There was a time long ago when, whenever I made an embarrassing or horrendous mistake, I would wish that time could turn head over heels, erasing that dreadful smear.

I guess I grew up, no longer thinking so naively about schemes that will never come to fruition. Innocence has passed me by, those accumulated smears and smudges, mistakes and flops, staining the pearly white Tabula Rasa of childhood.

Yet, some things don’t change at all. I still wonder how things would be different if time indeed turned back for me. These are tendrils of regrets from the past still stubbornly clinging on.

---------------

I still remember the most moving statement I heard in the entire JCC, with vivid emotional clarity.

“I won’t ever again say that my mom’s cooking was bad.”

The two of us had broken down, tearing quietly in the steadily encroaching darkness, watching the forlorn raindrops fall from the makeshift roof of the structure.
20:53
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If I were in an RPG, this would probably be a rather accurate portrayal of my stats…

Chua Yi, Jonathan
Human

Strength - 13
Dexterity - 11
Constitution - 15
Intelligence - 14
Wisdom - 18
Charisma - 7

If this were true, I ought to be a Cleric.

This is what happens when you play too much Baldur’s Gate II. Damn addictive.
03:08
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Jungle Confidence Course certainly is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, one that you never want to repeat again. Nine days of navigation and survival application in the hostile jungle environment, with only 1.5 days worth of food: this certainly paints a preliminarily sketchy yet powerful picture of the endurance required to successfully circumvent the journey. Nevertheless, no one was able to convey just how difficult it truly was before we started off; I guess no one is able to understand just how difficult it truly is until they actually experienced it. It goes beyond the hunger and physical aches and weariness; it reaches deep into the heart and strikes at the flickering hope within, choking the mind in darkness.

How do you encapsulate the experience of undergoing so much hardship and pain of those nine days into mere paragraphs? How can anyone read this and comprehend the emotions, the hopelessness, that pervades the self, as we sit blindly in the night, rain splattering through the useless thatched shelters of the A-frame, the stupefying cold chilling the marrow of the bones, and worse still, believing in the impossibility of all those many tasks that remain to be done, failing which the entire journey would have been an exercise of futility? To me, JCC was not a test of endurance, as many would have expected; JCC plunges its participants into despair, and examines the mettle of these subjects through the ultimate trial by fire. The burning scars on both the physique and the mind are equally ugly, and for the latter, permanent. We wore them like badges of honour, the marks of our triumph.

My team was one that ran the most, rested the least, pushing all limits of physical endurance, so much so that we burned out completely on the last day. We went through thick and thin together. We gloried in the success of Exercise Nomad, where we obtained full marks despite the rollercoaster ride that nearly led to our failure; the next exercise, we were lost, bashing our way through the hostile jungle for five hours; the very next day, we were down and out, trapped in a ravine 1km away from our destination with an hour left on the clock. We had done our best to obtain that historic second perfect score, but our best was still not enough: the disappointment was crippling. Powerful experiences, powerful memories, powerful emotions. What mattered was that we passed. What mattered more was that we survived. And what mattered most was that we gave it our best shot, and returned with pride in our hearts. We did it.

It was when we passed the finish line that I understood what it was like to break down in happiness, in relief, in having undergone so much pain and seen so much darkness as to be overwhelmed by the sublimity of familiar surroundings, familiar faces. I still remember with great vividness the pungent taste of those combat rations we stuffed ourselves with, especially after all those days of constant, debilitating hunger, the encouraging words of our instructors congratulating our success, and the beautiful, beautiful view of the camp we had become so acquainted with. It was with equal vividness, perhaps more so, that I recall the journey of the past nine days, each moment having seared themselves into the depths of my memories. Perhaps in the future, I can draw strength from the memory of having fought tooth and nail with despair, and having survived.

And so it is that I now sit comfortably in front of the computer, content merely to have a full stomach and idle days, watching the time fly by.
17:00
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