Limbo

I try to look at NS in a positive light and convince myself that I'm making productive use of my time, and for the most part I'd say that I'm quite successful in that, but once in a while a rock strikes my head and I remember that my future life will not lie within the army but outside of it. Then I start to realise that while I'm still stuck in this two-year limbo, those fortunate enough to escape the system (mainly the girls I guess) are already starting to move on to the next stage of their lives. My female colleagues during the DSO internship have already gone on to receive their scholarships proper, and will soon be continuing on to their higher education in a matter of months, while those of us stuck in the army have to complete our mandatory hiatus, losing any hope of maintaining our post-'A' levels momentum. I know that theoretically we're supposed to have lots of admin time to use for planning for our future, but honestly it is very difficult to maintain efficiency and discipline in planning when we're left alone with a flood of information with no real clue of where to start looking. Utterly depressing.

I need a pensieve

Thoughts are literally tunneling through my brain right now. One moment they surface for a quick breather, exposing themselves to my conscious mind to ponder, and the next they have wedged themselves deeper still, back into some dark quiet recess of my head. I guess that's what happens when you have five days of free time to think about life and only two days to try and organise those thoughts. Though I could never even come close to telling you what exactly I'm thinking right now, this is my best attempt at turning my thoughts into words:

I like my current status in the army now. I'm totally adjusted to being a normal soldier after about four months of being a recruit or trainee. Maybe when I was still fresh out of trainee phase I might still have felt like taking a gamble, but not now when I've settled comfortably into what is supposed to be my life for the next 18 months.

Am I allowed to be lucky? Is it alright for me to be fortunate while others are suffering? If not, what am I supposed to do? Feel sorry for them? Give them some of my good fortune? Where does my right to enjoy myself and have a good life end and my obligation to help others in need begin? Is there anything short of total philanthropy that can make me feel like less of a hypocrite? It's obvious that a life devoted either to complete selfishness or complete selflessness cannot function, because different situations call for different qualities. But even if we were to consider a mix of the two extremes, at what ratio should they go together? If neither extreme can serve me well in life, wouldn't it also make sense that no one particular mix of the two can get me through life unscathed either? Then why do we even bother trying to find a perfect balance if it doesn't exist? If we talk about selfishness this way, can the same be said of other vices, or maybe even the broadest sense of good and bad itself?

I am so afraid of adulthood I'm not even joking right now. Life used to be a set of instructions that we could follow without questions, but slowly it has turned into a multiple-choice questionnaire, then an open-ended question, and now simply a blank piece of paper. I hate blank papers, they remind me of econs *shudder*

I read an article a few days ago that now makes me suspect that I might be schizophrenic.

Army talk

A few things going on in my life right now.

23 SIG BN is a pretty cool place, definitely not the worst place a signaler man could end up in. The commanders are mostly nice guys you can talk cock with, so all's good. Except, of course, the location -.- Also, we're going for Exercise Wallaby which is somewhere in [secret Australian place (actually I don't know where it will be held either)], so I'll be on exercise for two months :(

Perhaps I wanted something else before, but I'm now comfortable with my lot. So should the opportunity arise again, what should I do? Status quo or stretching my limits? Or am I setting myself up for disappointment?

George Orwell wrote in the book 1984: "If there is hope, it lies with the proles", but together with hope we find chaos. You can get millions of underlings to carry you up on their shoulders, but those same proletariats can easily throw you down.

There are so many things I could be doing with my time right now, chief among them researching on US universities, studying for SATs and learning driving, but somehow being in the army totally takes the drive out of you to do anything besides laze around.

There is much to learn in the army; there is much yet for me to learn.

New everything

New house, new unit; everything's changing, whether I want it to or not.

First up, my 8-week signals course is finally over, culminating in a 16km route march (which I know is nothing compared to the 28km that the SCTs had to go through, but still, tiring is tiring). I finally have the signals insignia on my collar (though I have to buy 4 more for my other uniforms), and I can finally wear a formation badge and a blue beret (though both of those have to be purchased myself too -.- ). And then there's my new posting...

I still remember at the beginning of the course we heard stories about how 10C4I was the worst place we could go, but nearing the end of the course our possible postings looked so bleak that it became one of the best places we could go to. Alas, I did not go there, but instead got posted to 23 SIG BN. It's not hardcore or anything, and on the contrary I've heard stories of how good the life can get there, but the main issue with it is travelling time: it takes 2 hours for me to get there from home. Oh well, I can foresee a large part of my next one and a half years sitting in trains and buses.

And also if you didn't catch it from my first sentence, I have finally moved to my cousin's old house, where my family will stay temporarily for about 3 months or so before moving to our permanent new house. The new house is nice and big and all (my cousin is a pretty rich kid), but I'd much rather remain back in the old house. The familiarity with the layout, the furnishings and even the neighbourhood is something which I'm afraid I'll never capture again. I'll only be at home on weekends until after my NS, after which I'll linger around for maybe half a year or so before heading overseas for university, so basically for the next few years I'll be having a house that is not a home.

Sometimes I wish that time would just stand still at a particular moment. It doesn't have to be the perfect moment (after all, that moment doesn't exist), but I'll be content as long as it's a generally happy time. Being able to enjoy the same happy moments and going through the same familiar tribulations with my same old group of old friends is something that I find very tempting indeed. Still, in spite of all that I do realise that change is not only inevitable, but also necessary for our lives. Being frozen in time might sound appealing, but think about it: do we really want to do the same thing over and over until our flesh dries into dust? We might not necessarily dislike the outcome of a change in lifestyle, but we sure as hell detest the process. Any form of change, even if it is an improvement, comes with an awkward in-between phase when nothing seems to work for us, but it always smoothens out somewhat eventually.

Still Alive

Last Friday was the first and only IPPT of my SI life (since the other one was cancelled due to Cat 1), and I finally managed to do 8 pull-ups, jumping from a fail to a silver. That's great and all, but I still wonder if I could have done 6 pull-ups if I just tried a little bit harder 2 months ago in BMT, and maybe gone to SCS with my friends. Oh well, regret is useless now, and getting an extra hundred bucks now is nothing to frown about.

I had to do guard duty from Friday to Saturday, after which I went for an 09SH27 gathering, which consisted of Yicen, Michelle, Brenda, Loo, J.Tan, Junjie and finally Jacob, whom I haven't seen since his fateful enlistment into NDU. It was unfortunate that many of the gang couldn't make it due to field camp, but still it was nice to have a lunch outing again. We had lunch at Everything With Fries, which we decided should strive to become EWLF (Everything With Less Fries) or EWAAF (Everything With Appropriate Amount of Fries), because seriously not a single person at the table managed to finish their fries. After lunch, Yicen the organiser abandoned us to fetch J.Gan back from PRBI, leaving the rest of us, plus Tzumi who just joined us, to wander around finding something to do. After moving from place to place, we stumbled upon a flea market at Scape where the girls went shopping and the guys queued up for Gong Cha, and then we all split up. Oh well, at least the class spirit is still kind of alive, if by "class spirit" you mean the lack thereof between the guys and girls. I don't know why I still get slightly saddened by this.

Oh yes, and the combination of IPPT on Friday with no sleep due to guard duty and way too many fries made me really sick on Saturday night XP but all is well now.

More masks than Slipknot

You definitely meet all kinds in the army. On the one hand, you get to know people whom you can hit off with almost immediately and generally have a blast with when we're not being screwed around by sergeants. On the other hand however, you also meet people who are so self-centered and selfish you would not believe they would have the audacity and callousness to pull off what they do, and without batting an eyelid to boot. So to survive this social warzone within the army, we start to play the political game to weasel ourselves out of scraps. And at the end of the day, I wonder if I have changed for the worse after all the masks I have put on.

Moving on from boring ol' introspection, it has been a very hectic week. Three tests (two of which were surprise tests), an 8km road march and a VHF exercise just today, which combined with a stand-by-bed immediately afterwards caused us to book out at 9pm. On SAF Family Day (yup, apparently that's going on today). And to make things worse, the entire day today I felt dizzy, disoriented and unnaturally fatigued; basically, it was a fever without the actual fever (if it doesn't make sense it's because I'm having a not-really fever right now). To top it all off, tomorrow is my NUS GEP interview, which I really don't feel like going to anymore, but then I've already pushed it back for about a month already so it's not really feasible to delay any more. Panadol to the rescue I guess.

Flotsam

Nowadays I get this constant sensation that I'm swimming around aimlessly in a sea of my own filth. I want to rise above my own weaknesses and shortcomings, but once you become a man in the SAF there aren't really any ladders whatsoever being handed to you, and you are left treading water. Sure, you won't drown, but at the same time you'll never get out of that sea either.

On a side note, I don't think I'm getting the DSTA scholarship anymore, since I have yet to receive any news from them since the start of April. Oh well, I'm still on my way to a local education at the very least.