Dear Dreams

Sometimes you’ll be given some privileges when you’re given some bad chores, I mean by luck.

I wasn’t supposed to do guard duty before promoting to Corporal rank. The trainees were gone and so, they pulled in anyone to cover up the jobs. Anyway, Raymond aka 狗狗 was dragging in as well most probably because his boss, the big shot LTC wasn’t around for these few weeks. This was how hypocrite whoever could be. Great thing was that CPT Yeo was the complex DC, whereas Sam Toh was the guard commander. Life was good definitely.

The rain didn’t stop and guard mounting was cancelled. I managed to pair up with Raymond to do prowling at the second shift. We were asked to lower down the flags and fetch the night snacks. It wasn’t my first time just that Sam knew me better than the rest, and thus I was more approachable, similarly with the previous time when I was doing duty with Wah Chuan.

Prowling was much simple and faster without following all the tedious instructions; I wasn’t dumb like when I was a trainee anymore. I knew where all the checkpoints were located at, thus made the job fast before we could rest in one of the bunks.

Walking in the gears might be just tiring to anyone, but it had worse effects on me on my problematic body all thanks to the army. My back was tired out even more and my knees gave me pains especially when I was climbing stairs or moving up steep slopes. The most crucial injury was the pain on my feet, that each step seemed to soft the flesh and anything hard to make impact on my nerves or blood vessels directly. Wet socks and cold weather could have made it worse.

I want to accompany Sam to stay up and watch the clips on the laptop but gave up since I didn’t even have enough sleep the night before and that I still had to work on the next day. The downloaded “Guess Guess Guess” clips were entertaining and there were countless Taiwanese babes.

I had less than an hour of sleep before I proceeded on to the second round of prowling with Raymond. This time, after finished our job, we dozed off. The alarm sounded off on my phone but I read it as “Amara” and continued with the napping. Around ten minutes later, I woke up and realised we were late for reporting. Sam was cheeky.

We went to the guard room to sleep immediately as the rain got heavier. By the time it was our turn to set off, the rain hadn’t stopped and I continued my wonderful sleep. Sam couldn’t really wake me up for breakfast.

I tried to help him as much as I could, going back to all the checkpoints to gather back the papers in the rain with Raymond, and checking of the troublesome record book for unsigned blanks. I was quite puzzled why some of them couldn’t take a longer look to do their parts, whereas I was of something better finally.

Sam helped us to get away fast from the guard house. He stayed there himself with another two guys who were more unfortunate. Maybe it was just because of the non-stop rain or the kindness of CPT Yeo that, I was so lucky to have such a peaceful and more relaxing guard duty experience.

I had a fun time tearing CPU apart last Friday. Nobody would believe that was the first time I removed RAM, fan, graphic and sound cards from CPU.

I may be handling computers for more than twenty hours per days sometimes, but I can’t risk opening them up in case I accidentally spoil anything that I can’t afford.

Shep and 007 weren’t around and it should be a slack day which we could sleep inside the office. It was different with this new boss who had to take care of us as well as to answer to the top. He was the most hardworking person I had ever seen.

Quek is not more than fifteen years older than me I assume. Being a regular with the rank of a staff sergeant who just got married a year ago, he’s the role model of us. He has great knowledge over many things and he’s never like other officers who throw work at us. He’s well-organised and has great visions, even plans to make our lives easier.

One thing I can’t stand about him is his initiative to do work by himself. Yes, he’s setting very good example for his men but it’s stupid to carry all the heavy things by himself. It’s going to very sad to see another guy who suffers from injuries like me. Everytime when I see him carry bulky and heavy stuff by himself, I feel so uneasy.

Is this a reverse psychology which some people think? I’ve a weakness for this.

Somehow he’s quite similar to my character, except that he’s much more capable. We strongly believe we can’t depend on others to get things done, just that I always fail to do things by myself.

Things are getting better so far and Quek has told us he forecasts everything would be settled down soon – I don’t know. Since long ago before my injuries worsen, I’ve always thought the shit would be over soon – it never. It seems to me that the suffers would end only after my ORD date.

There’s always something more that I can do, I know for sure. I can’t sit down there and wait for time to pass. I want to finish everything off before I sit back, not slacking around and let things drag on. But I do get tired.

There’re also facts of ugliness Quek might never know. We can never measure or ensure completeness of fairness but we can at least moderate it. I just hate it when things get too far away and it’s always this case. I don’t know – what to say and how to solve it.

In the afternoon, he didn’t call for us anymore but I didn’t want to let him clear up the junks inside the temporary store room alone again that I stood by there. Indeed I had a tough time shifting the computers – at least thirty monitors.

When I was instructed to remove the parts from the CPU sets, I asked Yuqing along. I brought down tools and managed to break the Abloy locks and Yuqing was having fun cutting them after we had finished our jobs.

It’s a tough path ahead and especially this week when I’m having office duty and then guard duty. Birthday celebrations are on as well and Irwin might be arriving at Singapore any time. There’s eventually a way out, where I brave through all the hardship…