After an uneventful and disease-free year in Brunei, I just had to fall ill this week just as I was getting into the groove of working out. Now, under usual circumstances, any normal sane chao keng NSF would relish falling ill because that would mean an MC, and a brief respite from all the nonsense in army. Unfortunately, despite being far from the most garang and insane NSFs around, I was not operating under usual circumstances, so falling ill proved to be more of a pain in the ass (or throat) for me.

Firstly, I don’t have a medical officer in my camp, so if I were to report sick, I’d have to make a trip all the way to RIPAS hospital. Even after enduring the less than convenient trip there, I’d still have to put up with the treacherous bureaucracy in the hospital, where administrative charges cost more than medicine, and the time spent there to get treatment for a minor ailment would suffice for two heart bypass surgeries. By then, heaven knows what other viruses would have infiltrated my body. Ok, even assuming I’ve managed to weave through all the aforementioned bullcrap and got my MC, it still doesn’t guarantee me the much-desired hiatus from army. It’s not just the geographical distance involved that would make it illogical for me to be sent home to rest - I’d actually be quite content to just rest in my bunk undisturbed - but alas, undisturbed rest in MY bunk is as oxymoronic as a tall De Rui, because my bunk is conveniently located right in my office. Yups, for the uninformed, you weren’t seeing things. My bunk is my office, my office is my bunk. Pretty Zen concept if you ask me.

Now, things can’t be that bleak for me right? After all, I could get my buddy, Sam, to stand in for me. That good ol’ chap, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind doing an extra day of duty for me. Well…as fate would have it, on the day when I was dotting the office documents with bits of my saliva and phlegm from my relentless coughing (the resulting pointillist art would have made Seurat proud), there just had to be a rifle zeroing exercise in the morning, which was mandatory for Sam to attend. The timing was flawless. It was as if there was someone behind the scenes contriving to make the worst out of my sickness.

Oh well… I shouldn’t complain so much. Working in sickness is probably a common occurrence in our workaholic society.

Five years from now, I can just imagine myself stricken with diarrhea, sitting on the toilet seat in the office toilet cubicle, handphone in hand and laptop on lap, as I continue working in the background of liquefied shit squirting out from my ass. MC, what MC?