edit in BOLD. The PROJECT clerk who drives the SOLUNA insist.
LIFE OF WEI
It begins…..again at,
06:10:03am – blurry eyed I awake from a wondrous dream that Mindef HQ was destroyed by a catastrophic explosion. No human lives were lost though, my office however, oliberated. I could sleep home today, yay. No office = no work = sleep. No work….yay.
06:33:19am – waiting for train to …. work. Reality bites, truth hurts, the day continues. “Why does it feel more real in my dreams than when I am awake?” I couldn’t shake the quote from The Animatrix as I brushed off whatever remaining crumbs from my breadtalk bun which I heartily ate for breakfast.
06:34:00am -- same time, same train, heck even the girl from CHIJ Katong that gets off at Bedok was there, again. Same girl, same uniform, same feeling of drudgery to work.
07:35:23am – same green Toyota
Soluna, same green driver (Louis Tan), same green uniformed me, same green trees that lined the road to …
08:01:01am – MINDEF HQ, #02-27, AMD (Airforce Manpower Department), PD(O) Admin. I imagined myself to be a green peon straight out of a Warcraft game. Work work work, click click. Yesh mi lord.
08:10:01am – still no work! Yay. page 1, Life of Pi by Yann Martel (courtesy of Allan Yue)
09:00:00am – page 97, Life of Pi. No work, still.
09:12:12am – page 110, Life of Pi. Air-conditioning blaring unrelentlessly on my bare skin. Quick reflexes see myself draw out a drab grey NewBalance Sweater and found myself nuzzled in warmth and a peculiar smell that came from keeping things too long in a bag.
09:35:18am – same room, same boy, same book, different page, page 121 to be exact.
09:45:17am – Unzips dull grey sweater, stealths silently onto the dull carpeted walkways of MINDEF HQ, walks past a couple of colonels towards #01-xx MINDEF HQ, JLD (Joint Logistics Department), signals to the
PROJECT clerk slacking in-front of his computer screen. Canteen break and lunch time. Same yong-tau foo, same teh-ci, same Louis Tan sitting opposite who, as usual, finishes his noodles before me.
10:35:11am – Early for break, late to report back. As usual. Where was I? Ah, page 121, Life of Pi.
11:45:23am – Ms J is back. Back (as usual) to steal food from our pantry. I quote, “Wah, so attempting ah, make me hungry. Can eat?” She steps out of PD(O), bounty tucked neatly in her plump belly. The gossips starts. My department DXOs hate her apparently, gossips was always amusing. I tried to look absorbed in my book, I couldn’t help it when it got really funny. I laughed out too. My branch has nice people.
12:15:03am – watermelon + honeydew drink, Ice-Chilled, 70c. Nice.
12:40:10am – arrowed. Time to shred a bucket full of classified wastepaper. Same shredder, same vacuum cleaner in hand. I’m getting good at shredding paper. The trick is to remove the staplers before you actually go to the shredder machine. If possible oil the blades, they allow you to cut a greater thickness of paper. Don’t overload, you waste time trying to remedy the jam. A delicate flick of your fingers let you drop the pieces of paper one-by-one to the feeder, spread the deposits to maximise the use of the shredder blades since they are longer than your A4 pieces of paper. Don’t worry if the paper in the bin is full too, press forcefully down to compact the bin, you can shred more, for less. Really, I’m getting good at shredding paper, contact me at delaerrus@hotmail.com if you really need more help to, err, shred paper.
12:50:13am – Life of pi, page 160. Pi watches Orange Juice the Orang-Utan gets diced by the hyena. Tragic.
13:10:14pm – I volunteered. I got myself to help out to prepare for a meeting (APB Meeting for the record), made my way to #03-29 Air-Staff Conference room. Armed with 3 flasks of coffee, 3 plates of Nonya Kueh. Wow. You know why NSFs are paid so little? The meeting room was fully automated. Lighting, air-conditioning, projector, 3 foot long plasma screen all at the touch of a little LCD panel in the centre of the room. A few quick flick of the touch screen, the lighting switched over to a sombre dark tone, the screen hidden behind a wooden panel whizzed open to reveal another automated roll-down screen illuminated by the familiar blue glow of a bulb-projector, hidden from view, somewhere in the room. (I discovered it was just planted above my head) Wait. There was even the automatic curtain blinds that rolled up like a screen to reveal the picturesque view of Bukit Gombak. (It looked like some sort of James Bond villanpad) Patchy white mist hung in the distant hills carpeted by lush greenery, rain-forest trees growing nearer to our building and the distant rugged features of the HDB flats and posh condos skirting the foot of the hill that poked throught the horizon. *blink* Singapore? Yes indeed. I laid back in the plush leather seats and stared at the coffee cups and Nonya Kueh I had placed in front of the table. 10mins later, Colonel Foo will be sitting here. Hey, isn’t that commander of AFS. A quick scan revealed that the meeting was attended by every airbase commander, HAM, HAT, HAL, COS (Head Air Manpower, Training, Logistics and Chief of Staff) I felt honoured somehow that I was in the room to be filled with a bunch of Singapore’s high-up military personal. Erm, which was when I wondered how hard our tax-paying parents contribute to splurge on such luxurious décor and of course the Nonya Kueh, too.
14:13:12pm – page 249, Life of Pi. I’m paid $520 a month to read a book in an air-conditioned room where clerks (DXOs) discuss fervently about the locations of McDonalds that might sell the alphabet-bears for two-dollars with any purchase. (the trick is to buy the 50c ice-cream) Apparently the stock for the letter “Y” was dwindling and elusive, it caused some panic to DXOs who needed to complete their names with the alphabets. I wondered how miserable they (and others) were working to pay tax and pay us our pittance allowance for erm, reading books. I spent a good few years in Education too, paid by taxmoney; the government tells me that it stamps out leaders that will shape our future. Err, to shred paper too.
15:15:16pm – I found a startling similarity between my situation and the protagonist from my book. We were both trapped in a sort of desolate boredom, recollecting experiences in a diary sort of narrative, waiting for time to pass to elevate our predicament. His quest for survival, my wait for my TransitLink train home (which has a 5 dollar un-returnable deposit on your Ez-Link card as effect 3rd November 2003) We were both at the naked mercy of our surroundings, he could at any moment be gobbled up by his Bengalese Tiger companion, I for that matter could be arrowed by my chief clerk (no-no, you read correctly, not arrowed by the Indian chief.) National Service teaches us to dodge arrows, not bullets. Ask any NSF, he can testify.
15:33:10pm – I was a ghost in the office today. I had almost no work to do, no one fired me work either. I sat there slumped in the chair, reading. Walks to the toilet felt like I was floating around un-noticed to the busy little workers hidden behind their desk, or mountains of paper. I refused eye-contact with most, I learnt that by doing so, it made you seem more unfriendly or less approachable. People tend not to throw work at you for you might pass of to be eccentric or unreliable. I was silent most of the time, tending to my own footsteps along the dull drab carpet, like a ghost. My theory affirmed when I was offered potato chips when I was half-way reading my book again. I felt like a homeless ghost during Hungry Ghost Festival and was offered some snack. It was laughable really to imagine myself looking at my own bemused expression; I kept a straight face and declined. I was to regret, everyone was happily snacking in the office and I was to be hungry for the rest of the day.
15:35:11pm – One of the DXOs caught chicken pox. 2 weeks MC. My other NSF clerk tore his ligament, 3 days MC, the last NSF clerk David reported sick, 1 day MC. My branch was small, that accounted to almost a quarter of the staff on Medical Leave. Harbinger of my own tragedy? Wait. MC means sleeping at home. Hey! I want.
16:10:23pm – I thought I looked awfully suspicious pushing a trolley load with cups, saucers, a computer unit with keyboard, a mouse, 2 plates with half eaten Nonya Kueh along the corridors of MINDEF HQ, echelon of our country. A few amused glances in my general directions, nothing else worth taking note of other than that. My experience brought me an insightful lesson. Airforce commanders did not like Nonya Kueh. Remember that.
16:55:14pm – In what always seemed like the most agonising, slowest time-moving period of the day. 5 more minutes to my freedom! I made quick glances at the clock in the office and measure quick glances at my Chief Clerk should she throw some work just before I could leave, the audacity! I knew she was a nice woman, she wouldn’t. Would she? Time crawled, I felt dizzy looking at the second hand move agonizingly my freedom was at the mercy of a damn piece of plastic powered by a AA battery. I swore i could dodge bullets like Neo then.
16:57:03pm – “Weiyi? You don’t want to go home ah?” A small grin spilled across my face. “Yah, going home liao, bye chief.” Short sweet simple. I left the office, never looked back.
17:10:03pm – Five ten, the same 177 trans-island bus to Bukit Gombak MRT arrived at the usual time. Clockwork precision, there was something that made me feel satisfied with how life made sense this way in this level of perfection. An odd sense of control overcame me as I boarded the bus. The sky was hurling small droplets of water onto the road, my ever growing ass comfortably on the cushioned seat, sheltered from the elements by the metallic roof. I thought my green uniform blended into the distasteful upholstery of the Trans-Island bus.
And then and there it ended.
Only to begin … again at,
