Restored Post

End of week post:

As expected, when I went into the bunk Wednesday night, the pictures of Asian Prince had been torn down :(

On Thursday morning, we had a National Day Observance Ceremony. They wanted us to sing the anthem and say the pledge, but I was muttering curses. There was supposed to be a talk, but the CO was very kind and let us gather and sit down before commencing his "Why NS is necessary and we must stay vigilant" National Day talk.

The CSM singled me out for having a "faded" uniform, so I went to get a new set of uniform for my "parade 4". Finally getting the chance to enquire about nametags, I found to my horror that they were $5 apiece, so I've scrapped the idea of getting new ones, or even one saying "Agagooga" for fun.

The things people get up to in camp. One driver came to the Medical Centre to have his ear flushed - the night before his friends had put Kiwi Shoe Polish outside his ear. Attempting to remove it, he shoved much of it in instead. Yuck.

Apparently at the last IQA the Armour Medical Centre was in the bottom 5. Aww.

Apparently some other units only got 1/2 a day off-in-lieus for burning their Saturdays, while we got 1 day. Yeh.

I am told I got off easy for my carelessness - one guy in 46SAR got 3 extras for the sin of transferring data from the computer to paper wrongly. Erk.


NDP Day

I was posted at the Indoor Stadium again, as with the last time I was there.

This time, I got the wonderful job of tending to the rubbish point. There were 3 big trash compactor containers and I was supposed to direct people to put rubbish in one and flattened cartons in the other. Whether because the person on the next shift didn't do the job properly, or because there was simply too much trash, by evening the containers had overflowed and all the extra trash had to be placed at the side. Coming by after the parade and seeing this, the CSM was not happy and having no extra trash compactors, he did what the SAF always does when a problem can't be solved - throw more men in. So 2 people stood on top of each compactor and arranged the rubbish, all the while stamping on it, while the rest of us braved throwing up torn trash bags leaking mysterious brown putrid liquids down our arm. In the end, all the rubbish did manage to fit on the compactors, but to no end - when the tow trucks come to lift the compactors 45 degrees to tow them off, the top layer of rubbish will topple into the bushes behind (or did topple, as it's probably been cleared by now). So the next time you past by the area look for a bare area of soil where the plants have all died thanks to loads of garbage falling on top of them. At the end of it all, I smelled of trash, but I wonder how much worse those *in* the compactor smelled.

Inhaling the aroma of rubbish, I got the chance to ponder and meditate on the questions of life, like why rubbish, no matter what its composition, smells the same.

When I was taking a break from dealing with trash, I was checking bags. Someone was mulling "division of labour", and I was to get to check those 14 years old and under. I sense a conspiracy.

Instead of looping "We Will Get There" for 45 minutes, they decided to spare our senses and added variety to the piped in music with "Shine" and "Moments of Music" as well.

One CHIJ girl was using the hem of her skirt to wipe her glasses. Now, I may be lacking in social mores but at least I know better than that. Not that I have a skirt to use, but that's besides the point. She has 5 years more anyhow. Oh and thanks to that incident, I am now confirmed in my fervent hope that they had something under their disgusting nightgowns. Also on the subject of CHIJ, the disparities in size are rather shocking - the tallest performer was at least 1 1/2 heads above the shortest. See what chemicals in our environment do to the development of children?

Having had all their food confiscated the last time, the Soka Association came prepared Friday. They had people taking care of the food, instead of the individual performers bringing in their own. On a cursory and perfunctory walk around the stadium (actually looking for the stairs, but observing the Soka people at the same time), I saw a station where they were serving savoury rice kuehs, a water point with many coloured plastic cups, and many performers with Bee Hoon in their KFC packets, eating it with chopsticks. Wonderful logistics.

Compulsive photo-taking disorder, not surprisingly, is not confined to JC girls. One of the motivators (whether Poly or ITE I couldn't tell), went to take a picture with one of the Marshallers. Though of course she went for Sergeant Frank, one of the better looking ones, and with spiked hair too.

Stefanie Sun looked terrible in her wedding gown. I wonder who she was going to marry.

We were played out - we'd been told that we would return to camp that night and book out late Saturday morning. However, at the last minute, we were played out and were switched to picking up props at the National Stadium. Having left some stuff in camp, I needed to retrieve it, so I was going to go back to camp and book out Saturday morning. However, my most kind brother in law offered to drive me home after I'd gotten my (and 3 other people's) stuff, and so I booked out at around 11:55pm (I'm not sure how strict they are about not letting people book out after 11:59pm. The guard commander said I wasn't too late - "no lah, just scared you guys don't have transport". I think few people care anyhow). Even more kind of him was his intention to give 2 people we'd seen at the bus stop a lift - but by the time we'd turned back, they'd both taken a cab. The stench was rather unbearable, but I don't think the car will smell permanently.

On Saturday morning we went back to steal props from the Stadium for the Chief of Armour Change of Command. I wonder why they didn't take the balloon ;)

We fell out very early - about 9:30am, and as a bonus, we found 2 unopened bottles of Newater too! It tastes. Rather normal. It's hard to describe the difference. Since I'm at a loss for words, I'll let our esteemed PM describe Newater for me: "Goh said local tap water, which is totally potable off the faucet, was a bit sweeter but drinking chilled Newater, he could not detect the difference."

NDP is over! No more KFC and Pizza Hut! Yesh. But on the downside it means we go back from being Slave Labour to being Slave Soldiers. Ugh.


Quotes:

"[On Kit Chan and Tanya Chua] I tell you, singers don't have long careers after singing National songs"

"[Me on CHIJ kiddies chattering: Doesn't it sound like a flock of birds?] No, sounds like a flock of bitches"

"[Me on adventures with rubbish at NDP 2002] I feel soiled. I'll never be clean again."


Whoever's in charge of the NDP website is fast! At about 1am, the NDP 2002 photos were already up.

I realise that Mr Kiasu looks uncannily like Weston Smithers from the Simpsons. Plagiarism?

My mother "cleaned up" my room again and as usual everything was hidden. I was looking for Blue Bear and found him... at the bottom of a bag, with a pile of books and papers on top of him. !@#$%^&*()