Race Against Time

I am back home again. No injury since the first day of BMT. Suddenly I was given 5 days of Attend C, followed by 7 days of Attend B plus 4 days of physiotherapy for only a slight paravertebral spasm; something related to the lower backbone.

I told the MO I am okay and wanted 12 days of Attend B instead but he insisted and told me to rest at home instead so I am going to miss a lot of lesson for the 12 days MC including the 7 days where I am fit for light duty.

Yesterday night when my mum was massaging my backbone, she saw 3 patches of blue black. Luckily, this 3 patches were identified and now things may not be safe again, I need to go to TTSH for re-treatment later.

My backbone is aching and numb. I am going to miss a lot of lesson including hand grenade and SIT test. Not only about that, I am going to miss even more if I am given more days of Attend C after further medical review.

All because of the route march and the field camp. I am only 48kg and they expect me to carry 18kg of weight (10kg field pack, 4 kg of water and 4kg rifle) and route march for 8km. The final route march is 24km, maybe I am unfit for that.

The field camp is over but my heat rash is still there; feeling itchy without bathing for 5 days. Life in the field camp was hard to past because it rained daily and I was wet for 5 days. We were told to sit, prone and kneel on wet mud. The hygiene level was very low; the mess tin, fork and spoon were filled with mud and sometime sand even got into my water bottle.

We built a coffin hole and slept inside. We dug a hole on the ground and shitted inside too. We walked 8km with 14kg resting on our body and we walked for another 4.8km with 3kg the next day. Thursday was the worse day, it rained heavily and every of us were feeling cold. I wore my procho to keep myself warm while others did not.

On Wednesday, we received a letter, every of us did not know what the letter was about but once we opened, tears dropped from our eyes, some did not cry but have red eyes. I received a surprise letter from my mum and brother. My brother said something like NS is to developed my personality while mum wrote that I need to take care of myself and see the doctor if I am sick. Sadly, the letters were wet and gradually crushed to letters that could not be read again. If not, I would have posted my family love in this blog this time.

Field camp is over. I am worried about the route march where I need to carry 14kg of mass and walk for 24km. So far so good; no injury, no blister, no cut and no pain except yesterday where we were forced to march with 20kg bag home from my company to ferry terminal, I injured my backbone.

Week 1 BMT


Week 3 BMT

Whenever I received a new friend request from Facebook, I accepted their request sometime without knowing them. Yesterday there was a Malay girl whose name was Atika Yusof. She wanted to link up with me on Facebook so I accepted her friend request. I also posted a comment on her wall and asked her if she knew me, she replied yes and tagged me on her primary 5 class photograph.

Atika Yusof asked me whether I could recognize her. Sadly I could not despite browsing through her photographs in her profile. However, I am still able to feel her presence, she looked familiar yet unfamiliar. Either my memory was not perfect or the photograph's resolution was too low. Anyway, she was my friend, getting connected up again is easy through social networks such as Facebook unlike in the past when mobile phones were still not invented.


In the middle of our conversation, I asked her where she worked and I was surprise to heard that she no longer can work given her current status. She wrote a long paragraph full of words and the only word that was captured by me as soon as the sentence appeared was "cancer". OMG, I said, what happened?

She told me that she had Leukemia cancer when she was primary 6. The last time I was same class as her was primary 5 so i did not know about her status until now. The treatment took her 4 years and now she recovered from that cancer. Luckily, she won the monster. Given her medical status, she was still able to study till O level and even ITE. That was really great for her. If it happens to me, I guess I should have quit school before O level. She was brave, strong and willing.

Leukemia cancer is extremely risky. It affects young children with a mortality rate as low as 20%. At the time of treatment, her cancer cells have not spread to any part of her organs or lymph nodes (stage 1 or 2 cancer) so she was considered not the worse case. She even has a brother who has a matching bone marrow stem cell as her but it was not required since she responded relatively well to chemotherapy. She told me that she nearly die. She was lucky. If no family member has a matching bone marrow stem cells as her, the probability of getting one matching donor from a stranger is 0.00005.

Many people should have heard of the ambulance siren but some people may not understand how it works. When an ambulance is approaching toward you, it sounds high pitched and gradually reduced in pitch as it drives away from you. This is due to Doppler effects.

When the ambulance is driving toward you, the air in front of the vehicle is compressed. Thus, reducing the distance between the particles. This situation reduces the length of particles collision. As a result, the time taken to collide from one atom to another atom reduces. This is why the ambulance produces high pitch when it is approaching you.

When an ambulance drives away from you, the opposite explanation applies. The sound frequency is higher when the ambulance is approaching toward you than at idle state. This difference in pitch can tell the driver nearby to give way to the ambulance during an emergency situation.

Doppler effects can also occur in light. This is how scientist used to locate the stars. If the star is moving away from the earth, it will be red in colour because red colour have a longer wavelength. If the star is approaching toward the earth, it will be blue in colour due to higher frequency. This theory is similar to sound. This is the reason why the galaxy is rainbow in colour and we can even trace if the objects in the galaxy is moving clockwise or anti-clockwise around the galaxy core.

Happy mid autumn festival. This year it has being a great one! Yishun sound high with a concert and a famous band group held beside the train station. There is also a corner for children to play lantern, another corner with games and of course not forgetting about the wonderful lion dance performance plus free mooncake for residents with tickets.

Music and crowds were what that made a great night for the residents here despite the sparkles smog that caused irritation to many people especially the tent that made the place 50% confined. With the joy and fun, the kids did not take safety methodology into play; they threw sparkles around. I saw it as a high risk game but parents did not care what their children did. Whatsoever, who cares?

This night doesn't seem fine since it rained and I always believe that such situation rarely happens without the presence of sunlight. Isn't it ironic? Maybe the rain water brought lucks to people or the moon just want to hide away from the crowds.

Other than Chinese singer alone, they also came up with Malay and Indian singers as Singapore is a multi-racial country. The guest of honour for today was Mr Ong Ah Heng, MP for Nee Soon Central. Anyway, he is not my mayor, Prof Ho Pee Keng is mine.

The concert and the crowds rocked like nobody business. The youngsters enjoyed playing games and lanterns while their parent watched the concert. I believed that there were at least 5000 people in the big enclosed field there. Even for the Malays, Indian and Bangladesh who also joined us for the concert and ate mooncake together with us.

As for the concert, I think sometime 老歌 is nicer than 新歌 so I don't mind if it is a 老歌 or 新歌 concert because I will like both "algorithm" and rhythm. Bing Fei happened to see me beside the dragon dance performance, she tapped onto my shoulder, I declared I was blind when she was just beside me while I did not notice about it. Well, she also enjoyed with her family to celebrate mid autumn festival together with the crowd.

To all my friends and family, I wish you a happy mid autumn festival. Have a great day with your family celebrating and eating mooncake.