Day 3 -
Also known as the busiest day.
SAF day was on Wednesday and the main reason why the ICTs were called up this week, so we could make up for the lack of manpower from the full time and regular soldiers side.
Headed to the parade location really early in the morning and ended up waiting for probably around 6 hours before the guest started arriving. We had a few short briefings prior but most of the time was spend waiting in the nearby training shed either talking with each other or taking a nap on the extremely dirty floor which lead to a a bit of rash.
I was also shouted on on Wednesday for not doing my job properly by one of the regular sergeant, which was complete bullshit because I did nothing wrong.
My job that day was to marshall the guest vehicles into the parking lot and it so happens, the first vehicle that arrived was not a guest vehicle but a camp personnel vehicle. He knew where he wanted to go, and not being a guest of the parade, he was obviously not going to be headed into the guest parking space, so when I checked with the driver and found out where he wanted to go, I let him pass.
The sergeant assumed the driver was a guest of the parade and that I had led him the wrong way because I have provided him with wrong information, proceeds to yell at me from where he was standing, which was about 50 meters away going...
"EH YOU LET HIM ENTER THERE FOR WHAT?"
Really pissed off at me, so I shouted back in a non-offensive tone that the driver was a base personel, the sergeant then replies with...
"YOU DON'T STAND THERE BLUR BLUR, IF YOU DON'T MARSHALL PROPERLY I MIGHT AS WELL GET A DUMMY CUT OUT TO REPLACE YOU!"
I was really shocked when he actually started to reprimand me because as far as I know, I have never seen any sergeant in my camp scolding any ICTs before or treating them like a full time NSF, in fact, most of the time, the ICTs are left on their own like the working adults that they are outside of the army, so I was really pissed off after recovering from the initial shock of getting scolded in front of all the other ICTs and full time NSFs, but there was nothing I could do because had I done what I had wanted to do, I would have probably been charged with insubordination. So I cursed at him silently and continued with my duty.
5 minutes later, the sergeant walks up to me and started talking to me with a very apologetic tone...
"Actually I didn't really want to shout at you, but we have to do things right so the operations will go smoothly."
I explained to him what had happened earlier with the camp personnel and although he didn't technically apologize, I could tell from his tone that he felt bad about shouting at me. In fact when he was inside one of the buses guiding the bus driver about where to go and saw me marshaling, he smiled at me and gave me a thumbs up, as if to tell me...
"GOOD JOB RESERVIST GUY, LET'S FORGET ABOUT HOW I FORGOT YOU ARE ACTUALLY AN ICT AND TREATED YOU LIKE A NSF EARLIER BY SCREAMING AT YOU!"
And I really don't hold any grudge against him for that because he did explain himself to me after, I mean I have been scolded by him before when I was still serving my 2 years so I was used to it, but that experience definitely left a bad taste in my mouth for the entire day after.
So after all the marshalling was done in the afternoon, we went back to do more waiting, this time maybe for about 2 to 3 hours until the parade was over. It was a long and tedious process because the guest didn't return all at once, some decided to stay longer to chat and drink and the whole thing only really ended after 10 pm, by which time I was already sticky all over with a thick layer of grease forming on my face.
Got home by around 11 pm via taxi driven by a taxi driver who didn't know the shortest route to get to my house, he ended up taking the expressway and missed all the turns, literally going the extra mile, in the end, I had to pay a $18 cab fare, which is ridiculous because that's almost the equivalent to me getting home from the airbase, which is from one end of Singapore to the other. $18 for a trip from Jurong to Hillview is just a bit too much, there were times I wanted to ask...
"Uncle, why you turn left, did you know you can just go straight?"
"Uncle, why you need to take expressway? Isn't that a lot longer?"
"Uncle, you just missed the turn"
He did ask me how to get to where I wanted to go, but because I didn't know recognize the road until I was finally at the Jurong Point shopping mall area, I just told the Uncle I didn't know how to go at all. I'm not sure if he genuinely didn't know how to get there thus the Expressway route, or he just wanted to make a few extra bucks off me, but nonetheless, I managed to reach home to take a shower and prepare myself a peanut butter sandwich before going to sleep because the meals that were provided that day weren't very appetizing I didn't even bother finishing half of it.
Day 4 -
The first time I drove to camp.
It was a relatively short day on Thursday, drove to camp and reach around 11.15 am, had lunch at 11.45 am, waited in the waiting room till further instructions were given and finally after 1 to 2 hours of waiting, we were finally debriefed and released.
It's nice that I was able to drive home that day, reduced what would have been a 2 hours journey home by to only half an hour.
Went out again in the night to get Bubble Tea from KOI at Westmall with my Sister and on my journey there, was honked by this fucking impatient Taxi Driver at a traffic junction.
This mother fucker had wanted to do a right turn at the traffic junction, and it so happens the car in front of him (mine) didn't want to, the traffic light was already red but the right turn on the traffic light was flashing green, since I wasn't planning on doing a right turn, I just stopped at the junction to wait until I could drive. So I don't fucking understand what his deal was when he kept honking at me, the lane I was on wasn't a "right turn only" lane, my plan is to drive straight, you honk honk honk like a motherfucker also no use, there's no KOI if I made a right turn, so stop fucking honking at me, stupid sack of shit.
I really wanted to flip the fucking old sack of bones off last night when I saw through the rear view mirror the expression he had on his face when he realized I had delayed his journey because apparently I was the inconsiderate one for not wanting to do a right turn. Stupid fucker, I kept staring at him through my rear view mirror the entire time I was waiting for the light to turn green, trying to send him a "FUCK YOU" message telepathically. If the guy behind you who's also planning to do a right turn as well can wait for 3 fucking minutes, then I'm sure you are able to as well.
I think he saw my Triangle plate and thought because I was a new driver, I would be a pushover on the road, well fuck you you stupid old shit sack.
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| It's a Jennifer Lawrence gif from Silver Linings Playbook... again. It's really just a coincidence because I can't find the one I was looking for and this was the second best to express what I felt. |
But I was able to get my KOI cravings satisfied, so thumbs up to that. Hadn't had one in a week and I was starting to get withdrawal symptoms.
Day 5 -
Cohesion at Tampinese Safra today, exactly the same activities as the last one, bowling, lunch and movie. Except this time, I didn't bowl, the lunch was much better and I did not go to the LAN shop to suck at DOTA.
The 2 hours direct bus journey there was still alright, but the journey back was so boring I wished I had driven there instead.
We watched this direct-to-DVD movie called SkinTrade, which I thought was just a shitty version of TAKEN with a lower budget and a weak storyline. It was entertaining, but it was not a good movie, and I was shocked when I realized it was actually released this year straight to DVD, because the movie looked like it was made in the 90s and was the kind pirates would download, burn on CD and sell on the streets at 99 cents a piece or a $1.50 whatever the market rate is now to the older generation who don't know how torrenting works.
Apparently I also won some award today for something with 2 other guys, my friend being one and we both weren't even sure what or why we had been awarded. It's a hundred dollar gift voucher. I'm like Niki Minaj at the BET Awards.
Except I still don't know why I got the award. I'm pretty sure they just randomly picked like 3 names to give the vouchers out to or maybe the sergeant who shouted at me felt bad about it and just threw my name in.
Either way, $100 gift vouchers Woot! Woot!
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