Ignorance and Apathy

yes. i.e. dunno, don care.

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i think 2lt shawn has finally realised the truth. i am not normal. and it took me the better part of 6 hrs to convince him that.. such is the good impression i had jus because i said suicide is a waste of time... and i'm so against wastage.. hurhur..

as to how i convinced him i'm not normal, think its more inside stuff that i couldnt possibly make concise as i hv to describe my invention, the no.4 antenna that u attach to ur no.4 uniform, describe the two captains known as the 'tiger' and the 'wild boar', and the hardest part, remember what i said yesterday to convince him i'm not normal.. oh well..

anw such was the 'density' of the exercise yesterday that i had 6hrs to talk cock. so yeah.. welcome to signal institute..

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and so onto the hotly debated and argued (riiighhtt...) topic of politics.. not an area that a good and honest Singaporean who wants to survive in his country should discuss.

Besides, its a topic that i don't know much about, except for the fact that the public holiday known as polling day is on SATURDAY!! argghhh how cruel.. they better pay us civil slaves servants back a day of leave..

Now, don't you point that accusing finger that screams 'political apathy' and go away shaking your head, saying 'teenagers..'. I don't even get to read the newspapers at camp - a privilege reserved for officers and other permstaff at camp.. so how can u expect me to follow the politics scene, when i don't even get to follow the EPL??!!

oh the frustration of coming back home to find out "HARRR??" since when was west ham in the finals of the FA Cup? or since when did liverpool already play west ham in the EPL? or since when did liverpool cut united's lead to 3 pts?.. ohh the frustration of communication being down.. a feeling every signaller knows..

at least i don't hv to frustrate myself with "who's james gomez?" and "since when are we in aljunied??". i'm used to my house moving even though i've nvr moved house physically.. i guess thats what those pple living at the borders of wartorn countries feel.. without ever moving house, ur house moved from israel to palestine? well, minus the violence. for now..

and i found out the warrant officer who we affectionately call yoda for the simple reason that he resembles the wise old jedi, might be a neighbour of mine.. and its quite weird to find that a warrant officer might actually be known to my family.. hmmm.. i mean, there is Col Chua and Col Sanders (Kentucky Army) but still, this is a new feeling. mb bcos neither Col Chua nor Col Sanders work at Signal Institute. well maybe Col Sanders, but... hmmm.. =p

Anw, happy mayday (wonder why we nvr learnt the common phrase "mayday! mayday!") and may all ur labours prosper.. hurhur.. and crap, i've got to do guard duty again soon.. urgh. very soon..

out.

Balls to You too..

Do you know that there is a anti-BMT stage during our 2-yr/1.833-yr sentence of NS? or so i heard.. supposedly its to train us up to be civilians again.

put those eyebrows down.

this stage, i hv realised (though initially sounding dumb), is vital or else singapore wld be filled with guys (and girls) who punctuate their sentences with vulgarities. you know it, because the true meaning of these words are lost in the frequency that they're used at. i mean, they're used with a laugh often, hence the catchiness of a phrase that i've learnt.

technically "balls to you" is not a vulgarity. in comparison to other words, especially. though one WOULD refrain from using the term in front of one's mum or girlfriend or wife etc. but seriously its seems such a catchy phrase that i've begun to acknowledge it for a greeting - passing by friends in corridors/guard-duty-prowling-routes.. anw, it was introduced by my CC (Course Commander) as his way of saying "dream on/ to hell with that".. and now u can identify 20/05 trainees by that greeting they give.

anw that's a problem with the SAF-NSFs now here. another problem is this great divide of those with, and those without a certain mentality- the Serve And F-off (S.A.F) mentality. me? i've got a certain degree of this - i mean seriously, i'm not, never ever, going to join the army. but the problem is that some pple do not hv this mentality. AT ALL.. (those poor things..) and the dilemma is that these two groups of pple can nvr get along without hating/getting frustrated with each other. (and me being my usual diplomatic self can associate with both because of my sit-on-the-fence status regarding this mentality)

And LIVERPOOL hv beaten CHELSEA. die jose die.. mb the FA-cup is a step down from Champion's League. but well, its smthg that jose hasnt got. hurhur.. not this year at least..

anw, i'm gg to do smthg really stupid and really not advisable here.
562 days to ORD. =D.

cheers, out.

The Antibodies Hit Back

Interesting that out of the blue (purple?) i decide to change the template/layout of this blog. Reason? What else is there to do when one is confined within the four walls of his house..? And, yes, folks, i haven't left my humble abode this weekend.. in fact, over the past two weeks, i've not been out of my beloved estate or my not-so-beloved institute in another part of singapore.. and it does get kinda boring, even without other pple (understandably) getting frustrated with my chao-keng antics.

And so dear comrades, i realise that one can get falsely accused of chao-keng even when one isnt wearing green and brown..

But if all goes well I shall be up about and ready to fly to Alaska next weekend. and then my life will be back to normal.. hurrah.. man, i sound like such an optimist.. anw, how long CAN a flu bug live in you, refusing to budge? technically my temperature is down, at a safe temperature of 36.9, so i'd consider myself well under normal circumstances. Unfortunately for some reason this isnt "normal circumstances". not when it can rise from 36.7 to 38.7 in 8hrs (as proven on thursday..)

Oh well, i shall attempt to not be so dreary and thus dull for the sake of that meagre population of good people who faithfully visit this blog everyday (i.e. myself), and the slightly-more-than-meagre population to visit it periodically..

Come to think of it, i don't come here everyday.. geez.. but @UVLight is always active, just that when i'm in camp, its in HardCopy format.. speaking of which i sooo have to get a colour printer cartridge so that i can transform my exquisite works of photoshop art into print.. (these pieces of photoshop art is a result of my extreme boredom, and gosh, u dont know how boring it is - i even sometimes crave something to study!)

*i'll wait for those looks of horror to come off*

*oh hurry up will you*

I give up waiting..

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Ooh, i've just gotten a new assignment - a new task of LEARNING. "Geocities".. well, its a good way of spending this weekend.. apart from the "decorating" of the IC's report book that was so hastily handed on shoved into my hands..

But i'm not complaining.. being IC at S.I. is way cooler/easier/less stressfull than at Tekong.

And there's soccer tonight, though for the second consecutive weekend, Liverpool plays at 9pm on sunday, so i miss it because i'm on the way to my not-so-beloved camp on the other side of singapore.. anw, think i've blogged quite a fair bit already, so i'll leave y'all with smthg that my friend thiru has gotten me hooked on -

Winning (Spider Solitaire)!.. Note the difficulty level is not easy, hurhur =P

Roger so far? Out.

Chao-Keng Warrior...

One more week down. One less week before i get condemned posted to a new unit, where i shall serve the rest of my two-year - wrong - 1 yr 10mth sentence... Anw, i think i've just passed the most hectic week in this whole 8-week course. Unless one considers next week, which happens to be where all the tests seem to be concentrated. And the fact that the TextBooks are apparently not supposed to be seen being taken out of camp, its harder to study at home, especially if one has a transparent/translucent bag. But then, i think nobody in my platoon carries a transparent/translucent bag lah..

Anw, even so, i've fallen ill for the second consecutive weekend, so i probably would only be able to be resting in bed these two days. or three, if i decide to take up the noble vocation as a chao-keng warrior.. (and take MC on monday lah..)

But well, i know myself. Chao-keng is so not my business.. I mean, I went for two exercises with a fever after barely recovering from a fever.. and one of them was a "whole day till the next morning" sorta exercise.. which of course would explain why the fever came back today..

Anw, falling ill on the weekend is soo ma-fan.. firstly, i hv to sms everybody arnd and cancel whatever plans i had made over the weekend. then i hv to erase/cancel all the entries in my diary for the weekend. then i hv to sob over the fact that i cannot go out over the weekend. then i hv to curse myself "why couldnt i hv fallen ill on monday instead?".. troublesome..

then i realise that i've to stay home with insolent siblings erf.. wrong. sibling.

I wonder when i'll recover. To tell the truth, when i started to feel ill, i didnt take my temperature- i didnt dare. i knew what the temperature would be like. and suddenly i realise that i know how i feel at particular temperatures... i KNEW i was post-39deg even though i didnt use any thermometer.

Which also makes me realise how often i've fallen sick this year. and this after the proud 4-yr-without illness at anderson sec. I can tell my temperature by little symptoms.. eg..

• If i don't feel cold, i'm either <37>39. why? because past 39, your body radiates enough heat to warm up the surrounding air so you don't feel cold.. bullshit? i think its true.. sure there's smthg in the laws of thermal equilibrium to support my (far-fetched) theory..
• My mind starts to rush uncontrollably when i'm past 39.2. why? because controlling my vast mind is hard work, and after 39.2 my brain cannot control my mind no more.. hurhur.. fine.. i'm not gg to attemt to prove that far-fetched theory..
• When i'm past 39.6, i start to feel very very cold again..

so from all that evidence above i concluded i was 39.3 deg. anw, i think its damn scary if one were to use a digital temperature when one has a high temperature.. i mean, imagine (i neednt) the temperature shown on the thermometer jumping from 37.0 to 37.5 in one beep.. THAT is enough to scare the shit out of me lah, cos seriously, that wld imply that my temp is quite high.. anw i think i can recover by tmr!! righhttt..

aiyah very xian lah..

go exercise oso i lose my temper so many times.. sad case lah.. damned forthright, over-confident, condescending presences.. Go bloody OCS and learn how to command properly.. and u might know how mad i am that i am taking it out here @UVlight.. i normally hv the decency to conceal my dissatisfaction with pple.. but seriously, that exercise was a torture..

think i know whats wrong - i'm onli serious when i'm in a situation where i think i need to be serious. unfortunately in the wayang organisation where i work, i rarely see the need to be serious.. whereas there are others, so blatantly opposite from me who see the need to perpetually be serious and clinging on to the glimmer of non-existent hope of progressing in the military hierarchy. Why can't we accept that we have been condemned to the trenches of military hierarchy (and of the battlefield)..

there is no way u'd see us wearing crabs on our lapels telling pple with nothing on their lapels to rush in front of us to take the bullet for us.. urgh..

all right.. over and out..

Signal Warfare

Woah, and this week has been one hell of a week, and there are so many things to say that i doubt i can include everything that i want to say if i want to book in on time tonight (2200hrs)...

And well, perhaps one would realise that this is actually quite late for me to start an entry, but that is just because i've finally decided to take my panadol and now am feeling much better (even though i have to acknowledge that its actually merely pseudo-better).

Anw, i think this week wld hv started with a certain PUB scholarship interview that might hv gone totally awry, but i hv no regrets about it because i did what i set out to do - to be myself. N i noe myself to be amazingly unflinched when situations tend to go wrong.. anw, just hope that the assessors are nice. =)

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How do signallers fight? By communicating, perhaps? i think we did have a communication-warfare exercise with the platoon across the corridor on thursday. they came back at midnight, and "banged the doors and cupboard and switched on the corridor lights" and woke up a good deal of my platoon mates. But of course, me being the sleepy-head that i am, i didnt wake up lah.. but still it was quite enjoyable (thrilling) to partake in 20/05 (my platoon)'s revenge strike, albeit a small part. the revenge strike, of course took place in the morning, when the opposite platoon was recovering from their long night.. and there was quite a lot of noise coming from my platoon.. till they finally complained. but big deal lah, ultimately i think no point lah..

then on saturday saw all the badminton guys from anderson - 8 generations of them, in fact. all the way from MY seniors, to the sec 1's were there.. so even the most senior of the current andss batch were clueless as to who the oldest ones (who drove there) were.. which makes me wonder, soon i'll be the pakcik batch who comes driving.. woah..

Anw, that gathering, plus other activities carried out over the weekend and friday didnt do much to alleviate my fever, so well, i've finally consented to the panadol to relieve myself. and the ubiquitous reminders of "drink more water" (not onli the "drink more water" regulation of TSR)... yep..

Anw, TSR refers to training safety regulations which poses more of an inconvenience than a safety regulation. and i like the serious nature in which the TSR is referred to with.. anw, there's no point in taking an ATTEN B, course it really doesnt make much difference in SI.. surely the fever would break very very soon. i pray.

Oh well, i guess its back to camp and playing solitaire/minesweeper/microsoft hearts... =P

cheers~ n peace..