I dreaded coming back. It’s like immediately back to work. 2 more months of slogging it out, and then we’re done. I can’t believe we’re so close…
*030920 12KM RM* *RSTA MARCHING 70/113*
*HQ 4/12* *Commanders 3/7* OC CSM 2LT GAVIN *Troopers 1/5* LCP FIMAN *Not marching 7/12* 3SG NICHOLAS 3SG QIN DA 3SG KAMIL 3SG SEAN LCP ZHENG WEI (MARSHAL) LCP PHYO LCP SHAFIK PTE BRIAN
*Platoon 1 9/21* *Commanders 5/13* 2LT SANTHA 2SG LORENZO (FG IC) 3SG ANSELL 3SG NAVEEN 3SG JORDAN (FRONT SCOUT) *Troopers 4/9* LCP SADHIQ LCP NAZRI LCP CHUAN XU LCP IRFAN *Not marching 12/21* SSG SHAUN 3SG MARC RYAN 3SG KIM HAN 3SG ORLANDUS 3SG NICHOLAS 3SG JAVIER 3SG SHU CHEN (MARSHAL) 3SG E-SHAUN (MARSHAL) LCP JIAN XIN PTE ALOYSIUS PTE LENNARD (MARSHAL) PTE KAN WEE
*Platoon 2 12/18* *Commanders 9/11* 2LT JONATHAN SSG JUSTIN 3SG PO HSIEN (FG IC) 3SG JAREL 3SG JORDAN TAN 3SG KEEFE 3SG KEVIN 3SG NIXON 3SG KENNETH *Troopers 3/7* LCP MARCUS LCP DAO WEI LCP ABU *Not marching 6/18* 3SG MARC 3SG SHEYUAN (MARSHAL) LCP JUN RONG LCP JUN JI LCP JEROME PTE JANSEN
*Platoon 3 14/18* *Commanders 9/11* 2LT DE-RENG 1SG YI HANG 2SG AMOS (FG IC) 3SG UHARN 3SG JUN HAO (MAX 6KM ONLY) 3SG SUGAN 3SG VICTOR 3SG WEN HONG 3SG ADRIAN *Troopers 5/7* LCP WILLIAM LCP GODWINN LCP JOHN LCP KRITISH LCP WILLIAM *Not marching 4/18* 3SG MARCUS (MARSHAL) 3SG JASON PTE CHRISTOPHER PTE XAVIER
*Platoon 4 15/23* *Commanders 11/14* CPT YIEN HAO 2LT KAI SHENG 1SG WEI JIAN 3SG KEAN (FG IC) 3SG PRANAV 3SG JAMES (REAR SCOUT) 3SG TIEN WEI (STRAGGLER IC) 3SG YI FEI 3SG SANTIMANO 3SG SEAN 3SG GERALD *Troopers 4/9* LCP ANTHONY LCP ARFAN LCP CHEN JING LCP WAYNE *Not marching 8/23* 3SG SHAO YU (MARSHAL IC) 3SG DARRION 3SG JAYDEN (LOGS IC) LCP JIONG BOON LCP WEI SERN LCP JED PTE KAI JIE (MARSHAL) PTE MUHAMMAD (MARSHAL)
*Platoon 5 16/21* *Commanders 11/13* LTA RYAN 2LT RYAN 2SG TRISTAN 3SG XAVIER (FG IC) 3SG ZHANG SHEN 3SG ALEX 3SG JORDAN 3SG SAI 3SG HILMI 3SG LUC 3SG JOEL *Troopers 5/8* LCP CHEE KUM LCP RANIE LCP JON XIA LCP ALLAN LCP ADLI *Not marching 5/21* 3SG ASYRAAF (MARSHAL) 3SG ISMAIL (MARSHAL) LCP XING JIAN PTE BASHEER PTE JUN LIANG
Well, collating this whole list was really so satisfying lol. I feel like it’s such a useful skill, being able to account numbers to the individual man.
Today I spent a lot of time on myself. I definitely admit: it wasn’t easy dragging myself off my bed, sitting upright instead of lying down, and refraining from using my phone the whole MRT ride. I focussed a lot on (as much as I hate to use this phrase) self-care [cringe] and opening myself up to the environment and people around me.
10.30am: woke up for the usual Epic Seven grind. I’m spending less time on the game now, partially because I’m also getting a little bored with it.
12.00pm: took a wank and I finally pulled myself out of bed. I made my bed. Got showered, brushed my teeth, shaved, and dressed up. The look today was the typical gelled hair, my oversized white and brown striped tee, brown berms, and my white shoes. I put on my sling bag, and I rocked the look so fucking good. I felt confident today.
Usually when I go out alone, I wouldn’t think about presenting myself this well. It would probably have been slippers, black nike shorts, and a normal T-shirt. I’m happy I spent the effort to do myself up, even if a little bit.
There was once Rach told me she disliked the scent of the deodorant I used (the same one I used through JC). So I stopped using it entirely. And I admit, through the 2 years I spent with Rach, I totally put off the importance of smell. I realise I never bothered to get a new cologne or deo. Fuck me. It’s important for a guy to smell good. So I immediately went to Venus to get 2 bottles of the good old JC deo. Time to smell good and feel good again.
Other things on my list: fresh clothes, books, and something to replace the white jacket that’s probably permanently hers now. (Fk, I loved that jacket.)
12:30pm. My first thought was to go to Northpoint at Yishun. The place has always been a bloody maze, but it compelled me to go and explore. So I took a 30 min train ride, and throughout the whole duration I forced myself not to pull out my phone once or plug in my earpiece.
It was like withdrawal symptoms everywhere. It felt so awkwardly ‘off’ that I didn’t have Danial Caesar singing to my ears, or Rach to talk to. So what I tried to do instead was work on my body language. Did I look approachable? Could someone come by and be comfortable opening a conversation with me? Did I look like I was deliberately trying to avoid eye contact with anyone in the cabin? Was I an awkward hamster, or did I look perfectly able to function without looking at my phone every 30 seconds?
Of course, now there’s nothing stopping me from staring at attractive girls. Feels good. So my principle: always glance once in a while so that they can tell through their peripheral that you’re looking, but don’t stare. Don’t be shy or try to hide your glances, cos you wanna be clear that you’re paying attention to them. Hopefully they make eye contact. That gotta be the ‘click’ moment man.
Just to share some thoughts about behaviour: Sometimes, it’s easy to tell when someone is conscious of your presence and is paying little bits of attention to how you conduct yourself. It’s this stupid body language thing that people subconsciously pull off when there’s someone they notice.
Like when their head shifts between looking left and right but never faces toward you. Or like when you look at them and they immediate glance toward another direction, even when they were clearly not facing you. Or like when their sides are facing to you, and you notice the blacks of the pupils at the corner of their eyes. Subtle little cues. Relatable? Or am I thinking too much into these?
Anyways, back to Northpoint. 1:00pm. When I went to miniso, my perception of it changed so heavily after the breakup. When I don’t think about buying gifts for a loved one, literally nothing there was of any practical value to me at all. It’s almost hilarious. Pretty looking cables? Nah, can find better ones at Harvey Norman. Soft toys? What? Absolutely useless apparels just for aesthetic? No thanks.
I hadn’t felt like I had so much time in my hands in a long time. No girlfriend to worry about, no floorball to play. So I browsed the aisles of Harvey Norman, borrowed books at NLB, and bought graphic T-shirts at male clothing stores. All while feeling good about myself.
Was going to a shopping mall fun? Definitely has never been on the top of my bucket list. Was doing it by myself fun? It was great. I’m alone, I do things for myself, and I do it all so I can look and feel better. Step 1 to recovery.
Just self-dates for now
I still miss Rachel. It feels so weird calling her by name. She has always been ‘babe’. Rachel or even Rach is just awkward and a mouthful.
Oh well. A breakup is a breakup. My heart yearns for me to go to her home and give her a tight hug; tell her everything is okay, I’ll stay by you forever. Or just drop her a call and tell her: I’m not angry, don’t worry about me, make sure you’re okay.
I know I made the right decision to break. But I still cannot bring myself to face the fact that she cheated. It’s all in all awful. Everyone you go to for advice will tell you: she’s a bitch, you’re right to dump her, no question about it.
But deep down you and I know that if you’ve loved someone for so long it’s impossible to let go just like that. Desperate for someone to just tell you: hey, I agree, she’s beautiful, she’ll never do it again, she loves you. But it will just never be it.
We just broke up, I want to bawl my heart out, and I’ve never felt so lonely since 2 years ago when I met Rachel at Sentosa. It’s been just over 24 hours: I cried more times in this 24 hours than in the whole 2020. Damn, the last time I remember crying was in camp, when I broke to her that I was gonna be confined again after Ex First In in 2019. And before that, was when I waited for her to finish clubbing with her friends at 2am in the morning … oh yes, and this year, when I found out I transferred command from platoon 5 to 4.
Well, now it feels so weirdly different because she’s not around anymore. My mom tells me it’s very unusual for me to stay at home on a Saturday. No lover to love, no friend to confide. Cheers to journalling. Come revival of ditrz.wordpress.
Here are my goals following this breakup.
1. Get back together with her after we both spend enough time working on what led to the breakup. Depends on whether she still has feelings for me then. Hope we still have feelings for each other.. Principle: she will never be short of suitors. And there are many other fish in the sea. Don’t keep my hopes up.
2. Change myself to become emotionally available. Go for the next outing I’m invited to. Go for a few more outings I will be invited to. Organise an outing. Read books. Write regularly. Speak regularly. Love mom more expressively. Less personal time, more people time. Reconnect with friends. Maintain connection with friends. I remember when I used verbalize everything I write in my head. That helped. Come revival of self-verbalization.
3. Make me ultra-confident and narcissistic af like at the start of BMT. I love myself. Keep styling my hair as I did JC. Maintain 6 pack. Maintain chest muscles. Dont be a scrawny man. I will (continue to) be buff boy. I’ll attach a picture for benchmarking, but just note that I just ate mom’s chicken chop, so maybe the benchmark is a little lower today.
The body don’t look defined cos of the state of my camera
Day 1 of emotional availability:
To setting some expectations for myself. Instead of playing Epic Seven to sleep every night in camp, let’s try writing the day out in events and happenings, with emphasis on thoughts, feeling, and (emotions)*. See what I did there. Pulled a little EEI phrasing. Let’s not let this fizzle out. Minimally, on the busiest weeks, every twice a week.
Instead of lying in bed all day and experiencing inertia at the slightest inconvenience, do shit and turn off the phone. Brush my teeth twice a day. Shave daily. Be mom’s boy. Chore slave. Go-outer. Library frequenter. Do work outs. Buy clothes. Get a job. Chart the future. Pack the room. Fold my blanket like I do in NS. Stop lying down and sit upright more. Laze days are ok. But not every day.
The end goal for emotional availability: talk to my partner like I actually love her. A relationship is not about doing your own thing.
Since yesterday, every moment in time when I don’t do something, I start thinking about bad things. I start feeling hurt. Even when I tire myself out trying to occupy my head, freeing my head to sleep just drives my thoughts crazy. I feel like the goal for the upcoming few weeks is to keep myself occupied as much I can. Hopefully these mad rush of 2 months before ORD can help.
I missed out on talking about how I feel about the breakup. The breakup hurts me so fucking bad. It really does. The past 2 years, she was really my best and only friend, my confidant, and my lover. She always shocks herself when she remembers that I don’t have friends other than her. I think it doesn’t exactly reflect well on her if she tells others her boyfriend is a couch potato and a loner.
Anyways, when I found out about the deed, the same heavy dullness in my heart came back. That familiar, and really annoying feeling from when I liked Davina back in Secondary Sch. Naturally, I went to google what I should do. And naturally most answers were to dump her to save myself a basic amount of respect and self-worth.
But nevertheless I kept searching; and fortunately, I found the one answer I was looking for, “Want to get back with your ex? Dump her (but don’t tell her it’ll only be temporary), and then slowly reconnect after you both have worked on yourselves. Because if you let her stay even after she does you dirty, you are an absolute loser not worth staying with.” Somewhere along the lines of this.
So I did – I dumped her even after she asked for a chance to take a breather, let ourselves think it through before making a decision. The answer needs to be a stone cold no – even if you’re looking at the most beautiful girl cry, even if you want to hug her and tell her it’s okay, and even if in your heart, you want to stay with her forever. She asks you for one last hug? No. You’re not supposed to cry too, but I failed at that. So I hugged her grandma, I stroked her cat one last time, and I walked away with my head down. All while I struggled not to turn around to squeeze her in my arms one last time.
That all happened just 28 hours ago. And I already feel like a half of me just died.
This brings me to tears. I hope she will be okay.
Will we get back together? Right now my heart cries out so much: yes, I love her so dearly. Will we get back together? I don’t know; maybe, but most likely not. But maybe.
Will she work on herself, since she already knows what went wrong? I pray. Will I work on myself? I sincerely hope I have the grit to work on myself, like with that spirit I had in OCS. It has died out since.
Let the upcoming months be the judge. If we don’t change, the path ahead will be clear.
Let happy memories be happy memories
To all of you who dropped me a reply about my story asking if I’m ok, I just want to say it means so much to me. You guys are real bros that I really appreciate. Sorry I didnt reply to most of you.
I was never a people person. I don’t put in the effort to keep in touch with people I become close to, and as a result, I break off contact with a lot of people super easily. Other than my girlfriend, I typically keep in touch with 1 or 2 people on a regular basis only. But to all of you guys who still check in on me, I still hold all of you dear.
It’s about my relationship. Usually, I turn to one person to confide my feelings. But today, I guess it’s not as easy to tell her directly.
Usually I’m perfectly able to manage my emotions. When shit gets real, stoicism and distancing my emotions from the problem helps a lot. I feel like my mental resilience is quite strong. But today is not that ok. Today is just fucked.
I am going crazy with my thoughts and I’m having a lot of difficulty falling asleep. I’m grappling with this heaviness in my chest. I want to tear out the edges of my brain. I’ve never felt so weak in a long time.
I feel lied to, taken for granted, and tossed away. Like I don’t mean anything at all. I feel like a piece of shit.
This is easily the worse form of dull lingering heaviness I’ve ever experienced in my life. I want to tear my heart open and rip all these feelings out. I’m so confused and lost. But I know you’re confused and lost too. Weighing between your feelings and the thought of moving forward hurts. Thinking about what has happened hurts just as bad, if not more. It hurts like such a fucking bitch.
Hey , if you do see this, I just hope you understand why this is something I really need to write out. If not I will really have difficult putting myself at ease. I don’t intend to and will not share about my problems unnecessarily. I just need some solace in my own thoughts. I need to sleep
Hey baby. It’s 10:35pm; it’s another lonely night in camp. I miss ya. So many things I wanna say to you but there’s always something that pulls me back; it kinda ties me by the throat and it never lets the words out. When I’m right by you I can never find it in me to let you know how precious you are to me, even though deep inside every inch of me just wants to hold you tight and never let go.
These few days I’ve been feeling rather distant from ya. Perhaps it’s because I haven’t been showing you enough affection and care that I owe you so much as a partner. Perhaps, it’s all the settling into university and camps that you’ve become so occupied with that your mind’s elsewhere most of the time now. Or it could be simply because we’re threading two really different paths in our lives now that inevitably sets our ways so divergent from each other.
Whatever it is, I always find solace in the fact that whenever I’m down I can fall back on ya. I guess I don’t have a lot of friends I can confide in but you’re all I really need right now.
Tonight I’m feeling a little worse off though. My insecurities are jamming up my mind and my head’s in a mess. You’re out with your classmates so it’s hard to talk
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another unfinished post. writing can be such a chore…. By the day I’m struggling more and more to find the words I need to say what I feel. The same words I was once able to pour seamlessly from pen to paper, mind to text. yet now all I see is myself churning out clunky and awkward sentences
I can’t believe it’s already mid March. Time flew by since the last time I wrote. BMT started, I strived, I struggled, I stopped striving, BMT ended.
I met a girl with the most captivating eyes and the most enchanting smile. She’s beautiful in a lot of ways.
one of my fav pics of u b
I got posted to OCS, and this coming Monday it’ll be time to welcome this next phase of life.
The past three months was exciting. On 4 Jan I enlisted in the army. We sat the bus to SAF Ferry Terminal, and then the ferry to Tekong resort. I loved boat rides, but this one boat ride was tainted with so much dread and unenthusiasm in the air that it was impossible to consider it remotely close to being therapeutic like the rides in New Zealand. I vividly remember staring out the window enthralled by the dancing waves of the ocean, as my eldest brother chanted by my left ear NS advice that conveniently took its leave through the right.
“Don’t do this… Do this…”
I was more interested in the view – a typical sea view with distant silhouettes of land in the horizon. The scenery was pretty. Yet it only brought greater apprehension to the idea that the sights in Tekong would probably … be not so pretty.
Having a background in NCC and prior knowledge of military protocol made me eager to stand out, show myself off, and prove to the higher ups that I was worthy of OCS – maybe even platoon best. I can’t say I didn’t try my best in the first few weeks. In fact, the first month or so I could clearly see myself being a top contender for platoon best. I was so wayang. Didn’t try to be the kind of wayang that only knows how to parrot instructions or put other people down, but tried to be the kind of wayang that people could befriend and come to first if they needed help. More garang than wayang. I was so confident in my stature, sincere in my intentions, and genuine in my interactions.
It was good all the way up till field camp. Field camp didn’t exactly suck that bad for me. It was tolerable. But it brought out a pesky flaw in me that I have always been conscious of, yet never knew it could break me as a person striving to be a leader.
I have always been this introverted, uninteractive potato who limits social interaction to the minimum. I have never been big on social gatherings, meetups, or casual conversations, the simple reason being my energy depletes extremely quickly and I have always needed time to recuperate and hibernate before the next social session. Field camp tested my limits and took that privilege away from me.. Hours and hours in the hot (fucking scorching) sun with little shelter, face full of camo paint, proning on dry uneven grounds was exhausting. I was so drained of energy, muscles aching, reconsidering all the goals I had initially set for myself in BMT. Never mind having to go through this, but damn, trying to keep up the wayang act in this circumstance was honestly the most challenging part of field camp for me. “Wah Kaisheng you man mode a lot,” my sergeant told me a few days into the jungle.
SITtest was worse. I was part of the pair that was tested first. The instructions felt unclear – 25 mins to plan became 25 mins to plan AND execute; situation changed, part of the bridge collapsed became situation changed, the WHOLE bridge collapsed. We were lost and scrambled to save our own asses. I wanted to blame the stupid sir for the trashy vague instructions, my partner for not knowing better, and SITtest for only giving us one 30 minute opportunity to prove ourselves as people worthy of OCS. How hard I tried to blame everything around me but myself and my own incapability to perform under stress. It was then this thought came to mind: whose leg was I pulling thinking I could become platoon best, much less section best.
That was the fateful week I started telling myself WHY try so hard for something that’s gonna be irrelevant after 2 years? If I couldn’t be a top performer, why not just accept the fact that I was at best an average leader ranked around 8/16 in my SITtest detail, and just go for SCS instead of OCS? Why try so hard just to put myself into a dog (eat dog) life for the subsequent 9 months?
And I convinced myself to stop trying. The following 4 weeks I was nothing more than just an average joe trying to get through BMT life, one of those recruits who hid amidst the crowd, sniggering at the ones trying so desperately hard to push themselves to the top, volunteering for everything, kiwi-ing their boots till they could see their own teeth on the surface. Certainly it was much easier being one of those people I hated so much – those who mock the ones who genuinely step out of their comfort zones yet don’t even try to do so themselves.
I remained that way throughout the rest of BMT, my initial presence slowly fading into the crowd. Occasionally I wayang-ed here and there, but only when the situation called for it. Come POP (it was joyous) and block leave, I was extremely certain that I was going to get into SCS when our posting came out. I was like “screw OCS and the 9 months dog life”.
2 years NS, 9 months tekan, for what? SCS life leggo.
sike
So here I am today, mind fully blown. 15 March 9:05am, freshly woken from a good nights sleep, bamboozled by SAF yet pleasantly surprised I still made it. I didn’t know to feel happy or sad – one moment I was jumping up and down, the next I wanted to break my arm just so I could OOC right before it even began. Legitimately a rollercoaster of emotions. This coming Monday I’ll be placed in a course full of enthusiastic, top of the cohort cadets, lost in my own bemusement, still trying to comprehend what I should feel about the posting. 1st day in of 9 months of dogging out in the army.
I haven’t written for a whole year! I’ll write about 2018. This blog deserves some proper continuity to the narrative of me, from past, to present, to future. I think I owe this sudden urge to write to the series of TED talks I watched earlier today on the plane back to Singapore, especially this one by David Whyte that particularly moved me.
And how incredibly apt that I came across this right as the dust of 2018 settles, because 2018 was a year that everything I had hoped for didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to. A div didn’t really work out, I spent the year comtemplating how few close friends I had left, and never have I felt so demoralized by studies in my entire 13 years of school. It was like expecting to see some really captivating new year’s fireworks at the Sky Tower in Auckland city, all the way from Bucklands Beach (far off in East Auckland), and then seeing peanuts for lights. They kept saying the fireworks would be amazing, but how tiny and surprisingly underwhelming it turned out to be — barely even noticeable as I stood in the freezing 10 degree winds, a good 20km away from the actual tower. Straight out of an expectation vs reality meme.
Yet however disappointed I was, I knew I was standing right at the edge of the island on the seashore, and turn a little bit further east would be the open sea, so vast and plentiful of unexplored possibility. The fireworks at the sky tower were only the the small part of a whole bigger picture. A little bit west there were suddenly came more fireworks, and then a little west again there were more, and more, and more. If you scanned your eyes along Half Moon Bay and you’d start to realize the fireworks at that were popping at every corner of Auckland, each well within similar distances of one another. Then came the fireworks at Bucklands Beach. Few metres away from where we were standing two girls set off spark after spark after spark and there were crackling colours of red and blue. The bay was infused with that familiar youthful energy that always manages to reinvigorate us with each coming new year. New Zealand was so alive at that very moment, ready to traverse frontiers to the new year.
“And the last illusion is, I can somehow plan enough and arrange things that I will be able to see the path to the end right from where I’m standing, right to the horizon. But when you think about it, the only environment in which that would be true would be a flat desert,empty of any other life. But even in a flat desert, the curvature of the earth would take the path away from you. So, no; you see the path, and then you don’t and then you see it again.“So this is “Santiago,” the supposed arrival, which is a kind of return to the beginning all at the same time. We have this experience of the journey, which is in all of our great spiritual traditions, of pilgrimage. But just by actually standing in the ground of your life fully, not trying to abstract yourself into a strategic future that’s actually just an escape from present heartbreak; the ability to stand in the ground of your life and to look at the horizon that is pulling you — in that moment, you are the whole journey. You are the whole conversation.”
“And one night, it began to snow outside.I remember my nurses complaining about driving through it.And there was no window in my room,but it was great to just imagine it coming down all sticky. Next day, one of my nurses smuggled in a snowball for me.She brought it in to the unit.I cannot tell you the rapture I felt holding that in my hand,and the coldness dripping onto my burning skin; the miracle of it all,the fascination as I watched it melt and turn into water.In that moment,just being any part of this planet in this universe mattered more to methan whether I lived or died.That little snowball packed all the inspiration I neededto both try to live and be okay if I did not.In a hospital, that’s a stolen moment.
“Over Zen Hospice’s nearly 30 years, we’ve learned much more from our residents in subtle detail.Little things aren’t so little.Take Janette.She finds it harder to breathe one day to the next due to ALS.Well, guess what?She wants to start smoking again —and French cigarettes, if you please.Not out of some self-destructive bent,but to feel her lungs filled while she has them. Priorities change.Or Kate — she just wants to knowher dog Austin is lying at the foot of her bed,his cold muzzle against her dry skin,instead of more chemotherapy coursing through her veins —she’s done that.Sensuous, aesthetic gratification, where in a moment, in an instant,we are rewarded for just being.So much of it comes down to loving our time by way of the senses,by way of the body — the very thing doing the living and the dying.
“Parts of me died early on,and that’s something we can all say one way or another.I got to redesign my life around this fact,and I tell you it has been a liberationto realize you can always find a shock of beauty or meaningin what life you have left,like that snowball lasting for a perfect moment,all the while melting away.If we love such moments ferociously,then maybe we can learn to live well —not in spite of death,but because of it.Let death be what takes us,not lack of imagination.”
“It is naive to assume positive intentions of gossip however innocent it may seem. If you truly care for a person’s well-being, confront the person and discuss the issues with them directly; preferably face-to-face. Gossip is toxic to any relationship and gossipers are cowards scared to voice their opinion to the individual concerned.”
ditrz 