Restored Post

I have somewhat of a headache after confinement, so I'll trim the following a bit.

After the 8KM (woah) run cum Games Day on Thursday, we were taught "Connect Part 2". Now, rabid readers will remember that the original Connect involves the CO laying his hand out, and people touching it, and everyone else touching each other, such that if a bolt of lightning were to hit any of us, we'd all be fried to a crisp. Now, some bright guy came up with "Part 2". This incredibly inane act involves everyone holding hands - yes, holding hands. So much for macho-ism!. Everyone stands and points their right palms down and left palms up. Then they all link hands and stand in a giant circle facing inwards. When given the go ahead, they all turn to their right, such that everyone is facing outwards and their hands are in awkward positions. Then, they turn back to the left. Everyone then runs towards the centre of the circle and shouts "The Cutting Edge". Sheesh.

CDAC came down to give our unit a talk, and I was left wondering why it was compulsory for all of us to go. For one, only Chinese qualified for CDAC programmes, and looking around, I saw quite a few Indians seated in the auditorium. Also, the subsidies they offered were available for those with O level qualifications and below only, so all us medics were there just to enjoy the air-conditioning. The speaker was not atrociously bad - just bad, and irritatingly, she tried to act cute - she'd squeak at the end of every few sentences.

I was reading the Computer Times, and there was a guest article from a 10 year old NYPS Student in Primary 4. I was rather amused to find that the NYPS boy actually wrote better, both in style and in content, than most of the writers that the Computer Times employs (which explains why I don't usually read the Computer Times even when both of us are available).

At the last minute, I was asked to take over duty on Saturday, which suited me just fine - I exchanged my duty on the 12th for it, so I can now go to Melbourne (unless the SAF plays me out, which it'd better not).

Compared to my hellish Tuesday duty, when I was bedevilled by all manner of problems, Saturday duty was positively relaxing. The first half of the morning was spent half-slumbering, with Symphony 92.4 on in the background, and I was interrupted only when, mid-way through the Sleigh Ride from Prokofiev's Troika, I was brought back to consciousness to attend to someone from my unit who was reporting sick, as the other 42SAR medics had all gone to do dirty work at the NDp rehearsal.

When I flipped through the sick bay records, I saw that one guy'd saw a rat one day. At the time, I was rather amused by the entry, but I had no fewer than 3 sightings in my tour of duty! The first was when I opened the pantry's dustbin to throw away the remnants of lunch, and saw 2 smallish, slightly cute rats perched on the rim. Later, a large, unbelievably fast rat ran across my path when I entered the pantry, and later ran across the counter, up a pipe and disappeared into a hole in the ceiling. And the final sighting was of the same big rat the next morning - when I opened the door, the rat emerged from the styrofoam box where the food was kept and ran up the same hole in the ceiling. On examination, I found that the box'd been nibbled through, and a styrofoam packet containing the previous day's dinner had been nibbled through. I hope that the rat dies a horrible death from styrofoam poisoning!

Saturday's lunch was rather spectacular for SAF food - half a fried spring chicken, some wedges, a butter roll, a tomato and peas. It's probably the first pseudo-Western SAF meal I've eaten that doesn't include rice in some form or other, and I think this is what Iskandar was talking about when he described the Western food in SISPEC that the trainees actually looked forward to eating - "You wouldn't think SAF could cook good Western food". It was a touch soggy, but much better than the fare we usually get. And some people didn't want their shares (I think the duty ambulance drivers had all run back to their bunks or booked out even), so I ate another share. And I was lucky I did, for dinner was HOT, and I touched not a grain of rice, nor a sliver of otar, nor a shred of Chicken Rendang (at least I think it was Chicken Rendang) nor a single long bean.

The 46SAR Senior Medic asked me to stay in the Senior Medics' Room to make sure that the foreign workers painting the room wouldn't abscond with any documents (I can just imagine it - Bangladeshi workers who can't read English want to get the duty list so they know when to raid the pantry), and it was tolerable, though less comfortable than the sickbay where there was a radio and it was cooler. After a while, the workers turned off the air-conditioning so they could do their work, so I sweltered in the room for a length of time. After they turned it on again, I thought that would be the last of the discomfort, but just before they ran off for the day, they turned it off again, so the Standby Medic and I had to go turn on the Compressors on the roof, and search for the master air-con power panel. Evil Banglas!

I was lounging on the sickbay bed at night when the Duty Medic opened the door and said, "Send Patient". I scurried to change, only to have him coming in half a minute later and admitting that he'd tricked me. Grr.

Learning about my confinement, the Standby Medic remarked that my CSM was very "fucked up", and that he always gave people confinements. Looking at the reasons some people got confined, I am flabbergasted. Perhaps the most outrageous so far is - "Lack of effort during Battalion Run x 1 confinement". Apparently these people were walking during the Life run, and so warrant a burnt day off.

After I'd handed over my duty, I went for my confinement. At first I'd thought that the 3 of us confined Medics would get to spend the whole day sleeping, but we were presented with a seemingly endless list of chores to accomplish - cleaning the vehicle sheds, vehicle washing points, the multi-purpose hall (MPH), the canteen area... However, in the end, the Company Orderly Sergeant (COS) supervising us was quite lenient, so at about 10 we went back to the bunk and slept until almost 2, when we went to do more work. This ended at around 4pm, and we went back to sleep. In the end, I was so full of sleep that I got a headache whenever I closed my eyes.

I was reading the NDP programme, and there was this maze:

"Jo'an needs help!

Jo'an needs to make her way home to where the heart is. Can you help her get there?"

And the cartoon of her was very. Unrecognisable.

I wonder what she thinks of being made into a cartoon character for a maze. And also of her name appearing in every post I pen that has to do with NDP (Hey, she's the star, so naturally her name'll appear a lot).

There was some charity show showing on Channel 8 (I am one of the few in the bunk who watches English-language television, so usually I am relegated to watching, if I please, badly dubbed Japanese/Korean/Hong Kong dramas which thankfully are subbed so I can comprehend what is going on), with people skipping. At first, they were skipping to the most recognisable part of "Les Toreadors" from Carmen - a 15 second clip looped for 5 minutes. Needless to say, I was ready to tear my hair out. Later in their act, as they started to progress to stunts of increasing complexity, their greenness became evident as they kept fouling up - getting tangled in the ropes, stepping on the ropes and such. This incompetence only elicited ever more frequent and ever more enthusiastic cries of encouragement from both the hosts and the audience. So much for achieving a requisite standard for for National Television.

At the Staff Parade at night, where all the confinees and duty personnel from my unit were required to report, 3 people were awarded yet another confinement (on top of the one they were currently serving) because they were "late" - but then the official time for the Staff Parade was 9:45pm, and the Duty Officer (DO) decided to hold it at 9:30pm. Ahh, the injustice of our meagre existences.

Monday morning, I was never so happy to see my 11B (Singapore Armed Forces Identity Card).

Things to do: Get the boring gray T-shirt which says "ARMY" in bold, stark letters at the back, and write "SUCKS" with a marker at the bottom. I've ~$179 of credit left for the year, mayhap I shall try this!

Fain, soon shall I up the ante and bring more intelligent reading material than Raymond E Feist and Janny Wurt's "Servant of the Empire" (which is a good book, at any rate) to my not-so-gilded. Perchance Thucydides' The History of the Peloponnesian War, or Plutarch's Lives of the Ancients, both of which currently gather dust on my bookshelf. All the stuff on my "to read" list - now is the time to cut it down to size. If I find the time.


Quotes:

"[On Yiliang's numerous printouts of Japanese girls in bikinis, tacked all around the bunk] You better get a girlfriend, understand? This is fucking dangerous."

"[On discharging the ammunition given for guard duty] I think a flag will come out"

"Orgy with 20 RGS girls. All of them have [nick]names... You have a large frame, so it's possible... They all go back and wear their RGS outfits" - Tim The Great" (!@#$%^&*())

"You'll make a good priest, you have a very bad sense of humour"

"ATC celebrates Sinagapore 37th birthday (Singapore's)" - Sign. You'd think they'd be able to get at least the spelling of our country's name correct, but NOOOO.