Thoughts on ORD
I can't say I miss the place. I mean, that sounds terribly perverse, like Ost-nostalgie (nostalgia for East Germany) or Stockholm Syndrome (where hostages develop sympathy for their abductors) or something.
To me, NS was all about a suspension of normality. "Normal" life processes (okay, for someone like me) like going to school, mucking about at home, relaxing on the comp/piano and reading were suspended, or disrupted. Instead we had extras and staying in and avoiding the wrath of senior commanders who could dig up any damn excuse to give you extras.
They say that NS teaches you about life. I contend that this is only true because half the population of Singapore has gone through NS. The attitudes of NS permeate our society, and some people stick with them throughout their life. For instance, when you have 2 years to serve, you go through it with the "heck it" attitude cos you know that no matter what, ORD will come. But that isn't true of life, or a job - or at least, it isn't a healthy mindset, because when that happens then you're living only for death, or retirement, or a promotion, when what matters is actually the process and how it grows you.
I hated NS partly because of the discrepancy between the high-minded ideals it claimed to embody (defence of the motherland yada yada) and the sheer small-mindedness and hypocrisy of the people in it. Some people had a ridiculously inflated sense of self-importance - look at me, I outrank you, I'm gonna make you buy lunch/do my work for me just cos I can.
We had a running gag about Karma in my unit. For some people, the bad karma they accumulate just doesn't come back to get them - maybe the dice of Fate are loaded. But in the Ranking Exercise of humanity they'll get a D grade. Justice is served.
I hated my training days. Always tired, kinda hungry, never enough sleep (except at ETI, kind of, sometimes). And the bloody SOCs. And I can't shake the fact that most of my friends went to OCS and ended up getting $300 bucks more than me a month for the last year. Yes it reinforced the inferiority complex thing that I have.
Though I guess all things considered, an admin posting's pretty okay. And I can't say that the explosives weren't fun!
But mostly I hated it because I ended up in a damn boring job. Damn DAMN boring, like so boring that I even started proofreading e-texts on Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders. 60+ pages in a day of proofreading - most in English but when I got bored I did a few pages of some French stuff and a few more pages on Heinrich Schliemann's Troy excavations, I think that was in German. That's the depths of boredom I plumbed in my NS days. Other people smoked, I did proofreading for Project Gutenberg. I also donated something like 10,000 grains of rice on freerice.com, playing French vocabulary.
I started drinking a bit but not clubbing so I think that's okay.
The people were mostly pretty good though - I mean fellow NSFs. Sure you meet some weirdos and lousy fkers but most were okay. Some were good to talk to and fun to hang out with and I hope to keep in touch with you guys.
Otherwise it's been a long 22 months and I'm just relieved that normality is resumed.
To me, NS was all about a suspension of normality. "Normal" life processes (okay, for someone like me) like going to school, mucking about at home, relaxing on the comp/piano and reading were suspended, or disrupted. Instead we had extras and staying in and avoiding the wrath of senior commanders who could dig up any damn excuse to give you extras.
They say that NS teaches you about life. I contend that this is only true because half the population of Singapore has gone through NS. The attitudes of NS permeate our society, and some people stick with them throughout their life. For instance, when you have 2 years to serve, you go through it with the "heck it" attitude cos you know that no matter what, ORD will come. But that isn't true of life, or a job - or at least, it isn't a healthy mindset, because when that happens then you're living only for death, or retirement, or a promotion, when what matters is actually the process and how it grows you.
I hated NS partly because of the discrepancy between the high-minded ideals it claimed to embody (defence of the motherland yada yada) and the sheer small-mindedness and hypocrisy of the people in it. Some people had a ridiculously inflated sense of self-importance - look at me, I outrank you, I'm gonna make you buy lunch/do my work for me just cos I can.
We had a running gag about Karma in my unit. For some people, the bad karma they accumulate just doesn't come back to get them - maybe the dice of Fate are loaded. But in the Ranking Exercise of humanity they'll get a D grade. Justice is served.
I hated my training days. Always tired, kinda hungry, never enough sleep (except at ETI, kind of, sometimes). And the bloody SOCs. And I can't shake the fact that most of my friends went to OCS and ended up getting $300 bucks more than me a month for the last year. Yes it reinforced the inferiority complex thing that I have.
Though I guess all things considered, an admin posting's pretty okay. And I can't say that the explosives weren't fun!
But mostly I hated it because I ended up in a damn boring job. Damn DAMN boring, like so boring that I even started proofreading e-texts on Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders. 60+ pages in a day of proofreading - most in English but when I got bored I did a few pages of some French stuff and a few more pages on Heinrich Schliemann's Troy excavations, I think that was in German. That's the depths of boredom I plumbed in my NS days. Other people smoked, I did proofreading for Project Gutenberg. I also donated something like 10,000 grains of rice on freerice.com, playing French vocabulary.
I started drinking a bit but not clubbing so I think that's okay.
The people were mostly pretty good though - I mean fellow NSFs. Sure you meet some weirdos and lousy fkers but most were okay. Some were good to talk to and fun to hang out with and I hope to keep in touch with you guys.
Otherwise it's been a long 22 months and I'm just relieved that normality is resumed.
Labels: Life
posted by Unknown at
11:14 am
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