Memorable things:

• Superb food at the camp canteen and along the streets
  
• Shaz getting a not-so-subtle declaration of love for a canteen trannie (mayonnaise squeezed in a heart-shape)
  
• 6 guys high on beer squeezing on one bed talking cock
  
• Singing cheesy love songs with aaron out of absolute boredom
  
• Playing soccer with the Thais, who tend to grab *stuff* when going for the ball
  
• Thai liasons actually wanting to eat our combat rations
  
• Horny liason who carried porn on his handphone and showed it to random people (without being asked for it)
  
• View from the Hellfire Pass museum, along the Death Railway
  

Memorable but not so pleasant things:

• The bloody hot weather
  
• Jenny the infamous canteen trannie, with her booming voice, buff upper body, trunk-like legs and hideously short miniskirt
  
• Giant winged ants / beetles flying in the shower / tub and drowning in droves
  
• Not being allowed to flush toilet paper down the toilet bowl - the consequences of doing so were *not* pretty
  
• Almost escalating a soccer brawl with another bunch of singaporeans also from our unit
  
• Watching "Cannibal Holocaust" on the bus (the title is self-explanatory; Thai bus drivers have poor taste in movies)
  

There are new buildings, grand renovations, new and plentiful blessings that one should be grateful for. But what used to be, was something more even if they were fewer, more modest. Those were things we worked for, earned, made from little or nothing.

There will be those who grow richer, and those who enjoy the comforts of air-conditioning, clean and safe streets, and drinkable water from the taps. But for others, these blessings are too meager for the price that they must pay in toil, in freedom and the loss of something that once made them happy. These people will leave this city of small blessings.

Wait a second. The start of next year will be delayed by circumstances beyond everyone's control. Time will stand still for one second on New Year's Eve, as we ring in the New Year on that Wednesday night. As a result, you'll have an extra second to celebrate because a "Leap Second" will be added to 2008 to let a lagging Earth catch up to super-accurate clocks.

- 2009 to Arrive Not a Second Too Soon

Described here are the synthetic details en route to an array of 2-nm-tall anthropomorphic molecules in monomeric, dimeric, and polymeric form. These anthropomorphic figures are called, as a class, NanoPutians. Using tools of chemical synthesis, the ultimate in designed miniaturization can be attained while preparing the most widely recognized structures: those that resemble humans.

- Chanteau, S.H. & Tour, J.M., Synthesis of Anthropomorphic Molecules, J. Org. Chem. (2003).

The Workers' Party showed at the 2006 polls, for instance, that it was able to put together a not unimpressive line-up of candidates.

- Paul Jacob, Why let losers share podium? (Straits Times, 16 August 2008)

Salmon cream	Seafood marinara

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
- Johann Wolfgang van Goethe

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

- Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est

How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?

- Kierkegaard, Repetition

I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thougth and love lose their value because they are not everasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the wolrd. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.

- Bertrand Russell