This is coming to the end of wk 12 of my semester. It means… semester exams are coming!! Reports are slowly decreasing because practical sessions have decreased. But there are just as many tests coming along. For the future 3 Wednesdays, I’ll be having tests. They are held after school. And Wednesdays are my training days. I’ve been missing two consecutive trainings already. Felt that I’ve been missing out and not bonding with my trainees and my people soon. I can sense that my people are going to have a communication break down again.
What does my batch really want? Can we think as one or not? As instructor, we must show professionalism, something which my instructors showed to my batch when we were trainees. We are a weaker batch. I dun noe what to say either. But I just want my trainees to obey what we expect them to do.
My classmates. Though I can mix around with everyone in the class, both guys and gals, I’m not close to anyone of them, even Jas. She dun give me the warmth and closeness when we are together. Recently, I’ve noticed the bad side of her. It’s wrong of me to talk bad about her. But, she refused to listen to me when I give her advice on where she went wrong. She felt that there was not a need. I felt that was rude. Anyway, when we are ordering food, she don’t wait for everyone to come back to their place before eating, she always proceed on first. She has no table manners. When people are eating, she can just take away your utensils and take your food from your bowl without asking any permission. When she has finished eating, she just asked for tissue. Dint say please or can I have a piece of tissue. She’ll just say, tissue. How rude is that? I feel kinda sad for her. Tried to change of but she dun bother. So I guess I’ve done my part.
I’m now learning to live life easier. Living it week by week. Means, I set a weekly deadline for myself. And relax on Friday nite and Saturday. Enter poly must have a life man! Haha! If not must as well so JC! K.. I got to go..
mEmOrIeS sAvEd @ 10:17 PM.
Saturday, August 06, 2005.
Hi bloggie! I’m back. Nx wk is wk 11 already. I went to pulau ubin on wk 9. Six days five nights camp. For the whole of it, I didn’t get to bathe, didn’t brush my teeth. For those people who have never gone for outdoor camping, or camping in rural areas, they’ll find this way of living very dirty. But I’ve got used to it.
The camp I went for is AX camp. I’ve been to this camp before last year. I went as I trainee last year. But this year, I went as an instructor. It’s not as tiring as last year’s as there were more physical during training time. This camp, our full manpower came down. I was very glad about it.
Last year, I learnt how to cook my meals with just leaves, twigs, logs and a match stick, learnt how to chop bamboo, logs, build tripod, raft. But all these skills are not important. What’s most important is that we are more bonded together and we worked as a team. It was the friendship we had which mattered most.
This year, we passed down what we know to them. We tried to brainwash their brains to the correct mindset and guess we eventually did it by the end of the camp. The trainees showed disciplined and more sense of urgency. I was very satisfied with their performance overall. They make me feel that my effort put in was not wasted.
During the camp, we also had flag raising and lowering. During these two sessions, the senior com will take their lead to check the instructors’ hut and the trainee’s tent and basha. I was afraid the senior com will give the no of punishments which we cannot handle. I kept praying that they will know their limits.
The highest they went was 200 and the lowest was 50. There was once when we did 200 counts of 4 jumping jacks. It was crazy for me. Kept stopping. Guess I’m losing my physical. After our exercise, we went back to our trainees and ask if everyone was fine.
They were shocked at what we could do and asked if we were fine also. They said they should ask if we are fine since we just finished our exercise. I felt that they were very thoughtful and caring.
They asked a lot during the camp which was very good. Unlike during my time, my instructors kept asking my ppl and I to ask questions. From how they performed, I could tell that they did use their brains to do things rather than just do it without thinking. When I see their attitude gradually improving, I really felt very contented.
Very quickly, it was the last day of camp. They all commented that they learnt a lot of things and the camp was very fun, though there were many times which some of them wanted to give up.
Today is the first sea training, and it’s also the first training after AX. 13 ppl came down. However, only 3 who went AX came down. From this group of trainees, I could see the difference in those who went for AX and those who didn’t. Those who went got greater endurance and motivation. Somehow, I preferred them better. I guess I’m biased. There some who still do not have the correct mindset for upgrading. They refuse to push themselves further. No endurance and poor mental and natural weak physical.
I realized I’ve been living in a world revolving around guys. Ang, jj, ben, mat. All these are my close friends. Ben and mat are like my brothers. Ang and jj are my cca brothers. Always like teasing each other. Recently, jj’s classmates have been teasing jj and I. When they know we went for camp together, they teased non-stop. I don’t know what is jj thinking or feeling. I also don’t know myself.
Last week after AX while on the ride back to school, I was with jj taking the lorry back to school while the rest took a coach back to school. He told me he wanted to quit SPA because of his studies and his mum. He is unable to convince his mum he can cope his studies with a heavy cca. I didn’t comment much as I was very tired then.
Then at night on MSN, jj said he has never thought of quitting SPA so seriously before. I told him, if I’ve given serious thought about this issue, I would have left SPA long ago. I refuse to think of the situation I’m in so I just go down for training or camps when I need to. Also don’t want to give myself too much stress or else I’ll get my headaches again. The pain can kill. Sometimes it’s so painful that I can’t do anything but just lie down and rest.
mEmOrIeS sAvEd @ 7:00 PM.
Sunday, July 24, 2005.
Next week is my holiday. But it’s not holiday for me. I have a 6 days 5 night camp coming up. As much as I don’t want to go, I don’t have a choice. Everything is just a must. There’s no ‘NO’ in SPA. Anyway, I just got to learn to like the things I do instead of only doing the things I like.
Last week I was rushing for 5 reports. Imagine, I got to do 5 reports in a week! One day one report. Still got test. madness. When I just realized I had to complete so many in just one wk, I almost suffered from a breakdown. At first I thought I wasn’t able to complete it. But I planned my time well and sacrificed a lot of entertainment. Tiring as it is. Stressful as it goes. I just hanged on. Endured. Persevered. There’s this drive in me that keep me going throughout and this mind which just want to give up and take a break. My willpower battling over tiredness, stress. Who won? My willpower. I told myself it’s not the time to give up now. Set my thinking right and continue will what I have to.
Conclusion? Managed to complete 5 reports in a week. But ended up seeing the doctor. I was suffering from headaches called tension headache. Too much stress. This affected my concentration, attention span and listening ability.
Now, I still have lotsa work to complete. But I have no more drive. I want to rest more. Health is more impt den anything. Without it, wat other tings can I still do? Somehow I don’t understand, why does the work keep coming? Even when there’s break, there’s holiday assignment. Sigh….
Wat to do, bloggie, I’m in yr 2 liao. Complain so much oso no use. Still got to do in the end. My frenz, esp bryan said I complained too much. Each time when I said something like it’s very hot here or why should we cycle, I think it’ll take a longer time, he’ll say I’m complained. I dun noe wat I should say then it’s not complaining. I just get very irritated when he says I’m complaining.
CCA.
I’m now the semi senior in SPA. Have my own set of trainees. The initial no. was 35. It decreased by half when the training got intense. I told my people to change the bloody SPA system. But there aren’t any movements. All still follow the same way. Sianz.
I getting well w my ppl, except for xiao wei. She hardly comes for training. Out of 7 trainings, she only came for two. Sometimes, I also dun noe what’s she thinking.
Today, I was chatting w JJ. Dun noe wat we were talking and we were into money issues. He said I should tell him how much he owed me. I said I dun really like to say, JJ u owe me $3.20. pls return me. I find it weird. Den he said, u know me so long already, just tell me.
Recently JJ has been behaving rather weirdly, he’s flirting with me. okie, is it flirting of he’s just being friendly? My friend said he likes me for some time already. But I don’t believe. Because everyone is SPA is very close, like siblings. No BGR feelings 1. anyway, just see how it goes. Shall update more.
I’ so glad it’s returning. The closeness between Eileen and I. I guess I haven elaborate what had happened to the relationship between Eileen and I. We became very good friends as more upgrading sessions came along. There was even a point where I grew something for her. A point when she was sad and I’ll be sad too. When she’s happy, I’ll b happy too. A point when she didn’t go upgrading and I going for upgrading would be meaningless. A point when we just looked at each other and know what we were thinking. That was the point and closeness we had.
But FO camp came and smashed everything! She was the ACo for this camp. There was a lot of cork up during the camp due to insufficient preparation time. It was not well-planned at all. During the last day, we were talking about some timing. We couldn’t agree to timing. She suggested an unreasonable timing and I explained to her it’s impossible. I dun noe y she suddenly got so angry and flared up and walked away.
From that conversation onwards, I couldn’t communicate properly with her anymore. It’s just a one word ans from her if I asked her a qn and a one word qn from me if she asked a qn. We had nothing to say to each other. But I felt bad. Really bad. I wanted to patch things up. I don’t believe after building the friendship for 1 whole year, it’s going to collapse. I tried to communicate with her like I used to in MSN n SMS. But there’s no improvement. She still gave me a one word ans. It was very hard to continue the conversation. After 2 wks I gave up trying to talk to her. There were 2 wk where we totally didn’t communicate. One day I saw her sitting on a study area. I greeted her but she was no response from her! It was as though I was greeting a stranger. I felt really very upset. Y? Y is she treating me this way? It’s not entirely my fault. It takes to hands to clap.
Last wk, our friendship suddenly improved. I don’t know how. As usual my ppl and i were just talking and laughing. Usually if we were still quarrelling, she would choose to laugh with ang or chong, but she laughed w me too. At first I didn’t noticed it until ang looked at me and smiled. This smiled was telling me he could tell that our relationship was improving. Haha!
mEmOrIeS sAvEd @ 6:59 AM.
