the first bookout post

ok the previous post was a bit short for a never-blog-for-14-days-and-just-come-out-of-confinement-post but it was because last night i was pretty tired and rushing to unpack stuff and such .. so i decided to write another one. i dont know how long this will be, probably very long cos i've alot to rant about. i guess i'll write till i have nothing left to say.
so if you're a busy person, navigate elsewhere. alt f4 + u is a very quick and fun thing to do

Not that i'm not feeling tired now.. my flu is making me feel weak and drowsy. Yea i got the flu last tues i think. around that time. then recovered abit.. then got it back on friday night. Seriously, Tekong has a Tekong Flu Virus. about 80% of the camp is sick, and 90% is coughing. for example, during the last RO (routine order, something like a debrief of the day), every 3 seconds someone coughed. I'M NOT EXAGGERATING. i counted.
and well it doesnt help that i was with my sick girlfriend the whole afternoon. probably caught a few million germs. but it was worth it =) felt slightly recharged after meeting her. just slightly.
get well soon girlfriend!

so what is army like? you may ask. i must be careful what i post here because apparently it's a criminal offence to leak secrets of the SAF onto the internet. i dont wanna get charged and get confined (stay in for the weekend and can't come out) for no reason.

Well, it's tough. First few days were physically challenging, given i was slacking my ass off after As and didn't exercise besides the weekly basketball. After my body got accustomed to the rigorous exercise, it became more mental than physical. My mind told my body to quit when my body could perfectly handle the stresses.
I recall on the 6th or 7th day i was feeling extremely homesick. Missed my mom, who was delighted everytime i called and said hi and talked for 1-2 minutes. :S
missed my gf who is stuck with her mundane job for 5 months, whom i'm connected by just the sense of hearing, listening to her speak on the phone. touch, sight, taste, smell , all absent.
missed my bestie who kept saying she has noone to sms anymore when i was msging her every night
missed the people in church, whom i stil wonder how they will react when they see me again after 2 weeks.
missed walking from point A to point B without a given time limit.

It got better as the number of days to bookout got under 7, as it became a rapid countdown. every day was still packed with activities, sprinting and running and doing chinups and pushups and the lame 'warmup exercises' (CPT 1) which is done before every physical training which tires you out before the training even starts.

My happy countdown mood was dampened when i found out amanda was sick too, about wed or thurs? Couldnt fully concentrate on whatever i was doing, however fun it was. wed and thurs was ridiculous, damn slack and got canteen breaks. thurs and fri we shot with rifles, how fun =)
I got about 4/6 for both kneeling/squatting position, and a perfect score for standing position (snap target - target comes out for 4seconds and disappears)
i totally sucked at prone position. i just couldn't see the target, it was too small, and i didn't really get the correct position to be in. it's hard to lie on the floor and still prop your rifle up well to line up your crosshair thing with the target :S


Today wasn't that great either. amanda was still pretty much sick, coughing quite badly and feeling crappy. Hence i had to talk more as her throat probably felt really terrible so .. she can't talk that much la. i dawned upon a shocking realisation too, but i shan't say it here cos it's hard to explain.
I felt bad in the morning but took panadol so i was ok for the afternoon. met chris too, was pretty fun disturbing her, and just talking to my best friend. she zhai la, got 9 points for 'O's leh.
mood was dampened again when amanda called and said she couldnt come for the dinner we were supposed to have, as her dad was fetching her home. oh well.

now? i dont feel that great . kinda flu-y kinda feeling, hope i get well before i book-in , otherwise i'll be doing all the pushups while sick. zzz. (next week is 'punishment week'. the sergeants supposedly can't punish us much for the first 2 weeks. like can't pump us yet. then this coming week can le. so i suppose they'll tekan us like mad)
i shall go sleep early, as girlfriend suggests, it's rare that i get more than 7 hours of sleep.

ah yes, army has this policy that all recruits must get 7 hours of rest. yes, rest, not sleep. The lightsout timing is 2230 (10.30pm) and wakup time is 0530 (5.30AM) , so assuming we fall asleep immediately we should have 7 hours of sleep.
But of course that's not possible, it takes about 5-10 minutes for an average person to fall asleep, and that's assuming he isn't disturbed by the noises of people running to their bunks, people packing their stuff into their cupboard, and snoring buddies after lights out.
And, some idiots who set their alarm at 430AM and snooze all the way till 5+ when everyone wakes out.
So it works out to about 5.5 hours of sleep for the past 14 days. wow, that's little. i averaged 8-10 hours during holidays. no wonder everyone in Tekong falls sick.

first bookout!

ah, civilisation.

as the ferry approached Singapore from Pulau Tekong, all the botak recruits stood up in their seats in awe at the lights coming from the skyscrapers from afar, a sight not seen in a looong time.

my mind wasn't that much on the lights. i was thinking about my home, my mom, my girlfriend, my best fren, meimei, friends... ahh. As much as i felt shiok booking out and coming back to singapore, i had to remember that the next 2 days were gonna fly past even faster than the 2 weeks.

First thing that i did when i reached home (besides the obvious of unpacking, talking to my mom, blabla) was take a nice slow hot shower. in army there's no hot water and there's no slow shower. There are about 5 guys queuing for the shower and they're burning their eyes into you. Yep, no doors. i think they dont put doors for that very purpose, to psychologically make you bathe faster
Not that there's alot of time to bathe, the time given for 'admin' (free time when u can bathe, wash clothes, call home, etc) is very short.

It felt really really weird when i grabbed hold of my mouse for the first time in 2 weeks. It felt big and unnatural. i'm gonna go play a game of warcraft later to test out if my psychomotor (how the hell do you spell this word it looks wrong) skills are still there anot :p

hmm, i hope amanda's ok now. she has been sick for 2 days. high fever :S pray for her! gonna meet her tmr (if she's not feeling totally concussed and gg) ! excited sia. never see her for so long. longest time since when we became friends (in late 2007) . even throughout As we got study together.

okkk time to go play warcraft. cya whoever is reading soon.

my last blog post

This is my very last blog post for the next 2-3 weeks! So.. i'll upload a bunch of pics alright!



last night i went to Wendy's Spizes or something lidat, some prata shop in thomson road. Their menu is super lame! the picture above was the front of the menu
If you can't read the words at the bottom, it says:
'We accept all Major Credit cards except yours'

And at the back of the menu it says:
'We accept all feedbacks except yours'

Yes, besides the blatant grammatical error, do you get it!? means they dont accept credit cards and dont want feedback la! haha. lamers

Anw my Last Supper was pretty fun.. there were 12 people!! just need 1 more then 13 then machiam the real Last Supper. Let's see.. there were: timo roy serene graham daniel mark dom joel gabs cheryl kel me
had fun laughing at the stupid things they say. ha. and of course the 'army grads' gave me more advice. grawl.
Only ate chocolate prata which frankly wasn't very satisfying. It's not the normal type of prata with chocolate sauce.. no , it's like.. they fry the prata with chocolate, such that it's like squares of crispy prata with a hint of chocolate. It's like, biscuit kinda crispy.
Give me Prata House's mushroom cheese anytime man!

Ah, and kel was so nice to fetch metimodom home after supper. he lives like, 5 minutes away from the place can. but he made the journey all the way to boonkeng to fetch us back. thanks kel!

ok enough of me talking, on to the pictures.

These first few pictures were all taken on the last day of school, by this guy in my class who's a photographer (in the club also) he just sent it via email.. so i post here loh.


erm, this was some experiment of his. it was taken with infra red film or something like that. The lollipop i was eating was brown i think. or some other colour besides blue.




ive no idea what we're doing. well.. if i'm not wrong teehao was trying to show that the beer bottle in his hand was good or sth.. and me and john are just.. i've no idea.

john is damn vulgar

me and teehao are goodboys.

whee

a pretty impromptu shot, i turned and saw jonathan (the photographer) aiming his big camera at me so i quickly smiled

NO IDEA what we're doing.

o6S04

dang im half covered. i think i'm trying to bite john or something

=)

can't say i miss my class, cos i don't. i just miss certain people. My class is not exactly very bonded or anything. oh well.