My LiFE, mY stOrY

Here we are, after so much that happened in the past 11 months, we are in the final month of 2011. It’s a time to reflect on what we have done right, or wrong, rest up, and recharge for the new year.

I’m now in my last working week of the year before I go on vacation in Bintan with my bros and resting up for a full week after, followed by welcoming the new year. The final 2 weeks of this month has been my motivation since mid-year when I forecasted to have just enough leave days for 2 weeks of holiday in December. Resisting every temptation to take leave for half a year, I’m finally just a week away from my long-awaited vacation.

This may not be the most pleasant year I’ve had, but it’s certainly one of the most eventful. I will be wrapping up the year with my summary of events probably on the final week. Also, as we approach the new year, we are starting to see the slight glimmer of light at the end of a very long tunnel, less than 6 months to go…

Coming back to Singapore meant it was time to get my injury checked out. After an x-ray and a bone scan, the results were brought to me today. Seems like my right leg has suffered a stress fracture and the doctor recommends me to rest my legs for a period of 6 months. I was torn when I heard the news. I know I had wished for a downgrade since before enlisting, but after all that I’ve been through, I changed my mind. I fought too damn hard to get to where I am today, can’t let it all go to waste disappointing and leaving behind people that I’ve got to know so well over the pass year and the half. Also, I’ve been looking forward to running in the Standard Chartered Marathon since May, if I back out now, my friend will be running alone. The irony was that I probably got my injury from running too much while training for AHM.

After hearing the news today, my mood went to an all time low. I just didn’t know how to react, the good part was that I probably won’t have to struggle with IPPT anymore, but is it worth it? In a working environment where people look down on others who have a medical status, I have no idea what’s ahead of me. Will people look down on me just because I injured myself, will I be able to work as I have for the past year and the half, what am I going to do now that I lost the only way to workout that I’ve conditioned myself to like?

I have been reading Steve Jobs’ biography recently and wondered if I could be like him and pull off a reality distortion field, ignore what has happened and carry on. It didn’t end well for him though, so I should learn his lesson?

By the way, the book’s a pretty good read. Do pick it up if you are on the fence.

I’ve been missing for the past 3 weeks. Overseas, clocking a hell lot of firsts. Let’s have a look…

• First time getting high on drinks 3 nights in a row(, break for a night, and continued for another)
• First time seeing kangaroos up close in the wild
• First time seeing a stampede of cows crossing the road
• First time seeing a full piece of snake skin
• First time seeing squashed frogs on the road
• First time living in a tent for the majority of an overseas trip
• First time not bathing in a cubicle outside the comfort of a house
• First time hitching a ride, successfully
• First time staying at a motel
• First time walking 45 minutes to the nearest mall
• First time visiting a strip club
• First time buying a pre-paid sim card overseas just because I’ve been disconnected for far too long
• First time spending 7 hours in a mall (most boring shit ever)
• First time seeing a wallaby

Well, I think that’s all the firsts. I also ate more biscuit/cookies there within a week than I would in a year here. It was a good experience and I got to know the people around me better. I volunteered for the trip, if not for being homesick most of the time, it was a damn good trip, no regrets…

I realised that due to the fact that I’m a stay-in personnel while most of my close friends have either ORD’ed or are stay-out personnel, I tend to hate when it’s being thrown in my face. That, and the amount of work and crap I have to deal with on a daily basis make me lose it sometime and snap at my friends.

So, here’s a table for you to judge when is it best to talk to me with the lowest chance of me going nuts.

Sunday – book in day, not very ideal in the evening
Monday – first day of work, surprisingly alright
Tuesday – still alright
Wednesday – boredom kicks in, a little sad, not ideal
Thursday – so near yet so far, no-go
Friday – make plans with me for the night or the weekend and I will definitely not snap at you
Saturday, off, leave days – freedom! But work still comes my way sometime, proceed with caution…

Above is just a general guideline, should I be sick and forced to nurse my illness in camp, I’ll be in a bad mood no matter what.

I am so glad AHM is over. The after-effects have kicked in, currently I’m at the stage where my muscles hurt. I have to say that I’m a little surprised that all I got was muscle ache. I resisted all temptations to fall asleep yesterday after the run despite only having slept for 2 hours before the run.

The run was tough, running through the CBD, all we could think of is how hot it is in there, even though its like 6am. The buildings surrounded us and so, there was no wind and we were pretty much running in an enclosed area. Running through the garden by the bay was pleasant, but the fact was that, the route was narrow and difficult to run through, there were areas where the ground was uneven and I twisted my right ankle at one point of time.

It was pretty cool though, running from city hall to marina bay, kallang, fort canning, and chinatown. The route could be better though. For example, we were running up fort canning hill so late into the run, by then we were all tired and fort canning hill was the last place we would want to run. In order to run within my goal of 2hrs and 30mins, I had to push myself to run as much as I can during the last 5km. I had difficulties running due to muscle fatigue and over-drinking from 10km-16km. By the time I saw the 20km sign, I had 6 minutes left and pretty much ran at my 2.4km pace to the finish line. I crossed the finish line, saw my friend at the barricade right after the finish, went there and just held on to it. My body was starting to get numb, I was badly in need of water so my friend went to look for some water for me. He came back and said that the nearest water point was at the other end of the padang. While he was gone, I saw my ex-RSM run in, I am pleasantly surprised that he remembered me, we exchanged a simple greeting and he went off, we were all too tired, if not because I was pretty much numb, I would have gone to the water point myself. Anyway, we waited for 1 other friend before heading off to collect our medal and some water.

The medal’s pretty nice, too bad they didn’t have a finisher t-shirt. It was quite an experience, but I was left with second-thoughts about running SCM in 3 month’s time. Hopefully I’ll survive that and tell the story on 5th December.

P.S. I don’t have the exact timing of my run, all I know is I came in under 2hrs 30mins
P.P.S. I just found the page to get the results, it’s pretty detailed. I came in 2h:26m:26s. Here’s the website: http://www.runpix.info/wrace3/00/sfa11/ge.php

This is not good, I’ve injured my left leg. I’m not very sure how, but it’s either the AHM training or the fast marches, or the combined result of both. I saw the MO in my camp last Thursday, I was complaining of ankle pains but as he started pressing my calf region, I felt pain when he pressed his thumb against my bone, not good. He suggested it might be a stress fracture.

Anyway, managed to get a month’s excuse from RMJ (Running, Marching, Jumping) and a specialist referral to see what’s really going on. The pain only comes in when I run, or so it did. For the past couple of days, I started feeling pain and discomfort while walking, and it wasn’t long distances. Now, I trained very hard for AHM and I’m not about to give up because of this. I told my MO before he gave me the excuse, he said no at first, but I told him that I would want to run and I ran 16km with the pain, he said he’ll leave it to me to decide whether I would want to run.

I’ll be going back to camp tonight and tomorrow I shall ask if I could run. I hope they won’t deny me just because I have a stupid status, I’ve trained too hard to give up now, think of the irony.

The problem is, what am I going to do if the injury is serious? Because it sure looks like it, I cannot even walk without feeling discomfort.

2 days, a 2-hour conversation with a customer service rep, 20 emails, and $150 later, I have finally completed 90% of the transfer to my new host. All that’s left is the cancellation on my old host and the domain transfer to be complete.

The new host is costly, but on the bright side, it’s local, which means, much faster. It came after some consideration. The biggest reason I picked a US host was because it was cheap, like real cheap. But deep beneath the terms and conditions lies a statement that says that they can adjust the price to cope with inflation and rising costs. They made use of it but failed to inform customers. I received an epic bill and decided to cancel instead. For future references, do not ever choose JustHost. Apparently, I’m not the only customer who’s extremely unsatisfied.

First it was the cost, then came the horrible customer service. All their agents basically scan through the emails for key points and miss out a whole chunk of other information. So it takes like 4-5 emails just to get the message across.

Here’s the cool part. Companies often offer customers some ‘free’ gifts to stop them from terminating, the free gift totals to over $300, so was that the rising costs they had to cope with? People leaving?

I didn’t take the bait, it’ll be stupid to, after all that I’ve gone through. Let’s hope this new host works out.

It all started with some interest and curiosity. We embark on this journey together. This is what some describe as the most memorable journey in their life. A journey that they’ll gladly go through once but not ever again.

A few months ago, I realised why they say they won’t want to go through this again. Recently, I’m beginning to grow sick and tired of it, I’m not even sure I’ll want to experience it at all, given the choice.

The things that happened only reaffirmed why some lost their passion. We started off positive, but at the same time, fear what’s ahead of us. We keep our spirits up by lying to ourselves that it can’t get any better than this. The truth is, it is a tough journey, one that might scar and affect your life forever.

We endure, but to what end? People think that you’re faking it, and politics follows. I’m surprised I’ve come this far, but I’m about to be pushed pass my point of breaking, both physically and mentally. The people who take the lead, do they really know what is happening when they attempt to solve the problem?

We push ourselves, we work damn hard but we are hardly ever appreciated. I’ve worked my ass off for as long as I’ve been here, but do people notice me? Am I that replaceable that I don’t deserve the slightest bit of recognition? I don’t need acknowledgment all the time, but once in awhile would be good enough. It’s like I’m invisible sometimes.

Time flies, but at what speed? Could it go faster, because I can’t wait for all this to end. I’ve lost all faith, “I got lost in this old world and forgot who I am”.

I decided to come up with a system to ‘label’ weekends depending on the number of days.

Short: 1
Normal: 2
Long: 3
Super long: 4
Uber long: 5
Unf**kin’ believably long: 6
Vacation: 7

And I’m on my first uber long weekend from tomorrow all the way till next Tuesday, hooray! For it to happen, I have to use 1 off-day and 1 day leave, but it’s totally worth it as a break after all the work and OT we performed over the past 2 months. It’s time to rest and recharge before anything else.

For some reason, we were pulled in to do a 6km fast march today. Admittedly, we were carrying a far lighter load compared to the standard and were without rifle. It would have been alright if we didn’t have to spend our entire day working on the vehicles after. The experience was pleasant during the march. But what happened for the rest of the day screwed my legs up.

I’ve ran progressively to 10km twice. They did nothing to my knees, as I should be looking out for as the most prone to injury. The fast march combined with the servicing of vehicles did it. The lower half of my legs, from knee to ankle, are aching as I lie on this bed. To add on, my back is only getting worst and my left hand is still injured from IPPT last week. Basically, what I can only do now is endure past this last 2 weeks of July.

We’re all sick and tired of all the things we’re doing. Work is piling up and there’s nothing we can do except attempting to clear a never-ending workload. I have worked OT for the past few weeks, even on book out days. I can’t wait till everything stabilize and we finally get to go back to our normal routines.