Thursday, January 21, 2010

I dont want to lead a unit life, i just want to lead a cadet life

This past week has passed pretty quickly and after staying in for 2 nights in camp for various reasons(no i didnt get extras, it was voluntary), its Friday tomorrow!

A couple of things happened to me this week, some good and some bad. After waiting for almost 2 months, i have finally gotten replies from my UK applications. I got accepted by UCL but rejected by LSE. I cant say I am entirely happy though i must stress that getting a place in UCL is still a definite cause for joy. My hotel has been booked but i am still lacking the plane ticket. Sime Darby seems a lost cause. Evidently the brain detoriation is far more severe than expected but in any case this will go under the 'failed attempts' section in my life.

Basically what all this means is that an army scholarship is my last decent chance of getting that ticket overseas. I dont really see a point trying for all other scholarships but not liking the job and the army career is one damn bloody good prospect i cant seem to overlook in deciding my career although i will probably leave this August if i get offered which is a prospect my mum is finding hard to take. Sadly too, the past few days have been tough in unit for me. Seeing commanders who cant seem to be decisive is one thing. But to say that the welfare of the men is important when you want the guys to stay in next week with toilets that are as damaged as Lord Voldermot's soul(attempted nerd joke) with fans that dont work. You must be fucking joking seriously. And you wonder why the unit is doing so poorly.

'You so good you go do the job lah'. Most will say that. I cant deny though that I have no confidence in handling things any better in his position. But nonetheless, surely there is a need to explain why a 14 days SOL is reasonable enough a punishment from their perspective for a first time latecomer and not get US to do the dirty work for you. To let the men feel that WE do not do anthing to help them. Why not come down for once and really explain things. OCS has clouded our minds. It has clouded mine too. Now after experiencing unit life, I feel disguntled with the system. I feel irritated having to be in an environment where I cant do shit. Its tough when you are one with so much ambition, one who dreams so much on how to help his men and to inspire them having none under his charge at all. Its an utter joke to be honest. It doesnt make me any happier to hear that my upper study had so much free time that the men all felt he did nothing. It definitely does my confidence no good that each time when they come to ask me to make a decision, i have to say go ask QM because he is the one with the rights as the department head, not me. To put things really crudely, my job can be done pretty dam easily by a 3SG or perhaps even a CPL.

I had a talk with my AO the day before about this and he told me but isnt this why people choose to sign on? To want to change a seemingly ineffective system and to truely be the difference that their officer couldnt be. I have heard my fair share of inspirational stories and how if you can change the life of one of your men, you have done a good job etc. I really want to be like that but i find myself in a situation where the desire far exceeds the possibility. I cant do too much or say too much because much of this should be done by the department head. The battle between my own ego and the need to respect the proper hierachy is one that is constantly being fought within. I am glad however that the QM is a friend of mine from SOL, one whom i pretty respect even during my cadet days. It has made things much easier that he understands who I am and how i function and how he always tries to include me in the know although to be very rigid about jobscopes, he neednt do so. I am thankful for that.

I am going for ULOC at a much better place next week and the prospect is pretty exciting. To see the familiar faces is a much better deal than having to only bring bad news to the men each day before RO. 3 weeks is a lot of time, many thigns can change and I pray that things will turn for the better once i return back to KTSC.

Twistin' at 5:23 AM
Monday, January 11, 2010

post 360

360 posts. The very fact that I have been slowly but surely reaching this milestone on this blog whose URL was inspired by a dragonball character never ceases to amaze me. How I still come to this place to pen down my thoughts and reflections although i must admit i am pretty lazy to write everything down at times. Why is 360 a milestone you might ask. I personally do not have an answer but i have always been fascinated with the number 360. I have been in a reflective mode of late probably inspired from msn convos i have had with a couple of my friends over the week due to the privilege of staying out. I would rather stay in cause i get to save money and spend less on the outside meals and all but thats the problem with chinese, we are never happy with what we have no matter how good it might seem to be. But i digress.

I started this blog in the last decade after 2 very good friends of mine javier and wangguan began blogging. Perhaps I was just following the trend then. Or maybe i was going through the teenage phase where I felt compelled to pen down my thoughts about school, stress and all that crap a teenager goes through. Whatever the case, i started this with the help of the 2 of them and an interesting fact is that all the different templates of my blog have been created by either of those 2 sluts. What began with the daily rants of an ah lian teengae boy "OMG! I saw not 1 not 2 but 3 trans at plaza today...omg lar..its like at foodcourt rite, got this grp of 6 women(seemingly). but then look twice rite can see got half is fake de. wa lau. got boobs and long hair also " soon became an avenue for me to pen down significant moments in my life thus far.SJI, Band investiture 05/06, the last day of SJI, Perth, Renaissance Gold, O level results, A level results, VJC, Army. Unlike most of my friends(actually mostly girls), I have never really had the habit of having secret posts or a locked blog where i choose not to publish certain things for all to view. In that same aspect I have been pretty open in what i write after reading through some of the more significant posts. Reading this open book about my life(in a very literal sense) really brings back many wonderful memories on how i matured as a person over the years(i would like to think i grew up), how i got over the ah lian style writing. I am still amazed that i used to talk/type like this. Okay maybe I still do so but of course thats not the point. Most importantly though it reminded me how I have had and still have the luxury of being friends with truely great mates that i can always count on.

Being in KTSC for the past weeks has been an eye opening experience. I might think my life sucks after being rejected by 3 scholarship boards, i might think it sucks because I have had no luck with my love life, i might think it sucks because I am doing practically nothing at camp now. But a short 2 weeks of interacting with the men really opened my eyes to how wrong I was, perhaps even utterly foolish to think this way. Financial problems, domestic problems, criminal charges, these are just some of the day to day problems some of them face and talk to me about. How being able to moonlight to earn an extra 60 dollars a week is the only thing they hope for and how some of them only hope to learn as much as possible from being a clerk in the SAF and nothing else and also how some of them tell me how lucky i am to get the opportunity to go to OCS while they do not even have the chance. I am rather fortunate compared to many of them. Being able to grow up in a sheltered environment with very loving and supportive family members behind me in everything i do, with friends whom i can hang out with week after week and still not be sick of them, with the ability to buy a pair of shoes costing almost $100 without so much as a blink of an eye. Sure there are those who are doing way better than me but life aint too shabby for me after all. 3 weeks into officership and i have already felt that i have seen and learned so much. I am that much closer to signing on that dotted line.

1 year on, 2 years on, 10 years on, i wont not know if i will continue to blog at a frequency as i do now(which is actually not very often) but one thing for sure is that this blog will always be the custodian of the memories of just about the most memorable years in my life.

happy 360 post www.buuhx.blogspot.com and may we share more memorable posts together in the coming years

Twistin' at 3:54 AM
Friday, January 01, 2010

army days(delta part 2)

While talks about EI and the different arms became the highlight of conversation topics for quite a while, the plong too identity became stronger as the weeks gone by. First platoon as we were proud to be known as, we experienced warm jacket and probably had the only cps in history to turn out his own platoon. ming fui ftw and his legendary act will be passed down from generation to generation in times to come.

My most memorable moment in outfield was during service term and i fondly recall how i could not sleep the whole night as i was being attacked by a swarm of BIG RED ANTS. In the end as i was so dam shag, i dunno how i managed it but i just dragged my groundsheet by about 1m and just went back to sleep. With talks of a 16km route march spreading all around after this fieldcamp which included navigation, morale was naturally low. But after we cleared the RAI, we boarded a bus back to wingline. How wrong i was when i thought it was cancelled. We eventually embarked on it at 7pm(see what i mean about the mind games). i fondly recall the march for extreme fighting spirit with many of my friends suffering from sever groin/ass abrasion and how they used the SAF solution to all problems black tape in order to perservere on and eventually complete the march.

Had a brief stint with OCCing when i suddenly had a shortness of breath for 2 weeks. But i absolutely refused to report to the MO against the strong wishes of my mum because i know if i did, i will be sitting in SAFTI MI being SSM's runner now. It was on the eve of scorpion king where i was appointed CPS that this thing arised(stress? to date i still cant find a medical reason but it recovered on its own eventually). You would think that life is fair and that god could choose a better time for my assessment to come or perhaps an easier task because at that time i wouldnt have imagined myself to be chosen to be an appointent holder because i felt i was pretty cui and there were better people who could do a better job. But yeah i sucked thumb and alot of air and endured what would be the most tiring outfield of my life. To be honest i barely dug, but having to do rounds after rounds in the wee hours of the morning while permanently doing stores to help ease the load of my guys as much as possible and trying my best not to remember anything from the horror movie we watched during 'tactical halt' is no joke. I must admit i am an utter wuss and i cant watch scary movies. Scorpion King opened my eyes to how cooperative everyone is. Unfortunately i cant really say the same for LOCC at times so sorry to you guys. How when i said eh sect comms i need men do conc wire. No matter how shag, i would still have the correct number of people going to do although i must add they were always late but i can totally understand. I was god dam shit ass shag myself from the lack of sleep. A funny moment came when i was checking on the conc wire people only to see them sleeping at the fence in front of the lighted buildings in a straight row. 2 things came to mind, if instructors came we would have been screwed as i dont think we were even supposed to go there and they really found the more obvious place possible to be sleeping. But i must confess i joined them and slept for a while because i didnt want to wake them up and i myself was god dam shit ass shag as i mentioned earlier.

Scorpion king ended and with that just about all the regimentation. Memorable moments included myself causing a mutual hatred to a certain guy after my bitching to my buddy was overheard by some dude and it soon spread like wildfire during what seemed like a harmless rest period at platoon live firing. I feel sad for the guy actually contrary to very popular belief but in any case hes happier now so yeah good for him. Successful and all(no sarcasm i swear)

The day of 24 km is one day i will never forget. It was the day the much heavily anticipated postings were to be announced and everyone was excited. That night is still firmly imprinted in my mind. It was approx 2000hrs. Route march was scheduled to begin at 9 if i rmb correctly. Wing comm gathered all of us. He stood tall on the landrover(or did he sit?). Made a small speech then proceded to announce. Some squatted, I sat cause i cant squat each eagerly awaiting the next name to be called and to hear something that didnt start with I for most people. After each name, there was the trademark OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH and the ARGHHHHHHHHH followed by a very rousing applause although the logic behind is something i fail to understand till now but i am nevertheless guilty of it. Then my name came. Wayne, ATO. Immediately, familiar faces came starring back at me smiling gleefully(along with the usual hoos and haas) and it was exactly what i wanted, thats what an outsider would have thought. But no one knew what the hell was an ATO actually and only one thing similarly was going through my mind though and that was WTF is an ATO man? No one could give me an answer. Quotes instructor 'not infantry correct already. ' lol wtf but yeah i endured a whole march not knowing my fate. Imagine the pain and agony. Army transport officer, army tactics officer were just a few of the wild guesses people were throwing.

It turned out to be army technical officer and also part of logistics. And the next few days were crazy. Had eyes so swollen that i would have been a disaster if there was social night so yeah thank god for shaoyi who had suspected h1n1 cause i think i would have scared the shit out of jeanne if she went with my face in such horrendous condition. I must emphasize and add i am still dam pissed no one left me any food that night although i paid for 2 portions because i was forced to report sick. yeah thanks faizal for that by the way. making me report sick with a temp of 37.7. Its quite zzz but i guess i can understand, everyone was fearful of h1n1 at that time. Of course the 1 day confinement shit that followed was real lame but i think signals lesson would have been lamer. at least i could slack and sleep in bunk while waiting for nothing.

4 days from that march and i found myself on a 0200 flight to Brunei. My new adventure in LOCC and before that socjot awaited and I didnt even have time to properly say goodbye to everyone. Everything happened too quickly.

Twistin' at 8:36 PM