387 more days to ORD

Sunday, October 19 2008. 1422. Fair, slightly overcast.

What a week.
On Thursday, I finally managed to convince myself I am not hopeless at shooting. Which, incidentally, means that my No. 4 just became a little bit less plain. The joy.
The day after that, there was a big conflagration. Oh well. It was all a misunderstanding. Really, it was. Why does someone have to take the blame? (Although, in the end, after a slightly nasty argument, no one really did) Isn't it altogether better to forget the whole blame business and focus on trying to prevent it from happening again? Yes, what happened that morning was not very nice. And all involved should take responsibility. But it is a plainly stupid and primitive view that equates 'take responsibility' with 'sign extras'. I fully agree that I am partly to blame for what happened. But I do not see how this justifies three extras (and none to anyone else involved) and would have refused to sign without raising hell over it first. Extras for permstaff are used far too liberally here. As is PT for recruits. The bottom line is, fear and other negative emotions are more efficient way of producing conformity. Not a nice thing to realise, but maybe that's the way the truth usually is.

After that Syukri and Hashim came to tell me that I was being 'too soft on the recruits.' Probably true. Hmm. I am becoming the mirror image of Sergeant Huang. Maybe eventually I will attain de facto permanent COS position, too. A terrible thought.
But I guess they were right ... I should become more demanding. Stricter but not necessarily fiercer. Surely there must be some way to pull this off without liberally meting out push-ups ... we shall see. Next week is supposed to be hell week, after all the specialists raised a ruckus with OC this Friday and asked for more freedom to discipline their platoons. And IFC lessons are starting too. After that there's field camp. So, in some sense, the next two weeks and a bit are supposed to be the toughest and most memorable part of BMT. Less, of course, 24-klick. How will the recruits come out of it? And how well will you do as instructor? We shall see ...

What do I remember vividly so far, in my own NS? Sitting at the back of the Cougar lecture room, not being able to hear much, listening to Xiaowen counting down the time to the first bookout in minutes. The admonishment Lieutenant Na gave me over losing my status slip: "Soldiers aren't supposed to be like that." Being the last man to finish the SOC rundown, with all the instructors running behind me in a huge, noisy cloud ("Hurry up! Go! @#$%^&*!"). And then, in SISPEC, once again the sensation of exhaustion after every SOC rundown, the Strength Training sessions involving never-ending static exercises and Sergeant Tay going "Don't believe him. This PTI is a liar!" while doing the push-ups with us, the long overnight marches during Grandslam 2, and then finally the time I fell out of Warrior, with all the instructors shouting at me. And, strangely, ASLC dispersal. I don't really remember all the times we were tekaned. The concrete memory fades, leaving only the memory of the fact ("yes, we did do a lot of push-ups" or "yes, we were made to leopard crawl through the mud"). Tekan is unpleasant and of no value in itself, so the mind relegates it to the far reaches of memory, leaving it to be eroded by the sands of time, hopefully leaving the lessons learnt. I don't remember most of the long route marches either; they are now only faint memories. What I remember is the sense of great physical challenge or occasions when others' words struck a deep chord.

In other news, I'll be exactly halfway through NS when my current batch of recruits complete their BMT. Whoo.

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