My poly friends and me at the start of the month
I'm looking forward to December because it's filled with holidays and a block leave. Christmas seems like it's going to be pretty merry. Hopefully it is.

But this month:

1 Nov - MJ's birthday
We celebrated MJ's birthday in Whisk & Paddle, which is somewhere beside Punggol Promenade. It was a peaceful day, with a nice atmosphere filled with dogs and children and people eating - a simple time spent catching up and filling ourselves up with overly sweetened desserts. We had a walk in Punggol Promenade itself after eating, taking pretentious photos on the way because that's how we roll.

6-7 Nov - Field Camp
By right, field camp for the recruits was from the 5 - 9 November, but I only went for two days because I had duties and miscellaneous appointments here and there. The only night I stayed over, it poured, but I've already talked about that so let's move on.

10-15 Nov - Out of camp
This period, there was Deepavali, followed by offs-in-lieu. I spent this time watching shows, working on my novel, and kickstarting Muchilludes (my new blog, hosted in my own domain, which I have further plans for). It's about time I actually start doing stuff instead of planning or intending to do them. There's a technical aspect of it that I haven't got around yet, so it's not quite done. Went to help Ru Wen with photoshop one of the days, and then just walked around and made some plans for Christmas.

16-25 Nov - In camp
I didn't book out during this period, which isn't much, but still. This is because I strategically placed all my duties for month in one week, so it was just one duty after another, followed by live firing, and then a normal day, and then 16km route march. Because I'm from support company, I got assigned to be a marshaller for the march. Me being me, I took the opportunity to laugh at encourage the recruits.

26-30 Nov - Recent
I like to cluster these days together and think of it as one long weekend with a random work day inside, but it's actually a poorly placed off day (Thursday), followed by a Friday, followed by a weekend and a well-placed off (Monday).

On Friday, I did not eat dinner in camp because I assumed (never assume) we were booking out on time. But we didn't, and by the time we did, most food stalls were closed, so my dad accompanied me to my neighbourhood prata shop for supper instead.

Saturday
Saturday was a long day in a good way. Woke up early in the morning to meet with Guang Yi for breakfast before heading over to Suntec to meet Jessica and attend the Anime Fest Asia (AFA). To be honest, I never expect too much from AFA, so this year was pretty okay for me. Unlike previous years, there's no dominating anime. They had Tokyo Ghoul last year, Shingeki no Kyojin two years ago, etc. I expected this year's theme to be One-Punch Man. I guess it just didn't happen.

But, I'm very satisfied with the stuff I got: An overpriced One-Punch Man fan, a set of Koro-sensei (from Assassination Classroom) stickers which I pasted on my laptop, and a highly-adorable Charmander-crossover-Vivi (from Pokemon & FF9) shirt (at least I like to think of it that way). There was this nice Going Merry (from One Piece) drawing which I really like, but it costed $40. Every year, I drift a little further from animes, but it's still fun to geek out once in a while.

Following AFA, we returned to Bishan and meet with Jt and Joshua because I wanted to support Mr Unbelievable, which is having a promo event at Junction 8. Got to meet Jocelyn and Ding Dang, but didn't really talk to Guo Shen the director because he was backstage. It does look like the movie is going to be good. Coincidentally met one of the recruits, Brandon, as well. It did seem like the day wanted me to bump into/intentionally meet as many people as possible.

Jess went off, then the rest of us spent the next few hours lying on Guang Yi's house's sofa. They cooked an Indo Maggi Mee, which Jess got for Guang Yi when she went to Indonesia.

After that, I went to meet Mj, Cx, Stefanie, and Afiq at Tampines CC to support DTVM's documentary screening of Pasar People. It's about wet market and the kind of relationships that are forged because of these markets. There were three groups of profiles: Friendship, love, and work relationship. The first one was the most impressive to me because it's kind of hopeful to just see how Singaporean neighbours became close friends and would go to the wet market together. I'd thought everyone would just go get their stuff and interact as little as possible, which is kind of depressing. The film proved me wrong.

Caught up with Mr Chee Teng after that. It was getting quite late, so we all had to go off. What a long day.

Sunday
Cx, Stefanie, Mj, Joey, Avelin, and I met up to celebrate Cx's birthday with lunch at a restaurant called 'Saveur'. I find that we tend to gravitate towards expensive choices. The food was really good; the serving looked small but it was filling. Listened to Joey about what kind of stuff she had been learning in school, chatted, and cued Zi Wei's late entrance.

Intentionally stood in a circle indecisively because we wouldn't be DTVM otherwise.

Sat in a circle in Coffee Bean indecisively before choosing to go play some board games.

Which was really fun. We played a total of four games. The first one was my favourite: Betrayal at House on the Hill. We were supposed to explore a haunted house room by room, but somehow, I managed to trap myself in a Pentagram Room. By the gameplay, Mj freed me out of goodwill, and I ended up becoming the "betrayal", who has to kill everyone. They were mocking us on how Mj should've just kept me locked up. I accidentally committed suicide after that, but still won the game because I was a mastermind who somehow managed to trap one of the keyholders to victory while trapping myself.

I went home for dinner before meeting Zi Xing to chat and have coffee. That wraps up the day.

And the month. I'll say it was a great month. I honestly believe I've developed some newfound attitude that benefits my life and my psyche, but I shall not elaborate on that till my end-of-year reflection. I'm so prepared for next year, such that I even came up with some New Year resolutions already, which I shall, for now, dub as 'December resolutions'.

These are my December resolutions: To be honest with myself, stop rejecting circumstances, and stop lingering on things. I'll elaborate on them next time.

Labels: future, mehmeh, NS, things that happened