just found this via mrbrown - amusing read.

March 21, 2004
Evil Midnight Robbers What Rob At Midnight

I didn't expect to be up at 4 AM writing a blog post, but thanks to a really horrid nightmare, I, well, am.

Am managing okay in NS; have gotten to the point where I'm only fucking up every other thing we're supposed to do. This is an Achievement. In related news, the last few days have been pretty interesting thanks to armed robbers. Choppers overhead and a bajillion briefings to get us not to panic (when of course what we were really interested in was whether we'd get to book out earlier because of it; sadly the answer was no). Incidentally, the NS-man whose text message was quoted in the article was more likely than not shit out of luck in the end; around our area, at least, road marches continued, just around company lines. That's a lot of rounds when each round is just 400 metres. Poor bastards.

Most amusing was when one of my section-mates who'd booked out due to fever sent someone else a text message asking what was happening. The second guy cooked up the most outrageous story to tell him: whole commando companies being called in, firefights in the cookhouse, Sergeant X getting shot, the works. It was great.

Sergeant X, by the way, is a very popular topic of conversation. He's just so easy to imitate. Also to irritate, which is ungood. Noteworthy quotes:

'Eh, recruit, you stare what stare? I shoot you then you know!'—to curious recruits, while Sergeant X was standing guard with an M-16 during the armed robber alert

'Your marching—left hand left foot! No psychomotor skills issit?'—during a trip to the cookhouse, afterwhich 'psychomotor' became platoon shorthand for 'your marching is fucked up; change your footing'

'No more questions? Okay. Everyone FO now. (everyone fails to 'FO') You know what FO is or not? (platoon answers 'fall out') Fall what cock? Just now I fall you out already. Now you just fuck off!'—after the last parade on one day; the best bit is that everyone has to echo the commands so the whole platoon can hear them, so the whole fifty or so of us were running up to our bunks bellowing, 'Fuck off! FUCK OFF!'

In other news, half the company was down with diarrhea, vomitting etc. near the beginning of the week due to contamination of the water tank. It was pretty bad; luckily I wasn't one of the victims. It led to some pretty memorable episodes, like when this other sergeant shouted for everyone in the bunks who'd been ill with diarrhea to bring down their stool samples, and many people had no idea what he was talking about until someone asked him, 'Sergeant, you mean our shit?' and he answered in the affirmative. So everyone echoed the orders and the cry went out: 'Sergeant wants your shit! Everyone who got shit in a bottle, bring it down!'

And on that high note, I'm going to try to get back to sleep.



in other news, the email address of the Consulate of Republic of Singapore in New York is a Hotmail Account.