Friday, December 7, 2007


my pay will not come in this weekend like what i have been hoping for so it's gonna be quite tight for me this time round, again.

had a chat over roti prata breakfast with one of the cadets here and after glancing over his shoulders at the service-term cadets, he heaved a sigh of disappointment and pointed out a pretty valid point of incompetent officers-to-be.

not that i am exceptionally good or whatsoever, but i really do think that each and everyone of us lack the oomph and 'seh-ness' that are part of the qualities that our predecessors possessed.(like my uncles, the 2 colonels and dar's dad).

Allow me to present you 2 case scenarios:

PSP-yielding Officers-to-be

looking at the way things go, i think it's good time that ess-eh-eff replaces the aging M16S1 rifles with a gadget that will strike the hearts of all recruits - the Playstation Portable, affectionally known as the PSP.

almost everyone around me in my wing seems to have one. if i walk around now, i can easily find a handful of them gathering in one's bunk playing their beloved 'Monster Hunter'.

i have absolutely nothing against the PSP as a form of entertainment. after all, different people has different ways of entertaining themselves. i prefer to save my money and use the computer to read up on news etc., while these people might just have a different set of ideas from mine.

but when everything you talk about in daily conversations is about how to kill monsters in a virtual world, and when there are more pertinent issues to solve, things are going overboard and ess-eh-eff is on the way down. down down down.

it disappoints me more to see our numero uno, the sortof-honour (sorta like sword of honour) lying on his bed playing his PSP everytime i walk past his bunk, which is like, almost every 15 mins because of my ultra-active bladder.

at the rate things go, seeing the PSP being distributed as part of the SAF issued item is no longer a distant reality.

'Awwww Boo Hoo Hoo, I can't be the first to eat lunch!'

A: '(giggle giggle). Eh let's go to the cookhouse first so that we can eat lunch first! (giggle giggle)'

B: 'but...Donkey wing is the OIC today. we gotta go 30 mins later so that we will not jam up the place'

A: '(starting to look stern). Ahhhhhhhhhh Don't Be Dumb lar, who cares? we just go there and makan faster chao then can oledy'

B: 'don't want la...the Army guys have something on in the afternoon, it's better if we let them eat first'

A: '(starting to get angry)Eh you, screwed up sia. i don't care i'm going already. eh guys let's go!'

B: 'eh wait wait wait!'

At this time, A and gang are already on their way in their own group moving towards the cookhouse, while the rest, the more obedient ones, stay behind.

all my efforts to try to make this a humourous scenario might have failed, but really, it's not funny at all. what i really want to say here, is the prevalent 'heck care' attitude that a huge majority of us have.

what difference does 30 minutes make when you have the entire half of the afternoon to sleep when our other counterparts are busy working? anyhow, the extra time you get will be wasted spent playing PSP, right?

i've seen more than enough. slipshod efforts in preparing the daily ops briefs, infantile cries of wanting to leave the classroom first, convenient shirks of responsibilities and incessant complains when 'endowed' with simple tasks by the instructors. and so much more.

i know i am guily of some of the abovementioned offences, but i know too that 95% of the time, i aspire to do whatever i need to do to the best of my abilities, and present the best results whenever possible.

what happened to 'I must excel in everything that I do?'

what happened to 'I will overcome adversity with courage, fortitude and determination?'

what happened?

____________________________________________________________

i might sound like a huge proponent of good officership in the ess-eh-eff but that's not the key underlying point that i want to present here. it is the clear lack of willingness to do everything and anything, initiative, and industry that worries me as an individual and as a up-and-coming member of the ess-eh-eff officer corp.

when i see this, i aspire to be different from these people. i hope i can really do so.

disturbed you at 2:03 PM