Duty honour country

Been a hectic long 2 weeks, with quite a fair bit of punishments and late night sleeps. Can't recall much of the stuff that happened the week before, so i'll just do a quick update of this whole week.

We were punished to carry FBO around the camp for the entire week, literally volunteered to be punished in our case, for that platoon 2 was the platoon that was caught sleeping and removing their SBOs during Exercise VHF which incidentally had few detachments deployed around Singapore. Thus to "display" course integrity, my platoon volunteered to be part of the punishment as well.

Put that aside, we were also given field pack inspections. And it turned out that i made some enemies indirectly, for that my standard packs were deemed too high standard. "Spoil market" was the common term one will be associated with, when you tend to be doing something overly too good in any scenarios.

Not that i'm that petty about all the sarcastic remarks, i just felt that they don't have what it takes to be an officer. Just to propose a simple case here, would the fastest runner, fittest guy in the course be deemed as spoil market? How come packing of field pack standard items neatly and nicely will be deemed as one then?

Personally, i take pride in my bearing, packing of field pack items, tidying of my cupboard and things which can be done with all the time in the world during free time. Somehow not many will do that though. A very good classic example is the white horse. I hope you guys know who i'm referring to.

Not that i've something against him, and that i shouldn't have mention some negative comments about him here, since he's someone of high regards, i just don't think that he has what it takes to be an officer. Minus his intelligence, maybe he's just an empty shell? Just ask any military personnel what's the minimal standard of an soldier, i bet he failed most of it.

Before i start digressing and go into all the unbecoming behavior of the white horse, i better move on and talk about the FBO punishments. After serving the army for almost a year now, last week was the first time i ran in smart 4, with FBO for around 1km plus. Reason? We were late for a workshop conducted by Chief of Signals. Then again, i questioned the effectiveness of the punishment, for that i personally feel that by making us run back to our accommodation block and back to the workshop classroom, it just make us sweat, cursing the instructor and at the end of the day, hate army even more.

I'm sure anyone out there will agree with me that timing is something you can't train one to meet. It's how reasonable the timing is, and even with that as constant, there's a lot more factors to be considered.

Sleeping for only 2-3 hours for some of the days, and not sleeping at all before Exercise VHF was the highlight for the 2 weeks. I'm pretty fine with that, cause i'm quite trained to be an owl due to gaming before army.

Not forgetting SOC which was conducted during this 2 weeks as well. I managed to pass with just 1 try. Something good considering the ground in this camp is a lot harder with few steep slopes, and of cause i don't have to do it anymore till i commissioned. The only thing left for me now is to cut my 9:52s timing down by 8secs to achieve my IPPT gold.

Last weekend was probably the most fun weekend i had. Sneak out to... Probably not gonna mention it here. Blogs have been pretty much something which is like a double edge sword. Hold it wrongly, you will cut yourself without knowing. But anyway, it was fun and i hope to do it again!

This weekend was pretty boring and hectic as well. Came back from camp around 2230hrs on Friday night, slept for a couple of hours, head back to camp around 0545hrs for my regimental guard duty. Did 4 shifts and end the duty only this morning around 0800hrs.

Made some effort to go down to a market further away from my house on my way home to get some breakfast for my parents. Rest for an hour or plus, went for haircut, and off to get my N-gage for servicing. Yes, it's down again for the third time in less than 3 months. I should get a replacement of it soon. But it's still one of the best, if not the best non-camera phone for me.

Head to borders trying to look for the book titled, "The Fifth Discipline", but just couldn't find it. Was lazy to do a thorough search for it and i head to get the game Xenosaga Episode 3 for a friend. And luck wasn't on my side again. It turned out that the game was Japanese version. In short, the game is useless. Got back home, downloaded some video clips and before i know it, here i am typing this post before i head back to camp again.

That's the life of a signal cadet. If anyone still feels that signal is a slack vocation, think again. In fact, i'm sure i'm not the worse in the whole SAF. The grass is always greener on the other side. Nonetheless, despite not having much time for myself, i hope in the midst of my busy life, i'm still able to do some things for others.

Reciprocate or not, it doesn't really matter. All that matters is that i get to do what i want, eventually getting myself a title of "Santa" perhaps?

Alright, that's all i have. Gotta pack up, head back to camp, study for a 4 hours exam paper tomorrow. Think about it, i never did 4 hours before until i enter army. How contradicting?

And this week is hell week too. 16km route march and turnout expected some time in the week for us to earn our blue berets. If you happen to read this some time this week, just pray silently for me to be here again the next weekend.

Till then.