Rest needed

Just done running 7km at MacRitchie Resrvoir. Actually, not exactly 7km, I did walk for some distance. Man, it was really tiring. Some lousy cross country compeition and I was pulled in for reasons unknown. Anyway, I treat it as a form of training. After all, I was going to build up my stamina.

I recalled 2 points that CO mentioned last Thursday during his newcomers' talk. He said that it's not a matter of the working environment but it depends more on the people you work with. I agree with him completely. A workplace can have ergonomic furniture and equipment, perfect lighting, surreal paintings or works of art being put up. However, if the people there are nasty, working there can be a real terror. After all, humans are inclined to communicate with each other. If there is no communication, then no rapport can be established. Without such rapport, then one will feel lonely and left out. Essentially, life sucks then.

I still remembered the times I had in TDS. It was one of the better times I had. The people there are nice and friendly. It was a far cry from my stay in Alpha wing. All were concerned with their personal achievement, more than anything else. Come to think of it, it wasn't really a good place to hang out. Fortunately, I decided to get out of there.

The other point he mentioned was that he does not care about processes. Instead, he is more result-oriented. I think this should be the way things are. As long as we can produced the desired results, it doesn't really matter how it's being done. This itself is a double-edged sword. One can argue that in order to rise up the ranks, one can trample upon others and use them as stepping stones. Another would say it is best to work hard, get recognized and then get that promotion through 'the right way'. I say there's no difference between the two. The result is the same, isn't it?

To quote an example, think about the times when you did badly for exams. The moment you screw it up, you are immediately clustered with the not-so-good students. Even though you had been getting good grades consistently, you are still being viewed as a poor student. However, you did study hard. In fact, you prepared way ahead of exams. It just so happen that your alarm clock failed you and decided not to wake you up. You wake up late, panicked, rush to school and as a result of your panic, you forgot what you have studied. Does it matter to the teachers? The fact is you did poorly. Who cares how you managed to do badly or why.

Your friend, an infamous slacker got better grades than you. How and why? He cheated. Damn that pile of sewerage! But he did it so skilfully that he got away scot-free and no one has any evidence. Once again, does the teacher bother? No! Fact is, he got good grades! Who bothers how he manage to do it? As long as he get good grades, he is a contributor to the school ranking. And you? You lousy piece of sludge, pulling down the school's ranking with your offending low grades.

Fatigued. Again

The below is yesterday's post

Attended a pep talk this morning. SWO Poon talked to all the enlistees of S3 branch. His aim was to tell us that we are to follow and comply with instructions. He also mentioned that we are not to do anything that undermine efforts towards the battalion goal or he will get us for it. Yawn... Boring! Oh yes. He also mentioned that we are to complain via proper channels, that is, up the chain of command.

He mentioned about 'guidelines' and 'instructions'. We must follow instructions at all times but guidelines? It will suffice to be aware of the guideline; compliance to it is of no relevance. He quoted the fish tank example. It was an instruction passed down by some agency that no fish tank are allowed to be in the offices. The only exception was the lounge or rest area. However, since CO flouted this 'instruction' by putting up a fish tank in his office, it has now evolve (or should I say devolve?) to become a 'guideline'. Ops Room has a fish tank, as with at least 2 other offices that I've been to. I bet there are more of such going around.

As for his second point, he didn't want us to cosy up to our immediate superiors and use them for political reasons. Well, I can't help it. My immediate supeior IS a commissioned officer and rank sure get things done quick and nice. However, I have yet done so. It seems that some other guys are doing it and he wanted to put a stop to this. C'mon, if their working relationship are all that rosy, would it have been so easy for outsiders to sow discord and cause a rift? The fault lies not in us but in them. Please examine your own working relationship before assuming that outside forces are at work.

As for the last point, it goes to prove the rumours that SAF is afraid of internal complaints reaching outside. We are always told to go through the proper chain of command when we want to complain anything and not to solicit oustside help. On the surface, it seems like they do not want to wash dirty linen in public. Well, I agree. After all, who wants to expose their faults and mistakes in the local papers?

Then again, I see a more insidious plot. Going through all those chain of command involves a lot of red tape and the whole process can be very lengthy and draggy. I suppose they are hoping that by the time the complaint reaches the proper person, the complainer (I'm not sure if there is such a word) has cooled down, gotten bored by all the lengthy procedure and give up complaining. Going through many different people also means that there are more people to hinder and dissuade the complainer.

The entire session lasted some 45 minutes. Initially, I whipped out by notepad, thinking that he might have something important to convey. When it turns out that he was beating around the bush before coming to the abovementioned 3 points, my interest waned by the second. To make things worse, he was a bad communicator. There was no eye contact to me. Apparently, he was not addressing any issues but addressing a few specific individual. I know I'm not the focus here but please show me some respect, will ya? I noticed that I was the only one who was looking at him talk all the time. The rest fidgeted restlessly.

I pride myself for being a good listener and towards those who possess poor communication skills, I'm somewhat irritated. SWO Poon really irritated me. I wonder how he climbed the ladder. Didn't he attend any communication skill course? At all? I felt that my presence was not justified. No eye contact at all.

On a lighter side, I garnered a total of $24.50 for my suggestions. That is excluding the $25 award I'm going to get for my project. I'm going to make more suggestions and siphon off every single dollar I can. The quota is 9 per work year. But do I care? NO!! Let's see... Hmm... How about 10 suggestions a month? That works out to be roughly to be $15 per month.

Finally bought my porepacks today. It was going at $3.50 per pack, $0.40 less than the original price. I got two. I think they will last me for a while. I wanted to buy some orange/strawberry/lemon flavoured Vicks but it slipped my mind. I sense a sore throat coming and I wanted to be prepared for it. It has been some time since I last fell ill. Currently, I'm substaining on menthol flavoured Vicks. I detest the taste. It makes me feel sick already.

Fatigued

I'm really tired and sleepy. I nearly drifted into dreamland while lying on my bed just now. I wonder what is the force keeping me awake now? Force of will? Or mircale? I don't know. I do know one things though, that is, my limit is tested. Haha~

I managed to do some sums despite my apparent fatigue. Surprisingly, the sums energised me for a moment. I felt the urge to conquer them and to prove my superiority. They anin't that difficult, all I lacked was my trusty scienctific calculator. I wonder why it went or rather, where I had misplaced it.

Today was quite a slack day. MSG Tey took off, Daniel took a half day and Leonard had a MA in the afternoon. Guess everyone is still recovering from the AHM. 21km is no easy feat but I'm going to conquer that next year. Can't avoid it forever, can I?

I thought I was not well-established in terms of presence yet. I was sorely wrong. Since yesterday, more and more people has been asking if I had attended AHM and/or why didn't I attend. Even CO joined in the fun. I guess working in the Ops Room means that the profile is magnified by several times and even the most insignificant thing you do, becomes as glaring as the sun rays to others. However, they have gotten used to the fact that I'm the only crazy guy around who still goes to work and knock off in uniform.

I decided to leave my beard alone. Well, not really a beard. It's just some stray strands of hair here and there. I plucked out three and decided to call it off. No, it wasn't the pain; it was the trouble. There was too little to classify it as a proper beard but too much to remove them by plucking. Sure, I could used wax but the result I got the previous time wasn't satisfactory. If my chin was covered with stubble, I wouldn't have felt so perplexed. It's because there is so little of it that I want to have all of them removed for good. Just can't be bothered for now.

Free ride home~

Got another free ride home today. To make things better, I walked back home. Zero transportation costs! Haha~ Another step towards my goal of cutting costs.

My toe has finally healed! Yippee! It has been a long time since I saw smooth, renewed skin. However, my happiness was shory-lived. I noticed a small blister and burst it. The force of the compressed liquid caused the blister to burst with such force that the liquid squirted onto my forehead. Sounds gross, doesn't it? I really have no idea when it will heal fully. Maybe I really need to see a dermatologist.

I was busy converting 16 pages worth of text and diagrams into soft format. Man, it was a real chore. It sure reminded the time when I had to translate a whole slideshow into Mandarin. I tried to asked around for the soft copy but there isn't any. Oh well, I odn't blame them. The document is dated back to 2000. It was really tedious and boring. I managed to get them done before knock-off anyway.

The difficult part was the micro-design part. The tiny words and diagrams. I'm a meticulous person who is overly concerned with details and this is what bogs me down. I was really glad that Microsoft Word has the ability to expand the viewable text to 500%. I used up to 200% though.

Overdue update

Yeah, finally back here. A couple of persons kept bugging me about this overdue blog. I wasn't online on Sunday as I was the duty clerk and was in camp the whole day. I was too tired to update anything yesterday night. Man, if I had Internet connection in my office, it makes life a whole lot easier. I still remember the times when I just trotted my way to SAFTI library and use the broadband connection...

I feel a lot better now. The extra few hours of sleep sure worked its magic. My ulcers are not improving though. The one on the tongue still hurts and another one is emerging on my lip. I contemplated using salt but I was too lazy to do it. To use salt would render me helpless, salivating and tearing for some 10 min. I have better things to do. Maybe try salt tomorrow.

Spent the entire Sunday watching VCDs. I was too tired to study. All my body and mind allowed me to do was to slump on the couch and laugh at the occasional punchline. It sucks to do duty. When can I ever stop doing duty? Not as long as I'm in SAF, that is.

So like, I bought a Panasonic DMC-F1EN digital camera. Co-owned it with Qing Qing. Not so bad la, considering that we each forked out 300 bucks and it came with some free stuff. It looks kind of cool too. Packaging is really important. I bet it will be a stunner when we whip it out for use. Haha~

I was in the lift when I noticed the urine detector sign. It was always there and whenever I looked at it, a thought would cross my mind. This thought would be quickly banished by other thoughts and I would not venture to explore it further. I did otherwise today. I wondered if the detector was a hoax or not? How does it work? I saw patches of vomit on the floor but it did not trigger off any alarm. Apparently, the alarm doesn't rely on moisture. If not, the lift would have jammed everytime someone vomit or when there is a rainy day when everyone walks in with wet footwear.

Maybe the detector is equipped with urea acid detecting device! Urea acid is prevalent in urine itself and it could be the trigger. If so, can the alarm be triggered if I peed in a pail and splash the pail into the lift? Maybe it is just a simple surveillance camera. Then there are bound to be chances when the sentry is not looking and loopholes appear for people to pee.

I think it's just a signboard to scare people. Just like those signboards that shows an intruder being shot on the fences of military installations. For goodness sake! The sentries aren't even armed with live rounds! For those who are indeed armed, they have to follow a strict set of ROE (Rules Of Engagement) and are not allowed to shot upon sight. Unless you perform some threatening acts (which I am not going to divludge) that is.