Saturday, February 28, 2009 3:10 AM
“Alright, prepare two dollars and go fall in below.” The platoon sergeant yelled across the level.
This is it. I know. This is the time for my jet black hair to fly far away into Neverland.
The entire platoon took two dollars from their wallets and lined up in front of the training shed looking at the four barbers work their electronic shavers like clockwork.
Fear panged through my head momentarily. I had not been familiar with the word ‘bald’ for quite some years and all of a sudden, the army personnel brought him to me.
Clothes and hair mark one’s identity. Every single one of us is unique and is marked by our appearances. By shedding our hair, we lose our original identities and become cogs in a machine. Individualism is condemned as standardisation is encouraged.
Slowly, I stepped towards the plastic chair and lowered myself steadily, breathing heavily and uttering a word of prayer. On retrospect, it must have looked really funny; people do not usually pray before having their hair cut.
Click and the electronic shaver sprung to life. It moved down my head wolfing down the black delicious treats. Like Cookie Monster, the messy eater made a scene and all my hair fell to the ground. Hair flying all over the place in slow motion: a classic scene from some A-grade Chinese kung fu film. I cringed in pain as the barber applied all his strength on my skull. A funny thought, for the three times I have cut my hair in BMTC, I seem to land myself with the same barber and every time, he uses a lot of strength.
It is not the feeling of fear now but instead, acceptance.
I am a soldier now.
And for now, I am just waiting for Godot.
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Saturday, February 21, 2009 4:23 PM
My suffering made me sad and gloomy.
What a great line.
There is this punishment in there that goes
This is my rifle and this is my gun.
This is for fighting and this is for fun.
And it is really embaressing. Or how you spell that word.
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Saturday, February 07, 2009 5:07 PM
Benedict Anderson once said that a nation is made up of imagined values. So let us all imagine that we are a nation and convince ourselves to be patriotic.
Or let us pretend to imagine so. It achieves the same effects after a while.
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
