Mood: Relief

Theme Song: You, Jennifer Love Hewitt

Can't Stop, Red Hot Chilli Peppers

Counter: 1960

Current Book: Servant of the Empire, Raymond E. Feist and Janny Warts

Finally, home after 8 days stuck in camp. Gawd was it torturous, imagine spending days in camp, dying from boredom. The only things to do? Read a book, which isn't that bad. Play Risk or chess, both which can be boring after a while. Sleep, which I have had plenty of, to the point whereby I'm tired of sleeping and I gotta take a pill just to get to sleep at night. Listening to CDs, from which I've discovered gems in the singles that I bought and never gave more than one casual listen. No PSone, which I'm sorely regretting and will fix that when I head back to camp tonight. On top of that, we gotta be ready to be activated all the time, which has already happened thrice, once in the evening around 8, the other time around 10.30 when we are preparing to sleep, and the last at the unearthly hour of 1, which seemed more like a nightmare than reality to me. And spending extended hours outfield, I've gotten myself a healthy tan. I like it, I think I look much better with a tan with a tint of red from near sunburn. Amazingly I haven't been sunburnt, but my tan is fading fast; barely a week and already I'm losing some pigment. Darn. That's just me. Bah.

Songs. Listened to JLove and RHCP throughly, what to do, I was bored. I found two really nice songs in both albums, and when I reached home, I realized that Can't Stop by RHCP was just released as their 3rd single. Wow, I have such good taste. Its a nice song, have a listen. I prefer Jlove's You. That song is even nicer, I love it loads cause it sounds so beautiful. Even though I don't exactly understand the lyrics, its still an enchanting piece. That you gotta listen to, you probably wouldn't regret it. I need to start hauling more neglected CDs back to camp for the standby next week, first to mind is Natalie Imbruglia, Coldplay and Blink 182. Probably a couple more.

Books. Servant is a great book 2. I realized that I love the unpredictability at which events happen in Tsurani, and in the story. Some key figure might just happened to die as if he was nothing more than an insignificant pawn in the story, and the plot just goes on and on. Wrenching twists and sudden turns in the plot makes it really, really appealing. You can never second guess what is going to happen, most of the time, except when it comes to Mara, since she's the main character and you know she'll never die, being the heroine and all she'll probably come out with the better deal. Still, that is to be expected, and the villian, Tasaio, would just finally swallow his ego and kill himself. I usually admire the devious and scheming "bad guy", and Tasaio fits that bill, but his excessive cruelty doesn't exactly appeal to me, so I only have a token respect for him, nothing more. Great book, I'm still enjoying making progress in it day-by-day, hopefully to finish it this weekend so that I can clear book 3 next week. OH, and I've learnt alot of new words in this book, more than I've ever learnt from other books. The language used is really fluent and deep, and just to think that Mau-jie read this when she was p5? Wow, I'm impressed

Chess. I haven't played international chess for quite some time, and I've found some evenly matched opponents to test my mettle, which isn't bad, making for a different game all the time. Junsheng, my bunkmate, is most evenly matched with me, and we usually share victories equally. Two highlights: I scored a fool's mate on someone, haha, and I forced a skilful stalemate with Junsheng to snatch a draw, which's got to be one more the more spectacular moves I've made. But it's only a passing interest, I'll get sick of it just like I get sick of Magic. And talking about Magic I'm really getting sick of it.

1 week spent with the battery, and alone in camp has brought us all alil closer together. And I'm starting to fit in really well with the gunners, to the point whereby everyone's friendly with me. Well, having a nickname helps, and since I've always been labelled with a alternate name all my life, this time it isn't an exception. Haha, to list out my nicknames, in primary school I think I was called Professor Brainy, cause I was apparently pretty intelligent. Well, all those intelligence seems to have undergone osmosis and filtered out of my brain into the air. Then, secondary school I had a HOST of nicknames, the most in my class. First, I was Monkey, cause they decided that I looked like a monkey. Then, as we developed our class language, I was then Manqi, and then Manke. I also had other names, I was Hair cause I was always concerned about my hair and touching it, and then Ze Hair, as the use of "ze" in place of "the" became a trend. My email address that time was chingmid@pacific.net.sg, cause PacNet had a typo in my account name but I didn't bother to change it, so they thought that calling me chingmid was nice too. Then, there was another trend in which they started twisting names of everyone in class, and naturally my name wasn't spared, "chingmid" became "chang ma de", and it stuck too cause of the nice ring to it. Finally, the most absurd, and the last nickname I was "awarded" was an-ti-man-ke-zhu, which basically says "Aunty Monkey Pig". They formulated this based on nothing but the nice ring it had to it, but of course it lasted only for a while cause it was so ridiculous. Anyway, my secondary school friends taught me to be able to take and dish out pranks well, so in a while I turned out like this is because of them. Then, in JC I was simply called Communist, which I'm pretty proud of cause it made reference to my secondary school. Btw, I'm like that, I'm damn proud of my secondary school, but never of my JC.

So, my nickname for the next year would be "xiaobai", cause of my fair skin, and xiaobai happened to be some dog in some chinese cartoon, so my bunkmates called me a dog. And then, when they discovered my soft spot for cats, I became cat-dog. Haha, it gets really funny sometimes, how crappy guys can get. But I play along with them, and I make sure they get poked fun at often enough too. So the gunners got wind of that and started calling me that as well. They start talking to me alot more and discover that I'm not at all what they expect, heck, I'm even slacker than alot of them. It's really interesting, half a year ago, the impressions went "barbarians" and "full-of-themselves nerds". Its the logical assumptions to be made, and I never thought that I would be able to get along with them until half a year later. But they are really nice people, once you get to know them. True, the barrier is still there, from the difference in family backgrounds, educations, expriences, and language.

But, there's something I discovered; even though the bulk of them may not have undergone much education, they aren't at all stupid. What they say about intelligence is true, there are many different kinds of intelligence for different aspects. I'm just lucky I happened to be intelligent in the one thing that matters more than most. Like, for example, chess, I would be hard-pressed to win against a few of the other players, and they are so good at it its impressive. And 2Lt Lawrence, even though he's made it to OCS, came out and commissioned, appears to be good at both chess and soccer, but something just made me think. He was doing some practice questions for SAT, *** PHYLLIS QUEK IS ON FHM!!! GAWD, SHE'S A GODDESS! AND CHRISTINA AGUILERA'S IN TOO! WOOHOO!!! *** Phyllis is really beautiful, she totally embodies everything I find attractive. Fine, alot of people are gonna disagree, but I don't care. =P

Anyway, Lawrence was doing some questions for SAT, and one question was really easy. Ok, a triangle has 3 angles, x, y, and z. The question was, whether x has a larger value or 180-y. I saw him do all kinds of calculations and tedious workings, and pointed out to him, that 180-y would be x+z, hence it is larger. It was so simple I could figure it out when I was 12, but ye know. I don't know. I guess being good at studies is a great gift to have, but it is chillingly humbling. I remember when I was in Chinese High, and someone told us not to think that just because we made it into Chinese High, our futures were not assured. It is true. It takes much more than just perfect grades to make it big. Sure, it makes for a great headstart, with qualifications you get more respect. But there's alot more in the picture.

And I've also realized to be grateful for what I have. Talking to a few of those gunners, I've discovered that a couple are planning on signing on as specialists in the army for a career. Naturally, I turned my nose up at it. And the gunner, Zhengxian, told me that, to them, a life like this is great. 1.6k a month, with 3 meals and lodgings provided, job security and guaranteed promotion and a sizable pension at the end of it, it is worth it. For people like them who haven't had much education, this is a great deal, but for someone who's been studying like me, I'll probably find it a hard life.

But that doesn't mean I should be contented. If there's anything my mum taught me that's true, it is never to be contented with what I have. In effect, she's trying to breed discontent into me. Contentment is something best left to the aged; in our youth we should always be aspiring for greater heights. To look at people who may be below you in the social ranking and derive gratitude isn't wrong, but never to accept contentment, for if you allow yourself to feel that you have done enough, you will stagnate. Instead, she taught me to always look at people who are better than I am, but what she never said was in what light, so I took it to be in envy, and strive to surpass them. She was probably cultivate a sense of pride, which, although isn't very successful, is present in me sometimes.

Anyway, talking to my other battery mates, I find two of them pretty noteworthy. Longfeng is a very simple person, somewhat like a simpleton. It's like, I find him to be practically acting like a child, although I'm sure he has his grownup moments, which I've yet to glimpse. He's the other one who's planning to sign on in the army. He's only got a PSLE for his education, so he may not be exceptionally smart, but he's good at chinese chess, hehe. Got soundly beaten by him twice. And he's someone with a big heart, he loves helping others, and when he sets his heart to it, he'll make sure he helps you to the end. The other one is Liao Zhiwei, my driver for my BC Rover, the vehicle which I'm technically in charge of. =P Hehe, if you recall I'm like the highest ranking private in terms of appointment, so I'm the only one who "commands" a vehicle, although the BC is in it sometimes whenever he isn't around I take charge. Sure, only 2 other people, a signaller and a driver, but, hey, its equivalent to what sergeants do. Anyway, Zhiwei is a Malaysia come to Singapore to get citizenship, so he's serving NS. He's a year younger, and he only studied up to primary 5, in the Singaporean equivalent. He can't speak english, he's slow-witted, he has the annoying Malaysian chinese accent, and he's always smiling all the time, even the wrong times. 2Lt Desmond can't stand him, but after talking to him often for the past week, I've come to pity him. In a way, I sorta envy him. It's like, he doesn't seem to care about the world, this cat and dog race, the need to do better and to succeed in life. He's so detached from everything, it doesn't affect him at all. Wish I could be like that sometimes, life would be simpler, don't ya think?

Anyway, next week I'll be doing standby again. I'm all done with ranting and complaining about doing standby on CNY. Ran out of whines and objections. Now its gonna be simple. If I get a message that goes along the lines of "Happy CNY!" or "Gong Xi Fa Cai!" or whatever lame crap, my reply will be "Fuck you, I'm in camp." If I get something like "Hey, wanna go visit so-and-so." or "Hey, can I visit you." my reply will be "Fuck you, I'm in camp." If I see any thing on TV that has a relation to CNY (chances are high), my reply will be "Fuck you, I'm in camp." followed by smashing of the offending gadget. So you have been forewarned. =P

I was talking to Marilyn on Saturday, and just now too. Talking to her always makes me feel so at ease and relaxed. She never fails to cheer me up no matter what my state of mind is. Haha, she's just so adorable like that.

Just thought about how things could go bad while we are on standby. A terrorist attack, an accident, something could go wrong only too easily.

New Year Resolutions. People like to make them. Some make ambitious ones, "I will not smoke anymore.", some lame ones, "I will not use the word Nychthemeron all year." to the impossible, "I will abstain from all sexual activity all year.". Haha, I'll probably smoke again one of these days, I haven't touched a cigarette for a month, but judging from how many people asking me to smoke in the past week (mainly due to the increasing familiarity with the gunners), guess I'll get bored enough one day. Anyway, my resolution this year, would be to learn and to mature as much as possible. There, simple one, and something that isn't binding. =P

Familiarity breeds contempt, and I'm getting alil too friendly to my sergeants and officers, to the point whereby some of my actions border on insubordination. =P I'm like that, I don't seem to recognize immediate authority as authority and usually tend to try and climb on top of their heads. Oh well, gotta watch myself.

8 mile's out. GOTTA WATCH IT!

I've been feeling restless recently. I don't know why, but it seems that I can never find myself engrossed in a single activity anymore. Writing this diary is just about the only time I really concentrate, and then again I don't really find myself immersed in it either. Games have long lost its appeal, and Astaria can only barely hold my interest, but not likely for long. I don't know, I just find that I don't seem to have something I enjoy doing anymore. I guess I need an activity that I really have interest in, and enjoy. Maybe I'll start to learn driving, pick up a theory book and start studying. Hmm, sounds like a good idea, I'll look into it when I have the time. Maybe when my dad's back. When my dad's back, I'm gonna get him to go down to IDP and apply for uni with me, so that he could assess all the expenses, bring me to the dentist. =P hehe, dentists are expensive. Teach me how to cook, maybe fry some vegetables, steam some tofu and prepare crabs! =P I'm determined to master that skill. I'll need it, if I go over to Australia to study. And maybe see about driving, although I'll probably be taking it with Heng Swee; we've already agreed.

And maybe, something just came to my mind. I've lost big bucks last weekend on soccer, and I'm starting to get sick of gambling, being a vice and all, I'm starting to reproach myself for indulging in it. And, recently, I just seem to get the feeling that I don't have any friend whom I could trust as a true friend. I just feel like I'm so alone in it all. And it feels so lonely sometimes, and all the friends around me aren't true friends, and that they don't seem to really care. I attributed that to the gloom and doom of staying in camp, but something just struck me. I wonder if it is God's way of pulling me back to him. He's said it before, backslided Christians always return to him, its only a matter of time. I wonder if it is time for me to go back to Him, to be tired of partaking in all these worldly things and to trust in him again. Maybe that's the reason why I'm feeling so lonely, so in need of someone to trust, so restless, like something's missing in my life. Maybe it is God I need. Well, I'll just wait and see.

Back to camp, bye!