Basket.

I had declared today a complete day of rest, and did my best to follow it by remaining at home for most of the day, only foraying forth to collect my repaired spectacles. Time was well-spent putting enemy after enemy to flight in Rome Total War, watching Matrix Revolutions (which I now realise actually sucks quite a bit), reading and eating anything and everything worth the while I could find in the house. I'm just hungry a lot these days.

Tommorrow I attend our fourth class gathering in as many months (a very high frequency indeed), then step back into the past again at night as we have, of all things, a HISSOC exco reunion. It will probably largely be spent bitching about our mostly incompetent successors. We saved RMUN from disaster last year (which actually was supposed to be *their* year); I hope for divine intervention this July to rescue Singapore's largest student-run event from its organisers.

It'll certainly be good to be among people of my ilk again - for weeks and weeks I've been surrounded by (would-be) engineers, doctors and dentists. The hot topic of conversation is usually something to do with NUS Medicine Faculty applications/selection, and obviously I'm out of the loop once they start talking about it. I have also just about had enough of people, upon hearing of my MOE scholarship application, going "WHAT?! YOU WANT TO BE A TEACHER AH?!" with the requisite expression of shock and horror more at home on the face of a person who has just seen a school bus with 50 happy little children inside plunge off a ravine and disintegrate in a ball of fire.

Honestly, we might as well be from a different planet, a lot of the time. I can't understand what is the fun in Maths, and when I say I studied History at A-Level, they look at me as if I'm a tentacled alien being who has just materialised on Earth from the Andromeda star system.

To put it frankly, I need to talk to people whose ambitions are not to become ENGINEERS, of all things, when they enter the working world. I'm currently surrounded, and I've never felt the Arts-Science gulf more deeply.

The time finally came this week when my coursemates and I reached our individual physical limits. The stress, fatigue and various injuries accumulated over weeks of hard training hit home with a vengeance - we had by no means fully recovered from the tremendously exhausting outfield exercise last week when we were pressed right into deployment drill on Monday. The result: we dropped like flies and the medic became the busiest man on the field. Following almost immediately was the second outfield exercise of our course, Wednesday-Thursday. Not surprisingly, the casualty rate was even higher, and I was one of the worst-hit - strained my back and missed an entire night (literally) of the exercise. Watching my coursemates deploy the radar at 4am under the baleful eyes of the instructors, I was almost glad I got injured despite the pain (actually the Deep Heat hurt more) and potential seriousness of the injury.

I can get used to most things if I do them often enough, but I know I'll never, ever get used to being outfield. The less we go, the better, but I know we'll be out there fairly often.

I also severely dislike being treated as if I am made of iron, which is what the people who planned this course seem to expect of us trainees. 3km run in SBO the day after exercise? Ought to be a stroll in the park. The result? One more ICU case for Tan Tock Seng Hospital. No fucking joke, my coursemate is still in there and word has it he's been medically downgraded. It's that serious. For all the talk about safety first, the SAF still does plenty of bloody unsafe shit. It's not like I thought they would change, though. I guess they need more valuable male citizens to die and be all over the media and Parliament before they even think more about it.

And they call people "Singapore's only natural resource". We certainly aren't treated as if we are something half as valuable.

It is the end of one torrid week and soon enough, the beginning of another. One unpleasant discovery I have had the ill-fortune of making is that the outfield of good old Singapore island itself is by no means better (and in a number of respects actually worse) than that of Pulau Tekong across the shining sea. I never had much problems with mosquitoes in the latter-mentioned area, for instance; here, on the other hand, the critters seem to have been spawned from the depths of Hades, given their sheer persistence, ferocity and quickness. Heavens, they bite THROUGH the long 4. Oh, and did I mention most have white bands? Helllooo dengue!

And so we survived heat rash, horrifying abrasions and killer mosquitoes to haul ourselves through our first outfield exercise. All thoughts that ours would be an "outfield desk job" have been firmly vanquished from my mind. We are as much a combat vocation as any other, and I will not have anyone challenging this.

Before I left for the week, I read with some interest of the PSC scholar who was featured in the news because of some racist comments he made on his personal, private and password-protected weblog. As a result, he has a lot of people calling for his head. No surprise there. I do not condone racism, but a few things about this case perturb me.

For one, he made the comments on a personal website, which he stipulated was only meant for those closest to him to peruse. It was even password-protected; an unusual step for a blog. But someone cracked the password and displayed what he said over the very public domain of the Internet - something he never intended to do.

Why, then, is no one dealing with the obvious breach of ethics (understatement) that is the act of cracking someone's password and displaying the contents of a website he intended to be private for all to see? Why is everyone only focusing on his racism and not condemning the scum who stole this poor guy's password? It's ridiculous.

The very Singaporean tendency to make a mountain out of a molehill was also on full display in this case. Granted, he made offensive comments. However, we do not know why he made them, and the fact that he did not make them in a public domain suggests he had no intention of riling up anyone with them. Is one not entitled to one's own opinions? I do oppose the public expression of opinions such as these on the grounds that they can cause social disunity, but I see nothing wrong with merely holding them privately. If he had published his comments loudly and proudly on some public domain, by all means, sack him and burn him at the stake. But he did not.

Yet many, with nauseating and very Singaporean self-righteousness, are calling for his scholarship to be revoked, completely overlooking the fact that while he has indeed done something foolish, he has also had a wrong done to him. How many of these people would like it if the keys to their personal drawers were stolen and some very private and intimate objects taken and put on full display for all the public to see, afterwhich they are heavily criticised for what these objects show? Not many, I would wager. But here they are, loudly condemning someone who is in the exact same situation. It's plainly silly, but that's the typical Singaporean for you. Loud, hypocritical and overwhelmingly self-righteous.

I have this sixth sense that can usually tell me ahead of time when I'm going to get something very bad. I can't say it is 100% accurate, but it gets things right most of the time. Ie, when I feel I am going to get it bad, I AM going to get it bad.

I got the feeling last weekend.

And it turned out wonderfully spot-on.

The result: the roughest week since week 1 of BMT.

Monday and Tuesday passed very well, so I thought I might be safe. I scraped a pass on the hardest test I've had so far and got my best IPPT results ever. Wednesday was deployment. Horridly tiring, but nothing I couldn't take. It's 2am on Thursday and before we finally turn in, I was thinking the next day was time to book out.

Then the shit hits the fan. First, I am informed that I have guard duty this weekend. Ok, not so bad, well, burn my weekend but heck, everyone has to go through with this kind of nonsense. Shortly after, I commit one of the silliest errors one can commit in NS. The result is I am confined in camp for next Saturday. Two weekends vanished in a flash as I watched myself first get fucked by the powers to be then shoot myself in the foot.

I asked for excitement last week, and man did I get it. I'll know better next time.

A long week stretches ahead as I once more summon up the strength to drag myself back to serving my country. Even with this much practice at doing things I absolutely loathe, it's hard. I just don't want to go back to that bunk with its 10cm-thick (ie not very) foam mattress, filthy (although not so anymore) toilet, unearthly waking hours and strict daily routine. Yet I have to, as do thousands across the island, most of whom share similar feelings. I have to, as millions have in all the years before me. I have to, as the fate that awaits he who doesn't is worse still than this.

It still occasionally fills me with bitterness the intensity of which even I am surprised at that of this generation of my family, I'm the only one who has gone through the full BMT programme. Two cousins and my brother are medically excused on what I feel are very dubious grounds, another cousin is female and the last is a British citizen. They will never scramble to spend fifty precious hours of bookout time, never know the pain of weekend guard duty, never suffer in the sand (if you are lucky) and mimosa of the Pulau Tekong outfield. Nor will they ever serve the 13-year reservist cycle which I feel is even more of a pain in the ass than these two I am currently doing.

Whenever such thoughts surface, I just try to put them out of my mind. There never was much of a point thinking about it, and even less now that I've gone through said BMT and emerged not just unscathed, but, I feel, improved. But I can never get rid of them totally. Because I do think I'm just a never-ending battle between two sharply discordant personalities, neither of which has the decisive advantage over the other. I function very much according to which one is currently in the ascendancy. But it still rankles whenever I think about the amount of shit I had to go through compared to them.

These past bookouts, I've had a lot of time to think, and reminders of the past continue popping up. On the bus today, I had the fortune of seeing on TV Mobile the very teacher who caused such a shitstorm about short skirts among us more than a year ago. Then I learnt she was my brother's Biology teacher in RJ. Small world.

We talked plenty this weekend about all kinds of things; from personal experiences in RJ to the state of the world to the poor written English of plenty of Singaporeans (proved when we saw at the bus stop today a tuition centre recruitment pamphlet proudly proclaiming "We are dedicated to give the best of education to our students"). We have a lot to talk about, and sometimes I find this surprising because I don't think we are all that similar. He said his JC life was boring. I didn't tell him everything about mine.

Another thing I've come to realise is, my life has been dominated by religion. I was reminded of this again at the table today as my relatives exchanged views on the Church and Pope. My mother's side of the family is Catholic and my father's side Buddhist. Most of my closest friends are Christians, and most of them right from the time I began developing relationships have been Christian. Currently, two Christians and two Catholics share one bunk with me. I think I have to be the most superstitious atheist around. I still don't dare point at the moon for fear it will come down and cut my ear. I still believe in ghosts (although I think there may be a scientific explanation for them) and keep an open mind about aliens and alien abductions. I even pray (though not in the strictest sense of the word) sometimes, though only when confronted by the toughest of situations. And surely more than one person who knows me has heard me say "Someone up there doesn't like my face". What is more, I get these strange vibes now and again that I'm being played like a puppet on a string.

I guess I can't do much about something like this. It's by no means something bad, and I'm lucky enough that Singapore is a place where those with a religion accept and befriend someone who does not share their beliefs. It's just interesting how someone like me, who can, I will admit, be violently anti-religion should be surrounded by so many who so deeply believe.

I think I've softened a lot in many ways. I used to be all about absolutes. When I said "no", I meant it, and I would defend my right to refuse with everything I had, whether I in fact had that right or not. I guess as we all grow up and mature we can see the world isn't all in black and white and that it is foolish to keep seeing it that way.

As the warrant officers in their smart-4s drone on endlessly about the technical details of the AMAPS (Advanced Modular Azimuth Positioning System, what a mouthful), I've found plenty of time to think back to the far distant past and marvel at how the world has changed then. How I, in fact, watched it change. Our current batch was just four when the Berlin Wall fell and five when the Soviet Union collapsed. Earth-shaking events indeed, I was reminded as I watched a Discovery Channel feature on the Pope today (who remembers General Jaruzelski?). I only remember vaguely The New Paper's reports on the war in Iraq. But I don't need to go that far back. I just have to look at how, say, Zihao looked and behaved in Sec 1, how he did in Sec 4, how he did in JC and how he does now. I can already astound myself with the differences I find.

Maybe I ought to end this post now and soon, but I think I have a lot to write. It's making me feel better, in fact, somehow, some way. Expunging so many things I kept all through the weeks as I wrote post after post on the army. It doesn't deserve that much attention, is what I've come to realise. It hasn't exactly been life-changing, although it's changed some.

One-quarter into the year and it's probably time to take stock. So far, this year has been... boring. Yes, boring overall. It has largely just been one huge endlessly-repeating routine. School sure as heck wasn't, not for me it wasn't. I got new surprises everyday, sometimes pleasant, most of the time less than so. I remember thinking many more times than once the previous two years than I would like a little less excitement in my life; now I've got that, I suppose, and I find it's a bit hard to get used to.

Maybe I'm someone who likes challenges. I always thought I wasn't. But now maybe I can believe I am. Then again, everything looks easy after you've had the benefit of the passage of time.

I always stand back and take stock. Examine everything and see how life has treated me up till that point in time. Look at how I've changed over the years. Look at the kind of person I am. I've been doing a lot of that recently. And I haven't yet come to a conclusion as to whether I've actually changed or not.

But what I've realised, even long before now, even as I struggled on multiple fronts at various points in time, is that I've actually got luck on my side whenever it counts. Perhaps that is why I call myself an atheist but have never completely discounted religion. Perhaps that is how I've managed to keep a lid on the poisonous bitterness that every now and then threatens to rise to the surface. Perhaps that is how I have survived all fate has so far deigned to throw at me and picked myself up from every setback to face the next threat even as I look at others suffer much less.

Plenty may laugh when I say this, but I honestly do think I've been through a fair bit these 18 years. More, I daresay, than the average student of my ilk. Nor do I agree, as I possibly would have before, that JC students live comfortable, sheltered lives compared to so many others. Every situation has its worries and its difficulties. It may look easy, but it certainly isn't. Please don't compare apples and oranges.

Last word before I return to doing something that is my job but not my duty: take whatever comes and count your blessings. It isn't a bad way at all to live life.

With my newfound (relative) wealth, I have been able to afford some of the finer things in life, such as original copies of computer games. Got Rome Total War last week and haven't looked back since. There isn't a single strategy game that can render real-time battles better. The result, coupled with the fact that empire-building is addictive (something I have known since 1996), is a very compelling product indeed.

I also admire it for its realism - it's the most realistic strategy game I've seen so far, at least as far as the battlefield is concerned (armies still don't need supplies on the march). There's no more nonsense like your own cavalry charging through your ranks without causing harm or your own archers hitting the enemy but not you own engaged men. The result is that, after you win a great victory, you really do feel a sense of achievement.

Real life, though, matters more, and it's been quite a bore lately. I once said I wish I didn't have so much excitement (ie trouble) in my life; now I think I need some. Isn't that just one paradox of mankind?

Hahaha, PSC rejected me. Completely expected, of course, although I may have let myself dream for a little while after the results came out. Always keep your feet firmly planted on the ground even while you have you head in the clouds; always be prepared for the worst and know how bad it actually can be. I don't think there has been a philosophy that has served me better my whole life.

Sunday and soon enough time to head back again. Takes an effort of will to do so sometimes.

To end off, RIP Pope John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla 1920-2005. He was a better pontiff than many before him.

George Kennan (he of the Long Telegram, Article X and the Containment Policy, remember?) died on March 17 and I didn't even know. Well, there goes yet another significant historical figure from the last century. Now the Pope is going too; one of the many things John Paul II was was a potent figure for the Poles of Solidarity to rally around in the face of iron-fisted oppression in the early 1980s. They've been dropping like flies since we entered the 21st century, it seems. Especially those from the Cold War era.

I haven't read Cold War history in a very long while, but it was never my topic of choice. Nor do I see any fresh new perspectives on the conflict about to emerge. It's been examined so much that it's now boring.

I also do not think Singapore gets enough books on alternate history - or maybe there just aren't enough to get. Plenty of those that people would call alternate history I prefer to regard as (alternate) historical fiction; a story set in a world made different by a twist in the past.

I think I need to go out and get a nice, thick history book and lose myself in it.

Friday, April Fools' Day, and I'm back home again. A lot of the time these days, the military seems like school. The only things that remind me it isn't are: a)I cannot go home everyday b)The wonderfully stifling No.4 uniforms c)The occasional knock-it-downs d)Last but not least, the variety of powerful weapons devised for mass annihilation of fellow human beings I have the good fortune to see at least a few times a week.

Otherwise, we largely sit in classrooms at rows of desks (seriously) with pen and paper, wearing the same uniforms, listening to a teacher up front who uses whiteboards and Microsoft Powerpoint to teach us what we have to learn. We take notes and we have textbooks and lecture notes. Oh, and we have tests too. And PE twice a week (PT sessions actually).

And to complete the similarities, I'm being forced to learn what I have absolutely no interest in learning. Isn't life beautiful? Thirteen years in the system and I thought I was through with it. Well, time to think again. At least I'm used to it though. One thing mandatory conscription has taught me is that you can live with anything - after you get used to it.

It's a bit sad I don't have much better to write about, but I'm not called a Full-Time National Serviceman for nothing.