Bookout post:

I made the mistake of trying Cheers brand Sarsi. It is absolutely vile, it has a very strong and acrid taste. It's a Malaysian brand.

Restored Post

We were shown the Body Cooling Unit. It's very fun - when activated, it produces a fine mist which is very refreshing.

I must try the shuttle bus one day, it's sure to save lots of time.

They're very evil - they put anti-smoking posters, with graphic descriptions of the dangers of smoking, at designated smoking points! Not that it works.

A Playstation has been brought into bunk! Not that I have interest in playing a Japanese football game called Winning Eleven, some weird track and field simulation or console games in general anyway.

Some of the dogs in camp are quite cute - when I booked out on Tuesday, this guard duty personnel was petting one dog. And I am told that one day, on their orientation prowl, the prowlers were followed by 5-6 dogs. On Friday, 2 dogs tried to enter the Medical Centre, but we chased them out.

I saw, on the Dispensary whiteboard, that some people are banned from there for taking drugs from there without prescription. Hehe. In the same place, I also talked to a reservist whose reservist time consists of dispensing drugs, because the Medical Officer liked him and downgraded him before ORD. Oh well.

The pidgin tongue that passes for Chinese is starting to irk me so that I might even set up an "Improve Your Chinese" site. What a thought. Or maybe "Purify Your Chinese".

Supposedly in Australia we will consume Australian combat rations, which beat those we get here. Yeh.

I was given this horrendous piece of paperwork to do - to fill in, on some pieces of paper, some details from the medical records of slightly over 250 people, and the names on the piece of paper were only roughly sorted according to some arcane order. AHH! Luckily, after I finished the first page, he who asked me to fill in the table of details didn't ask me for the completed list, so I think I'm safe :)

Hilarious excerpts from my (temporary) company's briefing for newly posted personnel:

"No spitting or use of vulgar language is allowed within the unit.

Servicemen are refrain (sic) from discussing subjects involving race, language or religion within the unit.

Servicemen are not allowed to eat from moving from point to point."

Our Australia trip is being cut short! Probably will be 2 weeks instead of 3 now. Yeh.

I'll only have to go for remedial training if I miss weekday RTs with no valid reason. Supposedly. Oh well. But then one guy got downgraded to C2L2 because he couldn't pass his 2.4 even after 6 months of intensive daily RT, so there's hope yet!

Coming back from my night off on Tuesday, I brought a 1.25L bottle of Pepsi Twist and a bottle of Snapple Lemon Tea to put in the sick bay fridge. The next day, the former was almost finished while the latter was unopened. I conclude that people only try what they're familiar with! So I shall bring all the weird foods and drinks from now on to put in the fridge.

By right, we've to march around camp, but no one does so, and no one cares. As one lao jiao medic said, "The rest don't march... Don't spoil the market". Anyhow, even those who march, the people from the non-HQ companies, don't sing the inane, grammatically incorrect marching songs or march properly, so.

Lately, I realise that the unclean thoughts that were plaguing me during my time at SMM have not been present. Perhaps it is because people here cuss less, or maybe I've reached an internal equilibrium, and bound the stray thoughts in a chaos-order framework. (I'm talking rubbish, nevermind) [NB: For the benefit of newer readers, unclean thoughts do not refer to those of the obscene type, but of the vulgar type]

There's this weird "connect" ritual where everyone in the unit will touch each other, and the CO will shout, "42SAR" and everyone will shout (rather, mumble) "The Cutting Edge". Unit culture is weird.

On Battalion Games Day, I was roped in for the Tug of War competition, naturally. The CO decided to join our team, so it was lucky that we didn't lose! For our trouble, we were given Japanese containers as prizes. Mine is a translucent blue Tupperware-esque box.

I asked my Senior Medic if we could go for a night off on Friday, and he said it wasn't my father's army. To which I pointed out that if it was my father's army I wouldn't have to serve :) Surprised at my "gall", they told a tale of an RJ guy from some years back who was charged for many things. Hehe.


Thursday's System Run

I saw a lot of black RJ people coming in wet, barefoot and in PE attire and then changing to uniform. It took me a while to realise they were canoeists. Don't they have toilets anywhere nearer the Kallang river?

They have these ramshackle, 3 or 4 wheeled contraptions with lights attached to them. As with many of the things here, this is hard to explain, but you'll know what I mean if you watch NDP. They're ridiculous.

There's one part at the end of NDP where they play the National Anthem, blues style, with a malay woman singing it sultrily. Pre-empting their playing it, I ran to the toilet so I wouldn't hear it so loudly, and wouldn't have to stand up. In the end, they didn't play it. Grr.

During the system run, the guy in charge of the colour LCD they have at the stadium was cheeky. He played trailers for Warcraft III and the Diablo II expansion!

Later that day, the Soka association was rehearsing - the only group of performers rehearsing that day. Because of the rain, they ran under shelter to stay dry. At that point of time, I was very bored so I walked a round around the stadium. Passing by the Soka women, I heard them changing in unison in a foreign language. It was rather unnerving. Then again, most'd find people chanting Latin in unison unnerving, so.

Further along my round, someone suddenly shouted "medic". Turning around, I saw a moustached man who said that he "wanted to test how alert the medic is". Apparently he was a medic 30 years ago at SMM and the School of Artillery. Hmm.

As part of their efforts to provide variety for our meals, however small, and also perhaps to promote their new "wholesome" set meal, on Thursday, KFC changed its fare to 2 pieces of chicken, the multi-grain bun and whipped potato. However, I don't see how potato wedges, deep fried chicken, mashed potatos with oily gravy, fizzy drinks and coleslaw of dubitable freshness and residual Vitamin C content due to exposure, with milk and sugar added too, is wholesome or healthy. And the bun doesn't really have that much more fibre than a normal one after all, though it does taste quite good. At least it's not as ridiculous as McDonald's brochures proclaiming their breakfast menu healthy.


Friday and Saturday's NDP rehearsal

Secondary 3 Geography has its uses! In the fridge in the medical centre is a Sixes thermometer. Folie asked me how to read it, to note down the max-min temperatures of the fridge, but I'd forgotten. Ruby Tan YC (What YC stood for, I never found out, though maybe the others did) would not be proud of me!

I saw in the papers that on 26/7 and 27/7, Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, among other works, is being performed by the SSO. Too bad I can't go due to NDP rehearsals.

All the Medical Officers had gone home, so the Medical Centre was closed for the day. Our Senior Medic was bored, so, as with the last time we were very free, at a NDP rehearsal, he found something for us to do. This time, he brought us on a SOC orientation in clean fatigues. The course at our camp seems a touch easier than at BMT - I managed to clear the low wall, and the ramp doesn't seem that high. But when I jumped off the ramp (no more low ramp outside BMT, nosiree!), I landed face flat in the sand, as I always did when jumping off the low ramp in BMT. However, I still couldn't clear all the usual obstacles (parallel bars, swing trainer, low rope) and I didn't jump off the balance beam. I wonder how atrocious my timing will be - 20 mintues?

At night, while I was attempting to get Blogger to work, Andrew Gan and Mr Ong went to a RV fundraising concert, for their trip to Europe at year's end. I wonder if the alumni are/will be invited.

On Friday, the six of us new medics were tasked to go and act as stretcher barriers (sic) at the NDP rehearsal. When we reached there, we found we weren't needed, so we went to be marshallers at the Indoor Stadium. After sitting for a while, I was tasked to run some errands - to pass someone a nametag not his and a beret too big for him, and accompany him for cover at the Stadium until the other person who was supposed to be covering arrived. When he did arrive, I asked to stay at the Stadium and do something useful instead of moving chairs and the like, which the rest who were marshallers had to do. And I got to fall out earlier too - 8:15. Yeh!

Some of my 5 fellow new medics were excited when, when raining, a schoolgirl in a white shirt ran by. Sigh.

No coloured drinks are allowed in the Indoor Stadium - some backroom politicking by Sprite and 7-up representatives?

There were quite a few people sitting in the stadium watching the rehearsal. Perhaps these are those who did not manage to get tickets for NDP proper or the preview, so they snuck in for a look. Someone opined that the reason most people go for NDP is the goody bag, but what can be inside to make it worth all the time wasted queueing and watching the show? Or is it just that Singaporeans' desire to get something for what is apparently nothing (nothing, if you discount making up the numbers and making the stadium look full, showing the world that Singaporeans are very loyal and patriotic! And allowing yourself to be brainwashed and emotionally manipulated)?

To start off the pre-parade segment of NDP, they have this topless hunk in yellow trousers breakdancing on a giant drum to drum beats. And later, he is wheeled off dancing to the "Celebrate Good Times" song. I wonder where they get these ideas. [NB: My source tells me - ohhhhhh, that's 'gold man'. thought goldman was an emcee or something for a really long time. 'goldman 5 minutes standby'. The joys of having signaller friends.]

For NDP, they got the MDC people to teach the audience the "fun" dance. They were loitering near the medical post, and I recognised some of them from my audition. They all look like poser! Hehe.

The sight of the CHIJ (mostly Sec 1) kiddies running around with their oversized colour changing horseshoes. It's hilarious. However, the singer for their Garlands of Love item sings really terribly, affecting an odd accent and singing very "lao char boar"-ly, as Nelson would put it.

There were quite a few tudung clad women in the parade, and I was afraid that they'd collapse of heatstroke due to the heat. One was particularly extreme - her contingent's attire was a polo shirt and pants, but I noticed something weird about her arms, and from our vantage point we agreed that she'd covered her arms with skin-coloured material, making her look like a patient who'd suffered third degree burns to her arms and was waiting for the skin graft op. The lengths some people go to. In the end, the 2 people who had to be stretchered out in our quadrant were not tudung clad - one was a Boys Brigade boy and the other some girl from one of the industrial associations. In other tudung-related news, one girl in the signing choir was wearing a tudung. Except that the signing choir's performance attire was three quarters. Gasp, the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue must be called in! I seem to have an unnatural obsession with tudungs.

The 16 year old girl with the apostrophed name representing all Singaporeans dances quite well. Somehow, I wasn't surprised when my source told me she was from ACJC. She was practicing during the pre-parade, with a bandana (I still think those things are a terrible idea). I think she looks better au naturel, sans makeup, than in her publicity pic. Like everyone important involved in the show, she has an understudy in case she dies or is otherwise incapacitated. I wonder if the President has an understudy too.

Representing one of the five arms of Total Defence is a PAP contingent. I was rather shocked to see this - I know most people equate the PAP, the government and the nation, but this is a bit blatant. Where's the token SDP, SPP or WP members? What I'd give to see Chee Soon Juan in there...

Seeing civilians attempting to do drill is very funny. Then again, seeing me do drill is also very funny.

People from St John's Ambulance also salute the flag during the national anthem. Gah.

During what I believe was the PA item, there was a guy in fatigues performing, complete with the glittering fan. I know they may be short of manpower, but getting SAF personnel to perform is a little bit depserate, don't you think?

As usual, they have too many dancers. So for the "Radio NDP" part where a song is sung in each of the four national languages, and the whole thing's capped off by this year's NDP song, at least one girl has to dress up as a guy. Aww. Well it's good, at least it will reduce the incidence of Khalwat! And for all the talk of racial integration, the dancers taking centrestage during each of the 4 songs are those of the race corresponding to the language of the song - the Malay dancers during the Malay song, the Indian ones during the Indian item and (naturally) the ACJC dancers during the English song.

The Starhub blimp kept flying by the stadium. At first I thought that the pilot was bored, so he came to view the show, but I now think that he's the one filiming the "helicopter view" of the parade that was flashed from time to time on the stadium screen.

Just how many balloons are needed to provide enough lift to lift a man? Evidently the long chains used in NDP aren't sufficient.

We were repeatedly pestered to keep off the field. We were perplexed by their seemingly irrational obsession, until with a whiz and a bang, mini-fireworks (or giant sparklers, depending on your point of view) burst from the stage, followed by jets of flame. Impressive. And expensive (maybe that's where the foreign reserves go to!). Some of the female performers running up to the stage at that time were stunned and shrieked. Indeed, I almost shrieked myself, but instead just half bent over.


Quotes:

"All ranks canteen" (sign)

"[On civilians at the NDP parade segment] First song, no one fall out. Second song, a few fall out. Third song, a lot fall out. Jee bye... They were falling like fleas [at the first rehearsal]."

"[Me on civilians falling out: Maybe they never drink enough water] It's not the water. It's the chao keng. Trust me"

"[Me on NDP dancers: It's ACJC. Look at the shirt] All eat potato one"


Amusing SMSes of this week:

"yunxin can't know a lot of people- she doesn't know me. she cute?"

"thirteen year olds sure have good taste" - On Andrew Gan being handsome


Stuff I forgot:

Someone wrote, in liquid paper, "David Linx" on the vending machine in RJC with the male frisbee thrower. Oh well.


Thought: Why are there so many bust enhancement ads in the mass media in Singapore, but no penile enhancement ones? Odd.