So later tonight, I'll be going off to the airport again and fly off to Turkey. I realised that this year is the year that I've gone overseas the most. Went to Thailand for a short getaway with the family, following which was to Brunei with 1SIR after a day back from Thailand. Then I went Malaysia last month and now Turkey. Not bad... Global citizens of the world huh. Whatever.

So anyways, I do have Skype. And my username is yeohaikal. It's actually an account that's been don't know how many years long and I just decided to start using. Can give me free calls from there if u want and know how to. But that's only if I have wifi in the area of course. Ok. Don't think got much else to say. Next time I'll be blogging is probably when I'm back in Singapore again. See ya! :D

From when I was young, there was always one thing that kept me wondering about adults. This thing always went through my mine whenever I decided to think about people and humans in particular: "What was this pretty/ugly guy/girl like 10/20/30 years ago?" Now, as I'm getting older, I can see the entire transformation happening before my very eyes and allow me to understand the question that I once asked myself but dared not tell anybody else.

And recently, I've been borrowing alot of magazines. I guess magazines are very much different from books. They deliver nuggets of information here and there, just a matter whether you're lucky enough to find what you want. Otherwise, the entire thing is just worth flipping through and looking at pictures and that's it. I've been borrowing magazines on soccer, Mac products and science-ish stuff. Rather interesting so far. Less mundane than informative books with all their coloured pictures and highlighting of interesting facts and all. A very good change indeed. But of course, the stuff from libraries are VERY VERY not updated. Like stuff that can date 2 to 3 years back. You'd be lucky to be able to get any issue from the same year AT ALL. Seriously. Think those are really hot copies. Or maybe the library just depend on unwanted old copies of magazines because that's what I notice regardless of what name the magazine is. Hahh. Maybe I shall bring a couple along to Turkey.

Speaking of which, that's in about 3-4 days time. Got lots of time to kill which I must find stuff to do. I've already planned to bring my Latin textbook along so that can do wonders. I'm just contemplating whether to bring my laptop along. On one hand, that will give me a hell lot of things to do, on the other, a holiday to Turkey has an objective of trying to leave whatever I have in Singapore here and not bring along the burden. So maybe I shall not bring it at all. The magazines should do fine in killing time I guess. Anybody want souvenirs from Turkey? I just really hope I can see snow there. Been to a few countries during winter and saw no hint of snow at all. Not in China. Not in Hong Kong. Not in Korea. Hopefully this time it will different. Otherwise I'd just have to wait till next year when I'm in London and all.

Ok. That's enough... :)

Enough said. I was so awed by some of the debating speeches that I went online to find it. So here I have is the quotes of some of their speeches, the last of which is the one that ends the story. Very very thought-provoking and even more importantly, the manner of their speech and all, just very amazed by it.

Speeching of which, I was in debating in secondary school, never really got on the team of 4 people, but was always around to support them as well as help them do some research. Was in the debating CCA in itself, which helped me improve on my speaking abilities and stuff. But enough about that, on to what I planned for initially.

Here are some recurring quotes throughout the entire film:

"We do what we have to do so that we can do what we want to do"

"An unjust law is no law at all" - St. Augustine

And here's something that the debaters kept on saying to themselves while in training, something that coach taught them:

And here it is... I finally found it on the web:

Great Debaters Script

Harvard Dean: On this historic occasion, we welcome the distinguished team from Wiley College, our illustrious judges, you, the audience, and through the wonder of radio, the nation. Harvard University celebrates its 300th anniversary this year, and in Franklin Delano Roosevelt, its fifth President of the United States. But no university, no matter how grand or Augustan its history, can afford to live in the past. So, in the spirit of tomorrow, I introduce to you, today, the debaters from Wiley College: Samantha Booke and Mr. James Farmer, Jr. Mr. Farmer will argue the first affirmative.

James Farmer, Jr: Resolved: Civil disobedience is a moral weapon in the fight for justice. But how can disobedience ever be moral? Well I guess that depends on one's definition of the words -- word. In 1919, in India, ten thousand people gathered in Amritsar to protest the tyranny of British rule. General Reginald Dyer trapped them in a courtyard and ordered his troops to fire into the crowd for ten minutes. Three hundred seventy-nine died -- men, women, children, shot down in cold blood. Dyer said he had taught them "a moral lesson." Gandhi and his followers responded not with violence, but with an organized campaign of noncooperation. Government buildings were occupied. Streets were blocked with people who refused to rise, even when beaten by police. Gandhi was arrested. But the British were soon forced to release him. He called it a "moral victory." The definition of moral: Dyer's "lesson" or Gandhi's victory. You choose.

First Harvard Debater: From 1914 to 1918, for every single minute the world was at war, four men laid down their lives. Just think of it: Two hundred and forty brave young men were hurled into eternity every hour, of every day, of every night, for four long years. Thirty-five thousand hours; eight million, two hundred and eighty-one thousand casualties. Two hundred and forty. Two hundred and forty. Two hundred and forty. Here was a slaughter immeasurably greater than what happened at Amritsar. Can there be anything moral about it? Nothing -- except that it stopped Germany from enslaving all of Europe. Civil disobedience isn't moral because it's nonviolent. Fighting for your country with violence can be deeply moral, demanding the greatest sacrifice of all: life itself. Nonviolence is the mask civil disobedience wears to conceal its true face: anarchy.

Samantha Booke: Gandhi believes one must always act with love and respect for one's opponents -- even if they are Harvard debaters. Gandhi also believes that law breakers must accept the legal consequences for their actions. Does that sound like anarchy? Civil disobedience is not something for us to fear. It is, after all, an American concept. You see, Gandhi draws his inspiration not from a Hindu scripture, but from Henry David Thoreau, who, I believe, graduated from Harvard and lived by a pond not too far from here.

Second Harvard Debater: My opponent is right about one thing: Thoreau was a Harvard grad; and, like many of us, a bit self-righteous. He once said, "Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one...."¹ Thoreau the idealist could never know that Adolf Hitler would agree with his words. The beauty and the burden of democracy is this: No idea prevails without the support of the majority. The People decide the moral issues of the day, not "a majority of one."

Samantha Booke: Majorities do not decide what is right or wrong. Your conscience does. So why should a citizen surrender his or her conscience to a legislature? For we must never, ever kneel down before the tyranny of a majority.

Second Harvard Debater: You can't decide which laws to obey and which to ignore. If we could, I'd never stop for a red light. My father is one of those men that stands between us and chaos: a police officer. I remember the day his partner, his best friend, was gunned down in the line of duty. Most vividly of all, I remember the expression on my dad's face. Nothing that erodes the rule of law can be moral, no matter what name we give it.

James Farmer, Jr: In Texas, they lynch negroes. My teammates and I saw a man strung up by his neck -- and set on fire. We drove through a lynch mob, pressed our faces against the floorboard. I looked at my teammates. I saw the fear in their eyes; and worse -- the shame. What was this negro's crime that he should be hung, without trial, in a dark forest filled with fog? Was he a thief? Was he a killer? Or just a negro? Was he a sharecropper? A preacher? Were his children waiting up for him? And who were we to just lie there and do nothing? No matter what he did, the mob was the criminal. But the law did nothing -- just left us wondering why. My opponent says, "Nothing that erodes the rule of law can be moral." But there is no rule of law in the Jim Crow South, not when negroes are denied housing, turned away from schools, hospitals -- and not when we are lynched. Saint Augustine said, "An unjust law is no law at all," which means I have a right, even a duty, to resist -- with violence or civil disobedience. You should pray I choose the latter.

Great debates. Really.

Latin lessons. Fifa Online 2. The Big Bang Theory. Movies. iPhone. Reading the Quran. There's actually quite a lot of things to keep myself occupied with while just staying at home. Maybe I should just forget about getting a job and just live life like that; the closest thing to being so carefree and childhood-like. No pressure from anybody or society, no deadlines to meet, no assignments to complete, apart from the occasional tuition to provide me some decent form of income. But other than that, it's fine. I can choose when to go out as and when I like. However, I guess the novelty of it will soon wear off, because of the lack of purpose or meaning that this kind of life leads to. There's no goal to work towards to and one can start feeling meaningless and useless after awhile. Yeah... Think I shall still stick to getting a job. Hahh..

Going Turkey next week. So can't wait for that. Finally. My version of post-ORD holiday. :D

So anyways, heard many stories about that dreaded camp where I came from from the rest who just ORD-ed. Lots of funny stories. Stupid stories about screwing about other people because they were ORD-ing already. Amazingly, one specialist from the group got a Specialist of the Year 2009 for doing that. Screw that Colonel. LOL. How amazing ehh..

On another note, my dear girlfriend came back yesterday. So in a long long while ever since she left, I can finally hear her again! :D Haha... I sound so happy ehh, because I am k... Not because she wants to be. :P I might be going out with her later... So yeahh...

That's all for now. Back to Latin it is...

So anyways, went to Cheryl's birthday party yesterday. Yay. Cherly's finally 20! Gave her a pink giant (in my opinion) bag along with a card shared among 6 others. Stayed there till 2 just talking and doing what we do best, stoning. Been a long time since I was up so late, so yeah... I really did my part of the stoning quite well. Also realised that I'm not very updated with everybody lives because I've recently stopped visiting their blogs. Hmm...

Can't help it, can I? There's so many things to do these days and I'm kinda enjoying it. Latin lessons.. But the almost daily bouts of 'The Big Bang Theory' and eventually enough, after finishing that, I think I'm going to start on 'How I Met Your Mother' considering the reviews that I've had from people around me.

What else has been going on? LAN outing with David and Kuan Hui the day before ended up in a Monopoly Deal session at Shaw. That was really cheap, plain good fun. Not that LAN isn't. And of course, catching up with old times, as usual. Going to meet them again later for soccer this time round at the usual court opposite CSS.

I seriously think we should have more of these sessions just for the sake of it. It's like the time for us to carry on and move forward with our lives, but these mini outings and what-nots are like humans' attempt at staying away from the inevitable. I remember when I was young I wanted to grow up quickly so I can do alot of adult things. Now that I'm 20, with almost everything that I want to do all made available to me, the kind of enthusiasm I had as a kid is no longer there. Instead, I'd want as much as possible to go back and relive those carefree days. Weird ehh... We humans always wanting what we cannot get. And once we get it, we move on to something else, as if we're just checking away items on a to-do list. Haishh... Gotta get back to the stark reality of life or else I might just be late for the soccer session after all.

So we went to KL and stayed at J W Marriot hotel. 5-star hotel. Superb services and what-not. Even has complimentary internet connection. Nice. Nothing much during the 2 days there, apart from just visiting shopping centres as well as going to the indoor theme park that I have went before. Didn't do much shopping though because most of the stuff were quite expensive. I did notice one thing though. There were quite a lot of middle-easterners there. Seriously...

Then after 2 days in KL, we went to Port Dickson at The Water Legends. Did more things there. Basically, time at the beach, kiting, swimming and even a session of karaoke. My family has never done the last item ever together before, so that was really a nice one. My father seemed to be the most happy because there were a lot of songs on the song list that he knew and he was singing them rather happily. At the end of the session, our family did learn one thing. None of us are singers. Haha...

And then on way back to Singapore, we dropped by at Melaka for lunch and did some shopping. Bought lots of stuff. And even something for Siti! Hahaha.. Had dinner at JB and my parents did some grocery shopping there. Cheap cheap cheap. :D And then back to Singapore it is...

The night went on as per normal. It's always different. Prom Night from the perspective of the participant and the organiser. Or in fact any other organised event for that matter. The participant merely grasps as the surface of an entire machinery that's working behind-the-scenes. Caring for his own needs and making sure they're met is all that matters. Whereas the organiser has to look at every single nitty-gritty detail.

I have a feeling I should continue ranting on and on and on. But I suddenly lost the mood to do so. A few more parting words here should suffice. It's been nice to see the CSS teachers once again. They're the ones that have made the biggest impact in my life. A lifetime of thanks would not be enough...