quezzy813

wow. been a while since i was here. this place might be defunct soon...i've had a lot of things to write about, but ultimately never got around to writing, simply because i was using bookout time for other stuff. ns has numbed my senses, and now the words simply will not flow anymore. 

but alas, not why i'm here today.

i'm not technically allowed to share the details of today, but eh. suffice to say that the scholarship test was a pretty harrowing experience. it was also a great learning chance, since it put me in situations i've never been in before. i think i came out of it pretty alright; pretty much all my testers remembered my face, and i think a girl too XD it's kind of creepy that my assessor stays in my block and remembers me around though. i hope he doesn't burst out laughing the next time he sees me around the block =(

o gawd swimming is like an exercise in humiliation. as if attempting to drown myself wasn't enough of a workout already.

i swam all the way at the side, within grabbing reach of the ledge. seems i still have a bit of hydrophobia, huh. especially when i can't feel the floor. need to get over that...

saw a senior citizen swimming with only one leg. other one seemed to be inured...still swam fine though. unlike me T.T

tried picking up a few pointers from the people swimming...didn't help much. the pool is also surprisingly crowded at this time of the day, since i thought that most people would be at work.

bah. emo for various reasons time. T.T

it's been about 1 and a half months since i enlisted, and i have to say my physical capabilities have been greatly improved during this time. well, most of them, anyway. my left arm seems to have gotten weaker, what with not touching my blade for so long (oh gosh so much innuendo potential).

there's also the bit about my knees starting to give way, and the fact that my shin explodes in pain if i put too much pressure on it. but eh, worth it for that few minutes shaved off my 2.4, eh?

heh.

i've also been feeling faint and feverish lately, which one would normally attribute to being sick. i, however, am pretty sure these symptoms have another cause, namely the insane amount of mosquito bites to be found on my body. probably bedbug bites, too. i think they sucked so much blood that i have too little left in my bloodstream, giving me low blood pressure and dizzy spells. whole patches of my leg are swollen due to the close proximity of the bites causing them to swell together zzz.

it would be a shitty thing if i had to report sick or die due to 'blood loss by mosquito'. sigh. why is my blood so tasty T.T

so. booked out today, and went for lunch with my platoonmates. one of them commented that i had charisma. i found it pretty funny actually, but i didn't tell him.

i wonder if he knows all the niggling little insecurities i deal with throughout the day. what may seem like an effortless step out to be alone in front of the whole platoon actually requires a lot of courage, confidence and marbles, for lack of a better word. every time i address the platoon i deal with the constant fear of being booed back to my spot, while nervously attempting to address the crowd with techniques half-remembered from random sites i browse through. 

even after that there's still the possible backlash that i might suffer from whatever i do, up on that public stage. i worry constantly about being picked on because i pushed them too hard, or i did something to piss someone off, which is apparently the case now, clearly going against what i was trying to do.

thankfully though, that's been minimised so far, and everyone seems to be fine with me. i seem to have a way with people somehow...it's strange, really. i compel people to make fun of me, but not pick on me or bully me. i have no idea how that happens.

the saddest part about this is that there's the one guy who has great potential as a leader in his own right, with plenty of brilliant ideas and initiative, as well as being able to take charge effectively. on occasion, however, he defers to me or runs the ideas by me before he executes them. i really do want him to just go ahead on his own; it'll help him, and i won't feel like i'm stealing the credit for anything.

Day 1
- Kinda cake. I'm kinda let down by discipline too. Maybe it'll change, like Sec 1 to 4 in 4 days.
- Lack of dominance or enthusiasm in my platoon. I can still exert influence now...probably should.
- Also no joker. Sad.

Day 2
- Noodles better than I was told they would be. Yay School 4!
- Lunch was rice, even better. YAY SCHOOL 4
- I just noticed everyone is polite, virtually no swearing. Surprising.
- Dinner was sucky again. Zzz.

Day 3
- I don't know if my NCC experience is a blessing or a curse. I know everything they teach already, and I can't stand the standard of the drill here. Sloppy, even the sergeants. Too soft.
- Come PTP want to chiong sua also got no sua to chiong zzz, everything is spoonfed. Don't know how I'm going to get to OCS at this rate =/
- I wonder how long burn marks take to heal. They're annoying. Also ugly.
- Starting to get camaraderie. Excellent.

Day 4
- Cool. Almost half our platoon has a UG background We have a chance at best platoon =D
- Dinner was fantastic. Best curry ever, including outside food.
- SAMUEL LIM CAN BE SO PRO AFTER ONLY ONE YEAR? I cannot believe that. Cannot.
- Bah. So many attend Bs in our platoon, more than the other 3 platoons combined. I guess we can forget about best platoon...
- Section a lot more united now! Fantastic.
- Tired.
- I find great irony in being Punctuality IC. =D

Day 5
- The new uniform is definitely a lot better than the old one. I can feel the breeze through my pants~
- I seem to have forgotten a lot of NCC knowledge. Ah well, it's been so long after all. Even so, I'm now one of the more known people/leaders in the platoon. Excellent.
- I'm damn fat T.T

Day 6
 Starting to miss home. Pretty standard, I think?
- IPPT is terribly planned. Muscles all sore before it -.-
- These dog tags we wear are a constant reminder and symbol of our mortality and fragility.
- Herbal chicken soup for lunch! Fantastic. Wonder when we'll get another meal like that...
- Oh yes. I dreamed of N this morning. I wonder if I miss her too?
- I just realised. Day 6 and no one's commented on my eyebrows or my lashes yet. I'd have thought it'd be more obvious with no hair...
- Also apparently I speak like a Malay.
- NS appears to be a good time to break old habits, and start new ones.
- Temptation leads to sin, I think. But is it avoidable? Is it resistible?
- I think my stomach capacity has increased since enlisting. No, wait, it definitely did. Water parades are hell. I'm drinking 1.5l of liquids before I sleep tonight -.-
- The weather's been good and I rewear my stuff so often that I have nothing I need to wash today. Heh.
- Today's been a good day.
- My throat died, despite all the water. Maybe too much water? Scratching my throat and stuffs.

Day 7
- 7 days and my burn hasn't healed. Darn it.
- The rain falling down from the sky is pretty.
- It's confirmed, there are places worse to be in that 1st Coy. I'm thankful.
- Oh yes! Forgot. No communal showers. Japan experience for nothing T.T
- Everyone's surprisingly closed-minded here.
- Didn't finish my lunch today. I feel kinda guilty.
- Our section is united. But as a company...war.
- Yappari. It never rains, but pours. I wanted to teach everyone how to shout properly today...I guess I can't now.

Day 8
- Platoon IC. Cool.
- The plays in the paper today are pretty cool.
- Zzz I think I constipated again.
- Oh yes. I hope it never rains again, can't frickin' dry my clothes.

Day 9
- Our school truly is trained in bullshit. Hehe.
- I'm so torn in different directions right now.
- I think...it hasn't changed. Temptation called, and I answered. Went pretty well, surprisingly. But I think it's broken...
- Can't march properly after being woken up with only half an hour of sleep.
- Daryl is so awesome! :) (mandatory mention lol)

Day 10
- Heh. I got another appointment now. Water parade IC woo~ for one session only, though.
- I know I can't be liked by everyone...but i sure can try. Being a peacemaker for the whole platoon is definitely not easy.
- 2401's determination is...alarming. But I guess that's how he got to where he is today.
- Hmm. Different names have different nuances. I know four Daryls, and each one is slightly different from the other when the name appears in my head. Matthews somehow have quite a few things in common, though. Names themselves probably hold very little power; it is the person that makes the name.
- What am I, a toilet cleaner? Seems like no one knows how to unjam stuck toilets.

Day 11
- Two years of orders and three of command. If I can't be an IC properly, something must be wrong, right?
- Woah. Today's food has been pretty good. Curry chicken couldn't beat the previous one, but the meal was better as a whole.
- Zzz. Weather has been trolling us a lot lately.
- Might be starting to lose control of the group. Maybe it's time to relinquish control? Not that I don't want to, actually...
- Nuuuhhh. Terrible time to start acting up again...
- I'm like a cat! No idea how cats usually act though :P

Day 12
- Kirby makes a valid point. I do look a bit like OC. My platoonmates seem to have caught on as well...
- Ah crap. I keep dreaming up horror romance stories now -.-
- Zzz looks like my burn's gonna leave a scar. Flawless skin ruined T.T
- Kinda afraid I have carpal tunnel. My arms go numb sometimes now, and couple with the incidents where my hands spontaneously stop grabbing something give me due cause for concern, I think.
- I wanna live the life of an epic. This though occurred to me while I was singing 'My Heart Will Go On'. Heh.
- You are judged when you die by the big, but you live your life by the small.
- I wanna try and be friends with everyone, but it seems harder for me despite my efforts. Is IC a barrier? Or is my goal simply too far out of reach?
- A key difference between NCC and NS is the level of enthusiasm. Then again, most people in the former are there voluntarily, not forced by Constitution.

Day 13
- Lol I think I got re-elected for a second term in office. The other platoon ICs have changed already...

Day 14
- Nooo the rain stopped. Now we have a cadence run to do. Zzz.
- Ahhh. A 3km run in the rain and menthol-laced shampoo on a bald head. The simple pleasures in life.
- Also, this is the second time someone asked if I'm Malay. What is this T.T
- NS has trained me to eat and enjoy chicken skin and soft bone.
- Ah crap I just realised I messed up the number of days.
- Oh wait, no I didn't. What the heck?
- Bleh. No one replied my messages. I kinda expected it, but it makes me kinda sad...

Day 15
- Bookout tomorrow! I've grown darker, stronger, buffer. Chest is bigger, I'm more rugged, and so on. New habits formed, old habits kicked. It's interesting, what can change in two weeks. And that's just myself. What about the outside world...?

Day 16
- Route march with a full bladder is not fun.
- I think I'm actually quite used to army life. I blame NCC T.T
- I personally think, to be a leader, you must:

1. Be exemplary (duh)
2. Be understanding
3. Be empathetic
4. Be efficient
5. Be bold
6. Be responsible
7. Be alert

As it is now, very few in our coy can be considered leaders. Hopefully that will change eventually...
- I promise myself that I will earn myself a bar. Yesh.

1 week after:
How much do we really change, I wonder?

2 weeks after:
It's quite sad, to cheer for being borderline physically fit.

so. the last time i can update this place for a couple of weeks.

i had quite a few things to write about in the past few days since i last wrote, but decided not to since i was a lazy bum and didn't want to waste precious playing time. :P

meh. i guess i should've done that, now that i think about it. oh well, too late heh.

i wish i had more time to do the stuff i wanted to do. it really is entirely my fault for this, though, so i can't really complain. maybe just whine about my own incompetence.

bah. new experience, in a way. ncc might have done some prepping for exactly this moment, but i know well that this is a whole new level, incomparable with the 'mini' treatment in ncc. regardless, it should be fine. nowhere for me to run anyways, so i might as well just suck it up and carry on. bleh.

i hope my platoonmates are fun...and that morale is high. otherwise we're all quite screwed.

oh! i appear to have forgotten to gush about how wonderful bishan library is.

it's fantastic, like jrl leveled up. i went there a few days ago, to pick up a few books that could only be located at that particular library. why some books can only be found in a tiny library half the size of jrl and a fraction the size of the central library, i'll never know.

anyway. the moment i stepped into the library, i had a huge grin on my face. while it was immediately apparent that the library was a lot smaller than jrl, almost everything was the same, down to the little cafe galilee in the corner and the borrowing stations. it was nice. plus, they didn't have stairs for the first floor - they had ramps. friggin ramps. how awesome is that?

knowing that the books i was looking for were on higher levels, i climbed the ramp. and grinned harder. MULTICOLOURED ALCOVES FOR YOU TO READ? AWESOME. and it's so cute too, the way it seems so haphazard. you can see all the alcoves from the second floor to the fourth from the ramp. really nice.

needless to say, the fact that i can actually find books here is also a great plus. although they do have a lot of random books that are completely unnecessary...

on a random note, am i the only guy who giggles like a little girl when i find a book i've been looking for for a long time?
---

yesterday i discovered one of my weaknesses. can learn from that though...although that means i'll have to wear a hazmat suit or something.

managed to catch what seemed like the breaking point of others as well. that behaviour is really pretty interesting, since i don't see it in action particularly often.

also managed to see old primary school friends. that makes two. who may or may not have remembered me. that makes two, again. she most likely does though, from her expression...

seems like i can have nice dreams too. hehe.

---

i'm slightly worried for wednesday, mainly because it's the last day of napfa retests before i have to enlist in the dreaded ptp batch. 

this is slightly compounded by the little fact that my right leg is effectively useless.

i can't bend my knee more than 90 degrees and putting weight on it without feeling pain, and when i straighten it i can feel my bone shifting, in several instances hearing the crack as it snaps back into place. needless to say, this isn't exactly supposed to happen often.

my toe still hasn't fully healed from last week either, but it's more of an annoyance than a problem at this point in time.

this means that if it doesn't heal by wednesday, i won't be able to complete all the stations, much less pass them. i can jog, sure, but i'm pretty sure i won't be able to do so at my fullest capacity, which is pretty much automatic failure. sbj will most certainly be out of the question, and sprinting might be affected as well.

oh well. we shall see how everything goes.

bleh.

dreaming of lost friends is kind of a sad thing. well, i'd imagine it would be. what i felt instead was a tinge of regrettable loss. no sadness whatsoever, strangely. as my mom came in to wake my brother up for school, i could only look back and think how wonderful things could have been in a melancholy manner.

the best part of that dream was when she greeted me like an old friend. 

(also the hairstyle. my subconscious comes up with crazy awesome hairstyles)

commenting on wanting to pray for hypocrisy in the church today was hard. hard because when asked for examples of hypocrisy in the church, i couldn't answer. not for lack of examples, but rather for two reasons. firstly, i classify all hypocrisy under the same category, namely hypocrisy. heh. secondly, i can't very well give examples when i know very well i'm guilty of them myself. that would be me being a hypocrite, calling out hypocrisy.


---

it's kinda hard to run when there are people that might recognize you watching you run. she didn't recognize me, fortunately. or unfortunately...

tried kirby's method of 1.50 runs again, and did 1.47, 1.40, 1.53, 1.47, 1.42 before i decided to go home, since it was about to rain. bleh. it'd be great if i could do that for the whole 2km T.T