24

Thank God for Adrian, my friend of almost 1 year who have been a brother whom I could count on, in good times and in bad times.

Thank God for Tham and Jim, my 2 buddies from church, who have also been my intellectual sparring partners for the last 2 years in university.

It has been 3 years since I commissioned as an officer, which came after a very trying year in OCS where I learnt so many lessons in the jungles of Brunei and Taiwan.

I have got 4 months to get the campus newspaper ready to launch in August, when the new academic year begins.

I took on 5 ECAs when I was in secondary 1. I was a BB boy, a prefect, played tennis, in the track and field team, and I entered myself for some abacus thingey.

Thank God for my first 6 months at the church cell group I am currently settled in. Thank God for Gerry and his wife, Peichi for opening their home to all of us every Friday evening without fail.

I have been at St John's-St Margaret's Church for 7 years now.

I spent 8 weeks as an intern at the national newspaper last year, and once is just about enough. I am wondering whether I should do 8 weeks at either Reuters or AP this year.

Thank you the 9 unprompted birthday wishes from Bing, MZ, Rachel, Deborah, Sida, Rashid, Vincent, Ailing and Kenneth.

I was 10 when I got first dignosed with chronic migraine.

11 years ago, I was the nitpicking treasurer of my secondary one class organising team, which did everything to get our 2 fun fair stalls at the 1995 Fairfield Funfair.

I was 12 and in primary six when I top-scored my school cohort in my Trinity College exam for the speech class I took in school.

13 years ago, I submitted an essay for the 1993-94 Commonwealth Essay Competition. Although I didn't win, I was one of two Singaporean kids to earn an honourary mention.

I was 14 when I had my first serious crush in school. I liked her for three whole years.

At 15, I went to New Zealand for a geographical fieldtrip that changed my life forever. I may have said this before, but Vincent and I started out as enemies on this trip. We only became friends much later. Somehow. Oh well.

16 percent was how much I scored at my chemistry mid-year examinations at secondary three. My classmates joked that I was not the "highest" since he scored 13. Bah.

My best friend was 17 when he passed away during PE class.

Thank God for my first 18 months in VCF, for providing the social anchor in university, for keeping me accountable in school.

I clubbed for the first time when I was 19, when I went to NYE at Expo.

20 years ago, I was in nursery school at Jubilee Chinese Church kindergarten at the Tiong Bahru area, which is also down the road from Zouk.

I started blogging when I was 21.

My team spent 22 hours trying to locate our first check point during our first navigation exercise for our Jungle Confidence Course. We thought we were going to fail, but we didn't because we found our next three in the next 22.

I had 23 points for my best 6 subjects at my O levels in 1998. This was a 10-point improvement from my prelim score, where all my grades were in multiples of three.

My mom had me when she was 24, 24 years ago today.