In Continuum.

Diary Of A Bored Man

I should've brought a book.I should've brought more books.I should've brought my whole DVD collection.I should've whacked myself with a bat and knocked myself out the whole bloody day.Like i said in the entry below,the past thirty-six hours were probably the longest hours in my life due to the harsh punishment boredom decided to give me.Like the last trick up the sleeves,one last cheer before i go off into civillian life.It had to catch up with me and then tug at my sleeves,then pull me into the deep warm waters of boredom.I swear,i was drowning in the waters and everybody else in camp was describing the water.You see the irony involved here?

It was unlike outfield,when your mind is turned off.Outfield,the pain and the exhaustion takes over you like a heat wave in the desert.You cannot think,and you cannot make rightful decisions all of a sudden.That is what happens when exhaustion is combined with dehydration and hunger.You start to think of nothing and sometimes,hallucinate.But of course,when you are in that state of mine,you dont - technically speaking - have a mind to speak of.You are in equilibrium,the time the world knows about stops,and you are in your own vacuum searching for the light at the end of the tunnel,the door leading to the awakening of your mind and ultimately,your consciousness.

That kind of state might be desirable at times,because time doesnt matter anymore to you.You live like a zombie and have no idea at times,just how boring or painful the activity you are currently engaging in is.That can be a blessing because like the saying goes,ignorance is bliss.And it can be,if you want it to be.

Now,if i was able to do that in the past thirty-six hours that wouldve been great.Because really,if i have a choice right now i'd delete any inkling of memory that involves the last thirty-six hours.It felt even longer than the two years i've spent in the army.Making it worse is the fact that i felt that the whole day was wasted,that i couldve done something else other than staring into deep space,fearing the future and regretting the past.

A game of solitaire alone,just imagine that.Seeing somebody playing it in the corner of a room on the bed is pathetic enough,but seeing yourself through somebody else's eyes was even worse.There i was on my bed with my legs crossed,listening to my iPod while i played Solitaire.SOLITAIRE.It mustve been a game created by some ancient loner,who wanted to enchance the feeling of loneliness in the already lonely loners.I wonder if that last sentence made sense,but who cares really.Two games felt like forever,at though for a moment i did conjure up some interesting memories worthy of blogging,the moment i flipped opened the last poker card boredom sank back into my life and i was back at square one,bored and rotting.

Who the hell plays a guitar to himself in the middle of the night?That is of course,besides the fact that the D string on that guitar was broken,replaced by a Comms-Cord.It actually doubled rather well,though it felt rather rough when i tried sliding.But oh well,i kept playing and playing until my fingertips smelled like rusty metal and mouldy wood.It was disgusting,but it killed quite a bit of time.So i didnt complain about the smell or the fact that it was terribly out of tune most of the time.

Eating makes your sorrows go away i swear.In the middle of the night,WeiLun,Justin and myself sat around a metal cabinet,playing cards.Amidst the cigarette smoke and the empty coke cans,we all felt extremely hungry.So the thought of McDonald's naturally came into mind.But the problem was,according to the guy on the other side of the phone,it took a full hour to deliver the meal,which was strange because we expected the McDonald's to be vacant and the road to be empty at that hour(2am).You couldve walked and took lesser time,really.But anyway,desperate for food,or any kind of food suitable for digestion,we snuck out of company line and ran to the other side of the camp compounds to buy snacks from a vending machine,the last remaining ones in camp.So there we were,in grey tshirts and black shorts,putting coins into the coin slot on the machine and then running back with our arms full of cheese sticks,Oreo cookies,chocolate bars and potato chips.

Dreaming took up most of the time that i was asleep,and though i had a notebook and pen within my arm's reach,i was unable to record most of them down simply because Ah Chang and Ah Soon were making a racket when they came back from the outside.But anyway,i managed to remember one of the dreams,and it involved me back in school and feeling stupid all over again.

I was in a classroom,and there was a mathematics paper going on.Instead of the usualy tables separated by an aisle,the tables were joined together like the ones in lower primary classrooms.And right next to me was - the one and only - beau of mine.She was scribbling furiously on her paper with a tongue literally sticking out at the edge of her mouth.She seemed so confident with her answers,beyond all doubts.And there i was,staring blankly at the question paper and worse:blankly at my answer sheet,which was blank too.I remember staring back and forth between my paper and hers,and the familiar feeling of stupidity came over me once more,and the time was up for the paper.

I woke up,breaking into a cold sweat.That wasnt real,i told myself in a sort of relief.Adventures of a bored man,i told myself.At least that was mildly exciting.Waking up would mean i was back into my usual life,the mundane and boring life of mine in the last days of the army.I wanted to kill myself,or to torture myself just so that pain could occupy my mind with something,anything.But there was a parapet outside every window and no position of landing would kill me from any floor.I couldnt find any sharp objects and not even somebody around to poke me to death.I swear,the worst kind of death is the kind of death you cannot even control.And the most laughable one would be a death out of boredom itself.I was that desperate,and i admit i was going out of my mind.

But hey,i am home and i am here.I am thankful for the fact that i am alive and that i havent yet found green moulds growing in between my joints.I seem intact,so that is great.I wonder how many of those days are going to come before me in the days to come,when i am out of the army for real and back to reality.What a pain it would be,to stare into nothingness and thinking about nothingness.I do admit,that with the freedom bestowed upon me,there is a sort of fear twisted with it as well.More on that later,i guess.Until then.