Thursday, November 24, 2005

Is anyone still reading this ? not me.

My dad's friend once told him that whenever he put on his green (army) uniform, he would inevitably leave his brain at home. More often than not, I would cast that very notion to myself, wondering if by any freak of nature, I have indeed (abielt unintentionally, i hope) abandoned the grey matter residing in my skull.

Qi Song (aka Song Da Xia) is what I consider a nice guy, a friend. This is unusually rare to find in the army. One might immediately regard the previous statement as an utter load of bull, but allow me to continue. (Besides, I don't care what you think. :D) Anyway, on the second day of the OETI course, we were happily (lazily) chatting (kao-bei-ing) on top of a bird-shit assaulted M113. He was saying something like this:"Ben, the army sucks. Its fucked up." (Now, this normally won't come out of the mouth of a soft-spoken guy) So flabbergasted, I probed for more.

"See this regulars, they know their stuff well. I give them that. But whenever we screw up or do something stupid, they'll pull the excuse that WE'RE THE 'A' LEVEL BATCH, how come we don't have enough INITIATIVE, INTELLIGENCE, etc etc. Its like we're supposed to know 100% what they know within a few months when they've been at it for weeks!" "Haha," I said, "Then they'll pull that 3G soldier shit on us. Hell, I don't even think the Sgts bothered to read the OPERATOR'S manual, much less us. To quote one of the instructors ... "Motivated to learn""

Now, I have the greatest respect for NS and regulars and all the other people who serve the country, but I had to admit that he had a point. I think it just boils down to people's expectations.

In the army, as people will tell you, people who have "been there done that", is alot like life. You get bullshit, and more bullshit, but sometimes, something good happens. No wait, maybe it doesnt. Coz' someone changed their mind. Hey, must be flexible and adapt to changes ok?

Now, I don't even like most of the people in my course ... and that's baffling me to a (insert superlative) extent. I'd give you an example ... Call this Mr. H:

Mr. H has a computer problem. And almost everyone in my course knows I'm good at it. So one day, Mr. H suffers a hard drive problem. When he starts his computer, his BIOS flashes a cute little message as such: "First Master Boot Error". Oh no, he panics, and he calls Your's Truly.

Your's Truly RELUCTANTLY picks up the phone (he was in the middle of a scrabble game, dammit.) Before he mutters a word from the orifice and the front of his face (aka mouth), Mr. H bombards the handset with proffanities that would make your friendly neighbourhood gangster proud. So tryin to bear with him, Your's Truly offers some advice: "Hey, maybe your IDE ribbon cable is screwed .. try to check that out yeah?" Another bombardment of vulgarities. Now, tryin to keep my cool and resisting the temptation to slam the phone, I try to explain (!) WHY (!!!) it might have been the fault of the IDE ribbon cable. Vulgarities again. I hang up.

Half an hour later, he calls. Tells me he bought RAM, a 250 Gb drive and what not. Well done. I hang the phone up. Politely. I'm just to lazy to fill in the rest of the details. But you get the idea.

Maybe its the fact that they are from the "better" JC's or they're richer. They tend to despise guys from the less well known JCs (which are suprisingly few and far between in my course).

Clubbing, pubbing, splurging on MP3 players, clothes, shoes, PSP, handphones are of no rare occurence.

Now, as my really close friends will tell you, I consider frugality a virtue. And the above acts sickens me. For some unknown and untold reason. But I don't see the logic. Maybe, I don't think they see the logic of saving up. Maybe they just have really rich parents.

Many refer me as the guy with "muscles and no brain." It was the first time in my life I was insulted like that. Hey, maybe I'm dumb. That's why I didnt land in a "Top 3 JC". But I decided to use that to my advantage - And PLAY DUMB. Why not? Its a pretty good skill learnt from my experiences in the Army.

Yeah, maybe thats why I dont fit in. I don't like the people there. So I'll do things to irk them. To those smokers, I'll be laughing at u in a couple of years time. You silly, stupid little fools. Have a nice life.

Final thoughts:

Is uni going to be like that? I hope not ... but maybe I know the answer to that question. I don't think anyone found their best friend in the university.

The Gym is my santuary now. And home too. I do't htink I"ll ask anyone to follow me to the gym anymore .. ha.

Posted by Unknown at 11/24/2005 12:44:00 am