AutoBio – Page 11

X-COM

One of the biggest (and buggiest games) to hit my JC life was this game called “X-Com: Enemy Unknown”. If you haven’t played it before — and if you’re not in my age group then probably not — you don’t know what you’re missing. Maybe you can search on the Internet for the original version or one of those spinoffs with improved graphics and sound.

The role-playing element was excellent as well as the weapons/capabilities tree that expanded once you hire scientists and allocate them to various fields of research.

My group of friends spent loads of time with this game, and even though it was one of the buggiest games we ever played as DOS4GW would crash repeatedly, the great gameplay kept us coming back for more.

Grass Jelly Drink

After school dismissal, a group of us used to stay back and play basketball in the Quadrangle for a while. Once we were done, we would head to the canteen and buy a cup of grass jelly drink to quench our thirst. I remember one time my drink had an extra dose of protein because there was a dead fly in it!

Art Class

One day my mum decided to sign me up for Art Class at Yamaha. I went for my first class and was told by the instructor to draw a beach scene. I quickly drew a coconut tree and peeked at the works of others.

My drawing was terrible compared to the rest of the class and I promptly got out of the class and dissuaded my mum from thinking that I had any artistic inclinations.

I never went back and now I wonder if my mum got a refund…

Multi-Coloured Walls

I wasn’t very creative when I was young and my idea of making something pleasing to the eyes was to use whatever I had available.

When I had this assignment to colour in a picture of a wooden house made of planks, I coloured each and every plank a different colour, making use of all the colour pencils I had at my dispense in the kindergarten.

Teacher’s comment: “Lionel, your picture is very… colourful”

Army buddy at work

In my first week of work I was surprised to see an army-mate strolling up to say “Hi” to me at work. Nick saw my photo in the email that was sent out to all the staff members.

Leisure World Cruise

There was a promotion for a cruise while I was still schooling in University. It seemed like a good deal as it was only about $30 for a 2D1N cruise!

Esh, Bern, Em and I signed up for the cruise just for the heck of it. We had to take a ferry boat to the middle of nowhere before we disembarked on to a dock and transferred to the cruise ship.

The activities on the ship were minimal as it was targeted mainly at gamblers, but it was a cheap and good way to get away from the hustle and bustle of Singapore life and just eat and relax.

Half-naked inventory check

The first day of being Recruit Tan was “interesting”. First of all, I had to go to this strange place where I got kitted out with the latest and greatest in army wear, then I had to go on a depressing boat ride with my fellow recruits to an island (and to add to the misery, it had to rain. Did I mention there was no shelter on the boat?). Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse…

After getting off the boat and the subsequent short trip on a green army truck, we were ushered to a parade square illuminated by a number of spotlights. All of us had to organise ourselves in neat rows and place our new army equipment in front of us. Then we had to perform an inventory check…

Everytime our army instructors raised an item, we had to verify that we had the item and that it could fit. So you can imagine that when they raised the camouflaged shirt and trousers, all of us recruits had to take off our clothes and get familiar with one another’s undies. There were a few sniggers going around as various types of underwear were revealed: “holey” underwear, undies in funky colours, funny boxers, etc.

Bad day to go late to school

I seldom go late to school, but I really chose a bad time to go to school late for the first time (in JC life).

Over the weekend, my entire class was busy with running our funfair stall and we were all tired. I was one of the last few to leave as me and few others were busy cleaning up the stall.

It doesn’t pay to do a good deed. I was so pooped that I woke up late the next day for assembly. Guess what happened? As punishment, we had to clean up the funfair aftermath for the whole school!

School Runner?

Probably not many people know this, but I represented my school at the National level for the 200m and 4x100m in both Primary and Secondary School. Didn’t have many trophies to show for my efforts though…

Anyway, I stopped running after Sec 2 due to a persistent tendinitis problem which required me to spray ethyl-chloride everytime after I ran.

Finally got a work notebook

For some strange reason, I only got a notebook for work purposes in my second job. I think in this day and age, a notebook is more practical than a workstation unless you really require some high technical specifications that a notebook cannot support easily or cheaply.

Think I have been more productive toting a notebook around for meetings. Beats carrying a paper notebook to take notes then transferring it to my PC…