on the plane back from Brunei, i was of course thinking about how much sex i would be getting back in Singapore. afterall, men think about sex like 80% of the time as evidenced by the flow of those creative JUICES in my head. but i digress.

i was also thinking about how irritating it would be to start meeting people and all these old aquaintences again and how much it would really irks me to be repeating the same ol' facts about Brunei again and again and again and again and one more time hor, again. it a bit like a standard issue pop song severely remixed 20 times until all that's left is something like that:

(cue irritating retro music and woman in swimming costume)
"Time goes by so slowly, time goes by so slowly....
Time time time time time time time time time time time time time
goes goes goes goes goes goes by time goes time goes time goes time goes by by
by by by by by chee chee chee chee chee chee chee by by bybybybybybybybybyby
time goes by sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
slowly"

you get what i mean right? some friggin DJ thinks that remixed equals to taking the chorus, dissecting it into a million spring onion parts and finally sticking it all together with saliva. it's times like these when i wished i have scripted an entire list of Standard Operating Answers (SOA) that i would hand out to well-wishers so that i can save my oral talents for something more productive like sex.

in fact, since you're here right now and i most prolly haven't met up with you yet, why not read this series of SOAs and save me the trouble of handing you a silly piece of paper with a headline that's one letter short of SOAP and thus having to explain the answer another rhetorical question:

STANDARD OPERATING ANSWERS
21 Questions (from my bruddaz in the hoodz)

You come back from where ah?
Brunei. (and you call yourself my friend)

You come back from Brunei already ah?
No. My soul is here but my body is resting in a sacred place in Brunei and can only be awaken when people stop asking stupid questions.

How's Brunei?
It's terrible. That place is boring. The shopping centres are prolly half as happening as the econ minimart at your house downstairs. They close as early as 8pm. the nightlife there consists of smoking shisha and hanging out at the SEA games stadium, smoking, drinking and playing with fire crackers. And the entire place is devoid of hunky-looking macho marys. In fact, i'm prolly the closest thing to a hunky-looking macho mary. God save the queen. And of course, the Sultan there as well.

Do you like Brunei?
(typical Singaporean response) Ok lor. Whatever gah-men gimme i take lor.

I heard that they need not pay for anything there?
Yes. What you heard proves that not only your earholes are unclogged, but also that you are definitely not what i suspected all along: hard of hearing. They have no income tax. The gah-men there give them plots of land to start entreprises. Basic education only costs $10 (and that's a one-time payment of registration fee only). After that no need to pay already. Medical there is really dirt-cheap. Piracy is rampant. And you can actually buy drugs rather easily. Not that i took any.

Did you take....?
No.

So have you gotten fresh with anyone there?
No (the uncut edition will have to be told to you when we meet).

So what do you do in Brunei?
I work in one of the army camps somewhere in brunei as a medic. If i say anything more than that, i would have to close down this blog. And of course, kill you.

So i bet Brunei is very boring?
Yes. If not for the pirated DVDs and VCDs and PS2 games that they sell oh-so-openly in the major shopping districts, my species would have prolly been extinct by then already.

So what have you watched so far in Brunei?
Surprisingly to myself, all the box set dramas that i've bought are namely medical ones. HOUSE, Nip/Tuck, Scrubs. I'm actually contemplating purchasing all seasons of E.R. Of course, there's also the endless number of movies i've bought. latest ones (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire). ancient ones (Beetlejuice). unheard of ones (National Lampoon: Golddiggers). they even have the latest downloaded anime attained by means of bittorrent and burned onto DVDs. and i get pirated games long before they arrive in the UK or the US (and thus what more singapore).

So any souvenirs for me from Brunei?
This SOA lor.

How are the people there in your camp?
They are a very friendly bunch lah. The signallers are all chinese there with the exception of one bai. And since i'm the only chinese amongst all my medical colleagues, the signallers always make it a point to invite me to all their functions out of (i suspect) sympathy for my racial plight. Not that i want to be invited. true, there's good food and plenty to drink and pork. but they make really bad company being chinese. imagine having steamboat and talking about nothing else other than steamboat.

Manjens aside, who are you closest to?
At the risk of sounding absolutely cheesy and gay, my best friend there is prolly this indian-muslim chap there who went through medic course, taiwan and now brunei with me. not that we're super steadfast friends or what. but he's someone whom i trust 100% and i hope he trusts me 100% as well. and the great thing is, he understands my daily digest of lame jokes. anyone who understands my jokes can definitely be my friend.

What do you miss most when you are in Brunei?
Definitely not my family. I'm not close to them. But i do miss Long John's and Venezia ice-cream and McSpicy Double and Pastamania and Mango Frappucinos and McDonald's breakfasts and Holland V. i miss broadband and wireless. i miss downloading endless episodes of Naruto and Bleach. i miss wearing nice clothes. i miss Gatsby hair clay. And of course, i miss my friends. And of course, the activity that begins with 's'.

Do you like working in Brunei?
frankly speaking, Brunei is about as happening as a funeral. a very slack one in which nobody even bothers to cremate the body, afterall the body is relatively biodegradable given our lovely climate here. but i digress. the pace of life there in brunei is very different from what we have here. hospitals can actually close over in brunei. there can be no doctors at the hospitals. that is what they mean by doctor-on-call. he's supposed to be contactable when an emergency arrives. i can't say that i'm not enjoying myself there also. let's put it in the most singaporean way as possible - OK LAH.

have you spent a lot of money in singapore so far?
yes. a lot. it's to the point of embarassment. don't ask.

how much do you earn over there?
enough to keep up with my expenses in singapore. i pay insurance of $300. plus my phone bills and canteen bills and some stuff like groceries and DVD box sets in brunei. i just have about a hundred bucks left to save.

is there any internet connection at your workplace?
i might have mentioned this in my old blog. internet connection here is like the slowest thing on earth. even lydia sum carrying 56 kilobytes on her back will get there faster than the 56k here. we use dial-up systems here. it's that slow. the other camp on mainland brunei has broadband and even wireless already. and all we have here is this dial-up shit. i thought that i would never have to listen to that sickening dial-up tone again ever since my dad acquired broadband in secondary 4. brunei proved me wrong.

so have you changed a lot there?
yes. i think so. i no longer write my small-letter 'a's like that - a. but instead back to the original 'a' which doesn't the fake wig for a head. i've become more cynical about life in general. i've gain 2 kilos (given the benefit of the doubt that it's actually muscle mass rather than fat). i hit the gym almost every alternate day. i give lame names to the different days of the week like 'bicep thursdays' and 'masturbation mondays'. i've become a huge slacker when it comes to work. but other than that, nothing much has changed actually.

when will i see you again?
if all goes well, it's gonna be in march. if all doesn't go well, we'll prolly see each other again when kingdom comes.

will you marry me?
i don't believe in commitment to just one set of genetals.


it's the last night i'll be spending here before i get back to brunei. so i'm kinda like absorbing the atmosphere and the moment for all it's worth. sigh. i'll miss singapore lah. can't believe that i'm saying it. but it's always the case of absence making the heart grow fonder. one could also say, out of sight, out of mind. and i think i better stop before people think that i've gone out of my mind.

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