Hrms.

Yesterday, I had the most exciting moment in my national service history. I was abruptly awoken at 3pm and was told that I had to go open some rusty gate near the runway and basically just stand there for 2 hours. Not exactly the best reason to be awoken. In fact, off hand I can already think of several more pleasant alternatives.

Anyway, grabbing my helmet, and water bottle, I reluctantly trudged my way to the gate, cursing the sun that was emerging after the rain. I arrived, eventually, and lo and behold, it started to rain. Yipee. The nearest shelter's probably in India and I had no goretex-jacket(army issue raincoat) with me. Great.

After a few pathetic minutes that I spent getting drenched, I finally decided to seek shelter under the belly of an american aircraft that was being re-fuled by two ST fuel tankers. I stood there trying to be as inconspicious as possible while the ST personnel and americans holler conversationally at each other over the roar of the 4 engines of the idling plane.

Naturally, being me, I spotted the only lady at the wretched scene. An aircraft maintenance engineer of sorts, presiding over the re-fueling process. *grin*

To cut to the chase, after the re-fueling was done, she and her collegue came over to talk to me, and while her collegue went to get me a coke from the plane, we introduced ourselves, and made small talk. Her name's Holly =D. Holly's collegue came back. More small talk. He went away. She asked whether I was allowed to leave the flight line and board the plane for a quick tour. Hell Yeah!

I found out that the plane was a C-17, a cargo plane. Holly introduced me to the load masters, who're in charge of the cargo, which, incidentally, took up the bulk of the hull. I even went up the steps to the cockpit where the 2 pilots were having a steaming hot microwaved lunch. Damn, there must have been a hundred switches, dials, and gauges. Amazing. I stood there in awe, not even finding the voice to reply when one of the pilots said "nice to meet you".

All good things must come to an end, and I was relegated to standing under the belly of the plane while the rain got heavier, and the wind strong enough to unstablise me if I took too long taking a step. Know what I mean? Lift leg up, gale comes, whoah. Anyway, thankfully by then one of my sergeants braved the rain(silly guy didn't wear a goretex) to pass me a goretex, so at least my upper half was dry. Pants, socks, and boots were soaked through by the time I was done there though.

So much more to say. The americans were en-route to some british island off the African continent, and they were apparently in Singapore for the first time. Pity they couldn't visit the city. I told an american that we can see City Hall from where we were if the weather was clear, saying that it was the "heart of Singapore". His response? "Wow, is that like a palace or something?". And he enthusiastically told me of this giant snail he saw on the runway(wtf?!) that was *this huge* and that he could literally see it chewing. Er, I had my reservations, but I just smiled, nodded, and made appropiate noises. I guess they think Singapore's some exotic and primitive country with Sultans and giant creatures. Haha. He was telling me about how beautiful Singapore is; all the palm trees and all. I didn't have the heart to tell him that that was probably Malaysia.

I also had the chance to talk to 2 americans who were stationed in the airbase, and were there to faciliate the refueling. Nice chaps, humorous and friendly. Asked about my gun, told me about how big the barrel of a Magnum is, and one of them said that if he were to own a gun, it would be a shotgun; for the psychological effect it would have on potential burglers. Haha, after a lot of laughing, they gave me a lift back to the gate where I resumed my dull and boring duty. Sigh. At least I've the coke can as souvenir, and the envy of my friends in camp of course.

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On a sadder and much more stressful note, the web application that I developed for my step dad's company has bugs, bugs that as of now I've no idea to solve. In fact, I didn't document my work, nor their requirements, so I've no idea how to go about fixing them. I can't even remember why I coded some stuff. I'm in deep shit man.