change
Sunday, March 05, 2006 (12:55 AM)
i just met up with close to half the c31d ay2002/2003 classmates at sakura last night. it was quite enjoyable except for the long table that we didn't really get to talk to everyone. almost everyone seems to have changed some way or another. michelle's got a haircut which is so much neater and better. pam's got a nice tan, wendy's got a lizard on her left shoulder, bryan has decided to go back to the books after rejecting nus, and so many other changes.
army has changed my life quite a lot, for better and for worse. i'm still the shitty, crappy me, that's why to people, i may not have changed, but i have. something happened during the oeti training phase of my army life and it's been hanging on to me till now. sometimes i really wonder, if i had the chance to go back to that time again, will i change all that? will i do something to change it? am i willing to go through all that army shit again to change it? i don't really know but all i know is if i had known this would happen, i would've risked my 面子 to prevent it from happening. i don't even know if there's a cure, but just read this for the sake of reading and don't ask questions because there are things that can't be told.
i remember having a conversation with linxi when she was still in australia and she too had some kind of problem that can't be told in detail. just a brief idea of what it's about and it's that same kind of problem for me. i remember during the final stretch of her studies in australia, we would talk on msn almost everyday but we haven't contacted since she came back. i remember details of significant events that happened back in secondary school, but she doesn't seem to remember one bit. not even the idea that something of that sort happened. do i really have incredible memory, or just that i'm not significant enough for people to remember? sorry about side-tracking.
anyway, whenever people ask me about army life, whether i liked it or not, i would always say 'if given a choice, i won't do it but i cannot deny that i have learnt a lot of things from it.' it's the politically correct answer but that's also from the bottom of my heart. but everytime i talk about this, the incident that happened in oeti would always flash in my mind. i get this urge to say it and that i kinda hated army life for that single incident. or maybe if i had opted to go for officer course, things would've been different but i can't say it because of unexplainable reasons. i used to believe that 塞翁失马焉知非福 has been what went on in my life and what will continue to go on. because everytime something that seems bad happen, it always turn out good for me.
when i wanted to go tpjc science and didn't make it, i enrolled for tp and it was because of this that i get to learn japanese language and subsequently met tons of japanese friends. i met some people online and they introduced me to a language school when tp decided to scrap higher level language classes, and then i got to know more and more japanese friends through this school. there are many other examples that i can't really recall at this time of the day but my point is, until now, i can still hardly see what good has come out of the incident at oeti. if the problem can't be fixed, it's going to haunt me for the rest of my life unless something comes around and prove that it is after all still a case of 塞翁失马焉知非福.
this april, i'm going back to army. i just hope nothing worse comes out of it.