The dual life of the ordinary member of the male populace

Just like a freshly-baked cookie that has come out of the oven, I have now emerged from the organisation that has retained custody over me for the last two years: the SAF. Although I've not quite come out as delicious as I was hoping to after two years, there have been some marked differences about me that people might find desirable, yet there are a few things that bug me. The most perturbing issue is that I've become too comfortable with routine and directive. Now that I've been re-endowed with a civilian title, I've realised that this has become a stumbling block, and this state of being, coupled with a few comments I've received and a whole lot of other observations, has led me to muse about the predicament of the male citizen of Singapore.

In case you've not been filled in, every male citizen who is above the age of 18 in Singapore has to undergo a mandatory two years of National Service in various fields, be it the army, air force, navy, police force or civil defence. There are many politically acclaimed reasons for having this system in place. The paramount reason is that Singapore's regular force is too small to support the nation, and therefore a pool of operationally trained reservists must exist to be deployable in times of crisis. Other silly and over-hyped reasons include inculcating love for country, racial harmony, ruggedness to weather hard times, etc.etc. A lot more attention is given to the men who are in the midst of their two years of full-time National Service (NSFs), but the situation of the Operationally Ready NSmen who've completed their two years (or a measly 1 yr 10 mths for some, harumph) is mostly under the covers. I'm quite sure it's because elation has overtaken these 'free men', who no longer have to contend with the difficulty, the monotony, the antipathy, the whatever-thy of NS anymore. They don't wish to admit that they've got an even bigger problem than the NSF. And my being declared as Operationall Ready has made me painfully aware of this situation that belies the deepest recesses of the Operationally Ready NSman's heart. Therefore, it is my desperate obligation to comment on it.

Now that I've concluded my lengthy introduction, if you're still with me, it must be made unmistakably clear that an NSman is NOT A FREE MAN at all. In fact, there's an uglier reality to the whole idea of being operationally ready. What the lay-NSF doesn't realise is that when he gleefully shouts "ORD OH!" he's actually proclaiming doom and death upon himself, because being declared operationally ready means that at the ring of his phone or flash of some conspicuously baffling two lettered nonsense code phrase, he must immediately don his uniform again and put his life on the line for his country (or in less severe cases, trudge back to camp to show his face). He still must endure up to 10 more in-camp trainings (ICT), an affair which may be annual. I did touch on the fact that he may be mobilised to prove that he can be ready in a matter of hours should the nation need him. These inconveniences are rarely contemplated during the immediate release of a NSF back to the civil world (because anything that isn't the army is bliss, and bliss is ignorance since mathematically speaking the statement is equivalent to 'ignorance is bliss'***).

And that is where the trap begins: Being relegated back into the society of civilians. Firstly, there seems to be a pervasive belief that being a civilian is the highest rank you could ever attain, and the mistake that men make is that they allow themselves to be fooled into thinking they are purely civilians once again, forgetting that they're doubling up as frontline defence for the nation, and allowing this haughty thought to override their senses. I thought it was a joke but it seems that people are allowing this belief to creep into their brains and take over it. A soldier is a slave of the nation (the alternate unabbreviated version of NS is National Slavery) and civilians make up the nation. I hope I'm not being too hasty in my interpretation of my observations, but for those who staunchly believe that they're above any uniformed organisation, I'd like to kindly remind them that they are not. Soldiers, police and firefighters have volunteered to be duty-bound to protect and maintain the safety and security of the nation. There might come a time (God forbid) when your civilian way of life may be threatened and you have to entrust your lives into the hands of the men in green (no matter how hard it is to trust them, you just gotta have faith that they are operationally ready).

There comes the next problem. If there comes a time (God forbid) when men do have to perform their duties, how prepared will we be? Gosh, in a few months time I don't think I'd remember how to strip my rifle and reassemble it. I cringe to think that in the battle field, my M16 might jam and I'd have no idea how to remedy the IA (situation which requires Immediate Action). That the enemy would charge toward me and I'd be stuck with a rust-bucket of a rifle, and then remember that I forgot my close combat techniques. Ok, the truth is that due to my logistics vocation, I wouldn't have to be in this situation. But still on the topic of battlefield bloopers, I don't think I'd remember how to overcome the clunky and disobedient gears of the land-rover, or if my MB 290 were to have a fuel filter choke, I wouldn't have the slightest clue how to clean the bugger out and get my engine to run again. By then the enemy would've realised that this idiot is more busy fixing his vehicle and will move in to make the kill. I've always dreamt of running down a whole platoon of enemies but how would that be possible with a stationary and non-responsive vehicle? In the meantime, there'd be comrades deeper in the battlefield who'd be denied their yummy lunches (artillery men always have fresh rations :D). With the vehicle long expired, they'd probably be forced to dig holes and start cooking maggi mee. Oh wait, how do you cook maggi mee outfield again? We will be victorious only if the enemy dies laughing. Having been spoilt by the luxuries only the civilian life has to offer, and with very infrequent training and revision, how will the war be won? It makes it more unnerving when you come to realise that most of the male population would be involved in a war, and God knows how many would come back intact. That would probably not be too much of a problem anyway; local males aren't romantic anyway and their absence will push females to pursue the foreign candy that have so enamoured them all this time.

Fortunately, the SAF is a very strong and operationally ready force. We have NEVER LOST A WAR (because we have never been in one). But that's because our forefathers have enacted sound policies and relentlessly developed unshakable diplomatic ties with surrounding nations such that we won't have any enemies, and if we do have any enemies we will still have friends to bash them up before we have to do the dirty work.

While I have been focusing on how our poor men with dual-identities have to struggle with coming to terms with their partial military status, there are some nuts who have to struggle with their new found partial civilian status. A sad victim would be, yours truly. Having been drilled with the mundanity of military routine, I've become too comfortable and reliant on the perks the army has to offer, such as free lodging, free meals, free medical and dental benefits, free aerobics and gym classes, etc. etc. Although I am glad to be 'free' once again, I am also filled with trepidation with how I'm going to live my new life which I had absolutely lost for two years. I shared with a friend a few weeks before ORD-ing that I feared that one day after I had been given my pink IC, I might accidentally wake up at 5.30am and take a bus to my camp at 7am in a stupor, only to realise once I'm at the guard house that I'm not supposed to turn up anymore. The reality of the civil world is a harsh one. In the army, you were well taken care of, as a reward for the sacrifices you were making for the nation. You learnt the meaning of friendship, camaraderie, watching your buddies back, building lasting relationships based on love and mutual understanding, and racial harmony (the racial harmony lesson has been ongoing since primary school). However in the civilian world, you have to watch your own back, trust no one, struggle to reach the top, dog eat dog and chase paper. Sometimes, from the point of view of a civilian, I'd think that army boys are pampered. Sure, pampering comes at a price and that may be your life. But it's very obvious now that in this point in my life I have got to start taking charge of my own life, and that no one can help me but myself. It's sad and it's true.

I urge all female citizens of the nation to understand your male counterpart's suffering. When he doesn't want to go on a date, it's because he's thinking of how to disrupt his ICT. If he doesn't want to talk to you, it's because he's missing his BMT buddy and would rather talk to him (cue you're annoying him so please stop nagging him for a while). If he's spending less time with you and more time with the boys, it's because he spent two very special years of his life establishing bonds in ways you'd never imagine: area cleaning, rifle cleaning, PT and endless push-ups/ chin-ups, extra duties, field camp, trench digging, casevacs, and worst of all, booking in. You'll never understand because you've never been through it. But it's ok because whether we have a pink IC in our possession or not, we will be operationally ready for you and the nation when the call comes. We may live double lives, and that's larger than life itself.

And to all my BMT mates, army buddies, colleagues, seniors, Platoon sergeants, friends and fellow ORD-ers, thanks for the memories and ORD OH!!!

*** ignorance = bliss, therefore bliss = ignorance. Makes sense, doesn't it? I thought not.

Now we are free

My reemergence from nowhere is probably shocking, but now that I have been thrusted with too much of time to spare, and a bit too much stimulation, I have decided to blog again.

Why the sudden surge of time? I am now operationally ready. That's right. I have ORD-ed. In my previous post I did mention some of the goals I wished to achieve, and displeased as I am to reveal that I have not been able to attain my rank of sergeant, nor have I managed to clock 7k in kms to get my civilian license, I am relieved that I have managed to even ORD. Grateful am I also that I was able to go on my first and last military exercise to India from 29th Oct to 1st Dec.

India was probably the climax of my military life. After having been detained to a desk for about one whole year, I finally had a chance to be involved in a military operation although I was just a support element. The training was tough but I appreciated it, because the toughness reminded me of the fact that what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger.

My NS life has been dotted throughout with many lessons. I've met people and creatures from all walks of life, from all types of backgrounds, and with all kinds of quirks. I've loved, I've hated, I've pledged loyalty to and I've vowed vengeance against. And then I learnt that at the end of the day, there's no point having negative intentions and despising people because it could just be them who'll save you one day. I've learnt the power of networking and making friends who can for the previously mentioned reason, be a vital asset. I've also learnt to anticipate and embrace tragedies so when they come, you do minimal moping and more mopping up of the mess.

In short, I feel that the army has taught me well and I'm ready for the many new challenges I face in life. For what hasn't killed me has only made me stronger.

That is not to say I feel no trepidation for what lies ahead of me now. For now that I'm out of the army for the time being, I have been relieved of many responsibilities and given a new and extremely important one: responsibility for myself. I don't mean to sound boastful or dismissive, but for the longest time I've been taking care of the affairs of other people and striving to take care of the needs of everyone but my needs. I now must understand that no matter how altruistic I may be, I cannot sacrifice myself to the death. Especially now when I've been placed back inside an incredibly competitive world, which is something the army has shielded me, I now have to watch out for my back alone.

No matter, when trials come, they come. For now, I will enjoy my Christmas and New Year in peace, and in time to come, start to focus on greater things. In the meantime, I'm glad to join the ranks of civilians once again, and even though it is good to be free, I will always miss being a soldier, no matter how lousy a soldier I was, or no matter how ridiculously insignificant I may have been in the greater organisation, for being a soldier is inherently in my blood.

Reaching the end

I never imagined myself saying this: me thinking I'm the indomitable Craig, a firebrand that will surge through every obstacle and difficulty in my path, with resolve to never ever stop what I'm doing in service to my unit because my sense of responsibility could not be extinguished. But now, it is undeniably obvious that I have reached a state of nirvana: the ORD mood.

This is extremely wrong, considering I have 5 more months to go (okay if we look at it slightly more optimistically it's only 4 months, adding the offs and leaves before the ORD). I still have a substantial amount of time to go. But now I feel relaxed especially after how my 5 day MC incident seems to have changed the balance of things in my office, such that I do less now. For now, I have more important things I want to achieve before I leave, them being:

1) Get a mileage of 3000 before September so I have a chance of going to Ex Wallaby (my mileage now is 1000 thereabout)

2) Shape up so I can pass my IPPT and be promoted finally (and get back all the money I've been cheated of)

ORD-ing is not going to be very easy. I've realised there are a lot of issues that are tailing me like ruthless piranhas chewing on your boots, and I can name a few tricky ones off my fingers. My strategy is simple, if ppl in the army are deceptive then I'll have to deceive them back. Whatever it is, I have a lot of demons following me now that will be hard to shake off, all of them involving stores and all of them involving 1206 and money.

I think my army life has opened my eyes to the ugliest spectre of humanity, and it's sad that the things that the army stands for, like camaraderie, regimentation (which I believe is good), discipline, commitment, etc. are non-existent in my sphere of work. The culture is gross. It all stems from the fact that we have too many people who are just too unwilling to change their mindsets that NS is something they've got to do, that their whole way of life has been changed and that they might as well make the best of it. I owe all this to pampering. They always used to say you break down the soldier before you build him up, but after BMT people become too lax and where I work there're too many rights given such that they become wrongs. I myself have become too spoilt to do push myself to do higher and mightier things than what I do now. Fortunately there's one extremely slack guy I know who's actually not so slack, he's more heck-care, and he's taught me to learn to just take everything in its stride and not be so uptight. Feels gooood...

Anyway, for now I'm really really hoping that I can start to reclaim my life outside army after how badly it's been destroyed. I can't count how many relationships have gone cold ever since I entered, and I mean people who are really close to me. I've probably become like a shadow now, formless and dark. Craig with no being, no personality. It's like the end of the world coming true.

Anyway what nonsense. While these are times getting better, there are still many things that are left unresolved and I must strive to complete these last 5 months gloriously. At the end of it all, I'm sure I'll have something to smile about indeed. These have been the two most special years of my life.

Except for the weekend duties...

Etude XXXIII and thoughts on leadership

Hi all, I think I might've not lost my blogging bug although I disappeared for nearly three or four months. In any case, I just had to say something about Etude because it was the best I have heard ever since I knew NJC band existed. The band has developed an incredibly lovely sound, which I shan't go into detail about. I cannot understand how we only got Gold last year.

What was so great about concert was hardly the sound as such but the creativity pumped into the whole affair. I especially liked the arrangement for bugler's holiday played by the flute section, which I thought was absolutely fantastic. It's been long since I've heard a flute choir play and the five little kiddos down there really outdid themselves, so I'm feeling so good and inspired. Quite a pity though no one thought of borrowing the alto flute for this. Ever since we sparked off the dancing thing every Etude has been infused with a bit of dancing and every year it gets kinda scary to see we've got some band members who can dance so well, in retrospect it would be a waste if they had decided to join western dance instead of band. haha! Obviously there was a lot and a lot of not just effort but good planning and a good dosage of imagination put into this concert and it's heartening to know such dedication has not been lost.

So I applaud the juniors of this band. Hopefully I can be a part of it next year when I ORD. Yes, when I ORD I'll be able to do a lot of new things. Sigh....

However, although the concert was good I was impaled with a deep burden of guilt because past demons kept re-emerging. When I look at the current members, I may be wrong but I feel that not only do they work hard, they work together, especially the leaders. I've learnt a couple of things in the army on leaders and followers, and although I hate the issue of leadership
I have learnt that one thing will remain true no matter what: that it's not the leaders in an institution that will suffer the most due to bad leadership, but the people being 'led'. This rings so true in my work and this has indeed been a guilt-laying period in my life because the commanders in my place are really tripping things up.

And so I concur that what my CO says is true: there is no such thing as a stupid soldier, there are only stupid commanders. But I'm not going to dwell on that. I have to sleep for another torturous day at work tomorrow. I do hope one day that this will all come to an end for good and I can start doing things I've loved doing all my life. :D

The end of a long break

So well my MC came to an end yesterday. And tomorrow I'm helping to do duty. So these are my last few hours before going back to hellzone.

I hope though that I won't experience the weird things that happened to me last week, cuz i'm young and i have a promising long life ahead of me. Better take better care of myself.

So yeah. I think I won't be updating in a very very long time. I'm thankful for this really good break and I'm really sorry that it came to an end so soon. Sigh. Good times seem to end much faster than bad times...sigh

I emerge from the darkness

Finally, after three months, I never imagined that I would come back to this dusty cave. But I have, and it's refreshing.

The reason I decided to come back was partly due to my 'spate' of inactivity the last few days. It just so transpired that on Sunday, a day after my sergeants wedding, I developed a terrible lethargy and after a midday nap, I woke up feeling like my head had been hammered. I was literally panting and my arms were numb. The dreaded chest pain was there, and I knew immediately that this was not good. Tried to go for a walk to clear my head and hoped that I'd feel better, but I came back feeling woozy. As a dutiful soldier, I told myself I was going to sleep early that night so I'd be fighting fit the next day for my horrendous day at work.

I did not wake up fighting fit. I woke up feeling extremely weak. In the end I did the necessary and reported sick. Got a two day MC initially, but somehow things got worse that night, so I went to TTSH to check in. Didn't get warded, but after some blood/urine tests and an X-ray, doctors declared me fine. I was pretty satisfied by that; it wouldn't have been very comforting to find out that I had something terminally wrong. But what I was surprised at was when they slapped a 5 day MC onto my face.

So here I am, your obedient soldier, staying in 5 days at home, not setting a foot out of the house, practically rotting at home, sleeping and drinking and peeing and basically allowing my body to regain its vitality. I'm feeling fine now, but extremely thirsty for some reason. But it's nice to relax at home after these many many months of hard work. Sad to say, someone at work is suffering because of my absence, but at the end of the day, we've all realised that I'm not indispensable.

But these last few days I've been rediscovering myself a lot: the Craig that slipped away ever since the year began. I've been looking at old photos and gaping at how different I looked back then. As usual the most pleasant photos to look at were my year 1 in army, when somehow I wasn't as bloated as I was for the last 4 years. I've also been reading some amusing old MSN convos, marvelling at how bold I've been towards some people (opposite sex and in particular one of them) in my conversations with them. I've also been going through some old blog posts. Realised that I suddenly got a sense of humour in the army. My junior college days were pathetic, so morose and depressing. Sad to say, the entries that were written at the begining of this year mirrored those ancient entries, although they started off with more hope and faith and sweet little things than ever, and then deteriorated as time progressed. Now I'm thankful I kept a blog and maintained it. A blog is truly useful after so many years of using it.

So I've been taking the back seat and walking down memory lane. I can't believe I was a kid, a student until last year and then I suddenly had to grow up. It's sad really, that I've lost all the innocence and mirth and I've become quite an uptight behind (if you know what I mean). These last few days of doing nothing much but just scanning preserved memories in the form of cybernetic data has been so soothing, because one thing it does is help you remember all your long lost relations. Memories more often than not are marked by relationships. I've been contacting a lot of old friends on facebook too, and since most of them are army boys now I guess that they'll take a while to actually get back.

This is cool, a happy post after a long time. A 5 day MC is a miracle.

Please don't abandon my blog. Come and drop by once in a while and leave some tags; know that I'm alive and so are you. I know our lives are all busy but once in a while escape that rat race and drop a line, just a short sentence or two. It'll make one's day change for the better, you just don't know how. Just like how a plastic bag follows you home :D

My Grandfather's army

I got totally screwd by a warrant officer on Thursday night for a rule I broke although I was given authorisation from my own superior, and for a reason I deemed to be valid for one of my men might have had his safety breached. When I tried to reason with a Guard commander (a sergeant) to tell his guard prowlers to look out for the person, the warrant officer, in his presence, used certain expletives on me, raised his voice to max and told me to get lost in the most humiliating way. His reasoning: they were not my guards and I should not tell them what to do.

Later on in my imagination, I had a chat with the sympathetic sergeant guard com.

Sergeant: That was a really terrible incident. I didn't mean for it to happen. Indeed I know your position and was ready to tell my prowlers to open their eyes for your man, because we understand that someone's safety is on the line and in the army we help each other out.

Private: Is this what the army has become, respector of rigidity and intolerance to flexibility? If a man were to be lying, dying on the road now, had my actions although perhaps wrong by one rule book, been considered imperative by the heart and head? Have we become cowards to doctrine, and stooges to written authority? I believe what I did to be right and have a clear conscience.

Sergeant: Yet, I feel sorry for you. He treated you as if he were saying "Is this your grandfather's army"*.

Private, with a chuckle: He wants to know about MY grandfather's army?

Some silence prevails, as the air suddenly gets filled with a sense of heroism with what is about to follow.

Private: My grandfather has commanded tens of thousands of men. He has had the burden of keeping everyone of their lives intact, while trying to save a country. My grandfather has met and evaded death on many counts, the finality being when he had a limb blown off. He had many men under his count, but the very people who loved him suffered as well. Yet he lived like a general does, and he does have an army.

The sergeant sits straight and listens intently.

Private: There are some men who are respected because they ARE. There are some men who slap it in your face like a fish that doesn't belong to them. My grandfather has shouted at thousands of men to save their lives and to save their country. Let one man shout at a puny private if it gives him joy and the power he needs to feel for a moment. That kind of respect is just an illusion he can enjoy for that fleeting moment. It is inconsequential. But I'd rather be shouted at by my grandfather than him, because I know my grandfather knows best, but the man who 'disciplined' me just finds a way to vilify me to glorify himself.



*'Is this your grandfather's army' I believe is a common saying by superiors when they taunt you for being sloppy. I think it's been used on me once and I was extremely amused.

In Pursuit of Happyness

I just watched the movie starring Will Smith and his son. While it seems like he's taken a break from his crude comedic style and solitary drama as the last man standing on Earth, the role he plays in this movie is amazingly well captured and played out. I was brought to the edge of tears throughout the movie all the time because it is mind-blowing how a man who's so bright gets his life all wrong, and instead of giving up, he perseveres to make sure his life and those he holds dear get right again. When you see how life deals him blow after blow, it is mind-blowing how putting a smile on his son's face, a simple thing, can become his single goal, and the most difficult thing. Yet it is this selfless attitude that gives him the impetus to struggle.

It touched me because of the fact that he had his son become the most important reason to live. In his position I would have given serious thought to just ending up living my life in prison, or just ending life altogether, when it seemed that there was no use in going on. Now if you look at yourselves and our society, we cannot deny the degree of comfort most of us live in, yet our focus in life seems so wrong. It is sad when people tell me that ultimately money is the most important focus because indeed, having a stable source of income is a responsibility to yourself and the family, but the sensing I get is that the money is just there to get life rolling on, and not specifically for the sustenance of the family. I get this feeling that those I've talked to know that they need the money for the family, but why then would the family be in such a lukewarm state, as if they were just people living under one roof and nothing more?

Students of today have increasingly greater affluence and intelligence, and with the opportunities available to them, the 'dream' life is easily available to them. While lofty ambitions abound none of them would ever consider the amount of suffering a person would actually have to go through to be in their shoes. And though they need not concern themselves about having a future plagued with menial issues like not having enough money to live (because such issues evade their attention or just seem to be an impossibility in this country), we forget the stories of students who come up from nothing to bright scholars in other nations. We're just too sheltered, unaware and diffident about the suffering that people go through. What's worse is that we are unappreciative of what we don't have to go through.

As for me, I consider my current suffering trivial, and although I am probably going through a comparably tougher time than most people, I still cringe in fear as to what might really be in store for me, because I've always had this feeling about me for a really long time that I'm destined to go through a period of immense suffering that I must emerge from. I don't think this is it, so something greater (or worse) is coming soon. But like what I learnt in BMT, what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. The most wrong thing any person who's going through suffering can do is to take away their own life. It's like ending any hope of coming out a greater person. It's like abortion of their 'new-person'.

Not many people in this country know the meaning of suffering anymore, save for some unfortunate people. But a person who's never suffered before is at a loss. Sadly we are too indulgent in a hedonistic existence to ever prepare ourselves for the onslaught and ultimate purification that suffering exists, what with our party-going tendencies and easy shirking off of duties. The problem is that we find it too easy to run away from difficulties instead of allowing them to test us. For people who don't have that temptation, they inspire me and I hope that I will not take the easy way out as I have always planned to do since I was young. Because I know now that missing out that step is taking a step backward in life, and I need to know suffering so that I know what in life is important to me, and what in life is a sham.