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25 December 2015:

Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему.

I went out with T yesterday. A phone call ensued along the way and I truly got to appreciate the beauty of this phrase by Tolstoy. Or, as Cherry said to Ponyboy in The Outsiders, ‘Things are rough all over.’

Recently has been a rather lousy period for me, with multiple internal and external factors adding to it all. (Almost like a history essay’s introduction but it’s real life.) And I realised that most of these factors actually stemmed from procrastination.

(Which, again, really feels like a history essay in which the author traces factors back to a central cause. But I digress.) So off I went to Google about procrastination and ended up reading three articles on Wait But Why.

I must admit that I am a serial procrastinator and it is, in fact, extremely debilitating. However, just like Tim Urban, the author of above-mentioned articles, says it: procrastination isn’t something you can just ‘avoid’ or stop.

I dare not say procrastination is on the same level of mental illness, but it is extremely similar in the sense that chronic procrastination ties in with many other ills like addiction and whatnot.

What Urban did in his articles, very helpfully, was to breakdown why we procrastinate, and how to solve that problem. He makes use of fancy terms like Rational Decision-Maker, Instant Gratification Monkey and Panic Monster to properly explain just that.

I have, in the past, searched for articles on procrastination but I must say that this is by far the most helpful one I’ve encountered. Currently I’m on leave from full-time National Service, and it is in fact the best time to effect change.

(Using the word ‘effect’ here brings back JC memories of how me and J would step-intellectual by debating its usage, whilst our real-intellectual history teacher uses it without fancy.)

For those who do not suffer from procrastination, it is probably very hard to understand what it actually feels like, but a snippet of it would be: you may be decent in your pursuits, but deep down you know extremely well that you are only at 50% of your fullest potential and procrastination is stopping you.

TTFN.

This post was written after I chanced upon two beautifully-written blogs by two guys who are about the same age as me, musing about life and more.


12 December 2015:

Yet another batch of recruits passed out from BMT today.

This month marks two significant events in my journey as an NSF. Firstly, I am now a second-year soldier. Secondly, my upper-study has ORDed and I am fully taking over as a training specialist.

It’s been a year into NS but frankly it doesn’t feel that long. Yes, my BMT feels a little distant already but I cannot imagine just like that I have served in the Singapore Armed Forces for 365 days (and counting).

Looking back, I did not meet my initial expectation of becoming an infantry specialist and a trainer at BMTC, i.e. the typical sergeant as portrayed in army movies. In fact, what my sergeants told me back then was very true.

Out of the whole batch of recruits, only 30% make it to SCS. Out of this, only 30% become infantry specialists. The rest go to all the other vocations, even in navy or air force.

Furthermore, out of all infantry specialists, most actually go to active units as section commanders. Therefore, very few trickle down back to BMT to become trainers.

Of course, apart from how rare it is, I am unable to go back to BMTC simply because I went out-of-course. In a way, this is one reality vs expectation in my NSF journey.

That aside, I am glad that I am given another posting that allows me to contribute to the making of specialists. I won’t say the job is easy, but at least it’s challenging enough and fulfilling.

And hopefully, I won’t screw-up majorly in my remaining year of service. With pride we lead.

TTFN.



aboutme.

From Singapore. 20 years of age. Blogs as and when inspiration comes, in British English (and Singlish), Traditional Chinese and (hopefully) Russian. Not a lifestyle blogger, expect posts to be serious, dull or even obscure. I enjoy comedy, in particular British humour.



interests.

[more or less in order] medicine | forensics | theatre | modern world history | typography (including style and grammar) | visual design | Taiji | Chinese language and literature | Mandarin pop (and singing) | Apple products.



typography.

PT Serif for main text and links. Ubuntu Condensed for dates, post titles and sidebar headings. Both fonts from Google Web Fonts.



credits.

singzeon. by Sing Zeon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence. Pictures used here either come from my Instagram (instagram.com/singzeon) or Google image search. For the latter, I do not own those pictures.



quote.

Hard to love. 認真你就輸了。