The RV alumni Barbeque had rather less people than I thought it might. But all years were represented, from the Classes of 1996 down to 2001, bar 2000, presumably because their prelims are next week. But I was the only guy in NS, save for our valiant host Yongxiang the BSO, who came back late from a meeting.

Rule of choir gatherings: People will always start singing. And so they did, with kindred brothers Edmund and Sicheng making sleazy percussion sound effects :)

I got some things clarified. The one whose religion has something against kneeling (spoiling someone's bright choreo idea in A Musical Concoction 2) was Flora. And Choon Ping never tore a picture of Horse up. He -took- many pictures, but never tore any, so he says.

I'm told that Raffles Voices has sung The Snow in English. Finally, the desecration wrought by Wu Yi is undone, and redemption is achieved! Though I seemed the only one pleased at the news - the veterans of the Spain trip apparently were very attached to their Chinese version.

There were no girls (but Ms Chiang) to alienate with the ubiquitous army talk, so in some quarters it was flowing freely. However, the presence of the J6s and J5s, most of whom've ORDed already, and all the chao Medicine disruptees, meant that it was somewhat muted. Actually the S05A barbeque was, in my opinion, somewhat successful in this arena - the girls weren't *too* alienated by the guys talking about army stuff (or air force, as the case might be for Changge and Kai Leung) every single minute, though Chinx begged to differ.

Yijia now has long, wavy, highlighted hair. Yeh. And Yongxiang's dogs are cute. And that's it for pithy comments on the RV barbeque.

Restored post

By now, most of the Medics think that Yaodong is a bastard. I happened to see the letter referring him to a hospital, and it was very telling: "claims to have attacks 1-2x/wk but main descriptions are of chest tightness... study showed mild restrictive defect !? nt consistent with picture of asthma. Repeated visits to Medical Centre, also nt keen to be posted to combat unit"

Ahem.

The 42SAR canteen is rather dismal. It has the least food variety among the 3 canteens in Sungei Gedong camp. But it does have funky drinks like Snapple, Orangina, Stewart's Root Beer and Adam's Ale Sport. Okay, you can find them in Shell Select, but this is a SAF canteen.

I'm very happy that I have not been forced to glimpse any naked male members in camp so far! Of course, I notice that the number of "sightings" is roughly proportional to the number of Malays in my bunk.

I seem to be perpetually sending patients - Kiong calls me the "despatch medic". My mileage must be very high by now. And on one of my regular trips, I saw Aliff at NUH. He's now at DB. A driver for DB, that is. And he's now heavier than before BMT. Well. My joy at seeing him was balanced by my inability to go for a night off, though, as I'd been on the way back to camp from Alexandria Hospital when I was diverted to NUH to pick up 2 patients. We arrived back at camp so late, the cookhouse was closed.

Tuesday is probably designated "run day" in Sungei Gedong - on that day, it seemed half the camp was running. While slogging (it was my first Company Life Run), I saw Cai Yixiang. Jianwen tells me he's training to be an Armour Engineer, though whether he's an officer, specialist or enlisted man I know not, and Jianwen himself is training to be an Armour Officer at the Officer Training Wing.

Probably not by accident, I've been tasked by the Senior Medic to take care of the "Weight Management for Obese Regulars Scheme". Gah. And now I know what the rest mean by him "arrowing" everyone to do things, and pushing a lot of duties to others.

Mysteriously, the ET (Entrenching Tool) stick I borrowed from Wen Fa for 4NTM disappeared from my fieldpack, and the groundsheet he lent me became a poncho. Perplexing and disturbing this mystery is, and I'll have to bear the losses and replace his items! :(

Since our breakfasts are so lousy, these days we've been sleeping in till 645am, with one person going to sign the meal file. The meal file being a file for everyone to sign after they've consumed their meals. Now this is supposed to make us go to the cookhouse and eat, but in reality one person just signs for everyone in his platoon, so :)

I sprained my thigh muscles again during Unarmed Combat and they still hurt :(

Wenfa is very "notti" (Spelling provided by "Notti" Geraldine). I think it all started when he, me and Folie were in the bunk, and he started making suggestive comments about me liking Folie and chasing him. After 20 minutes of this, my face was red and I was trying very hard (and failing) not to burst out laughing. Later, he started sending me prank smses. His latest stunt failed miserably when I strode into the MO's room and saw him typing in a SMS to send via the Internet to "90483827" and which started, "Hi, I'm your secret admirer". Unaware of my sudden entrance, he continued typing for a while while those around him started laughing hysterically, and I finally exited the room with sounds of amusement. Caught red handed, I wonder if he'll try another funny anytime soon :)

By now, I seem to be immune to the smell of Medical Centres, a smell which used to hit me when entering SAF Medical Centres. This smell is, of course, the pungent aroma of Printol, which we use to mop the floor. Heavy duty stuff, that.

On Wednesday and Thursday, I was the duty medic for a marathon 48 hours, working my 2nd extra off on the latter day, so I have only 1 left to serve. But then, due to Weekend RT, extras don't hurt as much anymore. Well. However, I lost the opportunity to go for a night off on Thursday. Since I also didn't go for one on Tuesday as I came back too late from detail, and I'm assigned to cover the Army Half Marathon training on Saturday, losing my Friday stay out, this meant that I only got to go home once the whole week, on Friday, and didn't get to sleep at home :( Oh well, there's always the next Saturday Marina South run, and the Battalion Long Weekend (Stupid Thai Boy has a Company Long Weekend as well as a Battalion Long Weekend. Gah.)

As the title of the duty implies, Duty Medics have the most to do, not least the most mopping of the 3. If anything, the standing orders for Duty Medic I/Cs are even longer than for the other 2 types of Duty Medic, but everyone pays scant regard to them.

On Thursday night, we were merrily doing illegal things (like using the phone and the MO's computer) when an ambulance pulled up. I went to enquire if there was any problem, and it turned out that these were medical personnel from the 8th Singapore Armoured Brigade. Here to bathe and generally avail themselves of our extensive facilities. The MO walked in on Seetoh using the computer and asked to use it. He promptly started checking his mail, booting up ICQ2GO and charging his handphone, while the rest bathed first and watched television (surprisingly, Channel i and not a Chinese station).

I walked into the sick bay Wednesday night and one patient was reading 'The Dilbert Principle'. I must get down to reading it one day :)

Apart from activating an ambulance at 2am on Thursday morning, my night was peaceful, spent on my stretcher, since the sick bay was full of patients with sore eyes and I didn't want to catch the disease by using a bed slept on previously by one of the Infected Ones. Especially since I wasn't the one accompanying the patient :)

On Thursday I noticed one Warrant Officer who came to report sick had a long fifth fingernail, like an Ah Beng. So much for SAF personnel and short fingernails, ostensibly for hygiene purposes.

Lying and telling half-truths are an integral part of life in the SAF. The fact that I'm forced to partake in them to survive (and not even to prosper) vexes me sorely. Additionally, people like to evade work and push duties to other people, the former being christened 'siaming' and the latter 'arrowing'. Though I am not entirely innocent of such, I do do much less than my fair share of them. It's an irksome habit and one which causes certain people to get more than their fair workload.

One patient reporting sick asked if he could go and buy a drink. When I assented, he asked if I wanted one too. Aww. Ahh, the (small) rewards of duty!

Duty on Saturday was interrupted by a 6 hour detail duty, when Boon Wei, me and a few others went to recce the route for the Army Half Marathon (AHM) training on Saturday. Since all other vehicles were already dispatched out, we got a landrover which was spoilt, so we had to wait for it to be repaired before setting off. When we reached Marina South, the Conducting and Safety Officers started dallying and walking in circles. This, coupled with the 50km/hr speed limit of the landrover and a stop at Ayer Rajah Camp for lunch, meant that Yongsiang had to stand in for me for 6 long hours.

More about Ayer Rajah camp: The chicken wings from one of the 2 Malay stalls there is supposed to be so good, many SAF personnel have heard legends of it, and people drop by Ayer Rajah camp just to eat the chicken wings, and buy back many for their mates back at camp, as one of our officers did. However, I tried 2 and while they were quite crispy, it's nothing to write home about. I've had better, at Ikea and the Western stall at S-11 Bras Basah, among other places. Ayer Rajah camp is also where the famous OETI (Ordnance Engineering Training Institute) is, where 6 month stay out courses on the finer arts of being a technician are held ;) Also, there are many "camps" there - only some of them are so small - smaller than SMM even - that I wonder why they aren't counted as part of the one opposite ; Gloucester Camp for example, which consists of an office building and a carpark.

On the last weekend RT I attended, though 15 of us were supposed to book in on Saturday night to sleep in camp before the RT session on Sunday, only 4 did in the end, and the 11 others booked in Sunday morning. I'd do that, but I'm risk averse. Sigh, sometimes I feel like such a sucker - following the silly rules, not taking MCs because I am "sick" and such.

I've been hearing an array of complaints, from drivers and medics from my unit, and medics from other units, including Chris (from my BMT and SMM platoons) from 40SAR who was, with Kumar, attached to 46 for their Full Troop Exercise (FTX) (Hah!), about the people in 46SAR. Apparently the whole unit is dysfunctional - the people are all "pai kiahs" (lit: bad boys), aren't friendly or helpful and backstab a lot. Maybe that is why they have a whole lot of stupid rules (Lights off at 10:30pm, strictly enforced, with no talking on cellular phones allowed, for example). My unit *does* have a feud with 46SAR, but that doesn't really factor into my analysis, and there *is* the raft of complaints from other units, so.

I was smsing on Thursday and my officer said I sms as fast as he types. Wah.

Many of the people at Kaffir Company booked out at 3pm, because they had no dinner indented for them. HQ company is always the last to clear arms, and we've to wait for the Routine Orders to be published before booking out. Furthermore, our CSM is always very reluctant to release the book in/out books early. Life at the Company Lines *does* have its advantages.

I went to Som's store to rest and talk today, and I found that he has 2 new understudies, both JC students. One is one year our senior from RJC, and he revealed that he was a guest player in the recording of the College Anthem, done in 1998, that they always play. With his new company, he can't perform mysterious unspeakable acts in there anymore and more importantly, I can't go there to hide (or "tuang" if you prefer), but he can push work to them now.

For some reason, the incoming Brigade Commander (a Commando and a President's Scholar too) came to talk to us today to explain why we were cut from Exercise Wallaby. Apparently it has something to do with us protecting Singapore from terrorists. Anyway, for some reason he thought we were all very disappointed. Right. 99% of us were rejoicing when we discovered that we wouldn't have to roll in Australian muck anymore. Luckily our CO's pleas to let us go went unheeded :)

I hear our MO's trying to proselytise in the Medical Centre, but so far the 4 medics he's trying to convert haven't.


The irritating camp network has wiped Blue Bear from my desktop and the mp3s I had too. The thing probably didn't shut down properly the previous time. And I'm not sure of the disk space limits, so I don't know how much I can safely store on the network. Also about the e-learning centre: People like to book slots way in advance, so by the time I get there the slots are all filled. Luckily often people don't turn up.

My calculations were wrong. It's 7 hours of time off my weekend for each weekend RT session. Gah. Stung by my loss, I have resumed bringing soft toys to camp - Berliner Bear on Saturday and Polar Bear the rest of the week.

I don't know why a display of boobs gets most guys so excited. Their maxim seems to be: The bigger the better. Case in point: 20 Bikini Babes in September 2002's FHM. I found most of the shots disgusting, as many of the 20 look deformed. My expression of revulsion evinced a reply from Patrick though - "Are you gay?". Hah!

In a broader vein, why do girls read FHM? I doubt very many males read Her World, Cleo of Women's Weekly. Well I have, but I don't read them regularly, much less subscribe. Her are some reasons I drew up after a brief spate of meditation:

- They read it to understand men. The impression they'd get is, by and large, accurate. Sex, women, toys, cars and nice clothes (for some)
- To laugh at lame jokes. Rather, to laugh at how bad men's sense of humour is, that they'd actually laugh at the lamest and most un-funny jokes ever.
- To keep tabs on the competition, on the so-called firecrackers and their ilk
- To be amused at the so-called insights into the female mind. Re: September 2002 issue, where it is alleged that women think that size does matter, all of them wank and they all fake "it". All sounds awfully like what men desperately want to believe is the case. Except the part about jealousy.

Disclaimer: I only read FHM when I have nothing better to do. And I think most of the "firecrackers" and "babes" in there are disgusting.

I bought Seventeen on Saturday when I was with Ger, as I was sufficiently intrigued by the poster I always see when going to NUH or AH. I found it a little uninspired, but other people, male and female both, unanimously dislike it. Is it that bad? Apparently it's read by 55% of teenage girls in the USA. Anyhow it, like other women's mags, shows the truth of Tim's maxim - "Women's magazines are about women. Men's magazines are about women". Though there is this bit where a guy is "reviewed" by 6 girls who all want to date him (but who aren't particularly stunning themselves, somewhat ironically).

Someone drew my attention to JC Guide. It now has photos of Flesh Parade Night 2002.

A search for "Auspicium Melioris Aevi" brings up lots of results on Google. Seems Raffles wasn't very original in choosing a motto for his school :)


Quotes:

I don't horn people. I'm a very polite driver. I only let people horn me.

FHM... It may be in the toilet with all the sticky things on it (liquid)

[On Seventeen] It sucks. All the girls are too young.

[On the fringe benefits of duty] After office hours this phone is for you to use. The MO room's phone is for you to use. The computers also for you to use. Why waste your handphone bill?

[To me] Your best friend Clarence Lun will report sick again tonight

[On the Medical Officer] When he comes back, I will ask him, 'Sir, do you want to charge Clarence Lun?'


NB: All typos above are due to the fact that much or most of this was typed in camp.