The 2.4 Miracle

Unfortunately, at this stage of my life, passing my IPPT was no longer a given. I had to suffer my first ever RT, but I must admit it was overall quite a good experience.

Thank goodness I could still pass my IPPT, but I barely cleared my 2.4km run because I came in with 0 seconds to spare and I actually had to confirm with the PTIs whether I had passed! :p

My first mobile phone

It was only in University that I bought my first mobile phone. It was a gray Siemens candybar phone with an antenna sticking out at the top corner. They have since exited the mobile phone market and I has a pretty good idea why: their customer service was disastrous!

I had to send in my phone for repairs one day as I dropped it and the plastic screen cracked. Unfortunately, their customer service centre was in some Kallang industrial estate and after examining my phone, they claimed that there were more problems with it and I needed to pay more money to repair it! To add insult to injury, when I said I just wanted to take my phone back, I found that the plastic casing was damaged as it was apparently forced open without using the proper tools…

Needless to say, I sent in a “strongly worded” complaint letter and I managed to get the repairs done for free. Think they have much to learn in terms of customer service…

Programming again

In the course of my work, due to a lack of programming resources here in Singapore, I had to do some programming myself. There was a request from one of the management staff to come up with something in VBA for use in conjunction with MS Access. Although I did manage to come up with the small application, neither the effort nor the application was fully appreciated.

Thank goodness I have programming in my blood and I still enjoy the small programming exercise…

Cycling to school

Now that I’m back at work after my short break, one of the things I will miss is my morning cycling ritual.

L-A’s school is quite near home and within range of my limited cycling abilities, so every school day morning, I would strap her into her little seat and we’ll then enjoy a short bicycle ride to her school.

Guess these moments will be one of those memories I will recall fondly later in life. Wonder if she will remember as well?

The Freudian Slip?

There was one day at work when we had some visitors from other countries coming to the office. There was this particular guy from the African continent who was exceptionally tall and he towered over everyone else.

One of the girls in office may have made a Freudian slip when describing him as “tall, dark and long”. There was an awkward silence before laughter burst out as she realised her gaffe and tried to explain that she just wanted to emphasise his height.

Close shave with a snake

There I was, deep in the jungles of Brunei on Jungle Survival Training with a bunch of other trainees. Our objective for the day was to navigate our way back to base camp from the middle of nowhere, sharing between the 7 of us one set of combat rations that was meant to feed only 1 person.

As our weary legs trudged through the various slopes and terrain that the Brunei jungle could throw at us, the guys behind me came to a sudden halt. When I looked back, I could see that a few of them were terrified and their gaze was affixed on a tree branch.

Coiled around the branch that I had just walked past was a big green snake. Not sure if it was venomous, but if one of us had just got bitten, there would have been no way to do an emergency evacuation since we did not have a way to accurately describe where we were.

Funfair perverts

I was taking my shift at one of the games stalls set up by my JC class for the funfair when I overheard a comment shared between 2 guys who were patronising the stall: “Ay, let’s spend all our coupons at this stall and try to burst the water balloon. The girl is wearing a white T-shirt!”

I turned around and saw that the next classmate who was due for a turn under the water balloon was a female classmate who had unwisely chosen to wear a white T-shirt for our water-based game…