The Deep Entry

Having only made shallow entries as compared to the rest of you, i have decided to touch on something philosophical and not as superficial as the rest of my entries... Hopefully, by the end of this, you all will think i am deep, and not off the deep end. The use of the word, "hopefully", in the previous line was meant to be witty, since i shall be writing about hope...

Hope is the one thing we hold on to no matter how bad a situation is... No matter how much we think we have given up, there is always a part of us that retains hope.. As put succinctly by Lenny Kravitz, "it ain't over till it's over." A pertinent example of this is when u are watching a soccer match u have bet on (except for malik). Even though there is only a minute left of play.. and u are currently on the losing end... it is natural to just cling on dearly to the possibility that things will unexpectedly change... it may not happen very often, but sometimes, things do turn out for the better though the situation might appear unsalvageable... the unfavourable frequency of such occurences however, doesnt mean that we should abandon hope for lack of disappointment... I think that hope is fundamental to life as we know it, and is the source of inspiration and greatness. All of us are at important crossroads in our lives and i think we should keep in mind that no matter what life brings us, or what paths we find ourselves walking down, there is always hope... When everything seems wrong and the world itself seems to conspire against you, take heart, there is always hope, a beacon of light in the darkness that shrouds your way.

-Luke

Summer Solstice

Summer solstice is indeed the day which experiences the longest duration of sunlight but even then, I still fell short of time to do everything I wished. And this time it came at the expense of watching the Argentina Holland clash I had eagerly anticipated. After spending the bulk of the day in the hotel room watching shows on BBC Prime, I headed across the street for dinner and decided to dine al fresco for no particular reason. As a matter of opinion, I don't really enjoy dining al fresco because everytime I do so, I find myself torn between savouring my meal and the passing of a sweet distraction my roving eye captures haha. However, as I feel dividing my attention dilutes, rather than enhances the whole experience, I usually always end up vacillating between the 2. Yet, today I chose to indulge in my dish of cassoulet since meal prices in France are generally steep due to the comparative weakness of the Singapore currency. After finishing nearly half of my dish, I noticed small groups of young people from across the street, walking in the direction of my left. Though initially unfazed, I later saw a long stream of attractive French girls which started to flow in that way too. While feeling a sudden rush of motivation which stemmed from the French beauty I took a while to discern and appreciate, I devoured the remainder of my dish with alacrity and sought the advice of a waiter on current happening events in the city, as well as where I should have gone from there. After that quick conversation in poorly structured english sentences, I went against my better judgement of making a left turn and instead headed right because I was told many live band performances lined the streets which progressed in that direction. On my walk through the vivacious and bustling streets of the city, I witnessed musicians creating harmonies from an array of genres ranging from red-indian(and they were dressed like em too) to hardcore rock and roll. Among others were street jazz quartets or quintets and even a band which comprised of pre-youths that strummed tunes passionately yet with the simplicity of heart the crowd could easily identify with. Despite being distinctly set apart by genre, ethnicity as well as collective individualism, I was left with the impression that each band on the contrary, complemented one another in harmony.In further progression down the street, I finally reached the town square where the magnifique le capitol(current theatre and town hall) dominated its length. However, what really astounded me was not the grandeur of the architecture or vast expense I'm constantly deprived of in Singapore, but the mega party happening on the square with its atmosphere spilling over to the surrounding streets. It was completely havoc I swear, with hoards of people grooving on the boundless dance floor(square) and even gyrating on the concrete barriers of a path which led to an undergroud car park as a makeshift podium with invisible poles that soared to nowhere. The music though, was loud yet tolerable at first. However, it slowly soured when I started to hear shockwave worthy beats without any semblance of melody. This hastened my exit through the mammoth barrier of humanity. For ur interest sake, I had been surveying the party like a wallflower right behind a line of girls that were reasonably near the DJ. Unfortunately, those girls were with a couple of other guys which therefore deterred me from approaching any for a dance. In addition, speaking to a French girl in English would sound even more ridiculous than trying to bag a girl with an inane pickup line in a language understood by both. Then again, an inviting smile might just work because commonly in Singapore n perhaps the rest of the world which i'm unfamiliar of, there isn't much of a chase in picking girls up since her consent I infer, usually but with exceptions of course, mainly hinges on the appearance of the guy. I hope the rest of world isn't all like Singapore in this respect even though there're many things such as social security and cleaniness of environment that I wish others would imitate my homeland. These thoughts ran through my head as I bulldozed my way out of the herd of party goers, and from there I hit a street where crowds were carousing the night away with songs and cheers while moving in a convoy with all their hands rested on the other's shoulders, urging each one forth all the time. For a moment, I contemplated integrating myself into the action but returned to my hotel room as it was pretty late already. Oh I also nearly forgot about the Argentina Holland match till I knew I had to conclude this post, which was just a few seconds from now. Okay it's done and pictures may follow if I feel like. yah bye.
-Kenneth Wong

For those who love the sun..cherish these 2 days of summer solstice. 3 days to midsummer. I wonder what I'd dream about that night. Perhaps I should try to integrate one hahaha.
-kenneth wong

Nice & St Tropez

Cannes & Monte Carlo

Paintball

As if a confirmation of Kenneth's prediction of a havoc June, I played my virgin game of paintball on Saturday at Discovery Center. Been wanting to play it since sec school but never got down to doing it. This time my church friend got down to organizing it. The max players we can have is 10 so we had a 5 vs 5; where green team consisted of 4 of my church friends including me and black team consisted of the organizer and her taekwando class friends. It was a pretty even allocation of teams as each team had 4 guys and a girl. There were 6 official rounds of game play of 3 different game variations. Each team had a fortress on each end of the playing arena and for the first 2 rounds, the objective was to be the team to shoot down the other team's balloon. If you get shot along the way, you had to return to base before venturing out again. Our opponents snagged the first 2 rounds cos we, as we later figured out, were too defensive. In the next 2 rounds, whichever team that got 2 out of the 3 flags planted in the middle of the playing arena back to its fortress and climbed up the steps to wave them first wins. We snagged those 2 rounds cos we decided to just sprint to the flags with wild abandon and just whack. We figured that if anyone got shot while zipping towards the flag the next guy could cover for him so we just pressed forward all the way. That was when I became the hero of the round by skirting the flank with ultimate stealth and backstabbed 3 guys in one clean sweep. Boy, it was damn satisfying to see their shocked and dejected faces when all 3 suddenly got whacked from behind. I snagged a flag for each of the 2 rounds and our pride was thankfully salvaged with our havoc plan. The next 2 rounds were damn fun cos we had to wipe out the opposing team. We won the first one and lost the second. There was a damn funny instance when I leapt out from my crouching position and started pumping the pellets at my concealed enemy and he too started maniacally spraying the pellets at me. We ended up taking each other out and had like a dozen pellets sprayed on each other. He hit a damn painful one on my arm that left a bruise and I gave him the headshot of the day - right splat in the middle of his goggles. My legs and back are still aching now and boy, it was a bloody shagging 2 hrs.
It was damn fun and I suggest we find another 5 dudes and go play some day.