It’s been an exhausting last couple of days. Ever since I booked into camp on Thursday night, there has been a lot of drama and intrigue in my life coupled with tons and tons of intense frustration. I think I’m too angry for my own good. Can’t be helped; certain people bug the ever-living shit out of me.
* I burned the first seven episodes of the first season of Prison Break to a DVD+RW disc, but alas, it was to no avail. I think William’s ’sponsored laptop’ lacks certain codecs, because the screen flickers constantly while I tried watching the episodes. Guess I’ll have to pass it to Azri some other time (there is going to be a camp-wide raid next week apparently so all illegal contraband is advised against). Anyways, since the Prison Break suggested marathon was not going to materialise, the four (Azri, Esmond, Robin the caretaker for the day and myself) of us just slacked and watched television for a while before hitting the sack. William played piang and didn’t book in — he’d been given a time extension, actually, to work on his project… but he decided to just stay at home and book in early next morning instead. Ha. Awesome.
* Friday was a normal day. At first. My stomach felt like it was being yanked in a million different directions, but try as I could… there was to be no waste disposal. Blockage. Ugh. The mandatory LIFE RUN was replaced with an aerobics session involving punches and kicks and all that jazz. I was more concerned about my stomach then anything else, so I just acted like a clown and performed my moves half-heartedly. Once that was that, we returned to AFC to do fuck all. Got my three half-day offs and my dental appointment for next Friday afternoon signed for by MISTER DL (who was already a wee bit miffed at the fact that my Area IC was not doing enough to ensure the bigwigs at BMTC to treat us a little better), then slacked in the CCI Office watching Zoolander. Following which, the majority of us prepared our uniforms for the MASTAR PARADA later that afternoon. Thankfully, we were informed that we would be having a OC Dialogue (a precursor to the CO Dialogue to be held next Friday). And with none of the regulars — including MISTER DL and MISTER OHK — absent from the session, we let loose with our complaints. Pay issues, planning incompetency, and more sensible welfare for us CCIs were at the top of the list. I myself brought up several points; the fact that the Area ICs do not appreciate our input for our respective unit’s planning, the shambolic allocation of instructors in the East Area, and the insensibility in not giving everyone their own ISAC card to do their work. After the session, the OC mentioned he was going to bring up all our concerns directly to CO in a while, and that CO would address them in due time. Most of us were pleased, but had to rush because we had the MASTAR PARADA to attend. Word was, anybody not having an up-to-standard uniform would be serving extra guard duty. As for myself, I had nothing out of order. In fact, MISTER DL even recommended several people to check out the way the badges were sewn on my uniform. WOW. FOR ONCE, I DIDN’T GET INTO TROUBLE. Many others did, but instead of getting extra guard duty, they escaped with a warning. Great. Perfect. And if my luck can be counted for, I’ll probably get fucked the next time they decide to have one of these stupid time-wasters again and I’ll be the only one served with extra guard duty. Blah. Once the MASTAR PARADA was done with, we guys had our official Army Half Marathon (AHM) briefing. I was already set to play piang on Sunday, but the fact that we had to report to the Padang/War Memorial at 0615 meant I had a few other people wondering if they should play piang or not. One of them was Robin, with whom I struck a deal. More on this later on.
* For the rest of the afternoon, everybody just did nothing. Mainly because by the time we were done with the MASTAR PARADA, it was already 1630. The programme for next week was already out by the time we got back to the office, and upon one look at it, I detected at least seven mistakes for the East Area. The most critical one being on Monday afternoon. COCKHEAD had put myself, Thiban and Alex at Tekong, for Leopard COY’s last lesson. That’s fine and dandy, except for the fact that THE THREE OF US WOULD BE CLEARING OUR AHM OFF ON MONDAY SINCE WE WERE ALREADY SLATED TO ATTEND THE EVENT ON SUNDAY! Even if I was going to play piang I’d get a two-day MC from the Polyclinic. I duly went off to tell COCKHEAD about this fatal error, but once I met him, COCKHEAD claimed he had already changed the programme and put both Reuben & Choon Kiat there on Monday afternoon (as they were not going to attend AHM due to guard duty on Saturday). If COCKHEAD claimed he’d already known about it, why wasn’t it reflected? Whatever. I was satisfied that he, at least, already knew of the situation. All the other changes were not pressing and I was going to leave it until next week. Still, I was seething over the messed-up programme. Does it take too much effort to proof-read what you plan? It’s not NUCLEAR FUCKING PHYSICS, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE.
* Guard duty beckoned. We ordered our dinner at around 1750. While waiting, Robin and I shared our plan to skip Sunday’s AHM with a general theme that those doing the Friday guard duty would fall victim to a bout of food poisoning. The response wasn’t overly encouraging, but Robin and I were adamant nonetheless that we’d skip the AHM. Before we could even dig in, however, the guard-house called us and forced us to start early. Their treatment of us was very shocking; they fucking needed us to do a service for the camp, yet shoved us around like insignificant dogs. Friday’s guard duty has always started at 1900 but simply because some of them wanted to go off earlier than usual, we had to start almost one hour before we were supposed to? Screw that shit. As for the guard duty itself, it was largely unremarkable. I did sentry duty, and the guy doing stand-by-desk with me was this chap from another unit. He was strange. Suffice to say, sentry duty was boring and depressing. Left with some of the guys on Saturday morning, totally spent and ready to cash in on some much-needed sleep.
* On the way home on the train, there was this little boy who annoyed the crap out of me. I lost my cool eventually and berated the kid while grabbing the runt by the collar of his shirt. Naturally, he cried. Fucker. Showered, changed, and rushed off for my tuition gig. History, for Christina. She’s getting better; I’ll make her an A+ student yet. Decided to scrap my plan to skip the AHM based on Robin saying COCKHEAD doubted the validity of his sickness when he called to report that he had attained a MC from Changi General Hospital. I had come up with a new plan; claim my AHM off on Monday, get a MC to cover Tuesday and Wednesday, and go back to Pasir Laba on Thursday without worrying about having to stay in due to my dental appointment on Friday. Once my genius plan was approved by my brain, I finally drifted off to sleep.
* Having spent yesterday evening mostly slacking around, I headed to the War Memorial early this morning for the bloody AHM. Due to my own confusion, I spent some time at the Padang first, which was a lusterfuck of epic proportions even if I did run into some old friends and had people recognising me due to BCCT. Once I found the AFC contingent and the attendance was taken, several of my seniors decided to play piang and disappeared. I met up with Azri, Ian and Thiban at the start line… and as the clock hit 0800, we sprinted like mad. Not. It was too packed even to jog. So, the four of us decided to walk for a while. After about five minutes, that’s when we started to jog. Several minutes later, I decided to seperate from the pack and ran for real. I must say, I actually enjoyed the run. I only stopped once, at the first water-point. Didn’t bother stoping at the Milo rest-points, since there were too many people hogging the Milo. Pretty proud of the fact that I finished pretty early. Esmond was right behind me at the finish line, and we rested for a while at the Padang. Started to drizzle, so we figured we’d look for our bags. Bad idea; as we went back to the War Memorial, it started to rain quite heavily. Motherfucker. Only after 10 minutes of hiding under shelter did we find where SQ (he was on status due to a twisted ankle and thus didn’t run) relocated all our bags to. Slowly, everybody else made their way back… including those who didn’t run and were caught with MISTER OHK. Eventually, after about an hour of doing nothing and going back to the Padang for fucking jack, we were allowed to go off. And off I went, without any goodie bag to speak of but still pleased with my running progress. I only hope this will translate into a good timing for my 2.4KM run.
* Slept for the whole afternoon. Felt fucking ace. Talked to several people online for a while, before bad news settled in. Reuben told me that he would not be able to go to Tekong tomorrow afternoon, as he had a pre-arranged dental appointment. And because of COCKHEAD’S fantastic planning and ability to track where his men are at all times, I THINK I HAVE TO GO TO TEKONG TO TEACH TOMORROW AFTERNOON. ON MY FUCKING DAY OFF! MOTHERFUCKING BULLSHIT. There’s more to this situation than what I just revealed, but it doesn’t matter now. This is what it’s come to: me having to book into Tekong (which I originally wanted to do so that I could collect my misplaced keys), to teach on my day off. Simply because there’s nobody else that can be spared. Whose fault is that? That’s the billion-dollar question that I’m going to raise when I go back to PLC this Thursday. It’s time to take COCKHEAD down, for good.
I’m very tired now. Of everything. Of everyone (nearly). Fucking hell.
