I was such a putz. Thinking I only had 1 major thing to do today I ended up with a dozen non-interconnected things that drove me nutz. Agnes herself commented she's never seen me in such a state. Little, normally unflappable ol' me on the edge, taut, ready to explode or crumble into a sobbing, quivering mass of jello, perhaps possibly the latter being more likely.
The 1 thing I was supposed to do: get some personal training done with the main cast of The Odyssey (SYF version), working on keeping scripted conversations real and physicalizing delivery for better character exposition. It was the 1 thing I never got around to doing and I feel I let the cast down badly. Sigh. As it is we already have so little time and I wanted to make today's rehearsal count.
So what happened? I woke up and remembered I was scheduled for a course on using film in the classroom. Rushed out of the house leaving June & Q-tip behind although we wanted to have breakfast together (as you can see I'm just adding stuff to feel guilty about).
Let's just say the course left me thinking my time would have been better spent at Odyssey rehearsal, but I was already signed up and I didn't have a medical excuse not to go. It also added another 3 hours to my training record, so maybe that was the best thing I could get out of it. Then again, my mind was in 2 places at once so I couldn't concentrate anyway.
The most annoying thing is that my life works like a Hong Kong serial. At a moment of real crisis (gotta tell my cast what happened to me and having to make decisions for them, "We're done! Can we go home now?") my cell phone battery chooses to go flat and I am able to contact no one no longer. BUT there is just enough charge for me to receive a call from my "detachment IC... bzzz" interupting my final SMS instructions to the cast and finishing off the last of the power in the battery. Gaaahhh!
Now I've got something new to think about... is today a recall manning day??? Detachment ICs don't usually call on Saturday at noon for nothing, right? Agnes offers to drive me to J8, Bishan where in exchange I buy for her some delicious looking tako-balls, then I'm off flagging down a cab to get me home.
June, meantime, is frantically using all ways and means to contact me not knowing the status of my battery. She finds Weng's phone # on my desk, calls him and asks for Anthony's. She calls Anthony & sends him running around the College looking for me; but not long after, the prodigal son does come home.
Prodigal son grabs his military pack and discovers (as he had suspected) stuff supposed to be in his pack are not in his pack! Another hour of rushed acquisitions and improvisations later and he's off to camp, panting and sweltering in the merciless heat of the afternoon sun.
God is merciful from here onwards. The in & out-processing is super efficient -- hat's off to the 416th. I think I didn't spend more than 15 mins in total in camp; much less time anyway than the traffic jam into camp and leaving camp. In the 3-ton shuttle truck I realized how spoilt we are getting: the steel bar that we as sleepy recruits bash our heads on everytime the truck jerks is now padded, comfortable enough to rest your head on for a nice snooze. I got more lumps on my head from my helmet, which I carelessly attached to the top of my pack so that whenever I slung it over my shoulder, my loose helmet would pick up momentum and make contact with my increasingly numbing cranium.
Made it back home in time to change and pick up June for an evening at Sun Plaza and a date with 'Hellboy.' The movie was ok, I guess, predictable, but Ron Pearlman makes a convincing monster-who-makes-good, as he usually does. Issues of nature vs. nurture; isolation & alienation; the power of choice crop up. No surprises.
Tomorrow, a pile of compre scripts await marking. I can't wait...