unintended consequences

HALLELUJAH PRAISE THE LORD!!! DECK THE HALLS WITH MISTLETOE AND DRENCH THE PATHWAYS WITH AGEING CHAMPAGNE!!! It's another rainy Friday afternoon, not of any particular significance in the normal sequence of events, save one - we're going home.

Yes, that four letter word that implies, warm bed, soft pillow, home-cooked food, and above all, loved ones.

WE'RE GOING HOME!!!

It may seem like overkill but for anyone who has carved the days away on a prison wall, the moment of release is poignant in simplicity. There are so many ways to while away the many hours spent in prison garb. You can gripe, whine, party, slumber, or muddle your way through the programme, no questions asked, but once you're standing on the last step and the light at the end of the tunnel is mere fractions of a very small unit of measurement away, the one thought remains - Bolt. Bolt for your lives.

National Service, for all its trumpeted advantages and virtues, is a fanciful concept waiting to be debunked. It is the dream of educators and childminders worldwide - a broad-based programme conscripting thousands of young, aimless teenagers to serve the nation and keep the streets clean. Pipe dream, more like it.

The feeling of being OUT of NS is not to be copied by the average teen. NS doesn't just prepare you for the rigmarole of independent and/or university life - it throws you in the deep end and expects you to magically inflate the lifejackets by sense of touch alone while your lungs slowly kill you. NS - the Malaysian flavour - does NOT resemble any other life experience or stage in adolescence. There are NO parallels to be drawn, no fuzzy resemblances to jog one's memory.

Try staying in the same five-acre campsite for one month without seeing as much as a single motor vehicle. Try lining up for food for three months, mostly getting crushed in the process. Try gloomily realising every night that you know perfectly well what's for dinner and you know perfectly well that "choice" means there are two colours of meal tray to choose from. Try scooting down a hill to get your tummy filled, walking back up that hill, and realising that your tummy still hurts.

Try skirting, avoiding and walking on tiptoe around people you have no intention to be reborn as. Try having to carry your handphone everywhere you go, having to stick your hand into your pocket every other step, for fear one of myriad juvenile delinquents decided to relieve you of your assets. Try measuring every word in detail for fear it will give someone added impetus to bash you into pulp. Try conversing in a language you do not enjoy and do not want to speak and getting sniggers all around for every minute fumble.

Try having to talk yourself into sleeping every night because the pillow is made of a hard substance previously unknown to mankind and the bed reeks of piss, faeces, bedbugs, and every other known carcinogen to mankind. Try putting up with the stench of your own freshly washed laundry because hanging outside would almost be an invitation for would-be thieves. Try not wanting to open your clothes cabinet because, as above, it ALSO smells, but this time of molten plastic, and some wise guy already nicked the metal rod one hangs clothes on.

Try settling down at your writing table to put your thoughts to paper and watch your brain screech to a halt and whir slower...and s.l.o.w.e.r...now what was I saying a while ago? Try opening a textbook, peering at the constituent letters, and breaking out into a sweat at the sudden knowledge each word is not translating into a relevant concept in the mind. Try wanting to read a book and allowing your train of thought to be shattered by the blast of punk rock blaring away next door.

Try NS.

You'll be lost for words.

Then what is that crap you just wrote?

Simply that. Crap, destined to be swallowed by the sandstorm of time, to pounce on a substandard analogy, just pure crap, written by one, read by none.

...except search engine spiders waiting gleefully to index your every page.