Contrary to the tone of my previous post, I am extremely satisfied with my current vocation and am enjoying almost every moment of it at my workplace. The amusing thing about the place where I work is that one can claim $10 for any visit to a private medical care provider, and 50% of any dental visit. This counter-productively makes reporting sick cheaper!
That aside, I’ve finally added reCAPTCHA as a spam filter for my comments system, replacing most of other annoying and partially effective solutions, leaving behind Akismet.
That aside, the end of the week is here once again, with such great speed.
Having been in my current organisation for the past 6 months, I can almost safely say that the word army is synonymous with stupidity. Contradicting examples to my above statement is certainly an exception rather than the rule.
Most importantly, the people that it attracts and retains are naturally pre-filtered. There are only certain types of people who would take up a job in the armed forces; it is usually because of money, and/or education (or the lack thereof). Variations to the extent of ‘serving one’s country’ and ‘passion’ is hardly believable nor plausible.
Moreover, almost 80% of the human resource in my organisation is aged between 16 years old to 22 years old. Believe it or not, no matter how ‘efficient’ or ‘capable’ the armed forces is in protecting the country or managing certain events, you must marvel that the whole ‘active’ system is staffed by adolescents in the bottom three-quarters of rank! and some full-time regulars as a few supervisors in the higher hierarchy.
As such, I find their operational ideals ridiculous and efficiency reminiscent of communism and slave labour. Anyhow, this, I have to admit, is the best form of mental imprisonment and degradation of youths in their prime ages.
Case in point – my English standard has never been this low nor has my thought processes been this slow before.
The bottom line is that I hope to finish up this year and a half wasteful stint with license to drive and skills to sail. An added bonus would be an ACCA.
I was reading the Intellectual Property FAQ posted on the SingNet website and found something scary.
SingNet has a right to protect the rights of our customers while adhering to the legal system. We reject requests from third parties for information pertaining to our customers. Such information is only released under a court order or if requested by the law enforcement or regulatory agencies.
Emphasis mine.
Now, what on earth are regulatory agencies? RIAS? MPAS? ODEX? The fact that they even dare to offer up personally incriminating information without a court order indicates that they are absolutely not interested in protecting the rights of their customers.
Moreover, SingNet claims that its ability to protect the rights of their customers is only a “right” which can be optionally exercised at their will. Why isn’t protecting the rights of their users an obligation rather than their will or fancy?
So, that explains why they didn’t even bother to object to giving information to ODEX when requested.
Having gone to a Cardiologist in MMI a week ago, and being told that there’s nothing he could do, I decided to consult a respiratory specialist myself, rather than being referred left, right, centre and wasting weeks long of time to waiting.
Given that I didn’t write anything about my experience at the MMI, I will do so here before I forget.
MMI is a sub-unit of the SAF HQ Medical Corp, operated in the typical bureaucratic fashion. Obvious signs that indicate a military establishment is the ban on camera mobile phones, requirements on entry passes, uniformed personnel, extreme inefficiency, and man-power imbalance.
The reason I’d OOC’ed was due to chest pains, coupled with Asthma, and the MO decided that I needed rest and referral to the cardiologist as he apparently heard irregular click-murmurs in my heartbeat. Fast forward 4 weeks from that day, I took a morning ‘off’ and went, hopefully solving this annoying chest pain mystery.
The first diagnostic test they did, without even seeing the specialist, was the standard resting ECG. I do not comprehend their obsession with this selective diagnostic tool as I’ve done it at least 5 times with the same results – normal. What I really need is an echocardiogram which uses ultrasound to create an image of the heart. When I finally got to see a certain Dr F, he did a quick listen to my heart and proclaimed, “I don’t hear anything abnormal, go”. I then asked him about my asthma if it could be the cause of pain and he promptly directed it to another department which I had to make another referral from my MO. At that, I was made to leave and was discharged immediately. This is similar to the classic case of confirmation bias: ‘evidence of no problem", with added incompetence and disregard of the patient and his referring doctor.
Being really annoyed, I decided to just make a respiratory specialist appointment at Raffles Hospital where by the waiting time would be under a week and I get things done properly, the non-SAF way.
Fast forward a few days and I got posted to another unit, leaving me with no chance to talk to my MO about the blotched referral. Fast forward a few more days and I’m given ‘off’ to visit the hospital.
The first thing I didn’t do was an ECG. In fact, I didn’t even do any ECG throughout the whole course of the diagnosis. Through a stethoscope, the respiratory specialist could hear what my MO heard – irregular click murmurs. He then sent me for X-ray, and the all-important echocardiogram, which diagnosed the cause of my chest pains – MVP. He later commented that he was very surprised that the cardiologist at MMI failed to hear the murmurs and left it at that.
Case-closed. Lesson learnt: Never trust the SAF in anything, especially your health and lives.
With new found liberation thanks to the lack of bunks in my new camp, I should be able to book out for home. With that, comes a magnitude of opportunities which I could use for self-improvement.
Learning how to drive tops the list, followed by sailing, and flying (if permitted).
That aside, it’s time to catch up with friends from school.
Four weeks have past since I became an OOC and life for the past four weeks had been entertaining, eventful, and educational; in fact, I could say that it’s a life-time worth of work experience which I could never have found elsewhere. As what they always say, NS is only a waste of time to those who think it is. I propose an amendment: NS is only a waste of time to those who think it is and don’t persist in doing something about it.
I found ASLC to be a royal waste of time, doing things which has no effect on anything and learning nothing that I can apply in my work in future. Most importantly, the dispersal plan after graduation from the course is largely towards a place in Guards. It is a major turn off and a severe disincentive to persevere through the course. After all, when the chevrons come, so do the shit (that hits the fan).
My last four weeks have brought me to over 8 different attachments, where an attachment is a short stint (a day long) working with someone outside my company, doing something (possibly totally) unrelated to what I usually do. I got to experience stuff like manning the pass office, COS, ammunition party, clerical work, handy man assistant, ushering, sport day event official, JCC course selection assistants, and more that I can’t remember.
Then on the last day of my forth week, where my whole company is having their off-in-lieu, I received a call from the COS that my posting order is ready for collection and I have to be back that day to do so, together with my stuff. In order words, I had to move out in 12 hours. Brilliant!, doing out-processing when no-one is around.
Amusingly, 3 out of the 4 of us OOCs got posted out at the same time. I wonder how the office would function on Monday where the week-long outfield begins. Sadly, I didn’t even have the opportunity to bid everyone goodbye when I returned my camp pass.
Liberation!
In all, I’d found my last four weeks as an OOC the defining moment of my NS life thus far, having the most myriad of experiences and yet allowed to wake up for breakfast at 7 am every morning.
Hi there. Welcome to the mind of an INT{J,P}, CDIS. I hope you can find your way around without getting lost.
The pensieve is messy to the untrained eye. That's life isn't it. The fun part of life is to untangle the mess you've gotten yourself into.
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