standstill.

abt a year ago i was still a young naive little boy who cares abt his looks, always wantin to get attention and wasnt really thinkin abt his future. i was still in tt live-a-day-by-a-day mode. i didnt put in hard work for my As. nw it has all come back to me. those bldy days whr i skipped lectures or even dinner for dota battles seems ridiculous. those days i fought with my friends after a mere kill-stealin reflects childishness. doesnt matter dat i was born just 9 days before 1988. mayb i wasnt mature enuff.
it all suddenly came to me. at the strike of midnight of the last day of 2005. 7 more days n i wld become a soldier. who knows wad lies ahead. studyin was put to a standstill. i made a whole lot more of friends. Friends whom i guess i wld keep in contact for quite sometime. it has been lucky for me i guess. i wld occassionally mit up with my khakis or girl friends. then the flurry of university admissions came. everyone seems to be gettin wad they want. i had always wanted to be a doctor. to make a diff into other ppl's lives. bt i had lowered my expectations. definitely money takes precedence over interest for most of us. inclu me. moreover entrepreneurship excites me. bt hey my D for biology cldnt get me into a business sch. it sucks i tell u. thr might be a chance for me in economics in smu bt its slim. i know it. of cuz, i can choose to fly over to aussie / uk to pursue wad i want. i always had the fantasy of living the 'american dream'. those parties. those hot chicks. n college seems more like a long vacation haul. the oc =) bt then again the money issue comes into place.

juz came back from 4 days in tekong. yupp its a degree hotter than in mainland and the mossies thr are like 10 times more and 3 times bigger. they drained like 5% of my blood when i was proning or slpin. apparently the insect repellent attracts them. frikin hell. the rest of my friends only spent like 2 days for 'grandslam'. it has to be foxtrot. we had gypsy 3 unheard of in other coys. navigation in a semi-open terrain was easy cuz we can walk on the tracks. bt the distance from one checkpoint to another esp at night was like 5-6km. imagine a rocky path, hot sun, carryin a saw and no end in sight. well that was only the first day. we slept only for 5 hrs in quite thick vegetation with our sbo on and gun slung. only a groundsheet tt separates us from the soil. sentry duty was on for 2 hrs with helmet and in prone position. the nxt 3 days was hell. we did fighting patrol and ambush missions for abt 7 consecutive times only holdin diff appointments each time. i smell worst than a rotting corpse of a skunk. oh hw can i forget the camo on our faces for the whole 72 hrs n the yucky combat rations. in warm-glowing camaraderie, we endured. we fought on. finally on the last day, i felt a drop of water. we all felt it. it turned into a drizzle and mins later a downpour. it was a sign dat it was all over. i took off my helmet. the camo came off. the dirt on our no4 were washed away. laughter came back. we did a celebratory rain dance. at last war was over. We were victorious. =))