[err on the side of caution]
21 may 1990
catholic high school
1-2/2-2/3-10/4-10
AngloChineseJC: (Scylla, 1SD1)
VictoraJC: 07S32

why does this feel so familiar?

i had it before i went to australia, i had it before i entered ocs... now i'm having it before my weekend ends... if only there were a remote control to my endocrine system, then i could have a feast of feel good hormones (fucking shit, i cant believe i forgot how to spell hormones, after studying 4years of biology, i forgot...) then again, thats what drugs are for...

we're told not to compare our situations and circumstances, but the bomb dropped the moment they called me up for ExPC for the defence...

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i neeeeeeed a break...

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on the other hand, should u have nothing better to do, i suggest opening up an IKEA catalogue and translating all the names to english starting with vanlig...

happy getting lost in translation.

4:27 PM;

10 days and 10 missions later.

i'm back, 2 weeks after Section Field Camp, i still feel drained. not because Tango Wing is exceptionally 'garang' or 'hiong'. but because i haven't had time to switch back to the admin mode, the 5 day training week (although mostly ending up as 6). plus i havent had time to properly enjoy the weekends. so what if i forgot to bring my waterbottle for 5BX one morning at sanyongkong? so what if i fell asleep in the CAI room a day after we got back to begin learning about the GPMG? i tell u what, u end up being the CDS for Sunday the same week...

well it wasnt so bad having ur buddy as the CDO for the whole day as well...

Section 4 was a section really worth spending 10 days with... it wasn't that we were particularly good at everything, just that we had people that were willing to put in effort for most of our jobs.. being part of the best section became a bonus... and i suppose we did fight hard enough to impress the IDP instructors. but then again, everything must come to an end, and it did, almost immediately after we arrived back at wing line...

sweet bunk
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i must say staring into nothing is an immensely overwhelming situation, while the anticipation of an ambush is particularly exciting, it becomes boring once the heightened senses begin to be weary... then the mind starts to imagine things for you to be occupied..

there i was deployed to look down the knoll in almost the same arc of fire as alvin, but waiting for the patrol to come within the killing ground was too long for us, and sooner or later (rather within 15 mins) i had dozed off... not for long though, probably for less than 5 mins. then i looked up again to scan my frontage once more... and surprisingly enough i found something that looked interesting. i could have sworn i saw some one in long4, camo-ed and sitting at the bottom of a tree, arms resting on his field pack and drinking from his water tube. i could even make out his spectacles... and he was looking in my general direction...

i couldnt be anyone from the patrol force cos they wouldnt be that dumb to "rest" so near ORANGE objective, so i just kept on scanning like i should... which made me fall asleep again, then i was aroused once more and this time i looked through my scope to look at the "drinking man"... it was almost the same image that i saw with my naked eyes, but this time with slight actions of the tube moving as he continued to drink the water...

this carried on for 2 hours until section 3 finally arrived and the fire fight began... but through all the waiting that day, i was convinced at the end of the day that it was all just leaves, branches and twigs that some how was arranged coincidently to look like what i imagined... at least thats what i hope..

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the way to gauge the freshness of the mac donalds meal u ordered, is to order a mc flurry along with everything else.

4:54 PM;

Hello Tango 11 this is Tango 11 delta, sitrep over.
...
tango 11 delta, delta mike low.

there are moments when i really dont feel like booking out, its as though life get worse out there. not all of it is this way of course but the times that u spend in camp, u feel protected, paid, fed, albeit getting fucked over and over again, even though u try ur best. the horrible feeling u get that maybe best is just not enough to cover up the worst of others in the bigger picture...

perhaps it doesnt work this way with me. not with retail therapy, cos with each book out, i just keep spending more... wasting more and spending even more...

its when Morale gets too low, that i fear the change, that fatigue will metamorphose whatever enthusiasm i have left, into what i used to hate about others..

10 days in Sanyongkong... so near to what i used to call home.
i suppose when it all starts on monday, we wont be dreading to enter the gates of safti anymore...
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let go, letting go, "let gone"? (wait, there's no past tense for let go? is there?)
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well whatever, seems like the only time i can feel good about anything this week was when i lied to myself during 2.4 on tuesday... finally i'm back to gold.. which makes me think that if had stayed on and gone to air wing or something, it'd probably take a million years to get back... but then again, maybe with all the rest that there is over at the yellow block, it might be easier...

tango 11 delta out.

2:56 PM;

Sierra Tango.

its for days like today.

When u feel like everything is going wrong, nothing seems to fit in place, and plannings and projections are just a whole pile of crap. Its for these occasions that the army coins the most commonly used abbreviation. LL. No, its not excused Lower Limb... its LAN LAN...

LL encapsulates sympathy, encouragement, resignation and most of all an offer, to the one and only consolation you have, Suck Thumb (ST for short).

9:42 PM;

and so confinement begins...

well, i suppose its just inevitable, something like this was about to happen anw... but it felt horrible to draw that red line across the names of the 6 guys staying in for the weekend... that depressing sight of the 6 in admin attire while the rest of the 23 were in blackwhite penguin.... that empty feeling in them as we marched off and out of safti...

come to think abt it it could've been helped, but sometimes, resources just arent enough... in particularly, a photocopier.

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having no idea what is going on in the bunks right now, on a scorching afternoon, when their supposed to be studying for SOQT, which i highly doubt so...

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guard duty was horrendous... oh could i have regretted it more!

it felt just like the 2nd day of fieldcamp back in tekong... that lousy feeling, having caught the flu bug from god-knows-where, just because of the lack of sleep...

cough, sore throat, aches and fever

monday night i had nothing else but to think... thinking about being sick... LTA hafid was walking up and down the corridors so there was nothing else to do but to lie on the bed and stare blankly into the fan... IPPT was the next day and i was trying to find a convincing reason for me not to fall out and carry on with the training on tuesday..

offers of paracetamol aplenty from platoon mates, LTA eddie said no one was to be on medication 12 hours before ippt, if i were to take anything to help myself cope with the ailments i was having, it would be just before the test..

i couldnt help by try to figure out why the fuck i hadnt taken anything to help myself earlier... i wasnt as though i was short of medication from my stash in the bedside drawer...

then i realised that even though i seemed that the whole world around me gave little less than 2 shits abt the implications of taking paracetamol, (i.e. my mum, royston etc.) somehow i'm avoiding taking medication more and more these days.

one fine example would be that night before leaving for tamworth and most recently was monday night...

then came tuesday morning when i held the 2 tablets in my palm and stared at my buddy in our room for more than 10 mins while it was chaos outside while CPS was trying to drag us out of our rooms to fall in... "fuck it" i said eventually and just hurled it into my mouth...

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influential. you are just too influential. you always refused my offers to take anything for ur headaches when were in school... why did i rub off so much from you?

1:48 PM;

what the hell am i doing here?

booking in a whole day earlier than the rest of my wingmates. i tried to rationalise my decision only after discussing with alvin about standing in for his duty.. i realised i should have done it before i said yes... i hadnt thought about it properly, like what i'd be missing out at home... i only gave a run through about the things i was supposed to do when i booked out.

1. Go meet the rest of the guys of agc 08/09.
2. ... nothing else. and this was all it took for me to say yes.

yes to signing away a whole day of being away from camp. coming home this morning after being out with the guys, i fell asleep almost instantaneously...

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so i came up with a few more reasons to help me get to sleep tonight,

1. karma points
2. i wont be late booking in on sun
3. alvin really didnt want to miss his dinner

anw, the faster i get used to this life, the faster i engage myself in the reality.

maybe next week i wont even want to book out at all.. i suppose there's no point in leaving camp to expect something better.. all of them i want to see, they're all pinned on the board i get to see everyday.

everybody is gone anyways.

12:57 AM;

wake me up when september ends.

and so it ends, CLM has gone and finally after 4 months, i finally no longer wear the single white bar...

the end seems pretty distant, and theres so much left of this to go, but lets just take it a breath at a time, be in the now...

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thankfully, tango had our book out on thurs night, can't remember how much i loved to sleep on my bed, my own lovely bed. coming home last night was just too shiok to describe, knowing that i get to sleep peacefully, take my own sweet time to eat my meals, not worrying whether i have completed my readings for tests and if i have washed my clothes for the next day...

"i got a feeling, that tonight's gonna a be turn-out night,
that tonight there'll be turn-turn-outtttt..."

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but then again, Tango reminds me so much about Zulu, and how we were constantly rushing our programme, squeezing in everything to meet deadlines...

i dont miss you.

because i'm too busy to care, because i have no time to think about it, because you are barely present in the now...

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until i have time again, i will continue to stone on the train, stare blankly into the moon looking for something,

and realise that sunday is my SAW live firing...

7:28 PM;