armyboy__the.victorian

The past 6 weeks has just gone by in a flash.

I had my 21st birthday celebration on the 16th and 17th Jan, and it was certainly memorable. Especially after going for a swim in the pool with my 3-month-old camera, and being a fugitive by the security guards for illegal swimming after the pool’s closure.

and then I found a job at Starhub, of which I’m under going tough training now. can’t wait to get on the phone on 1 March.

Oh of course, Chinese New Year, the usual stuff annually.
However, Day 1 was exceptionally boring, stayed at home because the relatives from dad’s side were not free and hence received no angpows. ;(
Day 2 was better, went visiting most of mum’s side.

Nevertheless, my overall angpow received this year is really pathetic, like <$100. But it usually decreases as one gets older, doesn’t it?

Today is the last day of 2009. Looking back, it has been one long emotional, yet memorable year.

One year ago, a freshly commissioned 2LT stepped into unit not knowing what’s in stall for him. When he finally knew what was happening, he was already squeezed dry, anxiously hoping to ORD.

My past one year was spent in Signal Institute. Amist many unhappy situations, I’m glad to have met many nice people along the way.

I still remember those times when there were internal conflicts within the office, how I had to spend lots of time and effort trashing it out and solving them. I remember how stressed I became because of human relations, where the guys did not understand why I’m doing certain things and got angry. I cannot forget how i got so overworked, due to the crazy endless demands of the bosses. That seemed so near, yet so long ago.

Then there were the emotional times where I got my friends angry and hurt. And the times which I regret not living up to the expectations of the creed I respectfully recite as a trainee.

As the year approaches the end, I am sorry to all my friends whom i’ve either hurt or let-down during my moments of folly. I hope our friendship can strengthen as how the saying goes – ‘what does not destroy me only makes me stronger.

On a lighter note, I’ve met many great friends in NS throughout the different phases. It’s unfortunate that some of us has drifted apart, as is usual when we get posted to different places, but some of the times I’ve shared with them are truly precious and memorable. I hope we can still meet up although we/I/most of us have already ORD-ed.

Indeed, sometimes when things get lonely in there, friends are the only ones that keep me going because there’s not really anyone else to turn to. I hereby thank all my friends who stood by me whenever I was stressed, those who shared fun @ memorable times with me in ROC or in camp either singing karaoke or foosballing in the officers’ or specs’ mess, those who got an earful from my endless complains about life in army. Of course, not forgetting my fellow IRB guys in eLS who supported me through the tough periods. I also would like to thank my fellow colleages in Plaza Sing who are probably still slogging out now during the festive season.

As I finally submitted my university application to Cornell and Carnegie Mellon whose essays dragged on for almost forever, I would like to thank my friends and teachers who gave their precious comments, especially Victor who looked through most of them. Wish me luck!

Wishing all a happy new 2010!

This Christmas has been a physically and mentally tiring one. Overnight cycling was fun. The 3 of us started from Pasir Ris, and covered places like Tampines, East Coast, Loyang, Changi, and through the journey I’ve managed to see many different things along the way, such as the different types of chalets, SAF camps etc. The crazy stretch was definitely the runway strech towards Changi, which reminded me of my Spitfire exercise along Lim Chu Kang. And it would have been less tiring if not for the lousy bicycles we got which had so much resistance and lousy gears which we got conned $15.

I’m looking at Costa Sands Pasir Ris for next year.

And for Christmas, I so wanted to go carolling but could not because of the Avatar 3D movie I had. And it was followed by mahjong and board games at Foong’s. Two nights without sleeping was crazy, which kind of knocked me out the whole of today.

Merry Christmas to all.

I’m back from phuket. The flight back was crazy, with all the turbulence, flying 1 hour behind schedule into Singapore because there was a queue to land on the runway. (Our plane was queue number 10, and we were just busy circling the airspace)

Anyway continuing from my previous post, of which I was forced to stop halfway from blogging because the rest wanted to go back to the hotel.

Yup, besides the taxi, which was an obvious collusion, shopping was also very bad. There were practically nothing much to buy, except useless stuff. The cheap shirts were bad in design. Moreoever, haggling is not as easy compared to Vietnam.

On the other hand, our experience with food was pretty good. And cheap too. Almost everything was less than half the price of that in Singapore. So we ate and ate and ate…

Accomodation was screwed up at the Thavorn Grand Plaza Hotel. We made a deposit online via their online booking, of which we were supposed to pay only 900 baht in total for a dormitory, which means it will only cost us about $9 each for 3 nights (although we were rather skeptical as the deal was too good to be true). However, when we got there, they told us it was an error in their system, and charged us 3600 baht instead. So we haggled, and we came to a consensus that they gave us 2 deluxe rooms for 3 nights for 3000 baht, which equates to approximately $10 per pax per night, which was pretty reasonable considering the standard of the deluxe rooms.

We did all the activities we could. Going to Patong beach (where we got conned 50 baht just be sitting on the row of beach chairs; we also saw someone just removing her top to suntan), checking out night clubs (and it got irritating when they keep pestering us every 10 secs to watch their ping pong show, thai girl show, naked girl show – basically a list of menu of shows), shopping in the malls/side street, snorkling, losing camera, eating fastfood/street side food/restaurant, watching movie (we watched 2012 as it cost only $4), taking tuktuks, thai massage (it was so good and cheap – only $8 per hour, that we went there twice), did elephant tracking, driving an All-Terrain vehicle (ATV), monkey/elephant shows, swimming in the waterfall, and best of all was the white water rafting, where we we busy attacking other people in the rapids.

Many of the activities were made possible thanks to the very good service/discounts given by the Sunshine Travel Agency near our Hotel.

It was a great trip, and the 4 days trip we spent an average of $450++ each inclusive of airfare and taxes.

I am currently blogging from an internet cafe just across our hotel for some 30 baht per hour.
So, photos will be uploaded later.

The four of us has just ended a full Thai body massage session. We had one pretty value for money, about S$8 for an hour of massage.

Anyway, our trip so far was mainly trying to find cool local stuff to do, for the most value for money.

And so it started with me forgetting to bring along my phone. And to think I even downloaded Thai translation software the night before so as to facilitate communication. So, I told myself it’s probably a good thing so I won’t lose it overseas. However, the moment upon touchdown, there was like free sim cards given to tourists, and call anywhere free for 5 mins. And so I really regretted not bringing it.

Taxi is the worse service you can expect over here. Contrary to Singapore, there is no meter fare, so going from place to place is like another bargaining session to buy goods. And every step you take around Phuket, there will be drivers pestering you to take their cab. What’s worse, they will lie to you so as to bring you to a place. One instance was our intent to go to Phi Phi island, where drivers can make up stories so as to con us to go into his cab, offering to bring us to a far away tour agency, which we later found a very much better deal just a few blocks down.

So the first instance took place at the airport, where they offered to take us to our hotel in town for 500. We decided to try 400, but they declined. When we walked away, some 5 mins later, another driver came up to offer to take us. So we were pretty apprehensive, thinking that we could have actually gone lower, just because we were ignorant of the market price. Anyway, we got a pretty large van-cab, so it was still pretty alright.

To be continued…

Last night, we 7x 06S55 classmates decided to meet up and boose.

So I drove over to Jia Ying’s by 10pm, and then we started catching up and stuff. It felt like almost forever since I last met them. For the first time, I decided to try hooking up my laptop to my iPhone for tethering at the front passenger seat, which allowed me to MSN on my journey and reply to messages at red lights. Pretty cool – feels like a command post in there.

And then we played the drinking game, where Jia Ying decided to mix horrible tasting concoction of raspberry with lime juice, or green tea and wiskey or whatever – and that cost her to get arrowed most of the drinks, of which, some really tasted like shit.

Then, when we people got drunk, there was a htht where a mass interrogation and sharing session occured about lust and love. So as far as I could remember in my half-asleep state, we shared how immoral we all had been in our lives and how far we have experienced for sexuality.

In the end, I decided to drive home at 4am lest I got too tired to drive later… (I definitely wasn’t drunk at all when I drove!)

Since a week after ORD, I have been working at Plaza Singapura, and today is the last day of my 3-week journey as a Customer Service Assistant at the mall.

The job, though the schedule sucks big time (such as working till 10pm and even weekends) and the meagre pay (esp after CPF), was a fun and enjoyable experience as I got to interact with many people, besides dealing with many impatient and irritating customers.

I used to think that the job was easy. Basically all they do is guide people around and scanning people’s IC for lucky draw. Not until I tried it for myself.

Indeed, my job scope included guiding people around and keying in customer’s details for lucky draw. But on top of these, there are also lucky dip, Retailers voucher claims, carpark and enquires, CapitaLand Vouchers, Sistic Ticket Sales, answering phone calls, maintaining brochures, sai kang like rolling/preparing gifts, delivery man, and the list goes on and on… But one of the most interesting portion was being the ambassador for the Care Bear show, of which I managed the crowd control as well as baby sat the little kids. I also saw for myself how all loving parents would go all the extent just for their kids to be happy.

Anyway, at the start, it was pretty apprehensive at first, because people kept asking this, asking that, and I didn’t know the answer. But I’m really thankful for my fellow CSAs, Alvin, Kaur and Mala, who guided me along, as well as newbie colleagues Gladys and Roslan who fought alongside with me. Soon after, I got used to all the enquires, and managed to answer the repetitive questions about the nearest whatever shops, the location of the toilet, ATMs, MRT, Money Changer etc.

There was also a few incidents that got me really angry. Once, a female customer called (and I was nice – or stupid – enough to answer even though I had a long queue of customers waiting behind) and started to enquire about a Care Bear tea session. However, although I told her that there is no tea session, but only a meet and greet session which I was very sure of, she insisted on it because her sister told her so and asked me to go and find out. Because of a long queue behind waiting for my assistance, I politely asked her if it was alright if I refer her to my colleague, she got irritated and demanded, “Isn’t this the customer service, why do I need to be referred to someone else!?” She then demanded for the manager… At first, I was taken aback, but I offered if it was alright if I took down her number and give her a call back later instead. Then she got even angrier, and asked for my name and manager’s number… which I was more than glad to provide her with. She can complain all she wants … what a bitch.

There’s also the aunties/uncles who would calculate their expenditures & split their payment into many many messy receipts just to qualify for more draws…

Kudos to my colleagues for all the wonderful gifts and experiences spent together!

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To my BMT Instructors & Platoon Mates; 71/08 Sierra Officer Cadet Course & 71/08 Signal Officer Cadet Course Instructors & Wing/Course Mates; Signal Institute and Stagmont Camp Perm Staff and Friends …

Thanks everyone who has made my one year and 10 months enjoyable. I’ve learnt a lot from my NS experience and i think if we all think of it positively, we all can learn something or the other from it!

ORD is a happy mark in our lives, where we make very close friends, but also a sad one because we’d never have such an experience again. Take care and all the best guys! =)

‘

This is too cool to be true… I’ll let the photos do the talking!

I was posted to ATnE soon after. It was a pretty relaxed posting compared to my previous appointment.

At least, over at ATnE, I managed to go to Taiwan. =D

The freedom of having my own driver to drive me around, the friends/buddies made there, the fun was beyond imagination. I can still remember how I holan and then instructed my driver to bash general direction using the compass/GPS some 100 km to get back to camp. How I wished the times spent there could be extended.

Anyway, we visited many cool places during our RnR, had a ride of our time in the fully paid for theme park, especially the G5 Diving Machine. I also went up to the top of the Taipei 101, and the view is indeed magnificent! I had to pay like some S$20 bucks to get up there.

I even decided to be a little more daring and adventurous; hence I took a public bus alone to Fisherman Wraft at Dan Shui at night. Over there, I witnessed the fishermen who had just came back from fishing. I took a photo with them without their knowledge because they were so busy sorting out their catch. (Yup, I am the 1st guy standing on the left of the 3 people in the photo)

We did so many stuff, bashing through the streets of Shilin, eating loads of good food – a good reward for the hard work we put in for the last 3 weeks.

It was a totally fruitful trip, how I wish army could be more of such!