LOOKBACK 2006

The year started with me obtaining the Military Class 4 Driving License. Shortly after I began to tutor my cousin and I turned 20 on 22nd January.

February was as short a month as it was of activities.

Mr Brown left a comment on my blog and that made March an intensive blogging month. I said hello to Buddhism with my inaugural dharma class at Odiyana Buddhist Meditation Society and bade farewell to my driving probation plate.

I became a corporal in April. On the 22nd I went for my 2nd blood donation and since then became a regular blood donor.

Vanity May be the reason I went for mole removal. Vesak Day was meaningful as I took my refuge vow before Gen Wangchog and considered myself a Buddhist.

June saw my last minute entry into Youth For Causes (YFC) 2006 under the team "Pillar of Hope". I watched theatre production "A Stranger At Home" at the Singapore Arts Festival.

July marched in at the SAF Day Parade. I switched loyalty to Buddhist Fellowship (BF), watched Z Pop Charity Concert and had my head shaved for Hair For Hope 2006. My blog celebrated its 1st birthday.

National Day Parade was one of the highlights of August, the other, being hospitalised. Both were refreshing first-time experiences.

RSAF Day Parade on 1st September marked the end of the drilling journey. I treated myself to watch Forbidden City.

The Global Chinese Music Awards on 28th October was held for the first time in Singapore and I was fortunate to have discounted tickets to it.

YFC 2006 came to an end in November and my team "Pillar of Hope" received the Best Volunteer Management Award. http://pickofthepops.blogspot.com was launched.

A busy December it was participating in the Singapore Inter-Faith Youth Forum (SIFY) 2007 and meeting up with friends over the festive season!






For my friends...

For an army life, mine have been relatively interesting - tuition, YFC, SIFY etc. I learnt a lot, made some new friends and enjoyed myself.

But more importantly, taking part in these activities have let me revisit my flaws and see the worst in myself. These imperfections may not have surfaced in army because I'm a man with minimal responsibility. When those duties came upon me, I procrastinated. I got skeptical. I tried shortcuts.

My army schedule has been flexible for large part of the year. But it WASN'T me who was pro-active to look for activities to fill my time. It was the people around me who introduced/offered these opportunities and I'm especially grateful to them.

Thank you Aunt Sieweng for entrusting me with the task of tutoring Rebecca, Ronghao for getting me started on the Buddhist path, Wenxiang for introducing YFC and Weizhang for introducing SIFY to me.

I wish someday I can be the bridge linking my friends to their coveted opportunities too.

Of course I'm grateful to my friends from Dunman, HC, FDS, BF and miscellaneous places. Thanks for all your help and inspiration for the past year!

And the thing about being Buddhist. I'm not a better person. I'm still as unfilial. I'm more than ever nasty to my sister. I still harbour evil intentions.

Only perhaps when I'm doing something bad I get an increased awareness that I'm being bad. And I've stopped abusing animals because I realise I may be reborn as one. :x

Spiritual? Still a long way. I'm still the same Wenjian, not Wenjian THE Buddhist.

I hope this last entry of the year hasn't bored you, but it's all very heartfelt stuff ok! Haha.

Wishing you a 2007 full of warmth and surprises! :)

Annual CI Gathering @ The Asian Kitchen/Xin Wang HK Cafe

DHSNPCC CI Outing @ Teo Heng Karaoke/Black Canyon Coffee

NPCC Squad Christmas Outing @ n.y.d.c/Jazz @Southbridge

The Big Apple mudpie I ordered tasted worse than an apple from China.

Then we started walking to Boat Quay and thought Fullerton would look better with us in a photo.

Jazz @Southbridge! It was the highlight of the day because there was a waitress who looks like (gasp!) Sun Yanzi! But only when she smiles. And probably only under the dim lighting. Yeah I was very sobre no thanks to the awful ketchup-tasting Virgin Mary and the worse-than-K-Box-one Shirley Temple.

A night of bad food, bad drinks but thankfully good company.

Singapore Inter-Faith Youth Forum Study Visit 3
@ Sri Guru Singh Sabha, Church of St Mary of The Angels & Sri Ruthra Kaliamman Temple

Church of St Mary of The Angels at Bukit Batok is one of the seven recipients of the 2006 President's Design Award. It's impossible not to be blown away by its architectural beauty. I was overwhelmed by tranquilness the moment I stepped in.

This is the baptism pool. The elevated portion is for babies!

And this soundproof room is for babies and their mothers just in case they get a little too noisy. Impressed?

Now I truly understand how excruciating it is to have to travel across the island to book in. My comrades who stay in the West, I salute you. Changi Air Base celebrated its 35th birthday today at Singapore Discovery Centre and getting there from Tampines was no joke.
How often do you see fighter pilots shedding their cool image to clap for a birthday song.

Attendance was actually satisfactory for Shift 2.

Formation Best and avid WWE fan tries his luck with a mechanical opponent.

Simply childish.

We smoked out halfway and made our way to occupy 2 rooms at K Box @ JEC and sang till the ever punctual K Box staff chased us out.

Then Marvin and Yenghian walked (!) home and left me stranded in their territory. No direct buses home no familiar landmarks. I decided to seek solace at the nearest "home".

Dunman High at Mount Sinai Road!

This looks familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. I tasked myself to find the NPCC Room and thought I found it when I saw the Scouts, Guides and SJAB Rooms. But it wasn't with its usual comrades.

I found it after a detour anyway. Beside the Student Council Room. Which reminded me of Mr Kiw who said something like this before: "学长之下就是学警".

It's funny how a simple observation can evoke such memories. And I wish to have more of them.
:)

FDC Platoon 3 Outing @ K Box Paradiz

It's forever hard to get a platoon of RPs to gather. When one shift is off duty, another is on; and we are not just talking about one camp. A pity not all could join us, though they may possibly be humming the exact songs to their rifles we were K-ing in the mega room. With this outing the leave-clearing season is officially launched and let's meet up more often shall we?

Singapore Inter-Faith Youth Forum Study Visit 2
@ Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery, Harmony Centre @ An-Nahdhah & Loyang Tua Pek Kong

Buddhist Fellowship Youth Camp
15 - 17 December @ Aloha Loyang Chalet

Buddhist Fellowship Gala Dinner
14 December @ Metta School

Yenghian and I can hopefully start singing French songs after learning the language at Alliance Francaise from January! Shaowei, I'd need your help soon.

Singapore Inter-Faith Youth Forum Camp
8 - 10 December @ MOE Labrador Adventure Centre

Marvin and I were talking about the abstract topic of teeth because the festive season for wisdom tooth extraction is here and we can see dentists merrily popping bottles of anaesthetic and patients eagerly digging into their Santa stockings to find (surprise!) wads of MCs for their gifts.

Then we realised our families had the same custom for our dislodged milk teeth.

Upon the dislodging of an upper tooth, we had to drop it straight out of our windows for supposed aesthetic growth of the adult tooth. For a lower tooth, we had to throw it straight up into the sky.

Typical HDB-Chinese-family myth.

I guess it somehow worked because my teeth didn't turn out too bad, save a few rebellious ones which probably got affected by wind direction.

But recently, as I was observing my teeth more frequently to decide if I need wisdom tooth extraction, I made another amazing discovery.

I am becoming buck-toothed.

Die lah. I'm already not blessed with anything and I have to be buck-toothed? Argh. (As an aside, you may be observant enough to notice my downsized mole.)

How! Sponsorship for braces/retainers anyone?

It's time of the year to do reviews and round-ups! I shall begin with My 20 Favourite Singles of 2006. Listed in order of release dates, they are:

真的 [张韶涵]
靠岸 [林宇中]
SUPERWOMAN [曹格]
我要快乐 [张惠妹]
手 [莫文蔚]
我会好好过 [李玖哲]
爱情树 [张智成]
LOVE STORY [范逸臣]
我只是想要 [陈伟联]
假装 [蔡依林]
BEAUTIFUL LOVE [蔡健雅]
一个像夏天一个像秋天 [范玮琪]
触电 [S.H.E]
飞行部落 [F.I.R]
听妈妈的话 [周杰伦]
我要的世界 [萧亚轩]
雨天 [孙燕姿]
单身潜逃 [戴佩妮]
亲亲 [粱静茹]
女爵 [杨乃文]

It's journey to the West for me next mount. Back to square one, to the shift plagued by politics, pranks and polyclinic patients. As promised, here's a valedictory entry for Shift 3.

First and foremost thanks to the GOH guys for introducing the people, lingo and protocol of the shift to me. Hanging out with them after rehearsals has been entertaining and when it was back to mounting, they were the catalysts for my assimilation into the shift. The three of them are

Mavarick, a fervent gym rat who has biceps big enough to break two undercarriage mirrors, and who taught me how to say "anal sex" in German,

Jason, a fervent smoker who often has gastronomical associations such as Bengawan Solo and Changi Village,

and Cheeyong, a fervent sleeper who is well known for his legendary indulgence in a certain valley of sensual bliss.

The shift IC determines our 48 hours of fate in camp with strokes and letter permutations on his Brother Bear notebook. Occasional exclamation marks serve as immunity to graveyard slots for the 2nd day. And there is the paradoxical "invisible duty" which, erm, appears on the bottom of the detailing sheet somehow.

Thanks Fabien, for racking your brains every mount to maximise welfare for every one of us. I'll miss the 4-7 slots where we welcome the avuncular figures - canteen, SFI and newpaper uncles - should no attitude techie drive in with his zhng-ed car and disrupt that orderly sequence.

Fabien was my coursemate at FDC, so too were Hock Leong and Eugene. This anti-Boo pair never fails to liven up the guard room, with the former dedicated to irritating Cheeyong and the latter with his classic quotes and obsession with plural forms.

The livening up of my last mount was accomplished by the confrontation between Michael who has a sophisticated tattoo and the sergeant who is short beyond redemption.

I used to mix up Michael with Mok, no thanks to the black chunky specs. Thanks for taking orders most of the time! Did you go for prayers today?

Here come the animals. Drunken hamster Marcus and smiley cow Kenneth.

It's a pity I have to leave before unriddling what you say in your sleep Marcus, those spasmodic strings of undecipherable words you blurt before resuming your rhythmic snoring. I've never done a proper duty with Kenneth before, except maybe in console, where I wait for my alarms to sound and he, for his missiles to land.

One more to add, a bird.

Rihua has three wives and he picks which one to ride according to his mood. A pity I never had the chance to ride pillion.


Sorry Fred, I don't have your photo. V1 has become a creative writing haven because of you and your fictional Benson Hedges story. Though somehow it later got overshone by that non-fictional Mark Chan series.

Samuel Woo-kong! And what's Ruby Lin fan Hongrui looking at? You guys are diligent soldiers, so unlike your counterpart mentioned above whose name became an instant vulgarity sprayed on walls, papers, everywhere!

I missed out a sensitive someone but I guess he already has enough coverage on NS Portal. Off to the commanders!

Sergeant Yongjian is distraught I am leaving. No, I am the one distraught because I'm pretty certain there isn't another sergeant around who's so committed and sensible, who will bother about the most minute detail for the sake of everyone. I thank you from the bottom of my heart and I promise to forget what happened at E3. Heh.

And last but definitely not least, thank you PC Jianwei for your trust in us. Whether a shift is a happy or bitter one depends largely on the commander, and for me and I'm sure others, the days in Shift 3 have really been gratifying.

A final thanks to all of you who made the effort to have breakfast yesterday. I don't deserve such attendance really. It was phenomenal - a whole row of seats occupied. And that meant a lot to me.

Thank you Shift 3 and all the best.