…And I’m “randomly” picked to do guard duty the end of this month. On my dad’s birthday 
Pretty busy recently. Like for the past three months. Because in a week, five days are spent serving NS and two are left for myself. I just had so much to catch up on personal life that I couldn’t find the time to update the blog.
Nonetheless, I do myself the favor and savor this little time I have tonight to summarize on the missing updates earlier this week.
I am done with BMT, now posted to the 憲兵隊 training school. Can’t reveal much info because it’s SAF
Christmas at Orchard Road was shockingly crowded. Shopped at Uniqlo@ION Orchard before taking a walk. It took me one hour just to walk from Orchard MRT to Dhoby Ghaut MRT. On the other hand, I stopped by at Orchard Central to take the escalator up to level 5 (which looked more like level 15 on a HDB) of the shopping mall to check out the roof garden. Whew.
Blood donation attempt today failed. Blood somehow clotted, so not only did little blood flowed into the bag and I didn’t manage to give blood henceforth, the vein where the blood was supposed to flow out from is now very swollen from the clot so I can’t really bend my right hand now
Little island P. Ubin can be described in three: Singapore but not quite Singapore, assassin mosquitoes (I got seven big swells on the hind of my right knee, haven’t counted the rest of my body) and fun riding the bicycle in the rain!
I’m finally bidding farewell to BMT (Basic Military Training). Live firing using the rifle process was hardly applicable to real world, field camp sucked really badly, standard obstacle course seems so irrelevant to current terrains…oh more importantly, I’m leaving those people of WTF character/personality/attitude/blah blah.
BMT had been unexpectedly busy. Busy as in there just weren’t much free time to myself; NS had my time. So busy I hardly had time to study for my JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) level 2. Nonetheless I served three confinements for two stupid careless mistakes.
The JLPT exam was just on the last weekend before graduation from BMT. In other words, I took the exam last Sunday, then two nights later I was doing my 24km route march prior to the passing out parade.
On Wednesday I had less than two hours of sleep, and while most went home straight after the parade to catch on their sleep, I was washing all those army stuff brought back from camp. After all, I’ll no longer return to that military island. Whee.
I finally got to bed at 11PM, and woke up next morning to pick up my long-waited parcel from USA. Behold, my Zune HD 32GB (S$455.85)~
The rest of the day was spent packing and tidying up the first half of those washed army items. And some time used to catch up on admin work at home; like cleaning the room, arranging stuff to be neat…
Today’s Friday. Two days after the graduation parade. Time seemed to have passed so quickly, but at least I feel I’ve used it well enough to catch up on my life outside the military. Before finishing up on the second half of yesterday’s mess, I applied for a card today:
Ah, the *class*. Tomorrow’s going to be relatively less hectic, but I still probably have quite a bit to clear up on. I want more civilian time please!
First week of NS was great. I found the company rather slack as discipline was not as strict as I mentally prepared myself for (I was later proved wrong as time passed by).
Suffered a left knee strain on the third day of enlistment, so I didn’t participate much in physical training. When the MC period was over, my right knee ironically started giving pain. This time, I did not go to the medical center because not only would I again miss the physical training activities, I would soon be perceived as the recruit who likes to pretend sick.
We were able to book out on the first week instead of the conventional 2-week confinement period because of the Hari Raya Puasa public holiday. Though, it sucked because the 2-week confinement period will begin after our first book out. I personally would rather get through the confinement period first, because then I wouldn’t be sucking my thumb counting in vain my next book out day.
On the day of my first book out, there was an incident where we were going to fall in for our arms test. As I tried to walk down the stairs with the relatively new boots, my right knee gave way within the first two steps and down I went the flight of stairs – landing with my buttocks while carrying the rifle, LBV and helmet.
Pain it definitely was – it was a pain after pain with pain week for me. An “awesome” start to NS.
Upon our first book in, the feeling was extraordinarily unpleasant. It was the feeling of going back to isolation, the feeling of going back to an isle full of men, rifles, marching and other military involvement.
Amazingly, I became quite used to the environment and did not feel homesick throughout the 2-week confinement. I went to the medical center the second time again for three reasons – to complain about the non-recovery of my knee strains, to complain about my ass pain and to get an asthma inhaler. The inhaler was an customary request from the sergeants despite the absence of my asthma for more than 10 years.
Nonetheless, what I thought could be another prescription of non-effective painkillers for my buttocks was wrong. I was filed to go for an x-ray of my coccyx and later identified by the medical officers that there could be a bony fragmentation. On the same day of visitation to the medical center, I was sent on a fast craft to Changi General Hospital A&E for referral. The doctor, however, said he could not see anything, but still arranged for me an appointment with the bone specialist two weeks from then, and gave me MC to excuse from running for three weeks.
So I quite became a semi-permanent resident of the Status group of my platoon, falling out for activities relating to running.
During the confinement weeks, people started becoming assholes. What initially was an impression of a platoon with nice albeit blur people (we had to sign six times just to pass the specimen signature for drawing/sending arms – average count is less than three) turned out to be people who like to verbally abuse one another with lack of team spirit and discipline.
For me, taking the nice guy approach was extremely wrong because I was soon arrowed for nothing to something. For instance, as I was excused from running, I walked from point to point but instead got insulted for taking my own sweet time. For birds of the same feathers flocking together, there was this incident where one person had ankle pain so he was also walking from point to point, except the others said, “Oh yeah, he has ankle pain so he’s on Status. Okay okay never mind (let him walk).”
Three weeks of disgust has passed, with another ten weeks to go. We’ve been given warnings; that adjustment period is over and hell is coming – standards will go up another notch on our next book in. Life in the military sucks and anyone who likes to be in it is a sucker.
BMT could have been really fun, exciting and totally enjoyable if not for the kind of people we have to adjust living with. Keeping the bunk sparkling clean, going through crazy physical training and other drills – I am fully acceptable with. Living in a community of assholes and backstabbers – this I am not. For I only see the infamous “One for all, all for one” policy being applied on individual fault for team punishment.
-end Wall of Text-
NS helped me to realize what I’m protecting this country for. I couldn’t fully understand the reason why until I come to experience it now.
Prepared stuff for my National Service.
Hangers, check. Toothpaste, check. Underwear, check. Washing powder, check. Alarm clock, check……
Parents have been getting my beef recently. They keeping asking if I’ve prepared everything – this whole week – with each day spent asking more than three times.
Am I the one going to serve the country or my parents? Can’t they give me my independence of working through this thing? Why keep asking me as if I’ve not been doing anything? Why keep asking me as if they’re the ones going to army instead?
Multiply that effect by two because there’s Daddy and Mommy.
So what if I forgot anything, honestly? Isn’t that part of the process of growing up? Keep telling me this and that, and I’m still no different from a doll molded by you! It’s high time you two accept me as an adult and realize I have a world of my own!
On a side-note, my last few days before enlistment was spent working on a website. Mmm, nostalgic feeling of working. The irony.
Friend approached me two weeks ago to see if I could create a basic apparels e-commerce portal. As usual (maybe?), I started on using an already available e-commerce application and then tried to skin around it. As I went to skinning it, I thought I’m building them too powerful a system for their simple needs. I eventually grew tired of it and decided to write everything from scratch. After being done with the core, I realized that I overlooked the sample sites they gave me, as those were created based on blogspot and other free services (e.g. bravenet for mailing list, photobucket for image hosting). I could’ve done the same and saved myself so much time. No wonder they weren’t expecting to pay me for my work. Now I’ve built a rather powerful system for their simple needs.
AAAAAND it’s 5 minutes past midnight.
Let’s see how NS turns out. Pretty much mentally prepared.
PULAU TEKONG, HERE I COME!
Went for swimming today. Really saw some people and can’t stop thinking how disgusted I was. Saw this guy doing stretching exercises with his washboard abs and another uber dark-skinned Chinese friend with him. Don’t actually remember if they ever got into the pool since I cared more about swimming than glare at two men sticking to each other.
When I got out of the pool later to get some tanning, I looked over and actually saw these two “buddies” at the chairs too. Understandably, the six-pack guy, light in skin color tone, was having his tan. What made me WTF is the black gay sitting next to him, applying the tanning lotion.
Combo attack it with the feeling I get from them is they having no simple relationship.
Here’s my “solution” to yesterday’s problem: I didn’t want the wound to open up and rub against my pants. So I folded a piece of tissue paper and taped it around the knee.
Of course, the tissue paper did its job while I went out for the night with DJ Joce-lyn to support her DJing at Demsey House. Going to that event kind of influenced me to learn some disc jockeying.
Anyway, I couldn’t really hold out for the night. By 11PM, the left leg was already staggering as I walked, although I pretended to walk as normally as I could. As much as I wanted to stay, I left half an hour later to catch a bus home.
There weren’t any direct buses home, so I took service number 105 opposite the Youth Flying Club with the intention to flag a cab home from Serangoon. When the bus got to Orchard, I was actually wondering if I could transfer to service number 132 because it goes direct to my home.
I alighted after much hesitation, only to find out the last bus has already left some 10 minutes ago. I ended up boarding 105 again. The fare was counted as new ride, so there’s no rebate
As I got home finally (the midnight fare from Serangoon to Hougang actually cost me $7.50!), I dropped the pants and removed the tissue paper.
Most of those bits got stuck to the wound and looked as if the wound closed up together with the white tissue paper. It looked like I had a 3cm x 3cm infection.
As I tried to remove the “thing”, the old wound seemed to tear off together with it. Disgust, I know. It was as if another layer of skin was taken out.
I guess for the amount of pain and gore I had to suffer as an excuse to keep the pants clean, I definitely learned a lesson.
