Tuesday, April 25, 2006
This has been one tiring mount because of safety day. I figured out that the unit would scrapped safety day until the GOH guys are back from national day because with all manpower used to the limit, who else are left to actually attend safety day. Let me correct myself, it should be "manpower pushed over the limit". This has convinced me that we're having safety day for the sake of having one, without thinking about how the others who're doing duty for the taking over shift are suffering. I'm supposed to be dismounting today and going back tomorrow for the 1-7pm standby but I got called up last minute after my supposedly last duty at 4am with Nemo that I've got a 10-1pm duty. To be honest, I felt that it wasn't fair but my experience at this fucked up unit has told me to just suck thumb and just do that freaking duty.It didn't help that shift 4 is as usual, out to eat us. They came at 1pm and ended up taking over at 1.30pm. There are some nice guys in the shift whom I'm friends with. They're the few left who are still giving shift 4 a credible name. Take for example the 2 tengah guys from shift 4 whom I did duty with during their ojt, they're nice people who you can really have a good conversation with. One of them was supposed to be doing x-ray but he volunteered to take over me and Nemo so we could go send arms and get ready to book out. I didn't expect such a nice gesture from him. It kinda took me by surprise. Not many would bother doing it honestly, as long as it's not their duty or business, they wouldn't bother with it.
I'm not the kind of person who's out to get offs from my superiors unless I felt it was justified. Taking into account today where me, nemo and raja had to do standby for shift 4 even though it wasn't our own standby group left me feeling pissed off. We do extra work and we get nothing for it. I'm gonna ask my pc about giving the few of us at least a half day's off. It's the least we deserved after all this shift. It left only hock leong and chee wee in the bunk. Since my superiors are always talking about the QRF team for any emergencies, why bother having a safety day? Who's gonna respond to any threat to the airbase when everyone has been pushed out to do duty.
I was reading Yanan's blog about her ex-rgs friend who's suffering from tongue cancer and on sunday, lifestyle decided to do an article on her. I was bored in camp and decided to pick up the copy of lifestyle and read. The cover page ran an article which captured my attention immediately, it kinda reminded me about Yanan's friend. Lifestyle even did an earlier article before on Christmas last year. Reading about problems and struggles throughout her painful journey with cancer made me forget about all the problems I'm currently having with army. In fact, it seemed as if my problems are nothing as compared to hers. There's no comparison to what she is going through. A girl who's of my age is suffering while many others like her are out there having fun and enjoying life. Like many other Singaporeans out there, I can only pray that she will recover.
