Bookout post:

Restored Post

We have not enough beds and cupboards, so for now none of us have cupboards, and 4/6 of us sleep in the sick bay! It's quite comfortable, except for the walk to there and back.

On the job training is really mind boggling. There's lots of stuff to remember, and lots of paperwork to do. And we're all scared of forgetting to do certain things when registering patients and the like. Ugh. To make matters worse, we've to buy our own digital thermometers! Outrageous,

Yeh, I don't need to book out in collared shirts anymore.

The toilets at 42SAR are really nice. I thought it was only the toilets on the level of the offices, but when I used the toilet on the top floor where the Medical Platoon's bunk is, I was pleasantly shocked. BMT's facilities are supposed to be good already, but those in my unit are even better. The shower cubicles have doors! And the floors are tiled and there are flower designs on the tiles at chest level. Kind of like a 3 star hotel.

I've seen many dogs in camp. Yeh. And no cats. Double yeh.

My brother in law claimed that there was standby bed even in Units. Fortunately, this is not true. Goody.

Our post-NDP block leave with be from 12/8 to 17/8. This will leave me with 1/2 day left. I'm going to spend my next 14 days of leave, when it comes, as quickly as possible!

Zhongyong is stayout. Grr.

I found out what the two chevrons on the upper arm represent - it's the old corporal rank.

On nights off, Andrew Tan has to book in at 10+pm. Might's well not go out!

Our berets hadn't arrived yet, but the CCO Senior Medic wanted us to wear them by Monday, so we had to expend yet more credit at E-mart. I look horrible, like a French Painter at best, with mine on.

It's rather inane - there are specified times when one is allowed to use the arcade machines in camp. And there are, like 5 times throughout the day. 2 of them last half an hour and the other 3 last for 15 minutes! No one's gonna complete Metal Slug 3 (say) in half an hour. Though it does seem rather cheap - one of the machines costs 3 x 10 cents per credit. And it's quite up-to-date - I saw one KOF 2001 machine.

It's very funny. In one canteen there's a poster encouraging you to buy the (presumably more expensive) Singapore Red Bull, which has extra ingredients - including the most expensive of all of them, less sugar and is generally better, instead of the one meant for Indo-China. And then in the fridge of the drinks store, one sees only the Indo-Chinese Red Bull. Aww.

On Friday afternoon, we were mobilised for NDP cover. Or at least that's what we were told. When we arrived, we saw a lot of kiddies, and the MC announced, "Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls [Notice how for the older ones, it's ladies first, but it's vice versa for the kids], welcome to the opening ceremony of the Singapore Youth Festival 2002". And so I was sort-of involved in the SYF opening ceremony again, 6 years after my previous time.

The choir now sings more funky songs, with beats, stuttered rhythms and the like. But their costumes look as horrible as ever. Or worse. In 1996, the costume was a yellow shirt with a white collar and white bermudas with ridges running down them. This year, they have a white shirt and some dodgy-looking overtunic which looks like coloured fish scales glued together and stuck on soft leather. There's probably a name for that material, but it doesn't come to mind now. Their choreography is hilarious too. But then I usually find choreography hilarious. Anyhow, it involves swinging their white caps around, orange fans (yes, this is worse than the green ones I had) and some butt shaking and arm twirling.

They are still singing the stupid song, "We Share". In Sec 1, we in the choir had to sing it and I was wondering why the tune was so nice. When I became more versed in the ways of music, I realised that it was actually Holst's "I Vow To Thee My Country" with the nationalist lyrics replaced by communalistic ones written by Prof Edwin Thumboo. At least, the lyrics are not too cheesy, and they fit in with the cadence of the song. Now, they've added a descant part and some beats to the song. Ugh. Another of the songs they're still being made to perform is Pesta Belia. I was surprised that I still remembered the tune! Though I'd forgotten all the malay lyrics.

The parade commander is some RJ girl. Yeh.

Apparently some people, after passing out from SISPEC/OCS, get posted to... the NCC. Wow.

I find marching with a skirt amusing. As I do girls' lifting of their legs to bang - apparently the angle of lift's supposed to be between 45 and 80 degrees, but it seems they are lazy and always raise their legs as low as they can get away with. The sight of the Chinese High boys marching in shorts also caused me a moment of mirth. I think I get amused too easily.

And of all the things that happened during the SYF Opening Rehearsal, the one that left me most flabbergasted was seeing some people. 2 people, specifically. It was disgusting, but yet again, I ran into Huijun and Huimei! Everywhere I go, no matter what I do, they will show up. Anyhow they were volunteering with the Red Cross Ambulance Service, and started one week ago. So all the kiddies were in safe hands with our favourite, valiant twins.

*** [Ed: Name removed by request, due to person's vanity], doing his signal duties, looks hilarious. He wears his unit singlet, making him look a bit less professional. He has all manner of equipment strapped to his body, and antennas stick out all over, making him look like a suicide bomber. And he has not one, but two headsets on his head, attached by a headband that makes him look like a jungle boy, and frazzles his hair.

There's the usual marching band competition, and as always, TKSS and Bowen are among the finalists. The bands seem to be made up of mostly females, which is somewhat odd - I didn't think bands have the stigma that choirs have for males. The antics of drum majors never fail to amuse me, especially their antics with the oversized toothpicks. And their throwing them in the air and (sometimes) failing to catch them. I wonder if anyone has gotten injured before - Newspaper headline: "Drum major maimed by his own staff". The TKSS marching band wears black-and-white striped shirts. They look like prisoners.

We had a frugal serving of Pizza Hut food for dinner on Friday. Ugh.

After the SYF rehearsal was a NDP technical rehearsal. Which meant we just sat there and stoned. And the older medics were bored, so the senior medic decided to test us on POCM! My phone rang when I was the casualty, and the MO recognised my ringtone. So far the only other person who has is the doctor at the clinic I usually go to. Maybe there's something with doctors and classical music.

The rehearsal ended late, and we ended up leaving at about 11:15pm, sleeping only at about 12:40am. As we had to wake up at 6:10am, we were very tired on Saturday.

On Sunday, we finally covered an actual rehearsal. Except that we spent the time before and after lunch being casualties for the medical teams to practice on. The casualty cards we got were horrendously misspelt - "diddy, cannot hear" (giddy), "deep painting" (panting) and "knock on conrete" (concrete) were just some of the misspellings on them. I was talking to a medic from 5SIR. He was malay, as were most of his fellow 5SIR medics (so much for racial equity). He said that being a platoon medic wasn't actually that tough - he always waits until the fighting has stopped until he goes in to treat the wounded, and he gets riflemen to do all the work - even neck and pistol dragging.

We had some Bandung which 6SIR had concocted, and as we were tasting it I was commenting that it tasted a bit sour and we'd get diarrhea later. Sure enough, I had mild diarrhea Saturday night. Gah.

As we rode in on the tonner, I saw movement in the Kallang Netball Centre. It was the Raffles Guys School Upper Secondary Netball Carnival. Yeh.

I theorise that the purpose of SAF personnel learning unarmed combat is so that they can put up items for National Day (the SAF already provides much of the parade contingent, the odd jobs force, medical cover, comms support and god knows what else - free labour!)! In a real fight you'd just use any style that came to hand, so to speak, to attack your opponent.

They have this stupid idea of "NDP radio" where they pretend that they are tuning into radio stations, which then play 4 songs in each of the 4 national languages (naturally). They brought in dancers from the Lindy Hop Ensemble, ACJC and CHIJ Katong (almost definitely from their Flesh Parades), Sriwana and some Indians who had no shirts identifying which organisation they belonged to (if any). to dance inanely, and probably the worst choreography was that for the most irritating Malay song of all time - Burung Kakatua (lyrics will NOT be found below for this), sung in a most ear grinding arrangement by a most annoying Malay woman. Gah.

Some items in NDP were reused from the SYF opening ceremony - how cheapskate. So we saw the kiddies from Temasek Secondary and CHIJ Toa Payoh and St Theresa's Convent running around again. And these are really kiddies - most of them were tiny, Sec 1s or Sec 2s at most. Someone was commenting that he came to our location because he wanted to see zha bor, but in the end it was "xiao3 mei4 mei4" (little sisters). Aww.

They announced that the choir was going to sing a song - "Semoga Bahagia", composed by some Mohammad guy (aren't they all). I was very happy that it wasn't by Iskandar Ismail, he-who-composes-all-national-songs, and the song played along until a familiar part came. Then, I realised, to my horror, that it was actually the Children's Day song that we were forced to sing every Children's Day in Nanyang (how ironic, a malay song in a cheena school!), and I'd last sung in Secondary 2 or 3 when Mr Johari got us a cake for Children's Day but wanted us to sing the song. They'd arranged it, added beats and added new bits (not least the words "Semoga Bahagia", which I believe didn't appear in the original song), which was why I didn't recognise it at first. Lyrics can be found at the end of this post!

There was one part where they released many balloons into the air. I don't know how many seagulls and sea otters are going to choke on them and die just for this silly spectacle. NDP is just silly pageantry. Well, you know what they say about the proletariat and Bread and Circuses.

It seems the marshallers' jobs are very sad. They are like sheepdogs, running alongside and behind the kiddies as they rush onto the tarpaulin-covered field.

During the item involving Temasek Secondary, one little girl's giant white balloon popped. Aww.

We had anemic servings of Pizza Hut (Yes, again. I wonder how those taking part in every rehearsal can stand eating the same thing every time) and KFC respectively for lunch and dinner on Saturday. They're so stingy.

If you want to read the official line on NDP 2002, you can visit the hilarious website.

On the way home I crossed an overhead bridge when I shouldn't have so I ended up traversing the length of the Nicoll Highway. Oh well.


Quotes:

"[On NDP cover] Nu3 de4 yong4 [For females, perform] CPR. Nan2 de4 yong4 [For males, perform] IV. For all types of illness."

"[Me on Jaime Teo: What's her claim to fame? What's her claim to fame?] Boobs. Brainless boobs... Ms University-Singapore (Universe)"


I need new shoes. My black dress shoes went missing and my 2 pairs of track shoes are rather battered. And I lack casual shoes.

My thursday night can be described here, but I would like to make some points.

- I've quarelled with Screwed Up Girl before
- I said it was going to be a REAL PJ girl. And she doesn't know PJ girl anyway.
- The RV alumni didn't want me
- It's not nice to invite the whole world along when you yourself are being invited, and not organising the thing
- Your boyfriend is not a leech. And it *is* okay to go do things on your own. Not doing something with him does not mean that you are abandoning him, or choosing someone else over him
- Marcia. Not "Marsha" :)
- Crying all the time, at matters of little import, is not a good practice

This does sound rather mean, but I'm actually not angry anymore, am in a rather good mood, albeit tired after NDP cover.

And a misc point:

- The ice machine was right behind me and Andrew. Self service!


Semoga Bahagia

Sama sama, maju ka hadapan
Pandai chari, pelajaran
Jaga diri, dalam keshatan
Serta sopan santun, dengan kawan kawan
Dengan hati, bersih serta suchi
Sama sama, hormat dan berbudi
Jaga tingka, pemuda pemudi,
Adat dan budata
Jun jong tinggi,
chapai-la lekas chita chita
Pemudi pemuda
Supaya kita ada harga dimata dunia.