(Source: quote-book)
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.
Plato (via girlwithoutwings)
“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.
An you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You’ll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.
And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
(Source: justbesplendid)
Anonymous asked: Why so hardcore about blogging????
haha what is hardcore? i dont blog every day, spend hours typing, editing, and re-editing my blogposts (as can be evidenced by the grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc mistakes that riddle my blog posts) or even spend hours thinking about what to post so i think i qualify as your average blogger who, every once in awhile, has the good fortune to experience some of life’s more memorable experiences, and having some time and emotion to spare on a lonely bookout evening, puts it up so he can reminiscence along with anyone else who happens to have gone through similar experiences! (like ns!) :)
field camp
let me tell you what exhaustion feels like. it feels like immobility. stuck on the red sticky clay, bound by the shackles of gravity, not being able to move an inch even to save the lives of your friends, sweat-drenched clothes limp over hunched forms, face facing the same burnish clay shielded from the sun under the cool canopy of trees above, arms spread-eagled like a sign meant for the heavens.
it feels like pain. as you writhe beside the bashar pole, hugging your cramping leg at the end of an arduous 12 km route march. as you watch your platoon mates scramble to fall in, each limping or over compensating with his own movement in his way, a ragtag jumble of muscle, bone, skin and legs in some macabre dance to the uncompromising tune of time.
it feels like fatigue. as you kneel on the unyielding ground, knees crying out in raucous protest. when you crumple to the same (albeit suddenly welcoming) ground at the command, without any semblance of balance or control, your every bone and sinew eager for any fleeting moment of respite.
it feels like fever. as you stick a thermometer into the mouth of your green and black face, only to read numbers you’ve never seen before, as your body puts into sensations what the thermometer puts into numbers, the dull ache in the space between your ears, the way the world suddenly feels colder when your core feels that bit more warm.
yet at the same time, it feels like bliss. as you rest your sbo-wrapped back against the damp bark of a foreign tree tagged with the artificial fluorescent blue light demarcating the entrance to your camp site, shoulder to warm shoulder with your buddies from the same section, the secure heft of the rifle snug in the outline of knee, the silhouette of trees against the backdrop of the dark blue sky swaying in the light breeze of the cool night, a peaceful reminder of how trees can still echo out the sounds of the night at 2 am during guard duty.
it feels like fascination. as you drag your spent shell to the latrine after downing countless of liters in the battle to keep hydrated in hot humid conditions, only to realise that your eyes were not playing tricks on you, as fireflies glow into your consciousness amid the pitter patter of the evening shower dripping onto your helmet, shirt, shorts and shoes, only to dim into nothingness in the next moment, a never ending cycle of appearing and disappearing in your reality, yellow bulbs of life sending out a protracted message of life, of existence, of an overall independence from the hub bub of life, simply glowing in and dimming out in a drawn out pattern reminiscent of the dimmers you install in lights at home.
it feels like fulfillment. as you board the bus on day 6, knowing that the exhaustion stems from having given your all the past 6 days, testing yourself and your limits. choosing to stick around and brave through tough times. from not giving up when your body mind and heart tells you to. from believing that all bad times must pass, and that there will be light at the end of every tunnel, that there will be a recover at the end of every 20 counts of 4, that there will be every butts down, everything off at the end of every high kneel, that there will be pride and a certain badge of courage and honor that can be earned from sticking around when the going gets tough.
on hindsight, as much as the above might sound contradictory, field camp was much better than expected in terms of the punishment and the shit that we had to go through. the conditions must have been considerably more bearable than those of other companies. truthfully, it didnt feel good when i was digging the shellscrape out with my ET blade and stick, nor did it feel pleasant having to tank the wet weather near the end, with my boot half submerged in a muddy puddle glistening in the moonlight, but regardless, i believe that field camp has helped in its own way, as we enter the final phase of our bmt, accomplish the bmtc mission of leaving recruits with a positive experience.
if there was a moment in time throughout those 6 days where i truly sat down to give field camp a good think, it must be on day 3, shellscrape day. an sme paused at my shellscrape, gave it a cursory glance, pointed at the direct center where i was standing at, at its deepest point where i was literally knee deep in the ground, and said
“amazing, eh?”
2 simple words. but as he rightly pointed out. who would’ve thought we would be knee deep in our own shellscrapes?
Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (via irma-pun)
(Source: saddest-summer)
im a long long way away from home
mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?
in tekong the only mirrors you’ll probably ever find in tekong are the ones in the toilet and the rather inconveniently located one on the other side of the door of your locker. or thats what i thought.
staring blankly into space one particular morning during breakfast, some random fellow recruit from another company walk past my line of sight. the dim glow in his eyes, the slackness of his jaw, brow furrowed, cheekbones chiseled into a grim cast. i wondered. i must look like this guy.
curious how boys/men can be so alike in times of adversity, in states of exhaustion and so on. the way the world seems so fuzzy, muddled and muffled. the way time seems to slow down, as if a linear path suddenly took a big u-turn into the school of hard knocks and back out again. the way their actions no longer seem familiar, as if they were being performed by some other owner, a character so deep within themselves, that, just like an onion, it has to go through countless tests before the layers are peeled away to reveal the core. the way faces are set.
contrary to whatever ive written just now, bmt week 3 has been pretty okay. not much shiong pt or punishment, or otherwise i must be adjusting to the life of a recruit in tekong already. but i just thought i would write this down, for even though jaguar recruits seem to not have as much meaningless and useless punishments as recruits from a select few companies, the image of exhaustion remains, and i guess soon when field camp starts and theres more pt, ill look something like that.
but for now, bmt has been pretty okay. but falling sick is never fun. those enlisting in may, stock up and start eating those vitamin pills!!! (although i have come to believe that any resistance to simple biology 101 on viruses is futile)
in other news, soc with sbo is no joke. standing in a file/sitting with sbo leaves my back aching. sbo with overly-full waterbag strangles me. i dislike sbo. sbo. sbo.
on to week 4, and pre-field camp! with fbo!
stand by area
is also the most basic version of area cleaning. i guess my first 2 weeks of BMT can be surmised along these lines. how, like every journey and story, there needs to be a start / acclimatization phase where things happen for a reason, and lead to other consequences that will only reveal their true faces later on in the story.
the 16 or so days spent in tekong with jaguar company platoon 3 section 1 mainly has already milked some army stories that, as i recount to my family and relatives, will remain etched in my memory for a long time. some are funny, some are fun, some sound painful, some sound weird, but i guess there is wisdom in the paraphrased words of our platoon commander.
no civilian can truly understand what you’re going through. they have to go through it to understand themselves.
from the nightly adrenaline rush from the charge to the toilets, to the light-hearted banter and admonitions of the toilet ICs. from the “beginner” route march with field packs, to endless marching and foot drills under the unrelenting sun. from the expletive filled speech of commanders, to the stern uncompromising rules imposed on every recruit.
some memories will never reach paper or this medium, but i truly hope i can remember all of them. because in bmt, boys become men.
i dont usually use youtube. but every singaporean son is playing now.
yet i dont want to be every singaporean son. i want to be my parents son.
