Footslogging Journal Update

A map detailing my journeys across the island on foot, excluding the Peirce Route (April 2008) and various route marches, which probably shouldn't be here anyway. All the same, please excuse me now for showing off.

I told my friends in camp about my slightly unusual hobby of taking long walks around rural and suburban Singapore, and they probably found it barking mad or something to prefer strolling in suburbia to strolling in Orchard, or to prefer walking at all to drinking onself shitless in nightclubs.

Also disturbing to them was my perceived going to all lengths to document everything little thing that I do, one of these that is the map here shown. It wasn't done yesterday; it's just updated, and since September 2007 there are two more routes drawn and one expanded, with the legend as follows:

Grey font - general localities
White font / coloured discs - key landmarks along routes
Blue font - water bodies
Yellow font - communes
glowing lines - routes

Violet: Sungei Buloh Route
One-off misadventure in December 2006 involving an initial jog through increasingly inhospitable territory, cumulating in an encounter with dogs, a dead end in the middle of nowhere, crossing a canal, emerging wet from a drain, two bus trips, many factories, a puny reservoir park, and finally Sungei Buloh itself, where crocodiles didn't roam on that day.

Amber: Old School Route (~8 km)
I used to take this route from Hazel Park to Hwa Chong. Details here
Also taken in the opposite direction a number of times from the Boarding School to Bukit Panjang LRT station (June 2007), for sentimental reasons.
Supermarkets are common along this route, with cheese abound!

Green: Saint Joseph Route (~10-16 km)
Denotes various routes that pass through Clementi Road and Upper Bukit Timah Road. There was this time I took the longest of them, starting with Sungei Ulu Pandan and ending with a trip all the way into Central Catchment (via Chestnut Drive) and back. There was a hot noontime sun, plenty of monkeys, an electric fence I walked around, and a corner of Upper Peirce Reservoir which I believed few (if at all) Singaporeans actually set eyes on. And then I saw the apartment flats peeping just over the far horizon over the water surface and thought, oh.

Grey-green: New School Route (~8 km)
The route I took when I needed to go to the art room from home, or vice versa. Also taken just to have breakfast in Jelita or Guthrie House, again for sentimental reasons. Ulu Pandan and Sixth Avenue are good places to walk, not too cluttered.

Blue: Reservoir Circuit (6.17 km per round)
I ran around here to prepare for Recruit training. It worked well, but not well enough. Details here

Purple: Clementi Route
I walked this two weeks ago, running a small errand for field camp along the way. Passed through Clementi Woods, which is not a bad place to go on a hot day.

Saint Ignatius Route (not in display)
Was in here with Yee Chien and Xiang and Yuan Yi to distribute flyers for our CIP project (July 2006?). The roads in here are desperately obfuscated, so I couldn't mark out the route. We went in at Oei Tiong Ham Road and came out at Farrer Road, passing by the Vietnamese Embassy, the Phillipines Embassy, some other Embassy, numerous mansions, and Saint Ignatius' Church, where fellow trainee Long John goes to.

The Lives of Great Minds

I was reading the book When Philosophers Behave Badly by Nigel Rodgers and Mel Thompson, chronicling the scandals of great thinkers from Rousseau to Foucault. The point is that while Great Minds think great, their great thought may not lead to great lives. The tendency for ad hominem attacks in this work notwithstanding, I think it is ultimately important that we do not read the works of great philosophers with undue credulity, saying yes to them just because they are intellectual giants so far above our heads. Instead, we pit their ideas against our own lives to test their relevance. This tip should be good for starting readers of this austere discipline, coming from someone who stays perpetually at the starting line.

On the other hand, neither should we regard works of philosophers with undue incredulity, for whatever reasons. E.g. the fact that Nietzsche was Atheist and wrote like some heartless bastard isn't a good enough reason for a kind-spirited Christian to totally disregard his thoughts, and one can still find specific ideas, if not snippets of ideas, that we can agree to if we reflect upon our own lives. Here's coming from a Christian who has just read a very short and biased summary of Nietzsche's ideas and screwed-up life.

July Update II

1. It's like around BMT level now (though slightly lower), and here a pattern emerges that whenever training level goes up, my writing capacity goes down. There was a good idea swimming around in my head; a song about the shapeshifter I met in this dream. It only got written halfway, which is like damrn. If only I have the patience to rhyme!

2. I used to feel somewhat superior to some friends of mine who were shirkers in the face of training or just didn't enjoy as much as they should have if they just put down some mental baggage. It's wrong to feel that, I know, because as my friends from OBS Pulau Ubin or elsewhere may recall, I was a shirker once as well.

On an unrelated note, I'd still prefer outdoor activities in slacks, like what we have in here, than in civilian like say in OBS Pulau Ubin. Yes. You could be covered in mud over your slacks and still be putting on a huge grin, whereas in civilian you turned into some cleanliness freak.

3. Mum's birthday was this week, the day I was at range. I sent her a message in the morning to wish her happy birthday, which didn't so much gave her a pleasant surprise as woke her up too early.

4. As of Saturday 19 July, I am 6 months 1 week into army life, three weeks into Battalion training. A newcomer to our company was dubbed Mystery Man because he came in quietly and only announced his presence one day later, and set off a chain of insider jokes.

I am Mystery Man, just standing all around
I am Mystery Man, just sneaking down the line
So you better get out of my way now
Before I'm standing next to you

5. Some time ago on a Saturday, a conversation ensued between Ainan and I about the ideas of Nietzsche, army life, and plenty other unrelated stuff. The conversations are always interesting, even if we don't share the same opinions.

Dansons la Listériole

Song by TRI YANN

Au marché de Libourne, il y a un onglet fou
Bourré de drôles de gènes, tout en nerfs et tout sans goût.
Dansons la listériole, tant qu’on tient le coup,
Si la panse chatouille, les boyaux seront gratoux.

Au marché de Marmande, il y a un chèvre fou,
Je vous dis qu’il est space, aussi glauque qu’un égout.
Dansons la listériole, tant qu’on tient le coup,
Si la panse chatouille, les boyaux seront gratoux.

Au marché de Saint-Pierre, il y a un confit fou,
Il fait maigre en carême, et Slim-fast au mois d’Août.
Dansons la listériole, tant qu’on tient le coup,
Si la panse chatouille, les boyaux seront gratoux.

Sur la route de Bayonne, il y a un pommier fou,
Shooté au diphényle et à l’EPO itou.
Si la panse dérouille, les boyaux sont claquoux,
Rendez-vous chez Borgnolles, si on n’a pas tenu le coup.

July Update

All I can bring myself to say now is that the food here is good, I'm okay throughout stay-in during weekdays and that I find it slightly more enjoyable looking forward to weekends than actually living them. My forearms ache so it's harder to do simple stuff like opening canned drink, opening cupboards etc. There is also this inability to complete a long essay, one which is now in draft form.

It's not considered training time yet, and the wait is maddening.