Up To Speed

My previous post paints quite an unhappy picture of life in the past months, but there were definitely good things. I think those genuinely good things were as vital to whatever turnaround I experienced as anything else. Because time is short (I’m booking in soon), I will fall back on the expedient of lists.

Events (Momentous or Marginal):

• Theory Grade 8 Exam (last Saturday).
• All the outfield activities for my current batch.
• Finishing the last page in my awesome black notebook!
• Finally having a clear idea of the colleges I will be applying to this year.

Good Things:

• Toffee nut lattes. (‘Tis the season.)
• Nasi Lemak at Changi Village.
• Music! Lots of Wilco, Metric, Jamiroquai…
• Shrimp and avocado sandwich on freshly baked brown bread! The bread is chewy, the shrimp is fresh, the vegetables are crisp, and there’s avocado!
• YG5, a group of great people I’ve really come to appreciate.
• Finding solitude on duty. I listened to the other COS playing the bagpipes in camp when no one else was around, explored the area on bike, and listened to Radio Lab in the night. Quite wonderful stuff, really.

I think you’ll agree, life’s been going on even if I wasn’t really paying attention.

Before I leave the house, I really should mention something that’s coming up in the next few Sundays, because it’s something I’m excited about. Christianity Revisited is something two of the small groups in my church are organizing for our friends. The blog is really useful reading if you want to know what we have in mind, but what I’m psyched about is that it’s going to be an environment where we’re going to try and assume as little as possible, and be as open to questions and discussion as we can. We have you, our friends, in mind when we were thinking about this, so we didn’t want it to be something uncomfortably ‘churchy’ or sneakily evangelical either. We are Christians, but I guess what we’re hoping for is the opportunity to share about the things we think about the world and listen to what you believe, because beliefs are kind of difficult to bring up sometimes. I hope you’ll consider.

Now, I’ll be putting into effect my change-parade- and everything-in-everything-out-honed skills. I have a boat to catch. Until next week.

To Start

In the past couple of months, I’ve mostly been either immured in work and recovering from it, or distracting myself with the gratifications of life in the city. (The ubiquity of LCD panels, the expense of being an agent of consumerism, the ease of navigating public transport and well-lit roads.) Looking back at the time gone by, I know I’ve set aside too little for quiet, because too much of it seems blurry and inconsequential. I’ve also been fiddling around with project ideas and thinking up plans and programs, but they’ve been idle ones, for the most part; I think this restless scheduling is just a symptom of the fear of spending my time inconsequentially, or of being inconsequential.

Those words didn’t come easily, and I was tempted to dismiss it as neurotic self-abasement, but I asked myself again and found that I knew it was true.

I’ve been letting things slip, basically; having to give a definition of myself under pressure, and with the apprehension of becoming other than I am, makes it easy to lose sight of whatever was authentic to begin with. I haven’t been handling stress very well at all. Too often, I’ve been opting to go along with whatever’s moving, which is all too easy to do where I work because things are always moving, and most people are busy keeping up or running hard in the opposite direction; it’s easy to just follow them, too. Everything’s been worse recently because I haven’t kept up the habit of making time (neither me-time nor slack time nor quiet time, depending on whose language I use). The fear of letting things drop and the fear of being less than up to the task makes it even easier to allow myself to be driven and to get caught up in everything. These fears were a lot less overt and a lot more subversive to my mind, of course, but now I see what was there.

So I asked God to forgive me for being willful and sluggish and fearful. I am praying for faithfulness and focus and humility. I am praying that as I contend with authority as well as the use of it, I will look to my first authority.

I think it was on Friday afternoon that I realized I really didn’t want to feel tired and driven anymore. On Friday afternoon I experienced what it was like to set the tempo again, and I realized I missed the feeling. Experiencing it in the course of work was also decidedly refreshing, after feeling kind of out of tune for a long while.

On

Earlier, I was reading through several of my friends’ blogs, feeling rather nostalgic and wishing I was also somewhere far away.

I was suddenly jarred out of my consciousness by the what may have been my own voice in my own head. It said, with conviction and a touch of sternness, ‘I need to start running.’ It certainly sounded like my voice.

I may be running slightly slower than I was in ASLC, but I still run on a regular basis in the course of my work, and in any case I didn’t think I meant it in such a bluntly literal manner on this occasion. I think it is more of the sense that I’ve let my circumstances keep me a bit too idle on some fronts of my overall development.

I do suddenly feel energized.

Confirming The Ground

It’s been five weeks since I’ve taken up my appointment. My recruits enlisted the day I started work at the company, so I was as new to being a commander as they were to being in the army. As my recruits settled into the army routine, I was busy settling in myself. I found that my routine was more flexible and that most resources were available to me. I found where to get the necessary information for my work, and to what extent I was responsible for acting on information I received.

I have also found that being a commander is very different from experiences I’ve had that I’d thought might be similar. I’ve been a maanger of a system and a manager of resources. I’ve also been a coach and a mentor. I’ve coordinated events and activities and led planning meetings. This means that I’ve had assistants, 徒弟 (not students, and not quite apprentices either), and understudies. I’ve not yet had subordinates who, from the outset, expect me to be better somehow, by virtue of my rank and the fact that they have very little leeway in deciding whether or not to do what they’re told. That they perpetually have to do what I tell them is a constant reinforcement of the deference they first gave me on credit. I should qualify: I do not believe that I am intrinsically superior, and neither do my men believe that they are lower forms of being; respect is still earned, and once the men are settled they see things quite clearly. However, I am unused to accepting the trust implicit in our relationship and situation. What is that situation? My men are prepared (or constrained) to do what I tell them, even when there is no room for clarification or questioning, the fact that I am their commander being sufficient for them to act.

There is a weight of responsibility, and also an imperative to accept that trust; it is not an option for me to refuse it, so, on my part, it becomes imperative for me to do my ‘duty’, which is ultimately what we take on ourselves, even though there are usually woefully inadequate guidelines provided to us.

On the matter of trust, I should note that it is something I give very readily (although as I grew older I increasingly recognized where it was ill-deserved as well). Conversely, I quite actively avoided situations where I would have to assume some implicit trust given. Even in other appointments I’ve held, I’ve earnestly attempted to have my subordinates do only as much as I did, and only because they saw as much of a reason for it as I did. (This approach is unsuited to many ‘leadership’ positions, however; I’ve done well or passably well in the past because I was fortunate with regards to the job scope.) My readiness to invest others with my trust is probably also proportional to my reluctance to be in their position; so much for my nature. (It is also part of my nature to be comforted by putting what is difficult to articulate into words.)

Still, where I stand, there is much cause for thanksgiving. In January I made certain choices to the end of preventing myself from spending my time in the army comfortably, and forcing myself into places or situations I knew I would choose to avoid if I had a choice;  there was a risk, but my commitment would be limited to a set period of time, and I anticipated that I would have room to grow a good deal. I am five weeks into facing many of those situations, and nine months on the course that I started on with much less forethought and clarity than my words may imply.

The Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator 2000

From Wondermark (link on side panel):

And the automated version.

Jack

In one reality, he did not live up to his potential because of a lack of discipline and determination. His native intelligence and dexterity allowed him to learn many things quickly, but he never kept at anything for very long.

In a less moralistic reality, he was forced by circumstances to do whatever needed doing to get by. He took the odd job, but he would always end up surplus to requirements at some point. They would find someone else to take over the job for real.

In one reality, he didn’t push, while in the other, he was limited. In yet another, he pushed in every direction and found few limits to his efforts. Still, he had twenty-four hours a day, same as everybody else who had a claim on his energies, or who thought that they did.

Constructions

The scene across the water is a geometric vision. The cranes are a study in angles. The moving ones inscribe precise arcs, and I am reminded of my old mathematical compass. The heavy steel columns suspended at the ends of them are too heavy to swing, and as they glide slowly through the air, it is easy to believe that they are indeed in suspension.

I also notice something that looks as though it might become the roof of a grandstand. I can envision the smooth curve that will eventually be completed, but, as of now, the cross section of it reveals wafers of I-beams forming a gentle stair that I could almost call uneven; I stop short because the intervals vary precisely, and the word ‘gradient’ is brought to mind.

In the foreground: I would use the word ’skeletal’ to describe the exposed steel reinforcements and scaffolding, as well as the bare concrete beams and pillars. In the background: The uncompleted towers are more shell-like, and less floodlit. It is easy to frame everything because there are hollow rectangles everywhere.

There are lattices of triangles and struts, lines and ridges of fluorescence, and, most stunningly, clusters of bright white lights. The air around the place glows; the air is suffused. I think it is the lights that make it easy to be confused about the type of construction I am witnessing.

What shook me out of my reverie was something so dissonant that the irony clangs. Across my cafe view, four migrant workers in traffic marshal-type luminous green vests-with-reflective-stripes made their way to the work site dragging a low, flatbed-type cart piled with timber.

When their work is completed and the scaffolds are removed and the structures are complete, we will have an unremarkable piece of commercial architecture that I cannot imagine being filled with anything worth being filled with at all. In the transient meantime, at least, we have animated, machinated geometry and an interesting view.

Direction & Misdirection

After seven solid days on set, the persona that is Sergeant Derek has at least been fleshed out. Among other things, he is the custodian of weapons and their accessories, and he counts, inspects and logs in a cell-like room with many locks. His job allows him some licence to be obsessive-compulsive. (In many ways, he is reprising another role.) He tries to be strict and injects sternness into his tone of voice and expression, but he does not play this role well because he is generally too happy and too approachable to be seen as the disciplinarian. Once, a black mood took him, and since then, the recruits have been careful; the storm signs can be seen from a long way away. So they push the envelope. Sergeant Derek also leads songs and cheers, although sometimes he can’t help but feel as though it is because no one else can summon up enough belief to not feel ridiculous. He would do better to get more in-character.

*

Sometimes I feel like I am crossing over from one world into another while on the ferry. Whichever direction I go in, it feels as though the fairytale evaporates and leaves reality as the product, even though I am usually leaning more towards one side than towards the other at any given time. Still, it is disorienting.

Earlier I took the train straight down to City Hall pretty much on impulse; when I realized that I was walking along the track the day after the race, and that I only found out who won by glimpsing the front page of a copy of the Straits Times in Starbucks, and that I’d spent race weekend worrying about logbooks and learning operating procedures, I felt as though where I was then was in many ways as far removed from the other reality as I could be, and I was unnerved by how forcibly I had reoriented myself.

I have two days before I have to re-orientate, that is, face east; having to constantly do that can’t be healthy, since it means that I’m mistaken about my direction about half the time.

First Week

As of now, I am a week into my appointment. Last week I met both my former platoon sergeant and former platoon commander. They’re both still there, but they’re both leaving soon. I was glad to see them, and they were glad to see me.

This week I’ve also discovered that my job can be severely exhausting. So many lives, so many concerns, so many things to do. I get questions, orders and requests. I sleep late and wake early. Booking out was a relief.

Today I had mango ice cream on bread while walking through Esplanade park. That was also when I realized that next weekend is race weekend, and that on race weekend Sergeant Derek will be confined with his recruits.

That was a very sad juxtaposition. But on a happier note, my last unopened item from Taiwan is a double-disc set of Glenn Gould playing Bach and Brahms. I opened it.

General note: On weekends we spend money to buy time. Less general note: I am experiencing buyer’s remorse.

As of now, I am a week into my appointment. Last week I met both my former platoon sergeant and former platoon commander. They’re both still there, but they’re both leaving soon. I was glad to see them, and they were glad to see me.

This week I’ve also discovered that my job can be severely exhausting. So many lives, so many concerns, so many things to do. I get questions, orders and requests. I sleep late and wake early. Booking out was a relief.

Today I had mango ice cream on bread while walking through Esplanade park. That was also when I realized that next weekend is race weekend, and that on race weekend Sergeant Derek will be confined with his recruits.

That was a very sad juxtaposition. But on a happier note, my last unopened item from Taiwan is a double-disc set of Glenn Gould playing Bach and Brahms. I opened it.

General note: On weekends we spend money to buy time. Less general note: I am experiencing buyer’s remorse.

Stringing It On

I re-trace my steps for the record:

1. BMT, Zulu Coy, Pl. 1/Sect. 2/Bed 3. January.
2. BSLC, Kilo Coy, Pl. 2/Sect. 2/Bed 2. March.
3. ASLC, Juliet Coy, Pl. 3/Sec. 4/Bed 5. May.
4. BMTC. August.
5. BMTC, Zulu Coy. September.
6. BMTC, Zulu Coy, Pl. 1/Sec.2. September.

As I said once before, the circle is closed. Having shown that I am at a point along a string of odd coincidences, I felt like I might as well point out more. In addition to ending up where I started from, I have also consistently been in the last company it was possible to be in for each of my courses, and I have also enjoyed easy-to-remember platoon/section/bed numbers.