Ride Away With Me

Arms and the Boy here, your one and only source into the scandalous lives of the military elite. Okay maybe not. If you dont get the drift it's perfectly normal because it just means that, unlike me, you havent been indulging in an extremely unhealthy dose of some sinful (-ly good) Gossip Girl. I'm halfway through season 2. Who says you can't serve the nation and be au courant in terms of pop culture?

After almost a month of learning to ride daily (and getting screamed at by my beloved parrot) I'm proud to say that i can finally ride a motorcycle and yes this has been validated by the mean testers from god-knows-where and that bus driver that waved to me to ask me to give way to him. Like i told my friends, i felt a sense of belonging to the driving community already. Okay, maybe riding. We the bikees (never liked that term, didnt know how it came about) of the S-ahem-F, you never know what you cant say, ride the YAMAHA AG200 like you see. But ofcourse, being the S-ahem-F, it doesnt look as cool as it already doesnt. You get my point.

Unfortunately, the best 5 weeks of these 2 years are going to be over soon and i'm afraid i have to return to camp to receive the punishing torture of getting back into shape (not that i had much to speak of anyway) after slipping into the comfort of teh bing and samosa and nasi lemak. Oh i'm going to miss all of you. I'm afraid i have to try to mitigate this by hitting to the gym right away, like i havent been doing for the past 4 weeks.

You know you love me,
XOXO
Arms and the Boy.

Beautifully Imperfect

When God takes something from your grasp, He's not punishing you, but merely opening your hands to receive something better.

Disclaimer: There may be religious inclinations present in this post.

Finally. Two and a half weeks have past and i survived it. It wasnt easy being in a different environment away from home but I've got to say it was enriching. Contrary to many other testimonies you may hear, my experience so far has been physically challenging (yes, very.) yet very stimulating in the mind and (the best part) spiritually inspiring.

Faith grows daily. And i must say that this has been a growth spurt. Each day, my faith is confirmed and i feel the presence of the Lord more than ever. With each day that i survive, each time I feel myself being able to run faster; run longer, each muscle ache i endure as the morning greets and each new friend that i make, i experience the awe of his power.

Take today for example. My maiden book out and it wasnt all that smooth sailing. After a very ecstatic journey on penguin boat and a chartered bus to White Sands, i went to McDonald's with my new found friends and had a (much deserved) cheesecake. On the bus ride home, i felt for my military ic and you guessed it. IT WAS MISSING! I freaked out like a freak. That's the worse thing that could happen to you. I dashed home, changed and dashed right back to white sands to look for it deperately. It was definitely the lowest point of my limited time in the army so far. I was deperate. I sat at the bus stop not knowing what to do but pray. Really hard. Like nothing else mattered. And i asked for a sign that things will be alright. He gave me more than one. I went home dejectedly and reported the loss of that crucial document. Then i went to clear my emails. There was one that was strange because i never recieve emails from my aunt. But today i got one. and what it had to say was this : When God takes something from your grasp, He's not punishing you, but merely opening your hands to receive something better. And it rang out to me. Be still. Have faith. And true enough he opened my hands to receive something better. He let me see how things are really simple and that there is no need to worry if you lift your cares up to him.

You would never guess what happened next. After a few phone calls from a few family members asking how i could be so careless, revelation came. The door bell rung and my sister scrambled to open the door. The kind middle-aged man standing in between the door frame called out my name. I thought finally the written report for my SAT results were back. But boy was i wrong. there in his hands was that green card that was the source of my despair the entire evening. All i could say was WOW. Yes, it was in part due to my respect and gratitude towards this living saint for picking up my card and taking the trouble to come all the way to my house to return it. But most of all, i was awed by the power of prayer. He heard my desperate prayers and he answered.

He took away one piece of important document from me for a few hours to open my hands to recieve a confirmation of my faith.

The lord works in mysterious ways and i reserve all praise for him alone.

I am saved. We all are.

Amen.

(Even though this image and the one in the earlier post have references to the big US of A, I am in no part American nor have any such leanings. They just so happen to fit the content of my rants. In fact I am as uniquely Singaporean as any Singaporean my age can get lorhxzxz- and no it isnt in China.)

I apologise for the cheesy title and I have no excuse for it.

Before I finally give myself up the security of our nation (no i'm not a national threat but soon i will be guarding against these kinds, i hope), I thought that i should clear my backlog - emotional and physical. I know i have the undesirable habit of pushing things aside, things that i don't want to deal with and yes people do get hurt along the way. So i will deal with it.

Call it a spiritual cleansing of sorts. These past few days i've got to spend time alone. Waking up at one in the afternoon and sleeping at two in the morning. Unhealthy I know, especially as i will transform into a lean mean machine in just a couple of days that will wake up at 0500 hours and sleep at 2200 hours automatically. Well i least i still run, sometimes. Everyone needs to rest and recover once in a while alright! Back to spending time alone. You think about things (when you are not in fornt of the television watching the popcorn equivalent of tv content) and you begin to wonder. And you realise. That you have to do something about things. Whether it's sleeping and waking early, or hitting the gym and track, or spending time with your family or even packing up your table. Yes, i did it. I managed to clear the carnage left behind by the A Levels that rotted for at least a month. A couple of years worth of notes, neatly stacked away in a computer box- never to haunt again (well at least not for another 2 years).

This wasnt an easy task. It wasnt the sheer weight of the worksheets and notes but the stale memories that regained part of its freshness as you read about life as a teenage boy from the half-filled (yes, optimism is key!) journals and organisers. Even notes and worksheets can become signposts along memory lane. It was a reflection of sorts. Therapeutic, even.

The sun's rays will start to shine particularly replendently through the window glass, stretch across that freshly clean and coordinated desktop and reach towards you as you awake from your rest. You will feel the warmth of these arms in the coolness of the air-conditioning and you will see that it is not so bad. Issues will have to be worked out.

But it doesn't have to end in a cold, damp garbage disposal.

Think of the endless possibilities in the embrace of the sun. The embrace of the renewed freshness of new beginnings.

I hope things work out.

I've Got Soul But I'm Not A Soldier - Yet.

Welcome to a new chapter of my life.

They say it's hell. They say it's a life changing transformation- from boy to man. They say that you make friendships that will last a lifetime. I guess i'll just have to find out.

And i will keep you in the know of things. This is going to be an account of my life in the army (or at least I plan to, if i dont get too tired on the weekends). But I'm sure they have some policy of not releasing sensitive information on the web so i guess i'll have to be ranting in metaphors, similes and analogies most of the time. Hopefully you'll get it. If not, then maybe it's better that you don't know. Some things are just better left unknown.

Less than 8 more days till I start serving the nation. Exciting times. And nerve-wrecking too. I think i'm totally unfit physically. I promise myself to run everyday starting from tomorrow. Hopefully a week of that will help. But i've never had to train for anything before. Not even cross-country. I always just run and be glad that it's over.

And emotionally, i just don't know how i will react to it. It's just a blank now. I'll see what happens. It's like those moments before you go onstage, when you dont feel anything right before that gush of adredalin hits as you step onstage. Hopefully, like my experiences onstage, this too will pass quickly as soon as i get the hang of things.

That's why this blog is called "Arms and the Boy". For those not in the know, it's the title of a poem by war poet Wilfred Owen. We studied a selection of his poems for A Levels. It's about the jarring combination of the violence of war and the innocence of youth. Right now i cannot imagine myself holding real rifles, firing live rounds, crawling flat on the ground as explosions erupt all around me. Can you? Maybe it's not a good idea to let kids read Owen's poems just before they serve in the army. So much for the pity of war. Well okay, the chances of actually going to war anytime soon may not seem to be possible. Yet i'm sure there have been so many incidents when we were that close to conflict- they just weren't made public.

But still, life as a soldier will be vastly different. For one, I will have to get use to calling people Sir. Nothing wrong with that, you may say, but I have never called anyone Sir, not even teachers, because i feel that it adds distance and alienation between two persons. I prefer addressing people by the unique names their parents have given them. That's more initmate, I feel. But I dont think the army sees it the same way and i guess i will just have to grit my teeth and submit myself to the system- like everyone else.

It's what you make of it, someone tells me. And i agree. I'll take it when it comes and suck it up like a slurpee (without the brainfreeze). But it's not that bad, if you think about it. It's everything i've ever wanted: A chiselled physique and a sunkissed tan with fashionably short hair. And you get paid! Forget the yelling and the punishment and the long runs. It's all good.

God help me.

I'm really sorry for the boring template but it's just that for some screwed up reason i cannot use templates from Blogskins. That sucks. But i'll see how it goes. Tell me if you see a nice template hanging around or if you know how to get round this problem. I think it's due to bad scripting i guess. But i'm illiterate in that area. So help!

Long first post. Thanks for reading till the end! (: