I have returned after a seemingly long week at camp. It is back to the army recruit type of feeling. It is more ’slack’ here than in Pulau Tekong though. However, I remain unsure if I would enjoy the life here.
The week didn’t start well. The whole idea of staying in camp – well – sucked. And it did so badly. As the night darkens, I spotted the shuttle bus I usually would take home. I can’t this time, I watched it leaving sadly (and after which hoped that the bus fell into a huge drain somewhere).
My peers are like me, they all had the opportunity to go home every evening in the past, I can imagine they had the same sadness (and sadistic behavior) as they watch the shuttle bus leave.
The first night in camp seemed miserable for me. I have just lost quite a bit of freedom and am stuck here. I can’t help it but to feel sad. The fact that my birthday is on the same day played a more negative effect unfortunately. It was a sad birthday.
I didn’t receive much gifts for my birthday. My girlfriend did give me one though. She actually intended a clock as a gift but thought I may not be pleased about it as Chinese superstition claim giving clocks are bad luck like sending someone to death. I denied and told her that I don’t believe in these stuff anyway and a clock would be a great gift actually. She countered and explained that if anything goes wrong in camp, I may be suspicious on the clock. I don’t quite agree, but then again, I never had a chance to proof this scenario wrong.
Surely not attributed to the choice of gift, the first night was good. Better than expected. I was happier on the second day. It was lectures all day. It had been quite some time since I had lectures for such a long time. At the end of the second day, our index number was announced. Mine was ‘13′.
[By the way, the rest of my post is gone due to a silly mistake of closing the wrong tab. Every thing below this line is frustratedly retyped.]
The second night wasn’t as good. I have been doing a lot of thinking. I didn’t really want to stay. I don’t want to be on course. I love the idea of the eight-to-five job and I don’t want a change. I like to go all those graphic editing things and some programming too. It’s like what I always dream to do in camp. I can go back to what I was doing. I just need to fail every damn thing. It’s just that simple. Fail and get out of the course.

(Another occasional doddle.)
I have my sources. And the sources tell me bad things of my course. My course is going to have a tough time ahead. It seems that the place that I am posted to sucks. It is strict and it does not allow me to book out as often as I wish. A friend told me that I was ’suay’ (bad-lucked) to get posted here.
However, part of me don’t want to leave by failing. It was a hard decision with little answers, it only helped me stay awake till 2 AM in the morning. I couldn’t sleep.
A new guy arrived on the third day. He wasn’t around as he had a bad fall and was resting at home for the first 2 days. It was discussed that he may go out of the course as he has too many medical appointments to follow up. And that would clash with the lessons and he may just fail.
The third day morning was spend thinking. It was lecture again and it really made me feel like quiting. I gathered the reasons for staying and quiting. In the end, I decided to stay. For the following reasons:
# As much as I like the graphic editing job, I am learning very little. I mean – let’s face it – it has little value when you’re cropping images and that took a huge pile of my work list.
# This course isn’t as bad as the other courses too. I actually considered myself quite fortunate to be in this course. Someday, I would have to go on a course and leave my eight-to-five comfort. So why not this?
# I hate the feeling of having the eight-to-five job when it is not stable. I may lose my job so easily to go for a course. With the instability, I can plan little things.
# I get to learn quite a lot of things about networks. I think it would be useful in future although I am not particularly interested in the EIA/TIA-568A Category 5 cable heads.
So I stayed. The new guy left. His index number is 1. The course sergeant announced that our index numbers are to be moved up. I didn’t get to say good bye to him. He’s just gone like that.
My index number is now 12. It does seem like a pretty good number.