Chvrches

So finally, we agree
No place for promises here
You better run, you better run so
Hide, hide, I have burned your bridges
I, will be a gun
And it's you I'll come for
I, I, have never felt so easy
I will be a gun, and it's you I'll come for

Heard they're coming for Laneway 2014, but I'm still not too sure considering how I only know of & like Daughter apart from them. Contrary to popular belief, not a certified hipster.

Passing time

Great weather today – poured just about the entire afternoon while I was cooped up at home soaking up the ambience while catching up on Friday Night Lights (awesome, awesome but unacceptably underrated show). In the evening, we went over to the market at Toa Payoh Lor 4 for some seriously delicious kway chap and Asian platter. It's always great to be back in Toa Payoh or Ang Mo Kio – the places where I grew up, and if Pasir Ris saw the formative years of my childhood, these places are the backdrops of a couple of my fondest memories as a child. Until now I can still remember the way the old market looked, the crowds which overflowed into the neighbourhood square on balmy nights, the clanking of beer bottles, and those loud and warm family conversations in Hokkien which I would eavesdrop without fail. I'm actually really glad that such places continue to stand strong until now, because some things just aren't supposed to change.

The past two weeks saw some highlights and changes in my NS life, and it all started out with an outfield exercise which was, in my opinion, one of the worst I've been to so far. I'm quite disappointed at how I'm still rather weak despite all the training I've undergone in August, and considering how my team didn't really have to do much this time makes things even more pathetic lol. But what really redeemed this exercise for me was the second night, where we were huddled in some forested area around a campfire savouring canned clam chowder while gazing at the Orion's Belt. It was good even with shutting eyes and a lack of words. :)

Shortly after the outfield exercise ended, I booked out of Sg Gedong for a month and now I'm currently staying out, thanks to bike course haha. Am training for a Class 2B license, and though the first couple of days were quite shaky with a lot of scolding and nagging, I finally got the hang of the bike recently and I hope it keeps getting better from here. Daily mantra: try your best, pay close attention, don't be easily discouraged.

The past weekend was a pretty chill one with good food and great (albeit completely weird) company, though some bad decisions and run-ins with people got me thinking a lot about the way I handle my relationships, and what I feel is right to do. Guess there's still a lot to learn.

And so that's all that has been going on so far for now. It's back to work tomorrow, and that means it's also back to those dreadful 6.30am mornings. And to whoever on Tumblr who said 6.30am is an emotion and definitely not just a time, thank you. You understand me.

Proud

We all have something we're proud of

And something we're not.

Like when I said I wanted

To give the college degree a miss,

Go to design school, launch the arrows

To see if they hit, they said

Great, take the risk, you're good at it, you're good at everything,

(I think), just when

I get nothing more than

A verbal green light which tried to mean

Both more and less,

Something like

Let me support you

But first, I'll think about

How I'm probably going to work

Until I'm 90.

Yet it wouldn't mean much if things were clear,

If it could be shelved away in box labelled Things You Get With Generation Gaps, paying no mind at all

To whatever ignorance I hear.

But it was strange, because it was disillusioning,

How I realised I could do without it,

That I couldn't build my castles like I thought.

And how I realised

I was probably emptier

Than this conservative Chinese family was.

There are days where I wake up empowered

And nights where I go to bed

With so much gratitude pounding within.

It's the feeling of

A thousand Roman candles lighting up in progression along my spine

When my hands give way to

Something so achingly beautiful

Just because I could call it mine.

And it's what comes when

I close my eyes in a Hallelujah,

Think about everything that got me here today –

Things that were lost,

And things that were realised

Along the way.

Yet there are days where my will

Dwindles to a few silent drops off a leaking faucet,

Where twenty-four hours become so long they're embarrassing.

And I've seen nights spent

Curled up in fetal positions,

As if it would hark back to

Those sparkling eyes, the hand which was always held,

The days when I was still

Nothing short of a child.

And so it goes, I guess,

Hashtagging a couple of life decisions #yolo, #adventure, #swag, maybe,

While stumbling through the melodies of others

Because I was hopelessly out of key.

And while I lay gazing at this night sky that is life,

I see constellations romanticized with possibility

While all they are might just be

Leftover confetti.

Because this is a balancing act,

Of the good and the bad, just like how

We all have something we're proud of

And something we're not.

Tony Lucca

And all my friends were vampires
Didn't know they were vampires
Turns out I was a vampire myself
In the devil town

Albert Einstein and life

“Life is all about choices. How many people are trapped in their everyday habits: part numb, part frightened, part indifferent? To have a better life we must keep choosing how we’re living.”
– Albert Einstein

I didn't think much of this quote when I first saw it, because I thought it was just plain stupid for someone to pin it up against the notice board at the entrance of an army camp cookhouse. A well-meaning nugget of wisdom it is, but I just couldn't reconcile it with my current situation then. Maybe I was too caught up with the usual laments about being conscripted and not being able to make big decisions about my life (let alone choose how I want to live, right?), and well, that's really just part and parcel for an ordinary man in the SAF. But a conversation with a fellow platoon mate yesterday night on the train made me rethink the meaning behind the quote for once, or at the very least, its context. I felt it was interesting, the way he so colourfully described to me his various schemes and methods to climb the 'status ladder', how he progressed from RMJ, to light duties, to 'excuse dust', and finally, to the much-coveted 'excuse stay-in'. Yeah, he's a stay-out personnel, gets to sleep at home every night, and doesn't need to follow us out into the field for operations and exercises. And as he went on to tell me how the other statuses in the platoon aren't 'doing very well', I was somehow completely caught off-guard, because it wasn't until then that I realised that skiving was a completely separate business in its own. You don't 'not do very well' if you're simply ill or injured. It's about knowing the tricks of the trade. How to plan your medical appointments. How to extend your status. How to make sure you go for the right programmes and skip the unappealing ones (as if it's all just one huge buffet meal). And most importantly, how to play the game of cat-and-mouse with your superiors who so badly want to get you back in training.

In a sense, it was a conversation which served as the final blow, the last trace of glamour being stripped away. Those random bouts of in-camp depression used to make the grass on the other side look so strikingly green to the point of glaring, and I would ask myself why I was still committed to the job, when the usual few could 'get away with doing next to nothing'. But at that point, I stopped thinking that way. All I could think about then was how I was just so... repelled. Imagining the scenario in which everyone of us just fell out and stopped doing what we needed to do because we thought of only ourselves, I felt truly disappointed, yet I understood why I decided to hang on as long as I was fit enough to do my job. Yes, there will be many more times in the future where I will think like the person who casually glances at the quote while waiting for the rest to finish their meals at the entrance of the cookhouse – that I'm just another ordinary man in the SAF. But be it mistakes or 'job well done's, I'm at least gonna be there when I have to, to be responsible when I should. To be honest, I don't actually despise him or the few of them for choosing how they want their lives in the army to be like. All I know is that I'm gonna choose to stick to this kind of life I'm leading here, because I don't see how I can leave NS dignified any other way.

Some chit-chat about the goings-on thus far

To start off this entry, that's a photo I took with my iPhone while on the road the night of my third-last book-in to Pasir Laba Camp for my scout platoon course, heavily edited with some fake light leaks to evoke a faux film experience which would hopefully translate to feelings of uh... nostalgia, and perhaps, hopefulness that comes with yet another chapter closed. Lol.

Of course, I believe I've closed many more chapters during the four months I've been away from this place. Apparently I haven't been writing as much as I should, and I should've known better than to keep my resolution of writing regularly in a physical Moleskine journal, because that definitely didn't turn out the way I expected it to. Nevertheless, I've done quite a good job in trudging (both figuratively and literally) through my NS journey thus far, well at least as far as a man is concerned.

Looking back, the course was sort of a brief throwback to PTP/BMT days, it being a training school and all, only there was just way more dread accentuating everything. After all, you can't replicate the BMT experience unless you were a recruit who barely knew anything. For scouts, the average ignorant Singaporean would be able to know more about what we do from all those cyberpioneer videos on YouTube. Yeah, I guess we did most of that while on course. Besides being the signaller of my own team (so I had to deal with the weight of the signal equipment on top of my field pack), the marching was really old news to me by then, what with all the marches I have survived up till then. Nevertheless, I would say that every march posed a new challenge and I'm definitely no Superman. Definitely, there were those blurry moments with beads of sweat trickling down my cheeks. The amplified impatience when I'm not quite allowed to put down my field pack despite having reached the pitstop because the platoon waits for everybody to arrive. And not to forget, the physical abrasions in the aftermath that reminded me of how I just survived a terrible internal riot. Of course, look up reconnaissance on Wikipedia and you'll find out that there's much more to a scout than simply walking and marching – but I wouldn't risk carelessly rambling on about every single thing I did here. All I can say is that I learned a lot about the right kind of person to be when the going gets tough, with much thanks to my platoon mates. And I even surprised myself with regards to how much I thought I could take, as well as how far I was willing to step out of my comfort zone. Despite the dread, in retrospect, you could say that it was actually a liberating experience for me... most ironically. But if you asked me if I miss it... not really, I guess. Maybe it just isn't the time to get all sentimental and fuzzy about my NS experiences yet.

I have a feeling this entry has turned out to be totally useless and uninformative. :/ But I guess it at least sends a message to any reader out there that I'm still alive and well I would say, managing OK as a work-in-progress. Maybe one day I'll look beyond all these feelings and experiences, and see myself as a person who's truly changed for the better.

Hollow

I tried to write an entry earlier, but it was scrapped because I realised that the words were just sliding down a slippery slope of depression, unhappiness, emptiness, among other unpleasant feelings. I wouldn't deny that I haven't been feeling very good about living the past few months, but once it dawned on me that my words could aggravate all these lousy emotions depending on how I chose and strung them, I stopped simply out of the shocking potential within me to build my own catastrophe. And of course, out of the need to practice some moderation.

Shafts of morning light in its warm, glorious mild orange glow are pouring into the room from between the window panes, as I'm typing this right now. 7:03 am, and I'm not sure how long more this will take, but I know that lately, I've been holding on to these simple, fleeting moments, because it feels like they're all I have left to remind me to keep going. If anything, being here has only intensified my longing to go back to humble beginnings, to the places of my childhood where the world was my own personal kingdom – places that now cease to exist anywhere else other than in the haziness of a distant memory. Only when reality not only catches up with you, but laps you by several miles, will you realise that you once held your own world in your hands and did great things with it. And you'll hate it, too, because castles are built only to be torn down time and time again. Because that's how you remember.

I like to believe that I'm a person that, occasionally, writes too cryptically and acts too artsy for own good. Let's add this in to the list of the things that I am. Sensitive, quiet, withdrawn, aloof, awkward, pseudo-artistic maybe, introverted. For a guy, I'm probably 'great in a different way' for the affirmers, those who talk about making the society a 'better place', like some vacuum of rainbows sprouting out from every direction or something. I don't mean to sound caustic, but there are just phases in your life when you're too disempowered to even give a damn. I dare not say that everyone has them, but it's good if they do. Because if I'm lucky enough, they'd at least be able to relate to how I feel right now. A person with all the 'qualities' mentioned above, in an institution that hardly ever values any of them. Physically fit, yes, but not fit for leadership or command because that's just how I am. Getting thrown in somewhere to deal with the whims of the higher-ups, to maneuver through their personal agendas and to give them the 'face' they 'need'. Where respect is earned through authority and rarely through relationship. Yeah, I won't say anything, because I too understand how they need to do their jobs as much as we do. But sometimes, just sometimes, I'm tired and beaten from not being able to unlock whatever potential I have within me, to the point where I have begun to doubt if I even have it inside. Even now, I'm still not sure (ha...).

If I'm coming off as somebody who's whiny and too weak to face things by myself, then I guess you're either horribly wrong or too clouded by your own judgment. Maybe that's my fault too for being an unreliable narrator, but right now I can really do without people who can't or don't bother to understand. I've come to the point where I don't care what others would think about me anymore, at least not even in a place like this, where I'm probably the only one reading whatever I write. It's more of a case of keeping things in for too long, such that I would lose sense of everything I'm feeling if I don't express it a bit. Anyway, I believe I did an adequate job this time. Hopefully it doesn't sound too self-deprecating.

I guess this is the part where I heave a huge, breathy sigh and get up again.