Basket.

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.