It’s amazing how after six years of being in the SAF, four years after my ORD and two years after my first ICT, the one feeling that remains constant whenever I’m in camp is this:

I cannot wait to book out!!!

But the one thing I like most about being around NSmen is because I get to listen to the stories they tell me.

I realise people like to tell me stories, which is both a good and bad thing.

It’s bad when the stories are mainly gripes and groans about NS life or life in general and I’m really not in the mood to be patient and listen.

But I’m very happy when I get to listen to interesting stories such as this gem that someone just told me, and which I must share with everyone, because to withhold such information would be a mortal sin.

Now, this guy works at a location that I am obliged not to disclose, but let’s just say he rents rooms out to people for short periods of time.

The first time he started work there, he met a customer whom his colleagues term as ‘the vegetable seller’. They don’t actually know what he does, but he’s a regular customer there, so his occupation on their records is ‘Vegetable Seller’.

So the ‘vegetable seller’ happened to be checking out on the day that my friend started work.

You wouldn’t expect anything odd about this person; the ‘vegetable seller’ is, by normal standards, an average guy.

He dresses like a backpacker and carries around the gear to boot; he always checks in with a huge backpack.

So the moment he checked out and was out of earshot, my friend’s colleagues broke out into chortles and guffaws, and asked my friend, “Are you hungry? Do you want to eat?”

Puzzled, my friend asked why. His colleagues carried on laughing and asked him to go up to the room that the ‘vegetable seller’ had checked out of to find out why.

When my friend opened the door to the room, what he found on the bed made him burst into laughter, both in horror and amusement.

Lying comfortably on the bed were a few vegetables - brinjals, cucumbers and carrots - along with a banana, left there by the ‘vegetable seller’, intact in their original condition, though slightly bruised from use.