Dear Dreams – Page 230

Polyclinics for two days MC

[Thursday, 11 May, 2006]

I stepped into the polyclinic with queue number 5036, being the thirty-six patient at 0745h. The clerk assigned me to room 29, Dr. Sally Ho, and I felt it was kind of coincidence since my mum was mentioning she always asked for this doctor specially.

I sat there thinking I should be able to see the doctor soon but the first patient somehow was adducted and kept everyone waiting.

The number was skipped and the next patient went in. Just as I thought everything was fine, one old uncle went in right after the patient came out and another guy was telling him, “It’s not your turn yet.” But this troublesome looking uncle replied, “Nevermind, I will talk to the doctor.”

Similar to what I had thought, this old uncle must be pestering the doctor inside that he took such a long time to come out and when I got inside after another patient, it was already nine plus. I thought those idiots would have spoilt her mood.

The check-up was fast. I opened my mouth twice for her and she told me she would not be giving me antibiotic since it was a normal flu, cough and sore throat. Then, she stunned me by asking if I wanted one or two days’ MC.

That was the first time ever in polyclinic that I was given chance to get two days MC. I got one day only since the next day was a holiday – Vesak Day. So freaky, I could have super long weekends to rest if I did not have HLS duty the previous day and thus could not visit the doctor.

I continued to chat with her while she was printing out the MC even though my throat was torturing me. She was friendly.

It was soon I took my medicine after breakfast and started dozing off with the drowsiness. It was all for Vivi’s accompany the whole afternoon was great that even sleeping could be such a great entertainment.

The drowsiness caused by the medicine refused to leave me.

On my sexy voice

[Wednesday, 10 May, 2006]

It has been long since I nearly lost my voice and now it is happening again. Penetrating through my most energetic body, it teams up with the flu.

I hope they will not be accompanied by fever later on because it is a long weekends ahead and I really need to enjoy myself.

I do not want to disappoint Gilbert and Chua because we have not gone for swimming for quite long already. They want it this Friday and I really have to take care of my health and consume the medicine after going to the doctor tomorrow.

I cannot talk on phone anymore; and so now I cannot even sing in front of my computer. Sometimes I sneeze.

I hate this feeling.

Physiotherapy was scary

[Tuesday, 09 May, 2006]

Nobody would believe that my body was so weak that I had fallen sick again with flu and cough. It was not that I had been taking junk food again, but being passed on; but I loved it still.

Of course, I did not look like a sickly child. I made it this far due to the determination I had all these years, pushing myself in all physical activities. It was all for the injuries I quite regretted.

A terrible day ended.

Firstly, the return of the forty-eight full desktops by the 8SIG. I needed not exert myself at first but eventually helped out with the carrying of the monitors; a little was enough to hurt my back.

I had to rush for the physiotherapy appointment at MMI. This time, I was really scared when Dom introduced me the new programme. Most of the time, I would stay there longer in order to complete all the exercises and then more items were added on, that I needed to work out for at least two hours excluding waiting time.

This time round, there were more than twenty items. Looking back at the previous night which I had just gone for a jog, my aching legs pleaded. I struggled and at times my face turned pale. I did not complete everything as it reached 5pm without my knowledge.

On the way to take the shuttle bus, my left toes started having cramps that I almost thought I would not be able to make it home.

I survived.

Physiotherapy was scary.

Rumours

I detested this rumour of Quek going to another department; though we would be still under the same branch, he would not be able to shelter us like now. I hoped it was not true.

Ben would be promoted soon and taking over Chen De’s job as the sleeping I/C. Though Chen De did not appear in the office or was just sleeping most of the time, we still could get him for help in very emergency cases; he was going to clear leave soon.

However, Ben would be posted back to BMTC for recourse for ten weeks and he might get a new posting after that. With Ben’s absence, Chen De clearing leave and possibility of one of us going to E-Plaza, AVA would be left with just two guys out of Yuqing, Kwang Han and I.

The lab technicians, except for Siu Hang and Gilbert, were not ready to help out at all; I supposed others were expecting them to coordinate well with us regarding all the PA systems and usual daily work. Nobody had organised them well enough, as well as to change their mindsets.

I predicted new manpower to join TRMS with the completion of the courses this week but Ah Teck’s platoon would not even get their posting until a month later. I supposed the whole platoon would become AP (awaiting posting) and would be doing all the shit work in camp instead. It was crap for we really needed the manpower…

Facts had proven that I should not have cared too much and I should just enjoy my remaining days. Less than five months to ORD.

Slower

[Monday, 08 May, 2006]

Jogging with flu and throat irritation, the atmosphere was not right. I could feel some drowsiness underneath my forehead, persuading me to close my eyelids and stop exerting.

I did not plan to take a break; I persisted on. This night seemed quieter than usual, except that the politicians seemed to be working with something.

I was strengthless, taking each step slower than before. The world seemed to be dropping but I was not going to care and I tried speeding up to cover up for the delays of my fatigue mind.

I sprinted to the last point but minimum was the maximum on that weary body.

I looked at the watch; 13’45 set my mind unrest. I thought I miss out a round. Even though I had completed the six rounds, I could not make my timing.

Another beach outing

[Sunday, 07 May, 2006]

Sunny day was a good day for beach.

I could not stop feeling the lousiness in myself because I tended to forget things too easily that I always fell into the same trap again; this day this friend asked me to go beach and I would answer “okay” and this day this friend asked me to help get people and I would answer “okay” again, forgetting about the previous bad encounters.

It was not nice to be a fool to wait alone at the same old place; nobody was there until at least half an hour later. Somehow if you had tasted it so often, you might just feel like the surrounding people were mocking at you.

It was not like in the past anymore; I had to decline myself from dwelling in the old sweet times. People grew older to seek more important things like their boy-girl relationships and other possessions. The half-heartedness was obvious but I refused to obligate.

How would you feel if you were to give calls to friends who were already late for half an hour to realise they were still asleep and worse still, not going to join you anymore? How would you endure people who did not bother to inform you of their last minute laziness or second thought?

It was tedious to organise any outing when you did not even receive any reply from some of them. Whereas a few would just question “who going?” without any follow-up, while the rest just claim that they were sick just to preserve energy for other events. I did not expect the actual day to be worse.

If you had spent more than a quarter of your latest life with them and suffered these craps, how would you feel?

If your scheduled day was actually a day ahead until this friend requested for change of date that more friends would be invited to the group, yet your friend did not even turn up on the very day, how must you feel? Obviously it was not the first time and of course the person who was fooled was a real idiot, too naïve and eager to believe.

Nobody owed anybody anything; it was just the display of friendship.

If you were to ask me to organise for the next one, it was insult to intelligence and dignity.

Return of younger brother

[Saturday, 06 May, 2006]

My younger brother finally returned home from Tekong after his seven-day field camp. In fact, it has been around two weeks since he last stepped in; they burned his previous weekends and the Labour’s Day holiday.

He was alright except for the sprain on his ankle quite a few weeks ago and his fingers could hardly move after digging trench and “graveyard”.

He was complaining to me about the lack of welfare that they did not do much about his 38.8 Degree Celsius fever. I guessed it was culture shock for when I used to be in Orion Company last time; it was not so cocked up. At least, the previous commanders knew smart soldiers should take cover under shades; this new batch of sergeants could be born in the seventies, being too deserted from the new trend – what they called the 3G army.

I hated that place as it was where arrogant people dominated. The same reason why I did not want to join a uniform group when I was in secondary school, everyone was being commanded like dogs for more than two years before they were promoted and started to humiliate and laugh over the newbie for less than two years; just that in NS you would be trained for at least seven months to get a third sergeant rank to order others about. I did not like to be a sadist.

He told me that many of the trainees collapsed and I asked jokily why he did not want to join in the fun, and he told me it was very embarrassing to drop out. He had this interesting attribute to persevere on; unlike me, I did not give up just because I did not know my limits and this is how I got my injuries.

Anyway, he got my house so stinky.

New physiotherapist

[Friday, 05 May, 2006]

Even though I was a regular at the MMI physiotherapy centre, it was so different this time. Miss Archana was no longer working there and I was seeing the new physiotherapist for the first time.

Luck was not with me in the morning as it was pouring again. I was lazy to take out my umbrella from my bag and therefore I waited for the rain to quiet down a bit before I dashed over to the DSO building.

Being caught in the rain, I still waited so long inside the freezing place. It was quite crowded again and things could be much faster if there were a few more clerks.

I got my traction again and the new physiotherapist said it would only act as pain killer, which really dampened my mood and motivation on recovery.

Her explanation of my problems was clear with the aids of the artefact models. I had quite a lot of discussions with her.

We talked about exercising and like what I had analysis on my own, swimming and cycling was better than jogging due to the less impact, and so she assured me. She also advised me to get a pair of knee guards to maintain the positions of my knee caps to avoid more rubbing.

We also talked about downgrading of my PES status and she said my conditions were not under the criteria, thus there were little hopes. She understood that I was going to ORD soon and since she did not want me to waste money after my ORD, she wanted me to go back twice a week for gym.

The same

It is not that the world is too big, but even if you are just metres away, you cannot get to see her.

Busy and tiring

[Thursday, 04 May, 2006]

Today was another hellish day in camp.

I missed the first bus because I failed to catch the train for that timing. I dozed off so early the night before but I simply could not wake up on time.

I hated checking of bags at the gate because everyone had to go down and waste time instead of having the shuttle bus sending us right inside. But since the BOSS was Lionel Tan, I questioned him about the favour he owed me yesterday and he had made it quicker.

I had a cold sweat when I talked to Shep about my medical appointment. Ben helped me and we won the war since we really had enough people to prepare for the parade the next day since we got helps from the lab technicians as well. Actually, I preferred to join them as we would most probably be playing Worms in the office at night, illegally.

I was told to go back to the office first while the rest were involved in setting up the PA system for rehearsal. It was definitely a worse life in the office for the tightness of workload. People came in to draw and return keys, borrow extra chairs when we had already loaned some out. A platoon came for FFR cables when Siu Hang had already loaned them to another platoon for tests; the timetable crushed. Quek called to ask me to get a complete desktop set ready for Eric Tay and I had not done the stock check for the forty-five laptops supposed to be in the office after the exercise in ROC completed. I had to get another laptop from LTA Lee as well and I did not realise he had changed his number.

Just when everything came in at the same time, none was there to help me except Gilbert who came in and out of the office due to his work at his lab. The worst thing happened as my gastric pain started again and my mind almost went blank. A terrible stomache came at the same time. Ben had called to get some helps with finding microphone cables but since Rongji was asleep while Gilbert could not stay in the office, I could not leave the room for there were too many clients.

There were too many things I did at everyone’s absence. I gave a call to LTA Lee at the number written on the voucher for the expired laptop and he promised to return it by the end of the day; I gave excess chairs from the office to the trainees; I called Siu Hang who told the trainees to get the FFR cables from another platoon whose test was pushed to the afternoon and I passed them an extra pair from the mock-up room; I checked out the storeroom for the computer’s components and called Eric to push the due timing to after lunch; I listed down the serial numbers of the laptops with the help of Gilbert.

When the rest returned, I announced to them about the desktop but none really bothered. I finally had the chance to go down to the storeroom myself quietly and tried to settle it by myself. I managed to fix up some of the buses and power cables inside two CPU I chose but the hard-disks did not seem to work. I was tired as well as lost, sweating as much as I was walking briskly. As time went on and I could not solve the problem, I had to call Ben for help. He took over me to try out the two CPU and countless of hard-disks, while I began to doze off in a sitting position. He managed to find a hard-disk which we previously loaned to the CDT and everything was properly installed.

I tried to catch some sleep after lunch but work were never ending. There was a need to setup the Spectrum again; though I needed not go over but they called for cables again as expected, causing useless trips over. People from DSTA came over to look at the CAI and server rooms as well. Then, trainees continued with their usual problems.