So much for this week being slacker than the last...if anything, this week was the most physical one in sungei gedong to date. the thing about having a guardsman as your army chief is that suddenly, the army's very health- and fitness-conscious; more so than before. as a result, we're now running every single day of the week. it's 3km most of the time, but tuesdays and fridays are 5km. nothing i can't get used to, though i must admit the first few days were a little rough.

over this past week, my respect for my OC has increased drastically (again), all thanks to a little conversation i heard. not going to say what the conversation was about, but it involves fairness/equailty.

route march this past thursday was quite nostalgic, considering that my last route march was about 7 months ago. i guess i haven't been marching for too long, because after the whole thing, i discovered 3 blisters on my legs, close to the heel. my feet need to re-acclimatize. other than that, it wasn't really that bad. and the barbeque function after that sort of made it better too.

yesterday was a little depressing. lost at mahjong again. $5 or $6...i can't remember. but well...consolation is, i'm not the biggest loser, who lost 4 to 5 times more than me. it's kind of exciting, yet annoying to be waiting for the last card. exciting is when you get it, annoying is when you don't. i think i need more practice/exposure.

anyways, next week should pass faster than this one, which seemed to crawl by. 1 day of IMT, 2 days of range (all not for me!), and bunk shifting. hopefully it'll be so fast i don't notice it.

-random thought of the day: My 3 slackest weeks in camp are over...-

Today is the third consecutive monday i've been on off. i really could get used to this, but then again, i think this will be my last monday off in a couple of months. the reason i got this particular day off was because i spent yesterday at poyan range, watching (or rather listening to) people blow stuff up, and feeding mosquitoes (as usual). quite a sian way to spend sunday, really.

it's hard to believe that almost a year ago, i was busy preparing for the A-levels. i can't even remember most of the econs theories and maths formula any more. looks like i need to do some serious catch-up work after ORD-ing.

life is all about cycles, from day to night, the change of seasons, everything moves in a circle. sooner or later, people get influenced and even their lives begin to follow a set pattern. the reason i say this is because i realize that something odd happens to me every mid-october. though there are about 2 more months until the end of the year, ideas for my year-end post will come to mind almost every day. more often than not, they are repetitions, but new ideas do come in once a week on average. as much as i would love to launch into what these ideas are right now, i can't, because the standard time for that is on the evening of 31 december. so...i guess the readers will be kept in suspense until then.

this coming week is supposedly quite slack. with my CSM still in australia, i can see why. but then, we'll be moving into the new building, so it may require a fair bit of physical exertion. not to forget, there's a 4km route march on thursday. i can't believe i was naive enough to think i saw the last of route marches after BMT. oh well. hopefully things go well this week.

-random thought of the day: I don't want to book in!-

"N" is for "nineteen", which is what i am today...

yes, as the above line says, i turn 19 today. it's kind of a scary thought, because this is the last year my age will begin with the number 1. it's a sign of aging, but as they say, another year older, another year wiser. so...that's ok (right?). anyways, here's a big thank you to everyone who has sent birthday wishes through friendster, facebook (i succumbed to temptation and signed up after all), SMS, and all other means.

you know, this post was nearly late. for some reason, starhub decided to do some maintenance work, and the modem was behaving oddly for the majority of the day. in the end, things worked out, because i realized the TV wasn't screwing up, and thus guessed that the internet was ok too. that's why you see this post in front of you now.

today didn't go quite according to plan. by right, i was supposed to go run a few errands, maybe buy something for myself, but as you may have guessed, all that didn't happen. i'll have to do all that stuff tomorrow.

for some reason, i feel "written out", i.e. nothing else left to say. as such, i shall end off here and see when inspiration next strikes.

-random thought of the day: Thai food isn't all that bad.-

My feet are seriously killing me. the left one, in particular, is quite badly blistered and feeling quite raw. it's probably time for me to see the MO in camp to get some status. then i can get him to look at the other cuts, abrasions and assorted insect bites i have at the same time.

so...like i said previously, quite a few interesting events have happened between then and this post. let's start off with saturday. since i had the great fortune of booking out on a friday, i was able to make it to the morning turf city gathering. maybe it was because of the dinner later on in the day, but attendance was higher than usual. after the gathering, we went back for a round of mahjong. for once, i made money! ok, so it was only $2.60, but it's an improvement over previous times. i realize that odd as it is, what my friends say is true. you fare better at mahjong when you play faster and don't think too deeply. sort of a "follow your heart/instincts" thing. now, i just have one little doubt, which is about the "bao" concept. hopefully i don't have to learn through experience, because that way, i won't really be doing my wallet any favours.

thanks to meticulous planning and great timing, we arrived at the meritus mandarin for the cat high dinner with plenty of time to spare. the meritus mandarin is a place i'm rather familiar with, since both my secondary school and JC held their graduation dinner/prom there as well. so...the sense of novelty was sort of missing. nevertheless, the school spirit and closeness was still strong (we sang the school song twice!), and as an added bonus, i met some friends and juniors there. that took me completely by surprise, because i wasn't expecting to see anyone near my age at all (except the guys at my table). in addition, i also spotted a few familiar faces at the teachers' and retired teachers' tables. as i told Mrs. Chaillan (as i've mentioned before, say "shay-lon"), it's a wonderful feeling when teachers can recall your name quickly on the spot, with no prompting whatsoever. only thing is, she took it a step further and remembered my class too, all the way from sec 1 to sec 4. amazing, especially since i graduated 2 years and 10 months ago. some other teachers i met included both Mr. Gohs from the PE department (who remember me as well), Mrs. Tan, my lower secondary science teacher (likewise) and Mrs. Long (who knows me from bowling). didn't get chosen for the lucky draw this time round, though. kind of sucks when you get chosen and the condition is to guess the price of a DVD player, but nobody calls your name when there are no strings attached.

was feeling quite tired after the dinner (mostly due to the 2 bottles of wine at our table), so i crashed over at a friend's place. we ended up going to BK for breakfast the next day (the second time in 2 weeks). the stuff they have there isn't half bad actually. in fact, i'd say it's pretty good. following that, we went for a walk to the computer games shop to look for Overlord. very sadly, they were all out of stock, which means i may have to plan a trip to funan to get it soon.

had dinner at Botak Jones yesterday. it's most definitely a different experience, and it was also the first time i have seen anyone spend above $15 at a hawker centre. i think i'll be going back there again soon, though i can't say exactly when, unpredictable schedule and all.

well, i think that summed up my most happening weekend in the past...2 months or so. i'm hoping that the next most happening weekend will happen (excuse the lameness) sometime soon, though that particular stand may change, depending on activities in camp.

on an unrelated thread, i'm suddenly thinking of starting a facebook account. only problem is, as people who know me for some time will have probably guessed, i have this...reluctance to post pictures of myself online. yes, i have friendster, but there's no picture of me on my profile. so...i'm still undecided. luckily this isn't a really pressing issue.

incidentally, today is the one-year anniversary since i switched from tagboard to cbox. you probably can't tell, judging from the number of messages, but i thought i'd just say something about it, in case i need reminders in the future.

this coming week could turn out to be the best one i've had in AETC, and probably in my time in the SAF, mainly because i'm only working 2 days. today is off, and i'm taking leave (which was originally supposed to be off, but oh well) on wednesday and thursday. thus, i'm effectively only spending tuesday and friday in camp. the odds of getting into trouble is thus reduced 60%. also, since important people are going to australia for wallaby, that further reduces it by 50%. so, assuming there is a 30% chance of me receiving anything bad in any given week, the probability that something bad will happen this particular week is...6%, which i reckon is pretty good odds. of course, they could summon me back to camp in the middle of my leave, but let's not give them any ideas. at this point of time, i guess that i've proabably bored most of the readers to either sleep or tears, so i'll end off here.

-random thought of the day: I'm not much of a wine person-

Been too busy to blog for the past 2 weeks, so i'll try to lengthen this post as much as possible.

Last Week

had CD (chemical defence) training on monday and tuesday. to me, it's quite a hassle to remember the drills and decontaminate everything once every 20 seconds or so, and having a really scary MSG as your instructor doesn't really improve your odds. lucky i'm not in 39 SCE. standing in the smoke chamber was a pretty interesting experience. despite what others said about ears burning and all that, i felt quite comfortable until i had to remove my mask. i still find it quite amazing that gas can be that irritating to the eyes and nose. had fun being ultimate warrior and shaking the fence like crazy. all in all, not an experience i want to repeat that soon, if at all.

after the CD training, i had a rather nasty confrontation with a 3SG from my company. i honestly can say i'm liking him less and less. three stripes is not that big a deal. remember what i said a few months ago about basic respect and all that? well, he still can't get my name right. there are some things i wish i could say or do to him, but most of them would result in me being charged or jailed, so i'll tolerate until he goes off in may next year.

nothing really that remarkable happened after that, though time did seem to pass rather slowly. got screwed over quite badly (read: in full view of almost everyone) for some inconsequential thing which was partially linked to the above incident, but things were ok after that. finished a book in camp too. quite productive.

This Previous Week
this week can be summed up as, as i've taken to saying recently, "face green green". it's a phrase which has been directly translated from hokkien/chinese, which means that a person is flustered/busy/swamped in work. i am thankful that that doesn't apply literally, because i went outfield with alpha to support their ETEP. the original plan was for me to be attached to a platoon, and be a participant in the exercise (i.e. camo on, FBO, the whole package). but thanks to my OC's timely intervention, i was pushed to be chief safety...'s signaller. i really love that guy. he's got me out of more potentially inconvenient situations than i care to remember. so, all i did was monitor the radio for any cries of help or distress. thankfully, there weren't any. one drawback about being a safety signaller (or medic, or safety anything, really) is that you don't get to sleep all that much at night.

still, the 3 days and 4 nights are up, and i'm back at home. so, no hard feelings for this particular outfield. as support personnel, my role is naturally slacker, but i've still managed to walk (limp?) away with quite a badly blistered left foot. even green grass oil doesn't seem to be working its usual miracle. maybe it's because the blisters came on top of existing unhealed ones from bold sappers. i'm happy though, that i got about 25 mosquito bites total this time round, as compared to the 100+ from the previous exercise. SAF repellent is really good stuff.

turns out my ops spec decided to postpone his operation, so we're at almost full strength again. that's good, because we'll be needing all the manpower we can get these couple of months.

Present
well, it's just past 12:00am. time for me to get some sleep, i think. tomorrow is definitely a long and interesting day, what with mahjong and the cat high anniversary dinner. i'll blog about it after it actually happens. until then, goodbye.

-random thought of the day: Tired.-