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| my mum has flown off to japan for a holiday which she won at some great singapore sale lucky draw at marina square, leaving me, my dad and dino to keep house back home.
it sounds silly but i miss my mum already. my dad is asking if i know how to operate the washing machine and whether we should just send our clothes to the laundry. of course, i don't miss my mum for the undone housework, but for the fact that somehow, it really takes all of us to make home feel the way it is supposed to feel.
i strained my neck/back/shoulder area pretty badly and i've been to two sinsehs over the past 2 days to try to get it fixed. the first one i went to tried acupuncture which left my left hand feeling numb and weak, the second one, which my dad brought me to, gave me a massage that made me want to reel around and beat the living daylights out of him. and at the end of the day, the pain's still there, slightly alleviated but still, irritatingly so, there.
i already have 3 different brands of muscle rub and 2 different kinds of medicated plasters. i smell like a bloody chinese medicinal hall.
it's the second week of the airborne course and next week, we jump. there's duty this saturday, which i'm not exactly looking forward to, but oh well. most of the free time i have is spent resting because the course really drains me physically. when training ends at 6 and after dinner is all done, the first thing i do if i'm not sitting around talking cock is to lie on my bed and stay there for the rest of the night till dawn.
it's funny but it's almost therapeutic in a way, and the bunk has become something i look forward to at the end of each day.
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i'm so tired in more ways than one, and because we're only human, we're destined to be haunted by the very things that we once thought we'd let go of. because we can never fully let go of something, unless something else comes along for us to hold on to.
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| ok shit i have a lot to blog about the airborne course i'm on now but i have to go shower and get ready to leave the house because i have to BOOK IN ON A SUNDAY NIGHT.
and i thought those days of fridaybookout-sundaybookin were OVER.
APPARENTLY NOT.
i should have updated in the afternoon but i was too busy applying muscle rub all over my aching body.
so maybe wednesday, when i get to book out again, thanks to hari raya adil fitri.
but for now, the quote of the year:
"XXX, you are the fuck of the century!"
gotta love army instructors.
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| i'm thinking of putting an end to this blog because it's just too much trouble to update it on a regular, or even quasi-regular, basis. truth of the matter is i just don't visit xanga all that often nowadays and to have to log in, think of what to say and then actually type it... well, all that takes effort and at 25 years old, i don't have that kind of energy anymore.
can't wait till when i'm 60 woot.
am on the other hand considering just doing updates on facebook because it's so convenient. the problem is, i'm not sure i want everyone on my list to read everything that i have to say because more often than not, it'll probably be whiny/emo and that's not the Image that i want to Portray. especially to the Potentiates hee hee.
ok retarded.
just came home from duty and i'm tired lyk hellz. so will keep diz rare entry short.
faceblog or xanga?
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| went back to rjc last saturday for odacia, which is this huge gathering of old odacian fogeys that happens once every year or two and i'm so glad that i managed to make it there this year. it was, in short, a much welcomed respite.
i've said this a million times but i've always considered my jc years the best times of my life. it was a time when everything was simple enough; a time when you could afford to take a step back to enjoy the trains that roared past the tracks next to the school, a time when you could lie back in the netball court to enjoy the stars painted across the night sky; a time of venturing through underground school tunnels and a time when you were safe in a little hobbit hole in the corner of the school.
odacia has changed quite a bit over the years. back in our time, we had banners and elaborate opening sequences (which gives me goosebumps when i think back about it) but that wasn't what odacia was about, it was the fact that we had people from batches long before us (batch 2!) come back to visit and for us to marvel at how far back these ties of tradition stretch back.
odacia is really, at the end of the day, an excuse for everyone to come back to mingle in one location all at the same time. it was a good time for batches to come back together to recollect, to bask in the nostalgia, to take time off their busy lives to relive a day as jc students again. admittedly, the new campus holds little memories for us as a batch as compared to if odacia were held back at the ghim moh site because really, memories are as bound to the place as they are to its people. we'll never be able to sit around the odac table again and neither will we be able to return to the old odac room in its musty state.
[i miss the odac room. it was a little stuffy, and everything was a
little dusty. the lighting wasn't great and the furniture was all a
little termite infested. but it was comfortable. it provided us with
shelter and a place to hide away (from teachers, from the world) when
we needed to.]
but as we come back together from all our various paths, it is apparent that we've all moved on in different ways in varying degrees. it is easy to see how working life has changed all of us, how it has robbed us of time to meet up more regularly than we do or should, how it has worn us down, how it has changed the way we see things, people and the world. we might have shared a common lot in life 8 years back but we've all drawn different fortunes from then on.
it is heartening to see the younger ones filled with so much enthusiasm and passion, as we were back in those days. i realise that if it were not for things like npcc, amazing races and even the navy, i would have little in connection with the batches after me but it never fails to remind me of just how tight this family really is. the fact that we can find resonance with each other, across the age gap, simply because we were all part of a common timeless experience. and i'm really thankful for that, because in this way, odacia has served to bring all the elements from the past (batches before mine) and the future (batches after mine) together in the present.
but it is also sad to see how the more senior batches thin out
gradually more and more over the years, especially when the whole point
of odacia is for them, and considering how we now belong to that
category, for us. and it's nobody's fault really, sometimes time and space are simply that unforgiving and inflexible. but i really hope the spirit of odacia never dies, and that it will remain as an important date in the calendars of all future batches to come, together with other dates like 'inauguration', 'btc' and 'farewell'. it is selfish, no doubt, because odacia really does nothing for the current batch, it is both time and energy consuming and robs everyone of a saturday. but i hope odacia remains, as a gift from each batch to the batches that came before them.
so that we can all come back for one day in our lives and remember what it is like to be young and happy again.
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| yanjie is right, this blog has become darker and in perhaps in that way, less engaging to the common reader who used to come here for his or her daily installment of ha-has at my expense. so what has changed? have i changed? or have the circumstances or environment around me caused this change?
i don't really know.
perhaps this is truly the start of clinical depression - when you start sinking beneath your daily facade to only find solace in between sheets in the still of the night. maybe i should really turn to self-help books (which i used to denounce and declare utterly useless) since i've apparently become less able to help myself get out of funks, self-imposed or otherwise.
i really want to watch the dark knight because of how dark everyone says it is. maybe i can identify.
this entry wasn't supposed to start off like this, but oh well.
what i really wanted to blog about was the 3d2n nus odac race that we (hazel, guozhang, khaiwei and myself) went for over the weekend, the same race that we've been faithfully taking part in for the past 3 years, the same race that saw us coming in second in the first year and 10th (or some other damnshit position) in the second year, the same race that saw us coming in second again this year. it seems like second place is really the best that we can muster, and as it is, it's unlikely that we'll be taking part again next year (then again, that's what we always say at the end of every race we join).
i'm aching all over right now, having climbed up and down bukit timah hill (which is really omg damn steep), up the insane flight of steps leading to the bridge over henderson road (henderson waves), and basically doing a whole lot of running. my shoulders are killing me especially. and it's time i replaced my leaky hydropack. ok irrelevant but it just struck me.
this year's race saw its fair share of ugly singaporeans (which i'll gladly go into full detail on another post) - both in the form of competitors and drivers. but it also led us to singaporeans who showed that we're not an uncaring apathetic bunch of sods afterall. singaporeans who extended their generosity, who willingly reached out to help us, singaporeans who cared. and that's really heartwarming - to know that your fellow citizens are not as cold and unfriendly as stereotypes make them out to be.
so thank you, to all of you nameless ones who've helped us in this race, you're very much appreciated.
more updates to come (and i know you'll take this with a pinch of salt but who cares haha) soon.
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