2001-12-28 - 7:07 p.m.

Here's the army yarn that I've promised, I'm glad to have finally found the peace of mind to put it down into words and let it see the light of day.

A long 3 years of same-shit-differnet-day routine best sums up the times. Sad and memorable experiences were too many to recount... I shall start with the Brunei exercise which was probably the worst overseas exercise ever.

June 2000, I can't remember the exact date, but that was around the time of Eminem's Slim Shady music videos. 42 days attn B (Excuse lower limb) was the print on my medical slip before I boarded the flight from Changi (to who-knows-what airport in Brunei Sultanate). I'm in fucking luck! Fucking 42 days attn B! For the civillians, attn B is the equivalent of an MC except that you don't get to go back home from the army.

I was packing my Ali Baba bag from the army tonner at the Bruneian airport when joyless dark clouds gathered and the imminent pungency of trouble hung. I looked into my CV bag and found my beloved book 1984, am I glad!

'Freedom is the liberty to say 2+2=4', I had stopped at this line when I touched down... you add a fucking 2 to another fucking 2; you get a fucking 4! A universal constant! No one can change that. Parallel perhaps to my attn B, I've severe foot rot and I'm on medical status. NO one can chage that! Not Big Brother...not a chance!!!!! Till Cpt Jeremy Kong and Cpt Ash... they have a chance.

To them if they say 2+2 = 5, it shall be so in the unit.

Expectedly, Cpt Ash, the unit medical officer overwrote my MC. With a deadpan, he said perhaps what was the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard:'Your foot is already in a bad state, whether you go into the swamps and jungles, it will still be as bad. So there's no point in giving you the medical status.' That fucker Ash has done it again. Just when you thought that he's the quack-iest doctor on planet Earth, somewhere in his souless body, there's a brain which manage to outdo himself.

For all the shit I've been in, I had always managed to come out of it rather unscathed, but this time I'm thousands of kilometres away from home, and I do not know of anyone in power who can help me out. I'm doomed, I'm going to die a lonely death in the Bruneian jungles. My nine lives had already been used during the Thailand exercise, I'm never going to escape death the second time. There's only one person who can help, and that's my cousin.

Underneath the whole sadist army run on machismo, there are some factors which they 'give face' to and among them are parental complaints. My cousin will be smart enough to call my dad to make a fuss at the unit, and I shall be outta shit! Expectedly, things went to plan and by day 3 of Brunei, I was in the bar making milo and smoking Marlboros instead of carrying M16s in the jungles.

And for that I was 'marked' for the rest of my National Service.

I'm not so sure if 2+2 is equal to a four. In the army, there's no one who will protect you from the countless arrows and all the problems that come along. On hindsight, maybe it's a good thing. We break out of the sheltered life, and the coccoon called family. But in the case above, I had no choice... the predicament of death. I'm not exagerating, 2 National Servicemen died in Brunei from heat exhaustion that year and my foot had pustule deposits oozing out, with skin breaking apart now and then. It's rather appropriate that i read 1984 during this time, and to me, it was more than a novel. It was what made me made up my mind to change my life in bigger ways than to escape from the Bruneian jungles... I'm just waiting.

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