Basket.

It's been a sodden 48 hours all across the island, and set to continue for another two days. One part of me believes this to be excellent news, because it sure beats hot sun + 100% humidity, but another remembers in great detail the various sufferings I have undergone in foul weather.

Such as the time of the "100-year rainfall" way back in 2000, when there was simply absolutely no keeping dry no matter what you covered yourself with, when the porch and canteen in RI were flooded (the sight was truly amazing) and when the normally leisurely 10-minute walk to the Ministry of Education Language Centre turned into an epic journey of endurance. Or further back than that - RI's infamous Cross Country 1999, when the heavens only chose to open after everyone had made it to the (unsheltered) start point. My bag became an aquarium and my books the little fishies, only it is alright for fish to get wet but most definitely not textbooks.

More recently, there was the time Zihao and I contrived to get lost in town during a thunderstorm (end 2003 and there is a post about it, somewhere here) and had to wade through ankle-deep waterto get to our destination late. Then I came home and stepped in freezing dog piss to complete a wonderful evening.

And of course, being outfield in or immediately after weather like that is misery of the most abject sort. I can look back on the 8th FATA Trade Course and remember the time when I stepped into a deceptively shallow puddle and watched my entire foot vanish into the brown morass. Or the time during exercise when I had to wait for the convoy at our selected deployment ground for one-and-a-half hours, amidst mud and damp and with a pair of bees buzzing threateningly around my head (I later found out that they were prepared to let me rot there for a good while longer - to actually have dinner first, then move out! Well, that's certainly "Care for Soldiers", don't you think?); it later became the "defining moment" of my NS, for an essay we had to write for reasons unknown to me. I turned what was meant as a reflective piece on the wholesomeness of mandatory conscription into a sardonic diatribe against the system, and I never heard anything about my submission ever again. Not strange.

Back in tommorrow, but I don't mind in the least, because boss is gone and a Playstation does wonders for morale. More than any foolish battalion cohesion event ever can.