken picture of me clipped to some vague documents in a manila folder, and say the magic word...

liquidate.

ah... it seems i'm on to my the thing i second best remember doing...

spouting utter rubbish...

but seriously... i feel really happy now that i'm out... and knowing that in all likelihood i won't ever have to go back...
i literally have nothing on my mind now... i don't have to worry about my studies... i don't have to worry about the next two years 'cos i know that worrying won't make a difference and i have no control over things anyway...

basically i've given up fretting over NS... it's a pointless exercise to me and it's also pointless to waste my precious mental resources on it... so many thing's i've missed out on over the last two years... composing... refining my music... writing... reading... catching all the movies i want to... all that i'm going to try and enjoy as much of as i can before i once again delve into academia...

my music especially... it's no longer about getting a job or going professional... i'm just going to pursue it for as far as i can and see where that brings me... i definitely still want to study it at an advanced level... but if i can't do it now... then i'll do it on my own...

all the practice on the flute that i've lost... i will try to make up for... it's not just about some vague projected standard that i think i would be at today if not for all those hours given up... it's really a somewhere i have to return to...

i remember as a flautist in my secondary school band i practised almost everyday... i remember sounding far better then than i do now... not in terms of expression and interpretation of course... but in terms of technique...

that's what i miss most... for all the interpretation and expression and depth that i can see in a work... it's utterly useless if i cannot articulate all that...
it can be... at times... depressingly frustrating...
but i don't feel depressed now... even after a thoroughly tiring session... and one making seemingly no headway at that...

haha... there's always tomorrow...

and there's composition...
so many thing's i've left unwritten... so many sketches left forgotten for so long that i myself have already forgotten what i imagined they should sound like... and the unfinished works all lying around...
it's not so much that i don't have the time for these... it's more that i don't have the energy to... i sometimes just have a look at them and i see all that has to be done... all the planning that has to be carried out before i write another few bars... all the editing and refining...
and i just tell myself to do it another day...

but now i may be physically exhausted... but i know that my mind will be hardly taxed...

i feel somewhat triumphant now...
this could be from...
1) the fact that i'm 19 and 20's just looming there one year away and i feel invincible...
2) the results, the freedom from tekong and plenty of free time put together...
3) that i'm looking forward to band practice tomorrow...
or
4) an amazing accumulation of sleep deprivation...

somehow i think it's the last...

thus i shall go to see if it really is...

ah... sweet sleep...

hello everybody...

i'm fantastically happy with my results...
haha...
euphoric...? yes...
but that doesn't last does it...?

contentment...

that's what remains...

at least i know that all the work i put in the last two years... all the late night studying... frantic note taking...
all that, i can now truly say, has engendered something i can be proud of...
four distinctions...

it's not so much that i can now say that i'm capable of something... it's more so that i can now rest assured that my plans for my future will be almost totally in my control... unhindered by shortsighted fools blinded by qualifications alone...

we sometimes have to stoop to that level don't we...?

i was having dinner with my folks and i was telling them about the scholarships that i was considering... my dad was glad... so was mom... and they were all for me going for this and that and the other... going to get a nice job at the paper... go teach... go do basically anything that my four distinctions could bring me...

i don't dare to tell them anymore that i still want to study music...

i stop short whenever i try to tell them that As notwithstanding, i still want to carry on with my music... but nothing i've learnt before... not in the last two years... not ever... can help me find the words that say just that...

they seem so happy now that i'm on to something that seems appropriate to them...

yes life can seldom be peaches and cream and i know that people reading this will react...
well...
less than positively...

but underlying all this... it's not just me ranting that my dreams still aren't closer to reality than before...

to all those who think that they've done abysmally badly... dissapointingly... or just slightly underperformed...
results are results... life goes on...
there's more to it than those magic letters that come on a small slip of paper...

and as for me... i'll find my way there myself...

moving on...

i'm now officially out of Tekong... the end of three months of training has been long spoken of as a great watershed in a young man's life...

it's hard to find much meaning in this change... so i'm now a private... moving up the ranks of an institution i hardly have any faith nor belief in...
maybe it's my own doing... maybe i haven't invested enough emotionally in the last three months to reap any significant gains now that it's over... then and again brotherhood and camaraderie are calls to which i hardly respond...

but whatever the case is...

i'm just happy i'm through... as i sit here blogging i can feel life returning to a comfortable normalcy...

of course this too shall soon pass...

but we'll deal with that when it comes...

bliss...