Finally, i chose my own path. My life so far is kind of different from most people. Putting aside my life starting from birth to graduation of my secondary education as they are so mediocre that no one will stand reading them, my ‘interesting journey’ begins after getting my ‘O’ level certificate. 

 

I went JC(Tampines) after my ‘O’s. One word- disastrous. Oh, and just for information, i took double maths n physics. Alright, i know, that is a combination not to be trifled with but then, i was not thinking much. As a matter of fact, the reason for why i went JC is that there was no reason. I just went there for the sake of going there. When i attended school, practically every lessons ended by leaving a big question mark on my head. This is also the time when i started to run away from reality. I put in all my efforts in some other not so important areas like my CCA(chinese orchestra), hosting various programs organized by the chinese department(ok, i know i am ‘cheena’). Seems like once i have no interest in a certain thing, i will just neglect them totally, so actually, i kind of admire those people that could say something like “I didn’t want to be a doctor, i wanted to an artist. It’s just because of my parents…”blah, blah, blah. 

 

Enough said about my pathetic boring life in JC, let us move on to something a bit more drama. So time flies before i realise it, i have already collected my ‘A’ levels and flunked it. With the encouragement of my teachers, i actually applied to repeat my 2nd JC year. But something awaits me after my JC- National Service. I needed to know when will the ‘repeat form’ be approved so that i could defer my NS enlistment. So after i submitted my ‘repeat form’, i went to the office and asked a teacher who happens to be there. In order to protect her rights, i will not use her real name and i shall call her Mdm Bitch. If u have already guessed that i am going to bitch about this bitch, you are totally right. She told me “Eh, u just go in army, anything we will call you.”

 

Fast-forward again. Now, i have already enlisted into army for a week, still waiting for a call from the school as said by Mdm Bitch. My elder sister could not wait any longer and decided to call the school for me. And holy crap! The answer she got was that i could actually defer my enlistment ON THE DAY I submitted the repeat form. However, by now, i actually got used of the life in army. A world of our own, totally cut off from the real world. Somewhere deep in my heart, i have already decided to do my best in my BMT(recruit phase) so that i could get chosen to be a commander, and sign on as a regular from there, and sort of hide from reality for the rest of my life. Then again, it happens again… A joke happens again…

 

After my field camp, my left hand ring finger swelled like a sausage. I was admitted to hospital and a surgery was done. It involves cutting up my finger to allow the pus to flow out. It seems just like yesterday when I was lying in the operating theatre, groaning in pain when the surgeon is performing the incision drainage as the pus in my finger had clogged up most of the blood vessels and the anesthetic could not numb my whole finger. This unlucky event will scar me for life, and literary scar me:

 

As you can see, the left picture is my healed up ring finger with a little not so obvious scar there. As for the right picture, please do not be mistaken that I committed suicide by slashing my wrist. It is actually a scar left behind by a skin drafting (the dots around the line are stitches wound). The skin cut out was used to patch up the big cut on my ring finger. Up till now, i am still cursing and swearing about the surgeon as to why he graft the skin from my wrist and not from some other places which could be covered…

 

With the admission into hospital, MCs and the exemption from upper limb activities, i completed my BMT without doing quite a lot of events. SAF did not allow me to re-course BMT due to the fact that I have been through most of the training so with that, i lost the chance of being a commander. Eventually, i became a Combat Engineer, as a man(that is, not commander).

Let’s just TAKE IT that i went through the rest of my NS life peacefully, which is not the case, haha. But that is another story, for another time…

Well, these series of unfortunate events actually made me start to think what should I do next, and perhaps, it is a good thing that these things did happen. It is then i remembered about the major Project Work(which is part of the ‘A’ level) i did during my JC1(i purposely left this out at the beginning of my post). The topic was to investigate the growth of a industry and its changes. My group chose the movie industry. Like i mentioned earlier, I am unable to do stuff which i am really not interested in. But this project, something is different. It is so different that, i already categorize as something fun, rather then part of my sad JC life. So, a goal is now set- movie making.

 

The next question now would be, where should i go? Back to my project work again, we interviewed someone, a lecturer from Ngee Ann Poly. Yes, so that means, 4 years ago, i had already set foot on NP, and not knowing that 4 years later, i will be back. Sad thing is, i can’t remember the name of the lecturer we interviewed. I really would like to say ‘thank you’ to him as he was the 1st ‘media person’ I ever come into contact and the experience was a good one. Upon deciding the path, I simply used my ‘O’ld level certificate and applied for NP-FMS-FSV. Of course, I went through yet another ordeal this time round- psychological barrier. If not for all the good friends i met in my JC and NS, not forgetting my families members too, without their support and encouragement, I would never had the determination to start all over again. So, here i am, doing something that is finally interesting. Meeting new people, learning new stuff, my journey has only just begun…