we cannot change the cards we are dealt,
just how we play the hand.
Sunday, November 21, 2004
2:24 AM
On Driving
each time i get into the car, with that beardy ancient instructor on my left, i possess this excruciating urge to floor that miserable accelerator and fly at the impending bend. then i would half release that other miserable footpiece otherwise known as a clutch, followed by a sharp jerk up the handbrake, skidding my car 45 degrees.
but of course, its just an excruciating urge. nothing more.
oh. and just for the record, my first car number was 69!
the voices in my head-
Saturday, November 20, 2004
6:06 AM
Something about Fire
there's something so intrinsic about fire. a simple flame hanging from a wick, so powerful yet delicate, giving light to the little soldier who's digging up a command post, giving warmth to the more lordly soldier who's sleeping beneath an orange plantation. a simple flame, so small yet essential, shining the path for the navigating section, making way for the great battlion behind.
perhaps thats why they used the august presence of that torched flame to mark the important opening of the Olympics.
but have you realised that flame in itself is annihilative? it wrecks and it tears, it burns and it kills. no one wants a large conflagrant flame in the barbeque pit. rather, it is the bland touch of the element that cooks and warms, morphing that raw meat into a juicy steak, rather than a slab of stone that clanks in your mouth.
and what more, this element is surprisingly eminent in our everyday routines.
in work, it ain't the officers at the top of the foodchain who clamors and dictates that gets things going. its the little bland soldiers that brings the jerry cans from here to there, and there to here.
in people, the lesser unknowns are always the unrecognised but personally, utmost respected. i witnessed a disarray of hi-s and bye-s at munchimonkeys today, and a greater hodgepodge of bitching behind the back. but what had struck my heart from years ago and still remains ain't these little gossips and flibbertigibbeting but the husbandlyness of vernon and the holiness of fulun.
and lastly, in love. it ain't the celebrated dropping of a digital camera down the yarra river amidst a horse carriage ride and a magnificent night, or would it be the large scale mad rush from tekong to nygh, but the little little things of an ordinary everyday that keeps it going.
the voices in my head-
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
7:40 AM
Instructor Lie
this is going to make me sound like a big fat snob, but seriously, how did anyone expect me to react when the world turned topsy-turpsy on me?
today, i became someone above my friends, by rank and appointment. and it was inscrutable to the little neuron transmitters twitching in the frontal lobes of my brain.
i, sergeant lai-oh-yucks-just-call-me-kit, was made an instructor while awaiting the forsaken service term II course; and that little rank on me unveiled more than i had expected. privates scuttled out of my way en route the cookhouse, and the corporal fulfilling his duty overlooking the cookhouse ushered me to the Instructors' Corner to corral a slightly more liberal amount of dishes.
it was funny, looking at all my peers at the Platoon Sergeant course or Instructor Prep course hustling and fluttering around still as the trainees they are. now i realise what comic relief we must have had provided our very own instructors just weeks ago.
yet amidst all the day's worth of cachinnating and whizgigging, somehow.. it felt terribly. nostalgically. lonely.
the voices in my head-
Friday, November 12, 2004
5:41 AM
On Square Ones and my future
little Tom Walker was a simple little boy who had the simplest features on the simplest face. he looked like the sort of cartoon a little kid would sketch carelessly on the lecture notes of a sleepy awakening. everybody stayed away from him, for he was too simple to look at, and they fear that simplicity was contagious.
so he stayed away from everybody, and everyone stayed away from him, but he soon realised he needed a job, and little vacancies were avaliable to simple boys like him.
the world ain't that cruel, little Tom Walker always believed, and it was with this spirit that he found a great baking job at PattayanCookies Private Limited, and he savoured every moment he slogged out there. he was proud of his job, and he used to tell everyone how delicious PattayanCookies were.
but there was this strange thing though that little Tom Walker didn't know, about these PattayanCookies.. that is, they can't be eaten! they smelt like the most wonderful cookies, and looked like the most adorable brownies, but they can't be eaten!
poor little Tom Walker found that out one day, when he slipped on a slippery floor and fell face flat on a particular piece of PattayanCookie. it was hard, grotesquely hard with the taste of an Fmaths Spaper question. heart sinking, he sat down on his simple butt and tears started welling out of his simple eyes.
"i'm going to get a job. a real job! one with greater respect and greater pay!" so says little simple Walker.
but the world is cruel, and simple boys can't get real jobs. so what do he?
little Tom Walker went to this little shop down the town of Pattayan, and stormed in. it was a little Pattayan hospital, by the way.. and do not belittle little with little quality, for little only exemplifies the lack of size.
little Pattayan hospital offered any and every service, and little Tom Walker requested for a facial surgery.
"i want, no. i demand a complete makeover to my simple face," half sobbed little Tom Walker to the surgeon, "and i swear by a Pattayan whore i wouldn't regret my decision"
and so he changed. and he crossed over from a simple boy to a complicated one. and he got that real job he wanted, one with greater respect and greater pay.
but alas, fairy tales only happen to little simple boys in little simple tales. little Tom Walker was no longer a little simple boy, and his tale no longer fell under the realm of fairy Godmothers and tinkerwinkle wishes, and this is how it ends
Tom Walker the new, had been in his new job for a coming eight months, and he was showered with a new form of respect he had hardly attained before in his days of simplicity. and then one day, his boss came up to him and said,
"Cadet Tom Walker, you are thereby chosen to fly to the land of forgottens to train for a further month before you pass out as a member of the Pattayan Elite Force!"
and so happy was he, that silly Tom Walker.
he packed his bags, boarded that plane, and awaited its takeoff. before he knew it. he was in the air, with his complicated eyes and complicated nose and complicated ears and complicated lips tearing out from his once simple face.
surgery ain't meant for air travel. crossing overs ain't meant for the simples.
poor now-simple little Tom Walker was back to square one.
the voices in my head-
Monday, November 01, 2004
5:38 AM
Home
i'm back!
its been a crazy three weeks. i never thought i could survive on oranges for a 9 day exercise, with such luscious fruits the size of lustrous taiwanese bosoms growing all over me. but what stormed up as the most adventurous trip for little soldier lai was the experience of a typhoon, an earthquake and a landslide bundled into yet another insignificant platoon training in the SAF.
funny how boredom can eat into you sometimes. the outfield training atop meilin mountain shoved some sections into harbouring sector, while others went for ambush or patrol forces. as the lucky little soldier lai i am, i was cast aside as a section commander most of the times as the harbouring sector, and its times like these that had boredom eat my brains out. i counted a total of 971 oranges, and squashed nearly a jerrycan-ful worth of orange juice.
boredom loves companionship, and through these days i've often seen angst and frustration creep up the exhausted shoulders of my platoon mates. so many times have true colours of selfishness surfaced in the still dark night, when one would be needed to plough up yet another jerry can of water ration or hurl down a gigantic bag of rubbish for the day.
it was new to me, this thing of reality. i've never seen such harsh behaviour of men before, naked and true. perhaps it were the absence of the fairer sex, perhaps it were the presence of the deadly fatigue, or perhaps. just perhaps. i'm growing up.
but in most days, we get along all fine. and forward looking to R and R we did, and happy we still were despite burning one dull day due to the big black typhoon. crazy food we shared, from snake's tummy to pig's blood. little things we learnt, from the correct way to squash oranges to disposing its evidence. and possibly the stupidest things we did, from sneaking out at night to rejecting pretty petite prostitutes.
but of all, it was hard for me. possibly, probably more challenging than fasting with the muslims at the ungodly predawn hours or hormonal discharge deprivation of the aphrodisiac and amative, for i knew that somewhere in some time, despite sharing the morning elvenstar that hangs inches below the skyline of the taiwan sunrise, we too share the identical longing for the light touches and soft kisses. and i miss her ever more a thousand miles from home.
the past has been a static beauty, the present an empyreal experience and the future a crepuscular adventure. i know not what awaits me, but my crossroads beckon like a maze of wonders. ask me not the whys, or the whats, or the wheres of my future postings, for i know not myself.
but what will come will come, and so will i continue the trek of my life with that grin on my face.
arrived on yet another midnight of a thursday, i'm back!
the voices in my head-
i love my girl. a love so beautiful, symmetrical, tangible
God loves me. a love so great, unconditional, real.
my life in a nutshell. working towards loves of sorts. beautiful, symmetrical, tangible, great, unconditional and real.
a page, deliberately left blank.
Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking.
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
I Corinthians 13:4-8
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