Sunday, September 2, 2007
Episode 419
About six months ago I received the much-anticipated letter informing me of my 9-day-8-night all-expenses paid trip, fully sponsored by the Singapore Government - actually, the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), to be exact. I threw my hands up in the air, "Woo Hoo!"
My colleague gave me a deadpan look. "You're actually happy to go back for reservist?" I nodded excitedly. "It's holiday camp, man. You do absolutely nothing, the garmen (Singaporean's slang for "government") pays your salary, gives you food, shelter, clothing, and best of all, I get to stay away from office! You, on the other hand, will have to cover my duties." My colleague hissed like the venomous snakes you see on Discovery Channel.
Reservist training is the part of every able-bodied Singaporean male's dream (or nightmare, depending on how you look at it). After serving a mandatory 2.5 years (which has been reduced to 2 years sometime ago), we will have to make our way back to camp every year for about a week or two to attend "refresher" courses, so as to "enhance" our "capability" in "operational readiness". Oh yes, the last sentence is peppered with sarcasm.
So I went into the store room and dug out my green camouflage uniform, which was tucked into the darkest corners after my last reservist training. "Hey, the pants still fits!"
"Your face is turning blue." My mum quipped.
Monday came and I picked up my friend Vince who lives around my area and we made our way across the island, which is located inconveniently in the west, near Pathetic Avenue.
"Gentlemen, welcome to your 2007 ICT (In-Camp Training), I'm sure you're happy to be here as well as I am." The Commanding Officer (but often deliberately mispronounced as "occifer") spoke as he drew miffed guffaws from the audience. "We'll be conducting a two-day-one-night exercise this coming Thursday and Friday to refresh your knowledge and I trust that you guys will be attending the "Unit Cohesion Dinner" next Monday evening." More miffed guffaws.
The only exercise, I had safely assumed, would be the rolling of our eyes. You see, the army is a funny place. They demand that you get things done by a certain time so that you'll be ready for the next set of instructions . But since that takes about 3 light-years to happen, you will most probably spend 80% of your time flipping through the papers, chatting with friends, smoking, SMS-ing or dozing off. It's the waiting-to-rush and rushing-to-wait syndrome. Not that anyone is complaining.
"Eh! Canteen break!" Darrel happily announced a self-imposed exile into the Wonderland of Canteen Break. The smell of fried noodles, topped with fried eggs and fried taiwanese sausages, is impossible to resist. Besides, what good is a soldier if he did not consume his breakfast?
"You make me sick," I told Darrel while downing a plate of fried kway teow. "I detest people who go for self-declared canteen breaks without seeking approval from the occifers. Whatever happened to respecting authority?"
"Errr.. Aren't you on one too?" Darrel was incredulous.
"Well, someone needs to know that YOU'RE here, right?"
By late morning we were dragging our feet to the classrooms for some lessons on communications. The room was almost bare except for a few tables and mostly-broken chairs scattered around, and the air was stale. Can it be anymore depressing than this?
A young boy, probably twenty, walked in and proudly declared "I'm your instructor for today. But since I am not trained in this area, I'll just be flipping through the powerpoint presentations. Please don't ask me if you have any questions, because you probably know more than I do."
"Like that also can ah?" someone from the audience yelled.
"Army mah." The boy smiled sheepishly.
Tsk, irresponsible dicks. I muttered under my breath as I went back to my trashy Life! section.
Meals in the army were really nothing to shout about. Granted that they were a tad better than the swill they used to serve before commercialization (ie. before they brought in the professionals to replace 18-year-old kids), the habit of piling huge portions of food on top of one another hasn't changed. What looked remotely appetizing when viewed separately now looks like a secondary school biology project gone awry.
The much-dreaded - I mean, much-anticipated (you never know if Big Brother's watching), two-day-one-night all expenses paid field exercise took place on Thursday, and our first deployment site was so isolated they actually couldn't find it.
"I can't seem to find the place!" the platoon commander was exasperated.
"It's ok, we can wait." someone offered some words of wisdom.
(to be continued)
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