I haven’t been blogging over the past week or so because I’ve taken a little trip to hell and just got back. Figuratively speaking, of course. This past week has been audit week, with the preparations really taking their toll on me. Things are suddenly in one big mess, standards and practices that were norm are now deemed unlawful and have to be changed; changes and radical ideas are hastily implemented; “holes” have to be dug to cover up all the “extra” items that have appeared over the years; documents suddenly need to meet new standards that were never in place before. All for one big show for the auditors who are simply clueless like walking question marks. They poke here and there, trying to find discrepancies that have not been adequately covered up. Bur more or less, there is simply nothing much to find. And to accomplish this inhumanly feat, I and the rest of my compatriots, have been working 12, 13, even 14 hour shifts. There was once, I started work at 5 in the morning and didn’t end till about 6 in the evening! And the next day was no different. So obviously, if everyone is running ragged, there will be those who will fall sick. So as the week progressed, more and more people started going down. I lasted till Wed before going down. There were quite a number who weren’t far behind.
Well the comforting part is that I managed to get my off for Friday approved, and used it to learn driving. Went all out this time and took a 2 hr lesson. I went about the U-turn course before proceeding to my 1st lesson on performing a 3-point turn. Looks easy? Hardly. The illegal 3-point turns done with lots of space, with a slot or lot at one side don’t count. Using only a 2 lane road, and with those 2 lanes of space alone, do a 3-point turn to face the car in the opposite direction. Rules are, that if any part of the car, may it be wheel or bumper, touch the curb, it would be considered an unsuccessful turn. Not much space to work with. Well, I gotta work on that. On the brighter note, my general driving has improved quite a lot, although my U-turn still needs improvement. At this rate by test day I should be good to go!
Friday, October 28, 2005
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Beginning of the End?
It’s been a week since I last blogged, and it has been a slow week. My Sat was spent playing basketball as usual, but this time we started by playing full court. There were some young funks that were there when we got there, and they joined us for a few games, with the amount of people there; we had to play full court. It was a tiring few games, running up and down the court. I usually lingered behind most of the action, seldom venturing far from the centre line of the court in case I had to run back and intercept the ball. After that few games, it started drizzling pretty hard, and with the sun out at the same time, we decided to stop playing. When we resumed play, enough players left for us to change it back to a half-court game. A few more games later, the new additions completely left, and the fun finally started. We continued to play till about 1+ before calling it a day. After going for lunch with Ben, Yun and CW, made my way home where I fell asleep till about 5. That pretty much ended my Sat.
I had to wake up early on Sun to go for my driving lesson in the morning. Counting on the fact that I usually get to sleep in on Sun, it was a pretty hard thing to do. Waking up I then realised that I had strained my back from the basketball game on the previous day and it was pretty stiff. Went for my driving anyway, and sitting down and controlling a car, didn’t really affect me much. Managed to perfect my U-turning technique and the next lesson I will be learning how to do a 3-point turn. Whee… It will be the first time that I would be using the reverse gear. But that will have to wait as my Sqn is having its audit next week and I cannot take any off to learn driving. And, to top off the bad news, Sat should be a flying day for the Sqn, meaning that I will have to go back! Sianz… And if this isn’t bad enough, there is news to prepare to work 12 hr days from tomorrow onwards till the audit starting on Mon. Haiz… So if you realise that I seem to be increasingly absent, you know why.
Anyway, I got to go play my last game of Counterstrike: Source for the rest of the week. Till the next time.
I had to wake up early on Sun to go for my driving lesson in the morning. Counting on the fact that I usually get to sleep in on Sun, it was a pretty hard thing to do. Waking up I then realised that I had strained my back from the basketball game on the previous day and it was pretty stiff. Went for my driving anyway, and sitting down and controlling a car, didn’t really affect me much. Managed to perfect my U-turning technique and the next lesson I will be learning how to do a 3-point turn. Whee… It will be the first time that I would be using the reverse gear. But that will have to wait as my Sqn is having its audit next week and I cannot take any off to learn driving. And, to top off the bad news, Sat should be a flying day for the Sqn, meaning that I will have to go back! Sianz… And if this isn’t bad enough, there is news to prepare to work 12 hr days from tomorrow onwards till the audit starting on Mon. Haiz… So if you realise that I seem to be increasingly absent, you know why.
Anyway, I got to go play my last game of Counterstrike: Source for the rest of the week. Till the next time.
Monday, October 10, 2005
Slow Week
After blogging all this while, I have finally arrived at a stumbling block in blogging: Nothing exciting to write about. Yes, I like many other people are leading a some what boring life. Doing NS doesn’t help. Trust me. If it’s exciting, but it has some link to what I am doing in camp, then it is best to leave it there and not write anything about it. This is to prevent people from knocking at my door in the middle of the night. So counting that I spend a large part of my time in camp, it leaves me with this stumbling block of what to write. And the title doesn’t really help either. I’ve been cracking my brain more and more over the title, than what is actually said in the entry itself. Are these recipes for disaster? I surely hope not. So as long as I continue rambling here, I hope that you continue reading.
This week passed pretty quickly, because of the Sembawang Air Base Anniversary celebrations. Friday was the celebrations, with an outing to Safra Yishun to have the standard bowling competitions, along with the air-rifle and LAN competitions. Sounds like fun? I thought so too. The day didn’t exactly start very well, because when I reached Northpoint Mac to meet some of my camp buddies in the awful looking squadron T-shirt, only to be informed that I was supposed to bring along a polo tee for a dinner in the evening. After much deliberation, I decided to buy one instead of going all the way home to get one. So after lunch, Stanley and I set out to buy a polo tee. After searching through the whole of Northpoint, we finally ended up at Hang-Ten. I bought 2 polo tees for $26, because all the shops seem to have this promotion of charging u almost ½ price for a piece if u bought 2 or 3. Like the one from Hang-Ten was $23 each, but went @ $13 apiece if I bought 2. So I bought 2, and since Stanley already had his polo, I bought both for myself. Once I had bought my tee, we met up with the rest of them and took a ride to Safra.
Safra was pretty nice, and within walking distance to Yishun MRT. Makes me wonder why after holding on to the safra card for so long, I never went to make use of the place. Maybe it’s because that the card doesn’t give much discount! All the prices in there didn’t have a member price, so now I’m wondering why I pay $3 a month for the card. Yes, it’s not free. Well, the competitions started and people like me, who didn’t join anything, were all left there drifting around. And lucky I didn’t. Some of them who joined the LAN competition got really fuming mad when after waiting for their round for 2 hrs, were told there was not enough time for them to play and that they were eliminated. To make matters worse, there was a lot of time leftover, they just didn’t want to conduct it.
Meanwhile, 2 of my campmates and I, stole off to Northpoint for some entertainment. We ended up spending most of our time playing the arcade. When time was about up, we made our way back and slipped back into the crowd. While mingling around, saw my S1 standing and staring across the road. Jokingly asked her what she was guarding, and she told me she saw 2 guys slipping out and crossing the road to go buy something opposite Safra and asked me if I knew who they were. I replied her casually: “I don’t know, I just came back from Northpoint myself so I didn’t see anything.” The stunned look on her face was worth a thousand words sia. I believe that she thought that everyone stayed around and that we were having a good time. Haha… If she only knew that we weren’t the only ones there. Haha…
Proceeded to change out of my horrible squadron t-shirt and into my polo tee before boarding the bus back to camp. The celebrations in camp consisted of performances by the Music and Drama Company, and a buffet. Most of us were interested in the free-flow beer that came with the buffet and the buffet itself of course. We came out with a strategy of 8 people sitting at the table going for the 8 different food points giving out different food. Then bring it back to the table and repeating till the table was full. It worked out perhaps a bit too well, with all of us getting stuffed silly at the end of the day. One of my friends even got drunk on the free flow beer. Then he left before us and started messaging us weird stuff. Haha… I don’t think he can remember doing that. Poor guy was totally wasted. I made my way home at about 9+, completely stuffed but sober.
Saturday was spent playing basketball with the gang at Gombak. We played 4 vs. 3 till about 10, before KW decided to make his appearance. Continued playing till it rained at 11. Once the rain died down, all these basketball crazy fools started to play in the rain. It was pretty funny, playing unable to run much, scared to jump and passing most of the time since bouncing at certain areas of the court was impossible. And there were the water effects while we played. Concluded our game once the rain stopped and KW got hungry. I skipped lunch with them, because I had lunch waiting for me at home.
The rest of my weekend was pretty much spent playing CS and sleeping. Managed to help my mom make Tiramisu! Haha… Yummy treat! But that is for another time. This is making me crave for a piece. Off to get one! Ciao~
This week passed pretty quickly, because of the Sembawang Air Base Anniversary celebrations. Friday was the celebrations, with an outing to Safra Yishun to have the standard bowling competitions, along with the air-rifle and LAN competitions. Sounds like fun? I thought so too. The day didn’t exactly start very well, because when I reached Northpoint Mac to meet some of my camp buddies in the awful looking squadron T-shirt, only to be informed that I was supposed to bring along a polo tee for a dinner in the evening. After much deliberation, I decided to buy one instead of going all the way home to get one. So after lunch, Stanley and I set out to buy a polo tee. After searching through the whole of Northpoint, we finally ended up at Hang-Ten. I bought 2 polo tees for $26, because all the shops seem to have this promotion of charging u almost ½ price for a piece if u bought 2 or 3. Like the one from Hang-Ten was $23 each, but went @ $13 apiece if I bought 2. So I bought 2, and since Stanley already had his polo, I bought both for myself. Once I had bought my tee, we met up with the rest of them and took a ride to Safra.
Safra was pretty nice, and within walking distance to Yishun MRT. Makes me wonder why after holding on to the safra card for so long, I never went to make use of the place. Maybe it’s because that the card doesn’t give much discount! All the prices in there didn’t have a member price, so now I’m wondering why I pay $3 a month for the card. Yes, it’s not free. Well, the competitions started and people like me, who didn’t join anything, were all left there drifting around. And lucky I didn’t. Some of them who joined the LAN competition got really fuming mad when after waiting for their round for 2 hrs, were told there was not enough time for them to play and that they were eliminated. To make matters worse, there was a lot of time leftover, they just didn’t want to conduct it.
Meanwhile, 2 of my campmates and I, stole off to Northpoint for some entertainment. We ended up spending most of our time playing the arcade. When time was about up, we made our way back and slipped back into the crowd. While mingling around, saw my S1 standing and staring across the road. Jokingly asked her what she was guarding, and she told me she saw 2 guys slipping out and crossing the road to go buy something opposite Safra and asked me if I knew who they were. I replied her casually: “I don’t know, I just came back from Northpoint myself so I didn’t see anything.” The stunned look on her face was worth a thousand words sia. I believe that she thought that everyone stayed around and that we were having a good time. Haha… If she only knew that we weren’t the only ones there. Haha…
Proceeded to change out of my horrible squadron t-shirt and into my polo tee before boarding the bus back to camp. The celebrations in camp consisted of performances by the Music and Drama Company, and a buffet. Most of us were interested in the free-flow beer that came with the buffet and the buffet itself of course. We came out with a strategy of 8 people sitting at the table going for the 8 different food points giving out different food. Then bring it back to the table and repeating till the table was full. It worked out perhaps a bit too well, with all of us getting stuffed silly at the end of the day. One of my friends even got drunk on the free flow beer. Then he left before us and started messaging us weird stuff. Haha… I don’t think he can remember doing that. Poor guy was totally wasted. I made my way home at about 9+, completely stuffed but sober.
Saturday was spent playing basketball with the gang at Gombak. We played 4 vs. 3 till about 10, before KW decided to make his appearance. Continued playing till it rained at 11. Once the rain died down, all these basketball crazy fools started to play in the rain. It was pretty funny, playing unable to run much, scared to jump and passing most of the time since bouncing at certain areas of the court was impossible. And there were the water effects while we played. Concluded our game once the rain stopped and KW got hungry. I skipped lunch with them, because I had lunch waiting for me at home.
The rest of my weekend was pretty much spent playing CS and sleeping. Managed to help my mom make Tiramisu! Haha… Yummy treat! But that is for another time. This is making me crave for a piece. Off to get one! Ciao~
Monday, October 03, 2005
Rain
It has been a long time since I’ve blogged…again. Been pretty busy in camp lately, doing guard for people twice during the week. 2X a week in a span of less than 5 days. As most of u have realised, it’s been raining almost every other day for the past 2 weeks. This is good news for me if I was at home with no where to go, but when I’m in camp, it means that the shift will be getting extended. But on the upside of things, after Friday’s rain, I think my camp just got a new “swimming pool”! Hahaha… don’t think I want to go swimming there any time soon.
Doing NS is getting kind of boring, doing the same things everyday in a different order. I’m starting to feel that my brain is slowly beginning to reduce to a puddle of unusable muck. Argh! I see the effects happening now. At this rate, I don’t know what state I’ll be in by the time I ORD.
Anyway, on another note, if u have been reading the newspapers this past week or so, you would have noticed the increasing articles about organisations trying to regulate what people can and cannot say on their blogs. I agree that racist remarks are really too much, but personal opinions on people, are considered flaming. Even the schools, the institutions that are supposed to educate, are getting to it, using hard tactics to force people to close their blogs, remove post. The next thing you will see will be the influx of anonymous blogs, publishing even worst stuff, with new ones popping up each day.
If what is being said is really totally untrue, and written with malicious intent, then perhaps you have grounds to request that some action be taken by the person who wrote it. But if it’s just something that you don’t want to hear, then is it grounds to use such means to suppress it? Then if I were to feel someone is an ass, a big one at that, and were to write it down then I’m wrong. If it was that way, then controversial writers would all disappear, be suppressed and all that you read and hear would be the things all buttered and sugared up to please the person who’s concern. I predict the end of free press if this goes on too long. All hail those who write bluntly then.
Doing NS is getting kind of boring, doing the same things everyday in a different order. I’m starting to feel that my brain is slowly beginning to reduce to a puddle of unusable muck. Argh! I see the effects happening now. At this rate, I don’t know what state I’ll be in by the time I ORD.
Anyway, on another note, if u have been reading the newspapers this past week or so, you would have noticed the increasing articles about organisations trying to regulate what people can and cannot say on their blogs. I agree that racist remarks are really too much, but personal opinions on people, are considered flaming. Even the schools, the institutions that are supposed to educate, are getting to it, using hard tactics to force people to close their blogs, remove post. The next thing you will see will be the influx of anonymous blogs, publishing even worst stuff, with new ones popping up each day.
If what is being said is really totally untrue, and written with malicious intent, then perhaps you have grounds to request that some action be taken by the person who wrote it. But if it’s just something that you don’t want to hear, then is it grounds to use such means to suppress it? Then if I were to feel someone is an ass, a big one at that, and were to write it down then I’m wrong. If it was that way, then controversial writers would all disappear, be suppressed and all that you read and hear would be the things all buttered and sugared up to please the person who’s concern. I predict the end of free press if this goes on too long. All hail those who write bluntly then.