Friday, February 24, 2006
Going home by cab with Fred and Eugene after standby at East was a terrible experience for us because the driver decided to play the role of an irritating pest by being a bastard who doesn't know when to stop talking and even tried to lie to a bunch a ns guys like us. 3 of us booked a cab saying in advance that we will be paying by Fred's credit card. There's a reason why I mentioned payment by credit card cause it was one of the incident that caused us to be pissed off by the driver. We didn't mind when Sergeant Jia Cheng and Hao Ping wanted to join us for the cab ride even though it meant there were 5 people. I meant most drivers would be nice enough to take us and we would be totally understanding if they didn't want to. They could get into trouble if caught by the authorities for overloading the vehicle.
However, not only did the driver not just shut his trap when I asked him nicely again the second time if he could take the 5 of us, it's just a 10 mins ride anyway. He then went on a cursing marathon with his mouth and started questioning how did my sergeants become commanders and brought in our oc, that's something I forgot. He then told us a whole load of crap saying how he saw traffic police near the road leading to Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal catching those heavy vehicles which were transporting soil, saying that there were some which had overloaded. I did not believe a single word he said because the traffic police got better things to do now than to catch those vehicles. Firstly, stationing themselves at the junction at Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal was something I found amusing at first and if he had said that they were at the road before vehicles turn into the Changi Coast Road, I would have believed him because they were needed there to monitor traffic and security because of the Asian Aerospace.
We reached Expo mrt station and we didn't have cash on hand to pay him because he claimed that his credit card machine was spoilt? He even asked us to go draw cash and regretted picking us up because he hated going to ns camps to pick up passengers. How contradicting! He knew beforehand that he was heading into a airbase because the straight road heading into my camp was at least 2km long. Normally I enjoy taking cabs because I love interacting with the drivers and listening to their stories about life, ns and family etc. This cab driver just happens to be the bad egg among the many but I certainly won't let him spoily my perception of most cab drivers.
I didn't managed to catch Arsenal's match with Real Madrid because I was too tired from duties and despite being such an ardent fan, I cannot help but worry about them because I have to be honest and say that we don't really stand much of a chance against the Spanish giants who are on a good run of form. Arsenal on the other hand, are having a poor run themselves. I would say losing by a score of 2-0 would have been all right already. To wake up at 7am for duty and hearing from Ser Chin that Arsenal won 1-0 was really surprising but it just goes to show how Arsenal can go against the run of play and win. Let's recall the 5-1 hammering we gave Inter Milan 2 years ago when we even lost the first leg. Well, let's hope we can finish the job at Highbury in a fortnight's time.
The recent debate on whether school going children are starting school too early kinda surprised me a little. What took so long for parents and the government to start showing their concern only now when they should have done so probably a decade ago when I was still a primary school student. Does it really matter now or is it that we are starting to feel for our young ones or spoiling them? Students now should be used to having multiple programmes and enrichment lessons planned for them the moment they finish school to late at night. From swimming to violin and piano lessons plus tuition, you cannot help but feel sorry for them sometimes. Starting school later is indeed justified but it ain't easy to please everyone, namely the students, parents, schools and bus drives etc. The new paper published the schedule for one student and bus driver and you cannot help but feel that it's just the Singaporean kiasu mentality. One is working hard to get good results while the other is working hard to make money.
Being a former student myself, I know that in order to survive in a result-oriented society like Singapore, there's bound to be sacrifices to be made. That meant probably waking up early just to be in time for school. For the guys, I can only say it's good practice to start from young so you can be used to it when you enlist for army. How the current debate will work out is something that time will only tell.
I salute all officers while on duty daily and greet all that above me in camp because we have to, not because we want to. Notice the elaboration. It's only recently that I start asking myself these people deserve to be greeted just because they are of higher rank than me or because I really meant my salutes? For the nice warrant officers in East, I particularly liked a few of them because they are concerned about my welfare and they often asked about our nsf life. I can't say much of the specialists and officers then. I even told some of my campmates that the people we should salute are the ones like the auntie that comes every few days to clean our toilet, the SFI uncle who delivers our meals and the contractors etc. They come to make our life more comfortable if not a bit better.
To those who are paying 21 bucks to go see the Asian Aerospace at Changi, I just wanna say that I'm paying nothing for a free airshow. I get to see the unmanned aerial vehicles every mount and watch them take off close up because I'm guarding them. Not to mention the F-15s and the A380 fly high in the skies. That's probably the only perks of the job these few weeks.
