and yes, i'm embracing the life. the life of a nsmen, which also means that i have "so little things, so much time" once again. i ORD on the 8th Feb 2010, which was just this monday. never felt so relieved to step out of camp, in fact i actually didnt mind the 1km walk to the bus-stop in the scorching sun. i know it would be such injustice trying to sum up my entire ns experience in this short post but hey, i think its really a invaluable experience that thought me skills, both tangible and intangible. not saying its all a positive experience though, but you know, if you don't make those mistakes the lessons learnt wouldnt be as significant.

and my boss was nice enough to give me a book with his personal message to me in it. makes up for the fact that i still had to work till 3.30pm on my ORD day and have $15 worth of cab fare that i cant claim! Ah oh well. feels so good not to have to wake up at lame hours just to make the hour journey to camp. but hey, what's ns man? feel so out of touch already haha.

and it was NPD(New Pedal Day) for me on tuesday. guess what was in my post all the way from the states.



a Budda Bud Wah!! yeah u heard me right. makes a fine little collection on my pedalboard. im not gonna give a review on the wah since its not the intention of this post but love how it deals with cleans really well. only issue is that it kinda engages the switch on full sweep, but i certainly can live with that. so yes, let's welcome the newest member to the pedal family.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, I STAINED MY FENDER EJ STRAT WHILE PLAYING IT YESTERDAY!!!! all thanks to my retarded boardshorts. yes i know who plays a guitar in boardshorts but thats not the point!! it stained the lacquer finish and it wouldnt come off, till i had to risk using water to vigorously swipe the patch, only then did it start to fade off. but the imprint is still there... aarghh!

then the unthinkable happened, while i was cleaning it with the cloth after i was done, my finger slipped out and SWEPT ACROSS the guitar body. and now there's a BIG FAT SCRATCH across it thanks to my fingernail!!! aahhhh!!! that's like, $200 depreciation for the patch and a $80 scratch right there.

and rooney has been growing on my once again. check them out if you havent already years ago!!

i think God certainly works in mysterious ways.

yeah and im down with flu once again, seems like the flu bug just never stops well, bugging me. though im pretty sure this time the stupid amount of hours spend doing slides for the upcoming presentations was the cause of invitation. spend a good whole 5.5hrs of my leave day on monday doing it, having it crash on me 5 times, then spend the whole tuesday night till 1am trying to finish it up, but only to have my boss redo the entire thing on wednesday.

so yes, as i cascade and plough my way through one of the busiest(but certainly my LAST!!) weeks of my unit life, i thought i could just use this time to share a short blessing?

okay maybe i made it sound like, you know, a passing thought to share this but, i've been wanting to pen(fine, type) this down since it happened this morning.

well you see, i think this whole workload thing in the past few weeks have probably dulled my 'intentness' to things around me, but never would i have thought i did be so careless as to lose my 11B-you have to note that on top of all the trouble i would have getting to replace it, i can't ORD without it!! i met up with keith last night, after an extremely tiring day, since that bugger is gonna go study in Aus for some 4 yrs. drove down to Chomp Chomp area in Serangoon for our last supper.

so this morning i had to arrive at my camp, all the way at yewtee, by 7am. so as to prepare for the bunch of Nsmen to arrive for the briefing that we were supposed to give them. can u imagine the horror when i realised i misplaced my 11B at 6am in the morning!! gave keith a call and yeah, was pretty nice of him to pick up and tried to recall whether i brought it along with me for supper. i mean not that i actually fully trusted his half-asleep 6am mental capabilities. but nonetheless, i headed down back to serangoon at ard 6.30am(okay actually im deliberately typing out these timings so as to get used to not typing them in the 24hr format anymore), and combed the entire waste infested food center of chomp chomp. and of course the stalls dont open in the morning so i couldnt ask anyone about it.

and yes of course, i didnt manage to find it.

but yeah i followed by heading towards the 7-11 outlet where i bought bread for the house from last night, and by God's amazing, almighty, enduring, marvelous, astounding, and absolutely awesome grace, IT WAS THERE!!!! only that it wasn't exactly physically there, yet.

apparently i had left it there last night and the lady owner actually found it and brought it home. she would be coming to work after noon. gave them my phone number and asked her to contact me asap, as i needed it before i could enter another camp in the afternoon.

and she was kind enough to call me, and explain that she brought it home because she didnt want anyone to use my identity to like you know, do the stuff that i wouldnt do. okay im extremely grateful to her, and this post is also specifically to say, THANK YOU WHOEVER YOU ARE!!!

and so yes, i would be armed with my 11B, together with "the final countdown" and "time to say goodbye" in my ipod, ready to embrace the last working day of my ridiculously long NS life. that's if of course i dont lose it again before that.

on a side note, i actually locked the office up before i headed to another camp only to find out that i still had the key with me. yeah that means everyone else in the office cant go back in.. see, i shouldnt be given so much work!!