tornado thoughts

Rush to wait, wait to rush....

Reading the title, I believe many guys would know which organisation i'm referring to. This post is a summary of what had happened to my primetime weekend.

Yesterday afternoon, I was recalled to report to camp at 2pm and this is the first open mobilization that I've encountered. Guess we were the "lucky" lot to be chosen by Mindef to "audit" our unit's readiness with regards to NSmen because there was another company who reported but they just scanned and were allowed to go back home. Our unit is also quite kiasu, they had personnel to personally call each of us that very high chance we would be recalled back and reporting time is 2hours instead of the usual 4. This was to ensure no "hiccups" in the attendance. One of our fellow platoonmate was MIA and could be charged for not reporting back camp for no valid reason and was uncontactable throughout the whole period.

We were told that it would be a full day event and all activities that we had planned can forget about it. One of my friends agreed to come for our YAS service but due to this unforeseen circumstances, it had to be postponed. Sigh...

People said that when one gets recalled back just need to sign and can leave already. We had to draw arms, draw store (eg, life jackets and etc) and even live ammunition. We already know that once these stuff are drawn out, it'll be very very very draggy due to the sensitivity of ammunition and safety. To make things worse, nobody seems to know what the commanders are thinking of and all of us are reacting to instant orders. When one order is given, all of us would follow and complete the order asap. Many times, we are so efficient that we are just waiting for the next order to be passed down.

Time flies really fast on a prime time saturday and we were just practically waiting our time away. Rushing to draw equipment and wait for next order, rushing to go cookhouse have our dinner and wait for next order, rushing to layout our items for inspection and wait for inspection and next order, rushing to keep everything and wait for next order. We all know that once the live ammunition is ready to be returned it would mean the end of exercise. We rushed to load up all the ammunition onto the 5-tonner and we were waiting for the order to tell the ammo party to return the ammunition to the ammo dump elsewhere outside of camp. Imagine the order was passed down at 930 and was ready at 10pm. The actual time that the ammo party left camp was 0100hr. By the time all the ammo are returned and back to camp, it was daylight 0610hrs.

Before we were allowed to go back with our barang barang, we were told that there will be new standards for the army uniform. We were issued 3 sets of badges to be sewn and the name have to be reprinted because of the different background previously. This meant that extra work have to be done. I have to go to beach road twice (once to send to sewn and once to collect) before my next ICT to do up the uniform. I guess it will take about S$30 bucks for 3 sets ba. Everyone was very disappointed and angry because firstly, their weekend are spent just like that. Sunday most probably will be sleeping at home to have the energy to last another working week. Secondly, it is not because we had alot of things to do but most of the time (70%) are spent waiting. Thirdly, we wonder will we get paid for the time spent in camp and how much would it justify for social costs involved. Fourthly, it again proved that the organisation has not improved in the management, their forte is still "rush to wait, wait to rush".

posted by tornado @ 5:35 AM