My stomach’s growling. It’s calling out to me, “Lunch! Lunch! Feed me!”.
I hammered off a couple of goodbyes, press the enter key, slammed my laptop shut, throw on a fresh new t-shirt and bermudas when I heard it. I looked up at the window.
Shit.
Rain.
Muttering little curses under my breath I thought to myself. The coffeeshop’s just across the street, I’ll just run across, pack it and run back again, nothing to it. It’s only lunch, can’t be complicated , at the most I’ll just get doused by a couple of raindrops. That’s nothing.
I stepped out of the house, looked up again and the rain’s stopped. Someone’s looking out for me. Smiling to myself, I locked up the door and walked briskly down the stairs. As I stepped out of the void deck and out into the open the sky opened up and I was hit by a dose of sunlight.
Shit again.
Sun after rain, this is going to be sweaty.
More grumblings later, I packed a pack of economy rice, grabbed a bottle of ice cold ribena, paid for it and started back for my place. A cool strong breeze started to blow out from nowhere. Once again, I was smiling.
I quickly returned to my place, opened the door and left it open to enjoy some of mother nature’s cool fresh air while I dig into my lunch. Not bad, I’ve always liked the way they cook their food at this coffeshop and the price’s reasonable.
Washing it all down with the ice cold ribena, I lay back onto the chair and was wondering if I should start going about completing my list when my phone goes off. Hmmm… Not a familiar number. I answered and heard a recorded message.
“You have an urgent message from MINDE…”
Shit. ???. Grrr.
I quickly keyed in the necessary numbers and another message.
“You have not been recalled or your…”
I couldn’t believe my ears and pressed the repeat code again just to make sure. Hee. No recall leh. Again, someone’s looking out for me. This is nice.
Once again, I laid back, picked up the control and started flipping through the channels. 10 minutes later I’m thinking maybe I should get started on my list instead of wasting time when my phone goes off again. Again I answered and again a recorded message.
“You have an urgent message from MIND…”
This time, there’s a difference, “You will need to acknowledge…”.
Damn. Acknowledge? You don’t need to acknowledge unless something’s going on. Quickly I punched in the numbers again.
“You have been recalled. Will the following please report back…”
Shit. ???. Grrr. Bruuudy heeeow.
I thought they just said no recall? Pressing the acknowledgement key, I hung up and dialled the ops room. Busy. They must be flooded with calls by now. Finally I got through.
“Hey, I just received 2 conflicting messages, is there really a re…”
“Yes! Yes! There is! Please report back immediately!”
“Uh… Ok.”
I hung up. Grumbling silently, I quickly put on my uniform. Kiwied my boots just to make sure it’s black enough not to be stopped at the guardhouse. Grabbed my full pack, ID, cash, mobile phone and left the house. I minute I stepped out of the void deck a cab stopped right in front of me. Lucky? I couldn’t care less at that point in time.
“Uncle, ******** camp.”
“Ok. Eh. ??, you kena recall ah?”
“Ya lor…”, I answered.
I went on to grumble about the conflicting messages I received as the uncle sped across the PIE towards my camp. Soon I reached my camp. I paid the uncle and reported to the guard room for registration.
I had to surrender my camera phone. Nothing special about this except that they sealed my phone in a letter envelop taped across by 2 strips of masking tape and chopped with a seal across both ends. Funny way to do it but it does send the message across well, no photo taking in the camp. And they did this without causing any inconvenience to us camera phone totting soldiers, we’ll just have to open the envelop only after exiting the camp.
The whole process was fast, they had this station ready back at the camp’s void deck, a scanner and stuff, pretty high tech these days. Had our IDs scanned and receipt printed. We proceeded then to full pack inspection and were allowed to leave immediately. All done in a matter of 15 minutes. Efficient.
Met a couple of familiar faces. We chatted for a while. Some already married, some getting married, some already got kids. Seems like time has really just pass by me without my realising it. Anyway, we’re all going to meet up again in a couple of months for another one of their wedding.
One of them gave me a lift back home. I cleared up and repacked everything before keeping them aside for the next recall and in-camp. I then settled back for some relaxation before going out for dinner with some friends.
Now I’m back home again hammering away at my keyboard. That’s about sums it up for my Saturday. My list is still uncompleted, maybe I’ll see what I can do about that tomorrow.
