stream of unconsciousness

it's been a long time since the last post. many things have happened in the intermittent period. i like february. i like chinese new year. not because of chingchongchinapek pride, but the food, the drinks, the angpows. mostly the angpows. this year, as last, and as the year before last, i spent valentines day without a valentine.

how depressing. at the cusp of adulthood already.

as i type, my ord counter is running. 9 months to my ord and i am so happy. they say time passes quicker in your second year in the army, but for me, time is moving slow as a snail. im getting sick of the camp, this camp i once used to see as a little secret heaven. maybe its because this place is quite good so any change is for the worse.

been in charlie for a while now. finally got my promotion to 3sg, backdated to 12122009. i used to spit on supply, just like most combatants would. even during the course, most of us dropouts divided our time between spitting on regulars and spitting on supply. to be more objective, supply per se isnt any tough work. its the combatants you are attached to that can give you headache. even hell.

not least because they spit on supply. while they go out to chiong sua, you just stay behind and chaokeng, or so they think. and they are mostly right, especially in here. most of us spend most of the time in camp in the messes or the business center. no secret.

then they think that you are their saigang warrior, their personal squire and their expendable. they ask for things without thinking, as if cla is the solution to all problems. every few days they will tell you to go draw this, draw that, in bits and pieces and without following the proper channel. when cla doesnt have it, as is the case for all the exotic equipment they can ever think of wanting, they blame you, for not thinking ahead and the like. hello, im so sorry i couldnt divine into the future that you would need to draw an **** yourself but was too stupid to read your email so you didnt know that you were supposed to draw it yourself on open day, when they had a lesson to teach you how to fix it yourself? sorry i forgot that i have been paid 740 of taxpayers monies to be your squire.

of course, you are expected to be a cleaner. in all fairness, we should be cleaning the stores ourselves in periodic maintenance. yes, the load can be lessened by skillful archery. which is extremely tough, because the targets are lucid and move quickly, from the years of experience they had as nsfs. the nsmen are well-trained in this business of dodging.

even then, some of the expectations are ridiculous. coiling without twists? almost sandless field equipment? i am always tempted to ask them if they can demonstrate. but of course i wont.

and then since you are too free and too talented because you happened to be on some meritbasedbondedfinancialaid, you also get the dubious honor of doing up posters of events long past that nobody is going to look at. maybe except in the annex of "stupid initiatives that show my initiative and passion, however misguided, so please promote me and pay me more". and then they say its a good deal, because they will treat you to lunch. at the mess. hi, im quite satisfied with cookhouse food, which i think is nice and decently balanced. they dont seem to realize that as someone on meritbasedbondedfinancialaid, i am drawn towards the top of marslows hierarchy. i hunger for freedom, not food. and anyways off wont cost them anything tangible, unless they consider my presence in camp on a free day whiling time away at the pool table as something tangible. oh, and since you are so clever, use these croc clips to fix the tripflare igniters. i said, i dont know how, since most of the time elsewhere we condemn this shit, and he spits, whoa, a level so many As also no use. i just handed over a sample to him to show me how. its been a week. the igniter and the crocodile clip havent found each other.

they take you as their punching bag, figuratively of course. after getting their ego deflated and their figurative nose bloodied, probably from getting selfowned by suggesting stupid ideas and then getting arrowed to do them. if you remember red cliff, these regulars are more like zhugeliangs strawmen than the valiant soldiers. they attract so many arrows. then they downsteam, subcontract or call it teamwork and get you to do it. so they can claim the credit and then just give you a coke. i dont work for coke, unless its white, powdery and the finest from colombia. anyway coke is american and fattening. and not something i crave. my drink of choice is milo-peng, stirred not shaken, with a straw. but thats beside the point.

of late, wordplay is the fad among the regulars. or should i say wordplay is BOOMZ. so they say the 'c' in css stands for combat, so all of you are combatants first. sure we are. combatants who get no combat pay and who will probably be limping around or have difficulty breathing or something. the very fact we are here points to something being wrong with us. im not saying that we should be getting combat pay, because evidently we are too slack to deserve any, but please stop making us do stupid things like be enemy simulators or something dumb. and please, stop calling the penis the third leg, just because it springs from the groin, just like you dont call your asshole your secondmouth because it is a gaping hole as well. and i get cramps from humoring you guys by trying to chuckle.

in the same vein, S is for Specialist and S is for babySitter. your storeman goes out to a fight and they ask you why he goes out to fight. your storeman takes mc and then they ask you why is he so morbidly ill all the time. how on earth am i to know? how on earth can i care? if i was asked about their status, mc duration, sickness and the like, i think it is fair. but to ask me about their constitution and to ask me about their attitude is really quite ridiculous. then they always say that even though i am a supervisor, i need to help the men too, just as superiors should all help subordinates. i do that, and often and my storemen have vouched for me. as my encik i dont remember him helping, except with his mouth, saying, this is not good, that is not good. i see even captains helping to oil and arrange pickets, getting sweaty and dirty. i see him too, sweaty from running during working hours. not saying its wrong, but it indicates that someone is too free huh. maybe its the seafood he has that places him wayyy up there together with the long beach people.

to top it all off, selfesteem is what they have and you dont, and respect is something they deserve and you dont. they like to tell people that their cqs arent that good, cant do things properly and the like. we know its not completely true, because most of the time we arent the ones screwing up. they are. and that one time i ever questioned a decision because it was so ridiculous, like getting my storeman outfield to tloan some stupid stopwatches, some encik says i 'langa' him. of course i couldnt resist embarrassing him in front of my fellow cqms and the officers by telling them how i 'langa-ed' him. haha.

im just grouchy because its 0430 and i havent had enough sleep. thinking of having to do all the shit later in the day is making me pissed off, not least because all my storemn are injured and i have to anchor the rubbish.
french this evening to make my day.