Restored Post

First and foremost, I don't think I'm ever going to sleep at home on weekends anymore. I've been put on the distinguished rolls of "Weekend Remedial Training", to book in by 11:30pm every Saturday and only being let out at about 10am on the next morning, probably until I pass IPPT. Since that will probably happen when the Kabaa is blown up by a Palestinian fundamentalist, I don't think I'm ever going to sleep on my nice bed ever again. Damned SAF. That's another 4 hours (excluding 6 hours of sleeping time) off each of my weekends. I want lazy eye too.

And now back to our regular programming.

Though it's not as bad as Tekong, the Armour Medical Centre can get quite crowded at times - from time to time, like on Monday, people are forced to sit on the floor. Going into the sick bay, I found lots of recruits, and when I offered to lend them my Nokia charger, they all were very happy. Oh, I remember what it's like not having a charger, and how happy I was when our sergeant offered to charge the batteries of the confinees.

I found out what the cryptic PULHEEMS stands for. Apparently the letters stand for, in turn, physical capacity, upper limbs, lower limbs, hearing, eyesight, mental capacity and stability (emotional). I think my scores for the last two are going down (or up, as the case might be).

Even with restraint, my handphone bill for the month ending 18th August was $138.30. I give up. Damn work-related calls.

I saw and talked to Yaodong again. He was in the gym when I had RT. Apparently he was posted to my unit for a day, then got pulled back. He's now a clerk and running for the SAF or something.

I put a can of A&W Root Beer in the sick bay pantry fridge, but the next morning I found, to my horror, that it'd been spirited away by the pernicious demons of the refrigerator. What I don't understand is why they ignored the can of Tiger Beer, and instead went for the ROOT Beer. Gah.

I was going to leave another can in there, but decided to just consume it there and then, chilled with the ice from the Treatment Room refrigerator. While enjoying my brew, I realised that I've never appreciated how beautiful the thick layer of froth on top of the liquid is, and how heady its aroma can be. How the bubbles cluster in clumps at the sides of the glass instead of dispersing regularly on its inside surface. A far cry from the laughable swill that is MUG Root Beer!

I found that my camp does have a Muslim Cookhouse, at 46SAR! So now I know where the Malay cleaners eat.

On Tuesday, I went for a night off (note: A Night Off. Not a Nights Off). I saw a Malay VCD seller at Choa Chu Kang MRT station. He was selling VCDs for $10 apiece, and was giving away 1 for every purchase of 3. Of course, he was selling porn, but isn't that haram? Better than fundamentalism I guess. I think he must be very popular with all the NS men! Then again, we got raided by plain clothes security personnel that same night, so.

I met up with Julian. That clerk is too free, so besides playing Jap and other) games, watching anime and sleeping, he's been training up at the gym. Not only has he lost 10 kg (which I've seemed to put on), he can almost pass IPPT now. A perfect partner in slacking with Chinx the 5 month Temporary Support Staff (TSS), who is stayout and currently in limbo :) And I also noticed for the first time (well, one out of the two times I've been to his den isn't bad), his Lone Wolf collection. Though it consists of New Order books (and not all of them even), it does have the fabled Lone Wolf Book 22, The Buccaneers of Shadaki! And he didn't know it was worth at *least* US$100 ;)

I'm not going to be the Docu I/C anymore, probably because they decided I'm not capable of shouldering such an onerous burden! :) But I hope I'm not going down to any company line.

I was sending a recruit back to the Armour Engineers Training Centre (AETC) - it's an incredibly run down place, though the old SMM is worse (but then, what can beat the old SMM?). While there, I heard loud strains of marching songs, a thunderous cacophony which I'd not heard during BMT. As I remarked to the driver, I'd not heard such since BMT (not so loud or clarion anyway), and he smiled as he agreed. In a way, recruits are very carefree. But then, so are prisoners. My brother-in-law was very surprised, seemingly, when I replied in the negative to his query about whether BMT was the best time of my army life, when we were driving to the Air Freight Centre, retracing the route that we used to take to send me to the ferry terminal to take the boat to the Island of Doom. BMT was horrible, and I'm glad I'm past it :)

I've been doing cover, on a lot of days, for the Chief of Armour Change of Command Parade. It's very boring, but at least I've been reading more. And escaping sai kang and "arrows" elsewhere. Sinsiang positively *hates* doing cover though, but we're short of people, so.

Being forced to listen to drill commands the whole day, I think that the "puji puji" thing is actually "panji panji". Still sounds funny though :) Plus I've noticed a new one - "Kerkirike maseng maseng". Wth?! I've also realised that they can invent all sorts of weird drill commands - besides the one for tilting your heads down in contemplation, and the one for holding your rifles in your left hands while they rest on the floor, they've now created one for "Hip Hip Hooray". This is ridiculous.

The Outgoing Chief of Armour blessed all of us - "May the force be with us, always."

The breakfast at my cookhouse sucks. It's worse than SMM, and that's saying something.

Booking out Saturday morning, I saw Zaixiang. He's still training to be a specialist, and will probably go to 40SAR in November. And, as with everyone, his hair has become... weird. I don't know what it is with NS that makes everyone's hair go haywire. Except me, but I never cared for it anyway.


Quotes:

[On me] I see you, of course happy lor. So adorable.

"It is our duty to inform you that it is an offence to STEAL office stationery. Please be considerate as there are still SURVIVORS in this office who need these stationery to keep their EARDRUM intact. Thanks for your co-operation.

The curse........
Whoever steal scissor/penknife will be cut by paper, steal pen & all your pen will leak. Steal at your own risk........
Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha." (???)

Since human being don't perspire, I ask you all whether you sweat. [Men: Yes, Sir]... Sweating is for ANIMALS. Human beings don't sweat, human beings perspire. Did you all sweat? [Men: No, Sir!] Did you all perspire? [Men: Yes, Sir!] Very good. (being, I'll, are sweating) (???)

[On the SMSes I get] Why all the English so cheem one? What the fuck. I don't understand. (is all, cheem)

You know when is the most chio moment of an ah lian? When she turns demure for you. Wah lan eh.


Just when I comment on not getting hits from searches for "scgs nude", I get one. Gah. And "nude pictures of temasek secondary" and "uniform fetish judo" too. Sheesh. People have weird desires.

My father spends the better part of the day, so it seems, and at least most of the morning, as my sister affirms, checking stock movements and banging on his gigantic and elaborately constructed and fine-tuned Excel spreadsheet. And he still loses money. Sometimes I wonder what the point is - if it's a hobby, it's an expensive one indeed.

My sister almost brought my glasses to London. She took mine by mistake, but luckily I asked her about it. Then she remarked that, "I knew my glasses were dirty, but not that dirty".

Zaini, head of the SAF Music and Drama Company, is a Geography teacher at my mother's school, Henderson Secondary. And he's from RI too. I was rather surprised to learn that.

On Friday, I was at the e-learning centre, and beside me Cheong had just applied for an ICQ account. Besides the fact that his UI is more than 10 times mine, it was also interesting to see that just after I'd added him, he got a spam message advertising a porn site from one of the mass messagers. Those people are FAST!

I saw the guy whom I think is Yisa booking out in No 4, and I swear his nametag said "Zhuang". I was in the rover at the time, so I couldn't say hello, but the next time I'll send my felicitations.

I'm going to start an MP3 collection in camp! Slowly, I'll transfer them over to my desktop in the e-learning centre via Web1000. At this moment, I have "King's Singers - Barber of Seville" and the Bring It On chant. Hah! And Blue Bear now adorns my desktop ;)

I hear Chapman is a councillor in TJ now. Wah.


I had lunch with Geraldine today at some Taiwanese sort of outlet above Borders.

At Borders, I saw 2 petite Raffles Guys (Sec 1 probably) making a brief stop in the "Romance" section. Ah, so young and already so corrupted by the evil of Romance Novels. The tragedy of it all.

Prompted by a Popular Store list which listed Raffles Guys as one outlet, I made enquiries. Apparently it took over the old ODAC room (What need does an outdoor club have of a room anyway? ;) ), and is doing a brisk trade selling screwed up stationery to Raffles Guys. Ho ho.

In Borders there was this guy promoting his book promising the secrets of getting rich quickly. I think it's rather sad that in Singapore, people are so obsessed with making money. Witness the popularity of books of the self-help, management guide and get rick quick genres, and their ilk. The rapturous, lustful looks on the faces of the audience, listening hungrily to what the author of the book had to say, were especially frightening.


Ever since coming back today, I've been pestered by both my mother and my father, for one reason or another.

Now that Sulyn and Kheng Hwa are gone, my father's obsession with neatness and tidiness have come to the fore, and he's been scurrying around "tidying" the place, keeping things when they don't need to be kept and moving everything around.

And when my mother came back, she started on her usual tirade about keeping too many things, and how she found cockroaches in my room, and how I should keep food in the kitchen (even if it will inevitably disppear when she uses her Midas touch on it). And as usual, she likes to go on and on relating anecdotes when people are not interested, even getting flustered. She was ending with a "too much fat hampers brain activity", but even when I told her to buzz off, she continued on and on, seemingly oblivious of my growing frustration. Or perhaps not, I suspect she gets a perverse satisfaction from seeing people getting worked up, which is why she always used to continue nagging and criticising my sister even after the latter had started asking her to shut up, then proceeded to shouting and finally slammed the door of her room to go and cry.