Scratch scratch scratch… Rashes have been plaguing me for the past four days already, and it’s just terrible. No, I’ve not contracted STDs of any kind, and now that I think about it, I’ve had rashes just about everywhere except my nether regions. The weirder part about my rashes – with the exception of the first day of discovering it – is that they have been dormant in the day for the past two days, but come nightfall, they just insidiously reappear in full bloom over my thighs, my arms, my neck, my back and my face.

I’ve no idea what’s causing the rashes, and I’ve not sought medical attention yet since it doesn’t seem too life-threatening, albeit just awfully uncomfortable. Wee Liam says it’s either my unclean bed linen or poor blood circulation that’s causing the rash. Well…I’ve washed my bed sheet and pillow cover and it didn’t seem to help much. So maybe it’s poor blood circulation, but how the heck am I supposed to resolve that? Tilt my body here and there to expedite the flow of blood through my veins? Oh wait…I’m sure there must be some Chinese herb that promotes blood circulation, but then again, the chances of finding Chinese herbs here is as good as finding a free press in Singapore (you do realize I mean free as in requiring no expense and not unrestricted, and press as in the massage, and not the newspapers).

Meanwhile, I’ve been drinking lots of water to purge whatever toxins there are in my body that’s causing these rashes – that’s my diagnosis – and applying St. Luke’s Prickly Heat Power (that’s the real name of the “Snake Prickly Heat Powder” used for power baths in army just in case you didn’t know, because I didn’t) to assuage the itch.

The rash isn’t so bad once you get used to ignoring the itch. The worst part about having rashes is that you can’t eat seafood, and it’s not just an old wives’ saying - a conclusion which I unfortunately came to the hard way. On the first day of my rash, there were prawns for dinner, and being the sucker for prawns that I am, I ate like five or six of them. Not long after, my body was engulfed in a blanket of rashes. It was dreadful. I looked like some freak of nature. As if that wasn’t enough, there just had to be prawns for lunch AND dinner the next day AND for dinner the day after to mock me, and prawns are hardly the staple in camp. Sheesh…talk about tragic coincidences. This is as bad as it gets.

Enough about rashes; talking about it just makes me feel itchier, and it’s only daytime. I called home last night, and realized relatives of my generation were getting married all over the place – my godsister and various distant cousins. I was quite surprised initially at how everyone was getting married so early, but then it hit me: I’m nineteen and fast approaching twenty (hint hint), which makes my god sister and a lot of assorted distant cousins to be of marriageable ages. It’s quite unnerving. For some inexplicable reason, time froze in the JC era for me. I keep thinking I’m still seventeen to eighteen, and I’ve yet to come to terms with being nineteen, much less twenty. Ironically, it seems that NS has trapped me in some teenage Peter Pan-esque delusion, instead of shaping me into an adult.

On a funnier note, I also found out that my paps has just went for some fruit acid peel recently to lighten/remove some pigmentation on his face which is part of this $1000-package deal that he signed up with Bella (apparently, those Carl Ng ads have been pretty effective). I never knew my paps to be this concerned with his appearance. Haha…now I know where I got my vanity from.

Grrrr....the itch is coming back again (scratches at thigh). Before I forget, Happy Children's Day to all the kids out there and to those who are young at heart! I sure miss getting those Children's Day presents in Rosyth.