same place, different person

To pass IPPT. How hard can it be for others, always very hard for me.

Nevertheless, today IPPT had bought me back to the old Academy at Thomson road. It had been >2years since i had last set my foot there, and god, it's all memories the minutes you step in.

Yes, the place is so much different now; After they had shifted the training of new NS boys to the new Academy, they renovated and upgraded some parts, specially the new area delicated for IPPT. Cleaner, better equiped, more first aid and welfare, and even a delicated running track for 2.4km with electronic time logging..

And more importantly, the way you walk in also. No more previous trainee style of marching-with-your-boots; people dragged their feets in in slippers/flip-flops with no issues at all.. No more panic-looking NS boys guarding the gate, all season'd old salary-paid guards now.

But still, how would you ever forget the times you march/punished/ran on that same old tarmac, the stretch of pavement where you almost got into trouble by fighting, that old guard house where you draw the oily rifle, and that grass field patch which you had been psycho'd not to ever cut-across-the-grass-or-you-kana-palms-down..


IPPT finishes, and I save the 71cents by walking to Toa Payoh, using the same exact route that i used to take on every book-out days.

On this route across HDB flats, unlike the academy, nothing had changed. Every sights are still the same as before, the same path under PIE, the same void deck, playground, coffee shops, every single details remains. Rather, coupled with the old memories that was engaged just freshly in mind, it had a constrast on my current state of mind..

You see, back then as i/we walked, in mind would be always the desire for time to speed up; NS to end faster, we are unexcited by the mundane routines and is so ever ready to face new challenges... Now? Time. please slow down. School-life has only lifespan of few months left; After it are Really challenges already. You cant stop it, the journey, just like this route to Toa payoh, has to, and will, end soon.

Same place revisited, different mind.


..Let's take it as it comes.

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IF you have time to kill, consider visiting this:

Facebook album, on my small photo journal of the SG motorshow '08 i visited last sat 28sept.. photos of what we did other than car browsing. ^-^


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