Friday, May 04, 2007
I don't think I can get enough of watching "Army Daze" the movie both on tv and youtube, kinda like "Black Hawk Down". People say I'm a war junkie and I don't deny it, even to the extent of asking why I didn't sign on. It's contradicting that I'm all right with the army but at the same time, I don't like the life inside. To be more precise, maybe it's the way it functions that I don't like. Everything is about rank and even though you may be more educated and sometimes right, you don't have the power or authority to speak up. Like boon hui once told me(that coming from a nsf officer", "Not all officers are good". He has the right to say that, not me. I was a man in the army and my perception of officers will be from a different perpective.
It's good to be able to give whatever advice I can to zhen hui who's serving his bmt now in tekong. With field camp coming up for him tomorrow morning, I told him the "dos" and "donts" and the usual piece of advice like do whatever you want but just don't get caught. What's the worst thing about field camp except being not able to bathe? For me, I'm all right with not be able to bathe cause I'm not those spoilt child who needs to bathe at least 2 times a day. I guess it was the gruelling 8km route march before the whole thing begins. You don't even have the time and luxury to stop and rest after that, it's straight to your campsite to set your your tent. I wasn't a big fan of combat rations so I took out whatever food I wanted and packed it neatly into one pile. The rest that I didn't need, you guessed it. Being a smart soldier enables your load to be lighter and your method of operation will be faster and more efficient.
Being the usual Singaporean, he even asked me "Is school 1 haunted" and I told him some of the places that I deemed dirty or could be haunted. One of them is the fibua village in tekong, heard lots of stories about that place from seniors and sispec friends. The one that I found to be weird was the malay village, the school in fact. Toilet on the slope was out of bounds after sunset and it was locked up to prevent us from using it. To settle the call of nature, you do it in the bushes. The sergeants told us there's something wrong with it and even my friends were saying the toilet flushes itself. I'm not one who's scared of dirt, mud and animals but when it comes to paranormal stuff, I'm a coward. It's good to be curious but not good to probe further than you need to. They're like animals, don't disturb them and they won't disturb you. Give them the space they need.
These things are not important in fact, the most important thing when you're a soldier is to learn how to take care of yourself and not let people worry about you. Remember, you only serve 2 years of it, gotta come out the way you went in - in 1 piece.
