It's Been More Than a Month?

Can't believe it's been more than a month since I last blogged. Well, since the last time, I have

• Become a minute-taking slave for the NDP meetings in camp. Well, I'd only done it for a couple of meetings, but they were quite painful - the first one lasted 5 hours, while the second one started at half past six in the evening, ending at nine. Found out that it is quite hard to follow a meeting that you have almost no knowledge of what's going on. Also got a glimpse of the meeting table strategic manoeuvrings to marginalise people, to claim credit for pre-emptory work, and to siam arrows. Was also rather amused when the roomful of relatively senior military commanders started bickering like schoolgirls which TV personalities they thought were more suitable as MCs for the carnivals. Even more amused when someone (again quite senior) threw his hands up in despair, claiming that he had no idea who any of the TV personalities were.
  
• Went to Brunei for EX LANCER. Strangely uneventful, though a few things were particularly memorable
  
• Swamp walk - Yes, it's as bad as it sounds. Basically they dump you by boat somewhere in a swamp and expect you to topo your way out to the finishing point 2km away in about 6 hours. Sounds easy? Heck no, none of our teams made it. My team in particular only moved about 500m from the starting point. Will always remember the sight of my teammates getting off the boat into the knee-deep, sulphur-smelling mud and subsequently struggling to get out of the mud. The big problem with swampy mud is that once one foot is stuck, it's nearly impossible to get out, because to get that foot out, you've got to apply pressure on the other foot, and before you know it, the other foot is stuck. And after trying your darnest to get out of the muddy areas, you end up in thick thorny vegetation. As a result we spent our time alternating between muddy and thorny terrain, switching when we grew tired of one or the other. Thankfully at 1600, one of my Sgts made the very astute decision of making our way to the river bank, as the exercise was to be cut at 1700, and as a result we were the first team to be extricated from the swamp.
• Getting raped by wildlife - Yes, I was bitten / stung / eaten alive by an incredible number of pests. Yep, mosquitos, sandflies, wasps (ok 1 wasp), leeches, spiders (huge one on me, didn't bite though) I had them all. In particular, I some how had incredible affinity for leeches - I was bitten 4 times and found a few more on me. Thankfully leech bites aren't painful if you get them to release their bite before killing them. But the resulting unceasing blood flow is honestly quite gross.
• Watching people get raped on their birthdays - Taupok? Oh come on. A company of restless, horny, young NS boys can do much worse than that. The birthday boy was surrounded by the horde wearing masks, feet stomping, shouts of "Rape him! Rape him!". The victim was then held down, stripped, had kiwi, camou cream, powder, hot wax, combat rations, light stick liquid poured on him, was wrapped up in a plastic sheet and had ice dumped on him. Goodness knows what artrocities would arise if my company went to war...
• Getting inundated by the latest hottest music - Not one who's really aware of the latest hits, I had the good fortune to listen over and over and over again to the most overplayed songs on the radio, thanks to this British station, which really needs to hire a new program manager. My hot favorites now are Britney Spears' Toxic, Destiny Child's Lose My Breath and Maroon5's This Love. Man, I feel so in now. The BETV top 50 hip hop MTV video they were playing on the ship-ride back from the camp to the Bangar Seri Begawan area was also most insightful. Haven't caught up with hip hop for years. Nothing like an immersion program to get one fully reacquainted with things. And especially amusing after they had just told us how Brunei was a very traditional Muslim country - nubile girls sexing it up on the video wasn't quite what I'd expected.
  
• Brunei's quite an incredible country - no taxes, free education, free healthcare, free housing for government servants. Really puts things in perspective - there are so many places out there in the world where a higher quality of life is so much more cheaply attainable - so what is it in Singapore that we are struggling so hard to keep afloat, that we are trying to make something out of our lives in, that we're giving up 2.5 years of our time for? Is it the values? The way of life? Or is it just familiarity, what we're used to that keeps us home, that makes us shrug our shoulders and say "Life isn't that bad... imagine if you were in xyz country, wartorn and all"? Man has an uncanny way of adapting to all kinds of conditions, however harsh, imposed on him. Just think of NS... we all get by.... Think of all the people in jobs they'd rather not be in, they still get by. Questions that will need to be answered sometime soon especially since a career in public service looms large.
• Pics from the Brunei trip can be found here, courtesy of a campmate. Look under Lancer.