was pleasantly surprised to meet Michael today in the white house canteen, and we jus started chatting and talking abt our bmt days and abt our bmt mates. was not surprised to hear that we both are excited abt ord-ing soon. haha~

this two weeks are the last few days of NS life for some of my closest friends in SAF band. today's also fazil's last day with me (yesterday was our last parade together). i will miss them a lot, terribly a lot, cause they are some of the reasons why i'm so happy here.

as i sat on the bus on the way home, the little little details of my bmt days swarmed back into my mind. first day of my enlistment, April 1st 2003, april fool's day too. and i kept making a lame joke abt how a joke is to be enlisting on that day. anyway, 1 month before that, sars broke out, and due to this, my parents weren't allowed to see me enlist and say the pledge in Pulau Tekong itself. it was all very very depressing, to be there alone with no one my heart felt close to. (there was the irritating Th##g K#n W#i who was my sec 3 classmate for my section mate, but i don't like to talk to him. he's such a superficial person.) and yar, i said the pledge with 100+ other strangers at the parade square of the BMTC. the rest of the day, i was dragged all over the BMTC to collect my barang barang and to get settled down in our respective bunks.

that night was the most terrible. couldn't go to sleep and i could only stare out of my bunk (i slept by the window) and count the number of planes that flew past. and just when i was all tired from the counting (i still remembered it was around 17 to 19 planes), my alarm rang. 5:00am, time to wash up and go for breakfast.

the second day was the most terrible day of my whole NS life (in fact, my most depressing day of my whole life). was made to learn this and that for a short period of time and get scolded for not doing well (i'm the kind of the person who rather get physically punished than get yelled at). learning to tie the boot laces, learning to do our SBO, learning to... and when i was mentally tired, it was only 10am in the morning. terrible. then, there was the endless useless and boring talks in the afternoon much worse than any lectures i'd got back in jc times. and the day ended? with getting to know nobody cause everybody was just too busy trying to settle down and learn the irritating military stuff (which i've all forgotten by now). the only amusing thing that happened was learning Zhang Guo Rong's suicide thru my OC's mouth. amusing because i tot he was joking, until i read the papers two weeks later.

the second saturday of the confinement period is what all new enlistees look forward to, 'cause it's the parents' visiting day. but news had it that our batch of enlistees would not be getting one due to the sars. i was very worried at that time, because i learnt my mum fractured her arm and the only thing she kept saying was she was alright, but my dad fed me information with how terrible her arm was. i was very very worried and depressed over the fact that i couldn't be with her when she needed me. then again, i got injured on the first sunday of my enlistment, leaving the whole of my left knee cap skinless. and i kept telling my mum over the phone that i'm ok. haha~ guess that is what family members do, hide the pain from each other to prevent unnecessary worryings.

it was only the friday before that saturday that the parents' visiting had been allowed. and i was really looking forward to it. and the silly me wanted to impress my parents, so spent the whole morning of that saturday ironing my no.4 and folding the sleeves to the standard garang 3-fingers rule. in the end, because i got all too excited, i got scalded by the iron accidentally. haha~ ya. the scar is still visible till now. and ya, i was VERY accident prone during my bmt days.

that day was almost my happiest day of my life when i see my parents unboard the fast-craft. i almost cried. ya, those two weeks had made me weaker at the heart and mind, and all of the sudden, i was my boyish cryish self. but of coz i resisted the tearing.

enlistment had been the turning point in my life. a lot of things had happened since then, of work and outside of work. i couldn't say i've grown up or stronger, but i knew i had changed. seeing my old pal and saying goodbyes to my ord-ing friends today had made me realise this and remember all that happened.

Johnzzon