~JcZw

In church I finally discovered the song "Be Still", the second song I attached to the blog in year 1... The one which no one knew what it was, but I left it there cos it sounded nice (No, its not the one that goes "I will be still and know you are God")... Maybe if I can find that midi again which sounded so nice I shall attach it again =)

This week was the longest week in camp ever and also the most scary cos some *beep* commanders were threatening the toilet cleaners with confinement if the little bits of dirt between the tiles could not be scraped away - even after we'd hit it with everything we had including the remainder of the toilet cleaning fluid, various cloths, fingernails and a jackknife or two. Were times when I felt highly compelled to point out that our toilet was already VERY clean compared to the one at Pasir Ris MRT station, not to talk about those of the other companies...

Well, its but three days to go before I leave Tekong as a private rather than a recruit, and can get back to re-growing my hair... But between here and then there are at least 3 more stand-bys, an inspection by the CO ("especially Platoon 1 [by virture of being on the lowest storey]" according to our CSM), BAC in which we will get totally muddy and so on. Still, IPPT is done, as is SOC (though it took me three attempts to scale the wall), so that's something....

Then it'll be graduation, and one week plus of fun.... Am planning to go back to fencing and maybe St. John haha... but Zone comp has been pushed back so I won't be able to go for it or for the NYP occupational therapy talk before I get my next posting =/

There was games day in which Bronco got second... Sigh, was in the drill squad which got second last (not our fault cos we only had a proper training the night before), and one of the games in which I performed miserably.... So far the only team game I've ever won in my life seems to be Zone Comp 2004 =/

But also several events took place which remind me why sometimes I am so heartily sick of army... There are just people who have such weird values, even if they may be nice the rest of the time....

There was an instructor who said "I hope there's a war in my lifetime. It will be quite interesting. Die young also not bad what". Hello. I've never heard such immature naive thinking. What kind of sick-in-the-head idiot wants war to break out? Do you really want to see your fellow soldiers, your friends back in civillian life and more importantly your family getting shot / burned / blown up / any of the hundreds of terrible ways to die in a war?

Then there was another instructor who said "There were some of you who came in very clean, and who now don't give a *beep* about saying f***. That's normal. After all we are all guys". Okay, if being a guy means having to fit this kinda image, I'd rather not be considered one. No wonder there is more than one person saying that guys nowadays aren't gentlemen. I hope to goodness my filtering system never gets penetrated... Hope God helps me like he has helped my church friends...

Then there was Recruits' Evening which started out well and ended with me wondering why every NS guys seems so deprived. Don't let the next paragraph be misleading... the performances WERE good, and there were some really funny bits in which I nearly laughed myself to death too, but still....

I mean sure we spent the whole week with other organisms who have Y chromosomes on their 23rd pair, but that night the atmosphere seemed to be carried on a wave of rushing hormones just because some of the performers were female, which made me feel very uncomfortable. Spending the night listening to crude jokes and comments from the people around me, hearing people cheer just because the performer used the f-word, and so giving him some affinity with the rest of the school... It just makes my skin crawl. And at the end of the thing there were still people who asked me why I was so cold and not jumping around enjoying myself. How does one enjoy an activity which goes against almost everything one has been brought up with?

Its like the same people who say that we should be learning how to go clubbing, learning how to drink and etc cos "we are becoming adults". But why should we learn? I don't need to get AIDS to know that it can kill me. Recruits' Evening ended as a massive sensory overload which left me feeling more than a little concussed, and an even stronger stand never to go clubbing. If I have to endure such volume in an enclosed space I think I'll just shrivel up and die.

Maybe the reader thinks I'm being prim and proper and stuckup and gu niang and not daring to step out of the danger zone. But the fact remains that being crude, cursing and swearing doesn't endear you to any decent person.

Maybe that's the reason why when I'm in public in my uniform I'd rather keep my cap on pulled as low over my face as I can and read my Star Wars book rather than look around. Cos to the general public a new recruit is crude, deprived and a generally rather primitive lifeform =/

Sigh oh well.... Maybe that's all the catharsis (is that how it's spelt) I need for now. I'm praying that every idealistic NSF like myself who came in, and who is coming in, who made up his mind not to be influenced by army is granted God's strength to fufill his aim, cos the atmosphere in army at times can be whoa.

At least the week ended with going to Open Houses with a bunch of classmates and then to a senior / junior class outing which was a little of a letdown due to different circumstances, but still, it definitely beats the rather trying life in army haha.... Maybe there'll be another in the near future...

Well time for dinner and then the last Tekong book in. 72 hours and I'll be laughing =)