hello, world! (deployed)
·3 min read
Two months in. Two months in and I'm writing this on a Saturday evening, my phone at 19%, wondering if I should save battery or just let it die because what's the point when I'm gonna charge it in an hour anyway.
(I'm charging it, trust. I've been learning how to charge my phone more often now, y'all 😔)
Here's the thing about NS: nobody tells you that the hardest part isn't the physical stuff or the sleep deprivation or even the fact that you're wearing the same uniform as like 20,000 other guys. The hardest part is that you're just... there. You're deployed. Not in the war sense (thank god), but in the code sense, you've been pushed to production and now you're just running. Indefinitely. For two years.
And you can't debug yourself out of it.
I keep thinking about how "hello, world!" is supposed to be this beginner thing, right? Your first program. The thing you write when you're just starting out. But here I am, two months into SAF, and it feels less like a beginning and more like someone took my entire life, wrapped it in military green, and said "okay now do this for 730 days."
(Technically 668 now. But who's counting.)
The thing is, and I don't know if this makes sense, but I'm not not learning. Like, I'm learning things. Just not the things I thought I'd be learning at 19.
I threw a live grenade two days ago. An actual, literal grenade. The kind that goes boom. Next week I'm shooting a gun for the first time. I lost 4kg of fat and gained a kilogram of muscle. I can do 28 pushups now when two months ago I maxed out at 3. THREE. I couldn't run more than 1.4km before NS, but on day one in Pulau Tekongthe island where we live! I somehow ran 2.4km. Now I can run 6km non-stop, probably more if I tried. My 2.4km timing dropped from 14 minutes to what I think is around 12.5 (haven't tested it yet, but I can feel it).
(I can feel it. That's the weird part. I can feel that I'm faster.)
But also I'm learning that you can function on four hours of sleep if you really have to (you shouldn't, but you can). I'm learning that time moves differently when every week looks identical. Days feel slow but then suddenly it's Friday and you're wondering where the entire week went. I live for weekends now. I live for book out. (Book in though? Book in can wait. Book in can take its time.)
I'm learning that sometimes the best part of your day is the ten minutes you get to just sit and do nothing.
I'm learning that "hello, world!" doesn't always mean starting fresh. Sometimes it means you're already running, already deployed, already in production—and you're just saying hi from wherever you ended up.
So yeah. Hi from here.
Two months down. Twenty-two to go. The code's still running. I'm still here. And maybe that's enough for now.
(It has to be.)
(I'm charging it, trust. I've been learning how to charge my phone more often now, y'all 😔)
Here's the thing about NS: nobody tells you that the hardest part isn't the physical stuff or the sleep deprivation or even the fact that you're wearing the same uniform as like 20,000 other guys. The hardest part is that you're just... there. You're deployed. Not in the war sense (thank god), but in the code sense, you've been pushed to production and now you're just running. Indefinitely. For two years.
And you can't debug yourself out of it.
I keep thinking about how "hello, world!" is supposed to be this beginner thing, right? Your first program. The thing you write when you're just starting out. But here I am, two months into SAF, and it feels less like a beginning and more like someone took my entire life, wrapped it in military green, and said "okay now do this for 730 days."
(Technically 668 now. But who's counting.)
The thing is, and I don't know if this makes sense, but I'm not not learning. Like, I'm learning things. Just not the things I thought I'd be learning at 19.
I threw a live grenade two days ago. An actual, literal grenade. The kind that goes boom. Next week I'm shooting a gun for the first time. I lost 4kg of fat and gained a kilogram of muscle. I can do 28 pushups now when two months ago I maxed out at 3. THREE. I couldn't run more than 1.4km before NS, but on day one in Pulau Tekongthe island where we live! I somehow ran 2.4km. Now I can run 6km non-stop, probably more if I tried. My 2.4km timing dropped from 14 minutes to what I think is around 12.5 (haven't tested it yet, but I can feel it).
(I can feel it. That's the weird part. I can feel that I'm faster.)
But also I'm learning that you can function on four hours of sleep if you really have to (you shouldn't, but you can). I'm learning that time moves differently when every week looks identical. Days feel slow but then suddenly it's Friday and you're wondering where the entire week went. I live for weekends now. I live for book out. (Book in though? Book in can wait. Book in can take its time.)
I'm learning that sometimes the best part of your day is the ten minutes you get to just sit and do nothing.
I'm learning that "hello, world!" doesn't always mean starting fresh. Sometimes it means you're already running, already deployed, already in production—and you're just saying hi from wherever you ended up.
So yeah. Hi from here.
Two months down. Twenty-two to go. The code's still running. I'm still here. And maybe that's enough for now.
(It has to be.)