National Service - Pleasure Serving you Singapore!

Just few years back, a distant aunt gave birth to a baby boy in Singapore. My aunt is Singaporean but her husband is an Indian national. But they have refused Singapore citizenship for their son. Their reason was that they did not want their son to serve national service.

[For the readers who do not know what national service: in Singapore Men at the age of 18 have to serve in the Singapore Armed forces (navy/army/air-force), Civil defense force (firemen) or the Police force. The Bulk of us would be sent to the army. ]

I guess their reason for them to refuse the citizenship for their son was probably because of the deaths of some servicemen during their service. Don’t get me wrong, death in national service is extremely rare. I unfortunately have seen a once platoon mate die. His death had nothing to do with the training; he just had a cardiac arrest and died. But since it was in camp premises he was given a military funeral.
Having gone through national service and seen death itself. I would still encourage my fellow Singaporean brothers that national service is not bad as some people have thought to be.
I have seen boys turn to men. We are force to behave like a gentleman, and taught how to make decisions under both physical and mental stress. We are taught how to lead and taught how to take punishments and pain head-on. I am sure many who have served National service would agree with me.
I am going to convince my aunt that national service is not too bad. My brother is currently serving his national service as an Officer Cadet. He is soon to be an Artillery officer.
I have truly benefited from national service, I urge my readers to explain the true experience of National service to the few ignorant Singaporeans.
“What we lack in size, we make up for in numbers.” ,Lee Kwan Yew (minister mentor) and whom I call “Father of Singapore”.

This post is dedicated to 3rd sergeant Perry, a true hero. Although we knew each other too little, enough to earn a permanent place in my heart.
To those who say National service is a waste of time, i tell you. Stop saying that cos, his death was not a waste.

Relationships and trust issues

It happened when I was in the army and it was one of those exercises which would require us to be in some hilltop in a forest. The exercise was planed for 5 days but then got extended indefinitely. We were supposed to go back home on Friday, but it was Saturday we were still on some hill on a rainy thunder storm night trying to establish radio communication. We have had to move about with our radio set with a huge antenna. We need radio communication before first light. It would be too rush to do it in the morning so I and my buddy had to do right there and then. We were on a hill top with an antenna which was like a lightning probe. We knew it was a hazard but we had to take the risk.

My buddy and I were specialist who had 2 other men under us. This job required just 2 people and here was no requirement for the rest to get wet. We made our men take shelter in our vehicle, while we establish radio communication. My buddy and I were totally drenched to make things worst, I slipped and fell into a mud pond. That’s when tragedy struck. (Don’t worry… Nothing serious)

My buddy’s girlfriend called! She was mad at him because he had not come to visit her that week end nor call her. His excuse to her was that there was no phone reception and we had very little of battery power on our phones that we had to conserve for emergency.

My buddy was going to cut the call and carry on with the communication with me, but I signaled to him to carry on with the call and I would carry on with the mission myself. Why I did that was because

Her argument was, “how can you pick up this call then? Why are you lying to me? You promised to see me this weekend and you didn’t inform me!” Basically she was shooting her machine gun at my defenseless buddy. The bombardment lasted for 2 hours, with my friend returning fire with “sorry…sorry…sorry”.

By then radio communications was established. That night my buddy told me with sincere heart. “Vas, don’t get a girlfriend man. Don’t suffer like me. I can't break off with her cos i am afraid she might do something silly. I still love her man.. but i am suffering”

Not all Girlfriends are like this. Maybe not all the time.But why do women sometimes behave like this?

(You guys might be wondering why we were looking for communication when we could use our hand phones. That’s because military communications cannot me made using the GSM network. Security is first priority.)