Regeneration And Cure

I had such plans for what I'd do on my first bookout; entering civilization for the first time in two weeks should technically have involved immersing myself completely once again in what I was deprived of while wasting away on some remote (a debatable point, really) offshore island.

There was even a procedure to divorce myself from that world and to marry right back into the world which people who don't don green as their perennial garb usually live in; a process which involved a multi-level, targetted approach of associative substitution. Meaning, I swap everything even remotely army-related for a much more appropriate alternative with connotations of a free life. 

Namely, my monstertruck glasses get traded in for my mangled and self-repaired pair (yes, the one with the splint, scotch tape, masking tape and a topping of black permanent marker); my belligerent pants get swapped for bermudas of non-triangular geometry; my broccoli-inspired shirt leaves the building, and one of less obvious vegetable-derived origins takes the stage; my stage wagon for a backpack gets pawned in favour of my coupe of a sling.

Alas, the only exterior piece which I fail to replace in this little transfusion is that obstinate black forest sprouting on my head (no, cakes and confectionery do not actually take to my scalp). In a desperate bid to complete the civil civilian image however, a green jockey abdicates for the likes of black suede cap.

And this completes the transformation. Not quite worthy of enlisting the likes of Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox, but it's good enough for me. Though I admit Megan Fox would've been nice. Oh well.

But I digress. It so happens that booking out on a Sunday night, while an amazing feeling in its own right, also meant that in the larger scheme of things, people were either at work or in camp. And with that understanding, all possibilities of hanging out eventually dissipated. As I spent the better part of the day mulling over whether to head out, I came to realize that it would've been merely busying myself in the hopes of keeping myself occupied. Nothing much would've been achieved, other than filling up the space-time void. Sure, I could run a few errands--my bank account needs to be checked, I have yet to get a couple of army stuff, and the hunt for a new pair of glasses is on, but I reckon that checking them off my list of things to get done wouldn't quite have scored many points on the satisfaction charts.

And it was in this passive and ultimately unreactive state that I sat around the house and exercised lethargy. Perhaps this was the sort of rest I actually needed--not quite the sort of escape you'd conventionally think of (it's not the Maldives, you're not actually going anywhere). Rather, maybe it was the sort of retreat that doesn't take you away, but instead takes you in. Maybe your soul's telling you that you shouldn't be taking off, you should be taking stock.

Or maybe all that's a whole lot of bull, and I just managed to somehow come up with a way to rationalize away my time-wasting. Oh how this post vascillates.

The notion that army takes hold of your life and subsequently puts on hold everything you'd originally sought to do never seemed ever truer, and I must say it's rather debillitating. Countless discussions with friends about where this is all going, and what to make of the next two years continue to make their rounds, and I'm beginning to wonder--and maybe even worry--that my 'making the best of the shit we're in now' outlook isn't quite one which I can continue to believe in.

I don't quite know what to make of it all yet, but I'm grateful for the moments of respite and for the bunch of people who don't mind killing some of their time with me. As this post rounds itself up, it also tries rather hard in its own metaphorical way to stand in sedia in a desperate bid to do away with all that rounding, and to curb all traces of malignant sop (root word of soppiness) before it festers.

They say that prevention is better than cure

But what we can't prevent, we run from

What we can't run from, we ignore

What we can't ignore, we fear.

What we fear, we mock or destroy

What we are left with, isn't right.

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NB: Thanks for the fries, made my day haha

Edit: Holy hell, army really does make one rather incoherent. Apologies for the disconnects throughout

The End's Not Near, It's Here

Oh hell, it really is here. All the months of living vicariously through fellow bald-folk while whiling my time away with top-level slackers (you know who you are) are finally near an end, and God knows how much I'm going to be missing everyone back here. As much as I probably don't show it, it's the darndy truth.

There isn't actually much to complain about, considering that from what it sounds the confinement for our batch's only going to last a grand total of twelve days, which isn't actually enough time to cultivate new species of fungi in your boots yet. That's a great plus, I reckon. Especially since I was expecting a close to three week stay-in, which would probably have been enough to start a multinational corporation of bacterium in my then hitherto bagged and unwashed uniforms. So thanks for the hopeful news people, it's the one glimmer of hope I'll be clinging on to all this time.

And so here I am now, at a loss for what thoughts I'd like to put down before I get, well, put down in Tekong (images of SPCA posters and euthanasia debates spring to mind). Apart from the unsightly, unsoundly and ultimately unhealthy act of mourning, there isn't really much else I can say. You would probably know by now what goes through a typical mind when confronted with the prospects of what appears to be the synonym for prison, and it would do little good for me to rant the same to you in an unrelenting verbal torrent reminiscent of an overzealous phone salesperson.

'But then wouldn't we have a lack of a point for this post?', you might be asking. I'd be hard pressed to find a satisfactory reason for why I had to bore you with all this, or why I'd even bother to write paragraphs upon paragraphs explaining why I don't actually have a purpose for including said paragraphs.

Perhaps I just needed to get things out of my head.

Perhaps I wanted to get myself into the frame of mind that yes, army is indeed tomorrow.

Perhaps I didn't feel right including more than the vague.

Perhaps I needed to leave something before I left.

Perhaps I hoped that exposition would feel reassuring.

Perhaps I should stop here before attempts at being poetic vacate the building and melodrama takes up residence.

In all honesty it hardly feels as if by tomorrow I'll be sitting on a ferry, nameless save for a couple of initials, bundled with the rest of the statistical thousands, travelling across a vast body of water which, while being immeasurably vast in its own Asian right, still cruelly allows you to despondently view your home island from a distance. On the right contrary, I'm still sitting around with my bag glaring empty, my phone readily sporting a camera, and my blog draft staring me back in the face. It is time though, and I better start wrapping my head around that fact.

Here goes nothing