About writing

Mechanical diarrhea is what I decided to term this strange urge I have to produce any form of intelligible thoughts typed out on my laptop.

Having sunken deeper into the depths of Singlish and dialect, I feel this intrinsic desire to just prattle on about my life these past few months. That BMT blog post I’ve been building up and trying to write has been neglected for a good  few months. Recently I’ve been in awkward situations regarding my future, or maybe it would be best to term it as ‘the future my parents want for me’.

Getting accepted into uni to study chemical engineering with a double degree in business administration seemed pretty reasonable and pointed towards a bright future (I hope) but alas, engineer never did fall under the top 3 jobs for Asian parents.

“Oh your course isn’t medicine-related, architecture-related nor is it law-related?”

“Good luck getting approval from your parents to study what will eventually shape YOUR future,” 

As cynical as I sound, that is actually the summary (albeit a skewed one) of how my parents have been treating my university applications. They keep pushing me to apply for other courses, reapply for law (which I failed to gain admission into despite sacrificing two weekends) and architecture (which I was offered a vacancy for, but I rejected). I thought I was done with worrying about university when I applied, but lo and behold; it’s as though I never applied in the first place.

“You should take LNAT/BMAT/SATs/ … Now you sergeant-to-be right so should be quite free”

The thing people who don’t serve army don’t understand is just how tight of a slap it is to my face to talk to me about free time. Free time? What is free time when you’re spending 5 days a week staying in an army camp and only let out on weekends? Maybe if I somehow grew a vagina and chopped off my dick, then altered my physiology enough such that my gender changed to female; then would I understand the real meaning of ‘free time’.

Of course I’m not going to play the victim and rant about how tough training is and how tired we get (I use ‘we’ as the army has taught me that we’re a band of brothers!); but just think about it, if we only get at least half an hour to two hours of free time a day, I would like to bring your attention to the famous phrase used by NSFs who have completed their first two years of service.

“Where got time?”

Here’s the point in time where I rebut the famous “If you don’t work hard … blah blah blah”. Some renowned experts on National Service (i.e my parents who have never/will never serve national service) told me that these two extra years I have before uni are useful for reapplying to uni and for some reason they also seem to suggest that I will have a lot of free time to take tests, study for tests and apply to uni again. Yes, of course if I discarded my sloth and took my life in my hands seriously, oh boy I would certainly have a bright future; being able to study the courses my parents want me to study; being able to live the life they want me to live; doing what they want me to do. But is that really what I want to do?

OH NO!! THE FOOLISH INEXPERIENCED OFFSPRING thinks that it’s own ideas and aspirations are actually feasible?!

I don’t claim to know everything about the world, how’s it like to get out and start working, even I’m a total bobo when it comes to universities; but at the same time I can’t ignore the fact that NS is more than just the road-block-to-university that it has been stereotyped to sound like. This is probably the only place where you’ll get to meet a more diverse bunch of people than compared to school; and you do this BEFORE you go to university. Take for example how over these past 4 months I’ve been in the company of my future course mate at NUS. (Ok, fine, personal examples suck) Examples aside, the whole point of staying-in and the view that we really zuo bo lan in camp is pretty twisted. We’re not zuo-ing any lan, we’re making connections and whenever we spend our weekends going out and actually having a social life instead of holing ourselves up and studying our brains out; I feel that that’s actually something better than having a promising future. Because, what’s a bright future without good company? (And I don’t mean a corporation)

We can always agree to disagree, but that being said I’m not the type to be difficult with my parents. I respect their concerns about my future but I feel that it would concern them too if I just took everything they said without a pinch of salt; becoming some parrot that just echoes out its master’s orders without actually thinking about what I’ve been told.

Woah woah woah am I a rebel child? Hmmm considering how I actually can be bothered to wake up every Sunday morning at 6.30am in the morning just to stand, stone and suffer under the morning sun at Macritchie reservoir doing Qigong, I’d say I’m a pretty compliant son. (woops another anecdote)

Hopefully next week I’ll have more time to organize my thoughts and vomit them out again… I pray that MP* treats me well (NO I’m not talking about the elections)

*MP= Military Police (I’m not going to jail, I’ve been posted there to be a sergeant trainee)