Picture This

The thing making the news recently is the offensive pictures/cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published by a certain Danish newspaper and the Muslim reaction thereafter. But the matter I would like to address is not so much the publishing of the pictures itself but the Muslim reaction to it.

There is no doubt that the pictures are offensive in every sense of the word. It is insensitive and has absolutely no tact and the continued publication of it by other newspapers in the name of freedom of press is the most moronic thing to do. The unfortunate culprits responsible have long since apologized. Unfortunate because I don’t think they even knew that drawing pictures of the Prophet Mohammed is considered heresy. At best they were guilty of insensitivity and ignorance but I guess when it rains it pours.

But on the other side of the coin, I think the some of the Muslim reaction to it was overdone, childish and immature. When the pictures came out, they could have just complained, bring the matter to light and demand an apology, the retraction of the pictures and asked the other newspapers not to publish it again. But instead they turned to angry mobs, flag burning and calling people infidels. That is dangerous because they are now using the same language as the terrorist they are trying so hard to distance themselves from.

Islam is without a doubt one of the world's great religions, but I think it is far past its golden age and this fiasco just proves it. Gone are the days of the Moors whereby Jew, Christian and Muslim can befriend each other and talk about religion without starting World War 3. The Moors were in fact a beacon of peace, solace and prosperity in a Europe that was otherwise chaotic and bogged down by war after war during the dark ages. That was the golden age of Islam where there was mutual understanding between the religions.

So I think that is the keyword here, mutual understanding. What some Muslims fail to realize is that freedom of press to some is a religion and when the Muslims leaders tried to suppress the pictures in their not so subtle way, the newspapers saw this as a threat to their freedom and try to defend their keep by the continued publication of those cartoons. In order for this thing not to happen again, I believe that the Muslim world must reach out and develop a certain and viable understanding of the world outside and how it works. Then and only then, can they be understood in return. And it is in this system of mutual understanding that such events can be prevented. In order get yourself understood, you must first understand others.

Falcon

I intended to do this post yesterday, but I feared that I might dose off while doing it. At the start of this week I never thought I would be alive to update up blog today because of a little exercise called Falcon 2. It started on monday where we moved to our FOB (forward operatng base) to plan the first mission. After accomplishing our first mission, we went back to home base on wednesday and immediately plan for the second one, moving out on thursday and coming back on friday after accomplishing the second mission.

There were alot of surprises while we were doing the mission, although not altogether unexpected. We had to deal with hostile "civilians" on our way to the objective, enemy reinforcements and destorying targets of opportunity that we did not plan for but were important none the less. All in all, they really planned this very realistically.

This was the most shag exercise I have been involved in to date, which is prep for the ATEC we are having on Thailand next month. Climbing up and down knolls, carrying the weight, going through terrain that no sane person would ever walk on, not being able to see the outstretched hand in front of you even with the new gen 3 NSEAs (night vision) that we were given and to top it all off, dealing with a riot and a monk carrying a bomb.

But this week I really learn to dig deep into God's strength because I really had none left, I am afraid to close my eyes because I know and I will immediately dose off if I do. That was how shag I was. Some of my peers were even sleepwalking. So I thank God for providing me with his strength for without it even the day to day things I do in camp might seem too tough and daunting.

Competing with satisfaction

Yesterday, I was talking to an army friend of mine who backslided last year trying to convince him to return to going to church. Sadly, he was a victim of one of those statistics oriented churches who care not for the souls that are saved and only care about the numbers that join their ranks. He was sick of being pressured by growth targets and called it quits some time last year.

A bunch of my Christian commando friends have been praying for him and talking to him making a huge effort to convince him that not all churches are like that. But when I was talking to him yesterday I noticed I hit a huge brick wall, its called "satisfaction". He said that he was satisfied with the way things are now. So how do you convince someone who is so contented with life that he needs God? Because from his perspective of life he does not need anything, everything he needs he already has and God is just excess baggage and that is exactly the problem.

Smith Wigglesworth said, "do not be satisfied with a life that is not wholly swallowed up in God." What this implies is that satisfaction is a choice and not some holy grail you need to find. So perhaps my friend is setting his sights a bit low when it comes to being contented. Therefore I encourage everybody to aim high and find a life filled with satisfaction and contentment through our Lord Jesus Christ, worldly satisfaction is an illusion that will be shattered when Christ comes again.

And as for my friend, I hope you will join me in praying for him. I don't think I should give up just yet.

Exercise Greyhound

Finally got my pictures sorted out. The pictures below are from a LRRP exercise called greyhound. I don't think the ISA will come looking for me if I post a few harmless pictures. Enjoy!

LRRP Team 3

Go! Go! Go! Secure the LS!

Life is full of Surprises...

Chilling out in the hide

Combat Ration! Yummy! Note where all our weapons are. Definitely not a mark of a soldier. Ha ha ha!

What! 7 more days to go! Morale very low.

The view from our Observation Post.

Endure! 4KM more only!

Its over! Its finally over!

I can't believe we are going back there again for ATEC stage 2. Though I enjoyed my time there, it is the kind of place you wish to only go once. But perhapes there will be some new experiences to be had. We shall see.

Of authors and atheist

Having nothing to do during my super long chinese new year break, I went through some of the old reading material I had sitting on my shelf. I found two quotes that I felt tempted to place here.

"How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatalogical mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements?"
Joseph Heller

"The Babel fish," said The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly," is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy recieved not from tis own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech pattern you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish."

"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existance of God."

"The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.' "

"'But,' says Man, 'the Babal fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves You exist, and so therefore by Your own arguments, You don't. QED.'"

"'Oh dear,' says God 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
Douglas Adams - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I think there is no need to elaborate on the quotes any further and it is safe to assume that the authors of these quotes are atheist. These quotes do make sense, they are logical and they both deny the existence of God. But with me trying to be a God beliving and a God fearing person the question is who screwed up? It is God or logic? I know what my answer is, how about you?

I hate shopping

I hate shopping. There is no mincing words about that, I hate shopping. But with the lunar new year coming I had to shop for some new clothes to wear for the occasion. That makes shopping a necessary evil. It is the most vile, macilious and deathly evil of necessities. If you think I am exaggerating or using any form of poetic license to express my hatred of shopping, you are wrong. I mean what I say. I hate shopping.

I decided to do my new year shopping today because since I am already out and about going to church I can do it after the church service is over instead of dragging my ass out of the house on a Monday morning to do something I hate to do.

I went to Tampines Mall with the utmost reluctance, walking around the clothes section of Isetan. I said to myself, "this is not so bad Eugene, least you are still alive." I stumbled upon a pair of black jeans that caught my eye. As I took it from the shelf to have a closer look, the salesperson came up to me and say,"excuse me sir, the jeans here are for women, the men's jeans are on that shelf."

Yes laugh all you want, but how am I to tell the difference between ladies jeans and man jeans, there wasn't even a banner or poster saying those jeans were for women. This is one of the many reasons why I hate shopping. It is an endless source of complete embarrassment, I might as well be making an utter fool of myself.

Finally, after deciding to buy two short sleeve shirts and queuing forever just to pay for them, I went back home a completely broken man. My mum saw the bag from the shopping centre and asked, "you went shopping? What did you buy?" "Some clothes for new year," I replied. She took the clothes from the bag looked at them and commented, "aiyo boy ah, why you like this kind of boring colours, try something new lah!"

Reason number two of why I hate shopping, critique of your acquired merchandise. After torturing and embarrassing myself, I have to put up with my mum commenting about my colour and fashion sense. I whined at her to keep her fashion comments to herself trying very hard not to break that commandment about honouring your parents but the fact remains. I hate shopping.

Ironically, the SAF commandos have a brilliant strategy for shopping haters like me. They had it all along but did not realise it. It is called a deep strike raid mission, commandos love to do that kind of mission, you can take it from me, I know. But instead of the target being an airfield or a MLRS launch site, it will be something you want to buy. Collect all the intel possible then go in. Strike hard and fast, buy what you want and get the hell out. Worked for me so far. But I still hate shopping.

One thing still bothers me though, most women love shopping and in the unlikely event I get a girlfriend she will most probably love shopping and would naturally want me to accompany her on her shopping trips. What would be my reply to that? How about this, "Dear I love you with all of my heart, but ahem... I hate shopping."

Wonder what would be her reaction.

Too Sexy

Today when we were lazing around in bunk, the radio played the song "I'm too Sexy". Stanley exclaimed all of a sudden, "wah, this song is retro man!" It is retro, it came out in 1993, but it is a huge paradigm shift for me when something that came out in the 90s can be considered retro. If that is the case, what would the 70s and 80s be regarded as? Classical?

I cringe with fear at the thought of a song by linkin park or eminem making it to the classic hits radio station Gold 90 FM in the near future. Oh my God, the world will end.

ATEC

This week was my battalion's ATEC evaluation, in it my detachment was being evaluated for rappelling. I was being evaluated personally on a weapon called the AGL (Automatic Grenade Launcher) with my detachment mate Hon. Although this week was relatively simple, the weeks before was not good. I have stripped, assembled analyzed and memorized the IA drills of more weapons than I can count, and rappelled off the airborne tower more times than what normal people would consider sane. But rappelling is one thing, rappelling in full battle order with an almost 9kg MG (Machine Gun) is quite another.

In my fiddling around with the weapons and finding out how those weapons work, I am amazed at how good we got at building stuff that kills other people so well. Fighting wars has drove us to push the limits of design and technology, in fact many things we use in everyday life was first developed intended for military use.

And as for the weapons that kill people so well, they will continue to kill people well and the new ones that will be developed will continue to kill people more efficiently. If only we could find those design talents responsible for designing those weapons and ask them to make things that help people instead of kill them the world would be a better place. Naive? Of course! But a guy can dream can he?

Hitler

I borrowed my copy of "Hitler: The Rise Of Evil" to Weida, one of my camp mates who was struck by a sudden curiosity in that time of history. After watching the show he told me that he was amazed at how talented a speaker Hitler was, how he was such a genius to be able to manipulate people to do his bidding, able to make people see his point of view as the correct one. Stanley, after watching "Downfall" told me he how people shooting themselves for their beloved "Fuhrer"during the closing days of World War 2 was quite disturbing.

There was a side story in the movie "Downfall" about two children (not older than 13 or 14 I think) manning a Flak 88 with which they managed to take down a few Russian tanks with. Hitler heard about them and decided to go out of the safety of his bunker to present them with iron crosses for their bravery. At the end of the movie, those two children decided to shoot themselves when their position was being overrunned. One of them pointed the pistol at the other and pulled the trigger before turning the gun on himself, both of them doing the Nazi salute as their last act before dying.

There is no question what Hitler did was evil beyond compare. Millions died in concentration camps and the gas chambers. But there is also no questioning the genius that is Hitler, he was able to take control of Austria and Czechoslovakia without firing a single shot. There is no question about the hold he had over the people of Germany at that time, every man, woman and child look to him as a hero, messiah, superstar, they only fall short of giving him God-like status. They were willing to die for him like the two children mentioned in the previous paragraph.

"Downfall" caught a lot of flak from people who think the show makes Hitler look too human, there are scenes in the show where he is kind, he jokes and shows affection. But I think that is the point the makers of the show (who are all German by the way) wanted to put across. HE IS HUMAN! Modern history has done much to make Hitler look like the very personification of evil, the devil incarnate. But you can be assured that he is as human as human can be.

The decisions that Hitler made (right or wrong) made him the person he was and affects the way we remember him today. But there is no denying the bottomline. He is like us, capable of extreme affection or extreme evil and if we are not careful, we might become like him or worse. The choice is yours.

Happy lonely new year!

There is always something anti-climatic about holidays, especially so for the year end christmas-new year period. You will start to get all excited before the holidays, where am I going, What will I do to enjoy myself? Lets go have some fun! But when the day itself actually comes, things turn out to be very different.

I went to a new year steamboat at Shaun's house. Frankly I was very reluctant to go because my back was aching and that put me in a foul mood, a bloody good way to start the year. Despite that I decided to go to the steamboat anyway, who knows I might enjoy the company. Well, I enjoyed the company, I enjoyed the food but the pain in my back really spoiled the whole evening for me.

I decided to leave early and try to sleep the pain off, so after saying my goodbyes I took a walk to the nearest MRT station and boarded the train. I took out my book and MP3 player trying to kill the time it took to go back home. On the train my attention was diverted to a couple seating opposite me looking so much in love. For all of you perverts out there, no they were not lip locking and doing that sort of thing, they were just seating beside each other talking, holding hand always wearing a smile.

Then on my MP3 player the lonely sounding solo saxaphone kick in, the sadest song known to man started playing...

Once I laughed when I heard you say
That I'd be playing solitaire
Uneasy in my easy chair
It never entered my mind

Once you told me I was mistaken
That I'd awaken with the sun
And order orange juice for one
It never entered my mind

You have what I lack myself
Now I even have to scratch my back myself
Once you warned me that if you scorned me
I'd say a lover's prayer again
And wish that you were there again
To get into my hair again
It never entered my mind

Hearing the song and seeing the happy couple made me feel miserable to be unattached. Don't get me wrong, I am very happy the way I am. But it made the whole day very anti-climatic, for the next few hours I was feeling miserable lamenting to myself how nice it would be to be able to share the holiday with someone special whosoever that someone might be. Something is wrong with this picture isn't it. I was suppose to enjoy the holiday not feel miserable.

So that was how I started my new year, in unnecessary misery, good thing the feeling started to wear off and disappear the next day as I woke up angry at myself for not controlling my emotions well enough. But ok enough rambling. Here's wishing all a blessed new year.