i would classify the years from 1991 to about 1996 as my post-uni life. those where the years where i lived a double life. a closeted gayman that couldn't accept my own sexuality yet lusting for men. i came out in 1996. and the rest was history. anyway for the period from 1991 to 1996, it was interesting how my life was a blur especially for my personal front. i supposed apart from being pre-occupied with work (which i will write about sometime), i was also actively suppressing myself due to my inability to accept my own sexuality. thinking back, i thought it was a little regretable but well, workwise, i guessed i was simply living that particular phase of my life (and i believe most people lived their life similarly too). so, in this post, i shall try to capture some aspects of that few years that i can recall.
- i graduated after 4 years of uni with an honours degree in botany in jul 1991. i suffered a serious case of burned out towards the last weeks of my uni just before my exams. i literally had a bad case of gastric problem and collapse in the middle of my lab experiment. my supervisor had to demand that i stop/ close my experiments and start to finish up my dissertation. after the honours year exams, i ended up with a bad case of memory loss. i actually couldn't remember a lot of things. and after that for a good 2 years, i had problems remembering things. it was like as though my memory space had max-ed out. i slowly recover my ability to recall things only after 2 plus years.
- as i mentioned, most of my time revolved around work (i would at times head to work as early as 6-ish am, and did not return till past midnight over a long stretch of period). this was especially so during my first tour. after my first tour when i was posted to gombak, i started to have some time to myself. and that was when i started to do things that i never did before...
- i started learning to dance. social dance for that matter. i enrolled myself in a class in marine parade community center. my teacher was this guy called charles. he was so campy that i thought he was gay... but well, i learned later that he was married. anyway, i enjoyed the classes so much that i continued into the intermediate class after i "graduated" from my basic class. and even after that, i went back and became a assistant dance instructor to my dance teacher.
- my love for dancing started from this and that was how i eventually adopted "dancer" as my nick. and i suffix it with a "66" as these numbers reflect my year of birth.
- i cannot recall if i mentioned this in my earlier post, but i first discovered fort road when i did my third year's science project at the east coast fort road drain. that was where i got to know about the happenings in fort road and the whole vicinity. after being posted to hq when i started having more time to myself, i started to visit fort road again. and that became kinda a norm for me for a long time to come. thinking back, my frequenting of fort road and the beaches there perhaps kept me from further socializing with friends. anyway... it opened me out to more people in the gay circle.
- a huge part of my personal life was also spent with my camp buddies. and some of the interesting things i experienced include heading to merchinta (not too sure if this is how it is spelt) and spending the night there with bargirls (or dance girls or whatever they are called). it was weird for me. being a first timer, i did not know how the rules go and ended up calling number after number. i think i asked for at least 5 numbers through the night. and when i was about to leave, all of them returned to me and i was suddenly swarmed with girls literally crawling all over me! i ended up having to tip them for their services! it was a lousy but interesting experience.
- also, that was the period when r-rated movies started in singapore. and me and my buddy (this particular guy from the other company) often rode (i was riding a rx-motorbike) to bedok theatres to watch r-rated movies. it was literally soft porn. frankly, i was more turned on by the guys than the women... heh heh... but of cos my buddy didn't know... :-)
- i tried dating a girl called "jasmine" during those days. she was introduced to me by some of my army friends. but somehow, despite going out with her quite a few times, i couldn't even get myself to hold her hands. she was more of a buddy to me than a girlfriend. and i was quite sure she felt the same. there was just simply no bf-gf chemistry and in the end, she called off the "relationship"... and when she did so, i actually felt relieved rather than sad... heh heh...
- i bought my first car in 1993 (if i recall correctly). that was before i was posted to gombak and i thought it wouldn't look too right for a "senior"-rank person like me to be riding a bike to work. it was a 2-yr old second hand honda civic from a second hand car dealer in macpherson. sbj5677m. i eventually sold it before it reached 5 years of age and bought a brand new nissan sunny in early-1996. sce5248h. i drove this car for about 9 years before i eventually scrapped it in mid-2004. i changed to a newer model nissan sunny. i eventually changed to my current car in 2005 when i was outed by my office. this was to safeguard myself and to reduce my monthly expenses if i had to leave service at a short notice.
- as i mentioned, the years up to 1996 was almost fully occupied with work. and to a large extend, becos of my highly classified work, i learned not to socialize. it was partly also to safeguard myself. how can i possibly expose myself to people if i could only be referred to as a code for my email address at work? it was something that was hard to reconcile and the only way i could do so was to make a deliberate attempt to keep myself away from my overt social circle. the anonymity i enjoy in the gay circle and the fact that i was highly closeted at that time kinda fit together...
- i saved a huge part of my earnings during those years. and by 1996, i had saved enough to want to look for a property. everyone seemed to be doing so during that period. and i was so bloody naive at that time and i did not know anything about the property market. all i knew was the prices were spiralling like crazy. i met a friend at east coast park during one of my evening runs and he advised me to quickly get a property before the price went beyond my reach. i took his advise and bought my current property. one year later in 1997, the property market crashed. well, it was a hard lesson but i supposed to me, it was a paper loss cos today, the price has somewhat recovered. but i paid a heavy price for this lesson.
- ok, shall stop here... not too sure what else i can write... actually, it is rather sad to note that i cannot really think of a lot of things to write...
hmmmm....
- i graduated after 4 years of uni with an honours degree in botany in jul 1991. i suffered a serious case of burned out towards the last weeks of my uni just before my exams. i literally had a bad case of gastric problem and collapse in the middle of my lab experiment. my supervisor had to demand that i stop/ close my experiments and start to finish up my dissertation. after the honours year exams, i ended up with a bad case of memory loss. i actually couldn't remember a lot of things. and after that for a good 2 years, i had problems remembering things. it was like as though my memory space had max-ed out. i slowly recover my ability to recall things only after 2 plus years.
- as i mentioned, most of my time revolved around work (i would at times head to work as early as 6-ish am, and did not return till past midnight over a long stretch of period). this was especially so during my first tour. after my first tour when i was posted to gombak, i started to have some time to myself. and that was when i started to do things that i never did before...
- i started learning to dance. social dance for that matter. i enrolled myself in a class in marine parade community center. my teacher was this guy called charles. he was so campy that i thought he was gay... but well, i learned later that he was married. anyway, i enjoyed the classes so much that i continued into the intermediate class after i "graduated" from my basic class. and even after that, i went back and became a assistant dance instructor to my dance teacher.
- my love for dancing started from this and that was how i eventually adopted "dancer" as my nick. and i suffix it with a "66" as these numbers reflect my year of birth.
- i cannot recall if i mentioned this in my earlier post, but i first discovered fort road when i did my third year's science project at the east coast fort road drain. that was where i got to know about the happenings in fort road and the whole vicinity. after being posted to hq when i started having more time to myself, i started to visit fort road again. and that became kinda a norm for me for a long time to come. thinking back, my frequenting of fort road and the beaches there perhaps kept me from further socializing with friends. anyway... it opened me out to more people in the gay circle.
- a huge part of my personal life was also spent with my camp buddies. and some of the interesting things i experienced include heading to merchinta (not too sure if this is how it is spelt) and spending the night there with bargirls (or dance girls or whatever they are called). it was weird for me. being a first timer, i did not know how the rules go and ended up calling number after number. i think i asked for at least 5 numbers through the night. and when i was about to leave, all of them returned to me and i was suddenly swarmed with girls literally crawling all over me! i ended up having to tip them for their services! it was a lousy but interesting experience.
- also, that was the period when r-rated movies started in singapore. and me and my buddy (this particular guy from the other company) often rode (i was riding a rx-motorbike) to bedok theatres to watch r-rated movies. it was literally soft porn. frankly, i was more turned on by the guys than the women... heh heh... but of cos my buddy didn't know... :-)
- i tried dating a girl called "jasmine" during those days. she was introduced to me by some of my army friends. but somehow, despite going out with her quite a few times, i couldn't even get myself to hold her hands. she was more of a buddy to me than a girlfriend. and i was quite sure she felt the same. there was just simply no bf-gf chemistry and in the end, she called off the "relationship"... and when she did so, i actually felt relieved rather than sad... heh heh...
- i bought my first car in 1993 (if i recall correctly). that was before i was posted to gombak and i thought it wouldn't look too right for a "senior"-rank person like me to be riding a bike to work. it was a 2-yr old second hand honda civic from a second hand car dealer in macpherson. sbj5677m. i eventually sold it before it reached 5 years of age and bought a brand new nissan sunny in early-1996. sce5248h. i drove this car for about 9 years before i eventually scrapped it in mid-2004. i changed to a newer model nissan sunny. i eventually changed to my current car in 2005 when i was outed by my office. this was to safeguard myself and to reduce my monthly expenses if i had to leave service at a short notice.
- as i mentioned, the years up to 1996 was almost fully occupied with work. and to a large extend, becos of my highly classified work, i learned not to socialize. it was partly also to safeguard myself. how can i possibly expose myself to people if i could only be referred to as a code for my email address at work? it was something that was hard to reconcile and the only way i could do so was to make a deliberate attempt to keep myself away from my overt social circle. the anonymity i enjoy in the gay circle and the fact that i was highly closeted at that time kinda fit together...
- i saved a huge part of my earnings during those years. and by 1996, i had saved enough to want to look for a property. everyone seemed to be doing so during that period. and i was so bloody naive at that time and i did not know anything about the property market. all i knew was the prices were spiralling like crazy. i met a friend at east coast park during one of my evening runs and he advised me to quickly get a property before the price went beyond my reach. i took his advise and bought my current property. one year later in 1997, the property market crashed. well, it was a hard lesson but i supposed to me, it was a paper loss cos today, the price has somewhat recovered. but i paid a heavy price for this lesson.
- ok, shall stop here... not too sure what else i can write... actually, it is rather sad to note that i cannot really think of a lot of things to write...
hmmmm....
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