ever since i was slapped with the reality of national service, it has dawned on me that as much as we may wish it weren’t so, a plain fact of human relationships is that people do come and go. friends whom you used to rely upon can become mere strangers in a matter of months. it's a sad fact but i guess that's life.
casual meet ups in the canteen are no longer, a chance meeting in the library are past. and so it takes a greater degree of effort to keep in touch with the people you feel are the most important to you.
on a happier note, managed to book out on a friday night this week which was quite awesome. but then didnt really plan anything for lunch the next day. lunch with hochwin didnt materialise in the end. so i saw our very good friend wenyu online and asked him out for lunch. apparently he had been on att c the last couple of days. that bitch. anyway met for lunch and walked around the ion for a while where we bumped into so many people. felt much like a tourist in the new and sparkling surroundings. met daryl eng, mr combat e, by chance and sat day for a short chat. then later on flew down to iluma, another new shopping mall, to meet siyi to catch harry potter. show wasnt that great i thought. conversation was centered mainly on her impending prelims. it was only a year ago i was in her shoes and studying so furiously for my exams. and at that point of time i had so much wanted to enter the army instead. how time has altered our perception of things
was supposed to meet sheng in the evening, however he had some important things to attend to so i decided to get home. it was such a coincidence that mr siddiq poh happened to be on a bus and saw me and decided to alight. and so we went to heeren for a light dinner. i do treasure such chance meetings. i do like this bunch of ppl, the soccer juniors, benji, siddiq. do hope they do decently well for their A's.
well i guess that's all for now
I WANNA JUMP
i need a holiday now..
:)
well my block leave has officially ended. :(
and really i dont know what i'm feeling now. quite sian about the fact that i have to book in tmr at 8. and really there's no word adequate enough to portray that feeling. and i dont want to go to bed cos i know the moment i wake up i'll be getting ready to leave for camp. okay i cant complain enough so i shall stop here.
on another note, noelle left for australia today. happy for her that she's going overseas to study which is what she always wanted. beginning a new chapter in her life. but sad at the same time cos there'll be one less person for me to talk to. yeah and i guess there are questions that i wanted to ask but never did and things i wanted to say but never had the guts to. though we might have drifted quite a bit since i went into the army, i still do fondly remember the times we spent together, in school studying, playing tennis doing a whole lot of random stuff, the nice lunch and dinner dates, the occasional poker nights where we would help each other make decisions. i think it was after ct2 in j2 that we got closer. and of course i did pretty badly as usual. and then we became sort of study buddies haha. text-ing each other to update about our progress and being each other's alarm clocks. haha all which made studying a whole lot more bearable. yeah i just wanna say thanks for entering my life :). hahaha this sounds so solemn. i guess we can still keep in touch through email and skype (after i figure out how to use it)
have fun down under!
i never really thought much about a blog till now and i think it does serve as a medium for me to recollect what happened in the past. maybe when i'm thirty, flirty and thriving (haha got this from the movie 13 going on 30) i'll happen to come across this humble blog and what wonderful memories it may bring back. and i'm quite happy about the fact that i think no one actually bothers to visit my blog except for one, athena. (and i know athena you'll probably be reading this haha) i may change the url after all to keep it entirely private. but too lazy to think of one now so probably next time!
anyway i got up really reluctantly on saturday morning and made my way to church to teach these kids some math. my first student was this pri 3 indian boy and my second student, a sec 5 girl who's taking her o levels this year. i shan't elaborate too much but i really hope they put in more effort into their work and do well for the exams..
later on in the afternoon, took a bus over to orchard where i was supposed to meet shun yee for coffee. but she cancelled on me cos she wasnt feeling too well. get well soon! bumped into jake and one of his many 'church friends' at ben sherman hahah. yes he indeed has many 'church friends' met ho chwin at about 6 then we took bus 14 to sheng's place. hahaha thank god i dropped sheng wei a text before i took the bus. this was how the sms-es went...
me-- is there any other bus we can take besides 16, it's super crowded.
sheng-- it's bus 14 not 16.
so we got there pretty early. cat and weehao were there already. played a little wii then went down to the bbq pit! OCTs took over the setting up the fire while the pes Cs (hongyao in particular) did what they do all the time, nothing. took quite a while to start the fire. then it started pouring! i was the cook for the night haha. first time i actually did some bbq-ing. i used to be the guy who waits for someone else to do the cooking.. the food was quite good actually, besides the 'bullet-proof' beef
steak.
wenyu, zhun wen and kristle left at about 10. wenyu, to zouk to meet up with some rj peeps at some philbert-organized party. was supposed to go down too, but was too lazy to get out of sheng's house. so bear, jacob and i stayed over in the end. i totally died on sheng's bed and before i knew it, it was morning already. washed up and flagged a cab which brought us to bear's house in bukit timah. subsequently, went over to st ignatius church for mass. my very first visit to that church.
hopped onto another cab which brought me to the Prata house in thomson. was second to arrive. not bad by my standards haha. zhen and jon arrived slightly later, bruno, athena and jared couldnt come for various reasons. had quite an enjoyable outing, talking about people hahah. left the place at about 3.30pm and took my third cab of the day. rushed down to lido for the 3.30pm transformers show. as you can see, i was late. transformers was quite the action-packed show. oh ya forgot to mention who i watched it with. john and wenyu ( who booked out for the first time in a long time) met ho chwin afterwards for dinner. and bought ice cream from this cute girl at the taka food fare haha.
was waken abruptly this morning by a call from rachel. it was ten already! and i was supposed to meet her for breakfast at ten. told her that i was on the way already but she found out i was lying oops haha. bought her breakfast to make up for my 'punctuality'. spent 2 hours before she left for town to get her laptop case. she'll be flying off to the uk in september to study math and science at warwick.
wow this is really quite a long post. shall end here though. another day of freedom before hell begins once again. that is when my life begins to suck
i miss school
i'm losing my memory. i cant remember things that i used to be able to remember. i cant remember events that just happened a while ago. i think my brain is slowly wasting away. no this can't possibly happen.
on another note, today marks the end of the third day of my block leave :( let me recall what happened little by little. oh ya, got back to singapore on wednesday morning! okay wait i'm stuck now i cant remember what i did on wednesday and this is not a joke or something, i honestly cant remember ugh..
on thursday, met shanan for lunch at adam's road. queued up for the renowned adam road nasi lemak. the fragrant rice and succulent meat made the meal a mouthwatering delight. went over to island creamery after that where i a scoop of horlick's ice cream! it was gooood haha. before getting home, i stopped by the dvd shop. rented 'taken' cos i heard it was a rather good show. watched the show later on in the afternoon together with myy mum and dad. it was indeed quite good!.didnt regret spending 5 bucks to rent the dvd. but honestly i think rentals should be cheaper shouldn't it?
at about 8, i took the long journey to the east. paya lebar to be exact. took over an hour to get to my home for the night, parkview parade, kai sheng's apartment. played poker the entire night, or should i say morning, till 7am. won a total of 63 bucks. then took a cab ride over to carls'junior at east coast where we had our breakfast. following that we took the most expensive cab ride know to mankind home. the total cab fare amounted to a cool $40.55. wow. anyway i paid for most of it since i won quite a bit of money.
slept a totla of 6 hours from 9am to 3pm and skipped lunch at the same time. woke up and rushed over to braddell (is that how you spell it?) to visit our dear bruno who's on mc cos of a concussion. great to see him alive and kicking. athena, jared and ain left for various places after that while nicole and i joined bruno and his parents for dinner. made our way to serangoon gardens' sushi tei where we had a scrumptious dinner courtesy of bruno's dad, leong sim. the plan was to go to aston's in the beginning, but after realising it was situated in this hawker centre with no aircon, we decided that the ambience was not up to our stringent standards. had rocher tau hui for dessert after which burno's dad gave me a lift all the way home. yupp that very much sums up the last 2 days. haha hopefully this blog will help me to recall stuff in the future. thank you very much.
gotta teach small kids math in church tmr. honestly i really dont feel like going cos 1) i'm plain lazy and i want to sleep more. 2) i think i can't remember any math anymore and i really am too lazy to go study
at exactly 7.19am this morning, SQ 8991 touched-down and the singapore changi airport. so what significance does this have? well it marks the beginning of hte well anticipated BLOCK LEAVE! :D feels great to be back. i'm free as a bird, for a week at least..
brunei wasnt as bad as i thought. most of the first day was spent travelling to our accomodation in brunei. a 2 hour flight, followed by a 3 hour boat ride, then finally a 20 min bus ride, we were transported right to the very doorsteps of Resort Lakiun, our home for the next 10 days.
had our guided navigation exercise nomad on day 2 which was pretty slack cos the instructor thought we were good enough after 2 check points so we ended up being the very first group to get back to bunk, while the rest had to conmplete all 6 check points. day three marked the beginnining of platoon training. platoon battle course to be exact. we were thought how to go about doing ridgeline fighting as well as trench clearing. the terrain was indeed an obstacle. steep slippery slopes and torny plants provided us with the additional natural enemy to overcome. had 2 or 3 runs in total.
the navigation exercise began full flow on the fourth day. it was a 2 day 1 night mission where we had to locate 2 checkpoints, a passage point and finally an end point. being part of the second wave, my detail, tango 19, consisting of nicholas, zixuan, jiawei augie, melvin, chunyang, billy lang, staff tanu, benedict, colin and some other annoying guy, left 2hours later then the rest. we found our first 2 checkpoints rather quickly before it started raining. we were moving ahead of time. by the end of the first day, we were in between cp2 and pp1. an encouraging achievement as most groups only manage to get to the second checkpoint at the end of the first day. built a decent shelter for myself and chunyang , which kept us dry and warm for the night.at first light, we set off for the remaining 2 check points. to the disbelief of many, at 7.30am, we arrived at our end point, setting a new unofficial armour record for being the earliest team to arrive. we got back to camp at about 9.30am and were rewarded with a 2 hour canteen break.
had another 2 battle courses the next 2 days which i wouldnt like to elaborate any further