Thursday, May 11, 2006
I should thank my pc for letting me be in the standby group on saturday instead of the one on sunday. I don't want to spend my birthday doing basically nothing in aeti when I could outside spending quality time with my family and friends. I can consider myself pretty lucky that I spent both my 19th and 20th birthday outside of camp even though I'm a nsf. Reading marvin's entries detailing how he spent his birthday in tekong and worse off- during field camp. Everyone's morale is at his extreme low ends during field camp and to even have your birthday fall right into the field camp programme totally sucks. However, my experience in army has taught me that it's not when or where you celebrate your birthday, it's how it's been celebrated that matters. When the going gets tough during outfield, even celebrating someone's birthday helps lighten up the mood a little bit.
Had indonesian food for dinner at Suntec followed by ice cream at Swensens. I must say it's been some time since I last spent quality time with my family and my birthday has given us all the more reason to spend time together considering I hardly have a proper dismount day now. I felt kinda ashamed of myself considering that my body was there but my mind and soul wasn't. Maybe marvin was right, the thing about you still being still in the army still hinges on your mind but I tried not to think about it and let it affect the evening. Everyone asked what I wanted for my birthday but I just told them that I don't need anything for the moment because I've got everything that I wanted. I just want to see out my time as a nsf till I ord in march next year and become what everyone wants to be, a nsman. After that, it's time to celebrate my birthday as a civilian, no more a person who's still wearing green.
Many thanks to the people who sent me well wishes to my handphone and those who tagged on my board, really appreciate it alot guys. Personally, I felt that the best birthday present I received was seeing how Arsenal took the fourth place and finally qualifying spot for the champions league with a 4-2 win on Wigan. It was our final game at Highbury and we had to go out on a high. It was nice seeing Highbury legends like David Platt and Ian Wright etc coming back to grace the occassion before we move to Ashburton Grove next season. Let's not forget Dennis Bergkamp, one of the finest players to have graced the pitch in Highbury. It's just a pity I didn't get to see my favourite player, Tony Adams. Maybe he did come back, just that the cameras didn't capture him.
Today marked the last hectic standby that my shift will have and we will soon resume the normal standby timetable we had before my unit announced the heightened security news. It marked a change in schedue - we stay in camp for 3 days and only book out for 1 day. Bad thing is that I hardly get to spend time outside of camp but I've started my own policy of seeing positive things even out of the negatives ones. You just have to squeeze every minor positive detail out. I get to save on transport time and money and it's not that I really like to spend alot of time in camp but at least I get to spend some quality time with my shift mates eating dinner in changi village, playing soccer with them and the GOH guys and visit my old bunk during course time etc.
So for now, I'm taking things slowly, step by step till the day that the GOH guys come back.
