Kaleidoscope #5 | July 2020

 

Kaleidoscope: Issue 5, dated July 2020

SINGAPORE

2020 General Election (GE2020)

The general election is a form of a parliamentary election, where all incumbent members of the parliament (MPs) are dissolved and an opportunity arises for all able men and women to become election candidates to compete over their position in parliament. Usually, most of the dominating party (the People’s Action Party) will still remain, so in order to ensure a good level of representativeness of Singaporeans, there are other positions such as non-candidate MPs (NCMPs) and nominated MPs (NMPs) to bring in different people who will introduce fresh perspectives to the conversations surrounding the governance of the country.

First, the results:

Of interest is the process of the election this year, not the results. This year’s general election is a breath of fresh air for a few reasons:

New norms for voting - time bands, self-inking pens and more eco-friendly booths

Since 2019, the Elections Department has pushed for changes to make the voting experience better for everyone. These included polling booths made of recyclable materials like cardboard (though it is still a prototype), self-inking pens (basically a stamp which is more elderly-friendly than normal pens), and more electronic documents such as online forms for nomination of candidates as well as electronic voting slips.

Thanks to the pandemic, more safety measures have to be in place. Recommended time bands are given in the voting slips mailed to those eligible for voting to avoid crowding at polling sites (since most people are still told to stay at home then). However, this could not stop long queues from forming due to safe distancing measures. Many voters complained of how inefficient the whole process was, and some were told to go home and come back later due to the long queues.The voting time was even extended from 8 PM to 10 PM at the last minute, causing a lot of dissatisfaction among voters and the opposition parties.

Campaigning goes digital

Due to the pandemic (again), most of the campaigning have to be brought online. Still, the human factor and the intimacy that can only be realised in face-to-face meetings are still extremely crucial. As a result, we see political candidates engaging with people in the heartlands - doing home visits and making their rounds in hawker centres and wet markets.

The digital space had brought in more engagement and conversations during the campaigning period. There were even memes surrounding candidates who stood out, such as Jamus Lim, who was the sensation online after his performance at the televised debates. Such conversations showed that Singaporeans are actively involved in politics, and are open to discussing their opinions online.

However, digital elections can have a lot of risks too, as evidenced by the 2016 US Presidential Elections, which revealed signs of intervention from other countries through hacking of emails plus the creation of widely-circulated misinformation and fake news online. We cannot even trust videos anymore because of deep fakes, where artificial intelligence can create convincing scenes of any person speaking without it actually happening.

More women running for candidacy

39 of the candidates are women, which is the highest number of female candidates in any general election. After the elections, more than 20 of them will enter parliament, making up nearly one third of elected seats, which is a major improvement from the past few election cycles.

Female representation in the parliament is important. According to an article by Channel NewsAsia:

“There was a conscious choice to include more women candidates in this term of Parliament as women bring important issues to the table and also offer different perspectives,” said Ms Sun Xueling, the Punggol West SMC MP-elect and the Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Home Affairs and National Development.

The same article gives a good example of how female MPs usually bring up issues like caregiving that are unrelated to economic development, and pushes for more urgency in developing policies that seek to address such issues.

“Female politicians are known to be more inclined towards engaging on topics outside the traditional bread-and-butter concerns like the economy, said Ms Nydia Ngiow, a senior director at public policy consultancy BowerGroupAsia.

Citing the example of MacPherson MP-elect Tin Pei Ling, Ms Ngiow said that the parliamentarian has championed issues that were not widely discussed such as mental health and difficulties facing single parents.

Her work appears to have paid off. This election, Ms Tin won 71.7 percent of the votes in her constituency - more than she garnered in 2015, and putting her among the candidates that won with the highest election margins this year. “

Opposition parties now have more influence and powers

Workers’ Party (WP) chief Pritam Singh has been appointed by the Prime Minister as the Leader of the Opposition. This will give him more staff support and resources to carry out his duties. With such a decision, Singapore will be able to move away from a one-party state and see more balance in policy-making, as well as increased competition in the local political scene, which brings out the best in future batches of MPs. Although the concept of opposition leader has been emerging since the last few GEs, with opposition parties trying to band together in their face-off against the PAP, having it as an official position is a first for Singapore.

This is slightly off-topic, but there has been a coalition that opposition parties have been striving for in 2018, which did not go very well. It was inspired by the elections of other countries such as Malaysia and those in the West, which saw opposition parties reign over their countries. Read more here.

So what can Mr Singh look forward to?

Privileges:

• His speaking time will be doubled from 20 minutes to 40 minutes, which is on par with office holders.

• An office in Parliament, staff support and resources, as well as additional allowance.

• He will generally be given the right of first response among MPs to ask the lead question of ministers on policies, Bills and motions in Parliament. This will be at the discretion of the Speaker and subject to existing speaking conventions.

Duties:

• Leading and organising the opposition’s parliamentary business.

• Possibly: attending official state functions and taking part in visits and meetings with members of the Government and the public service.

• Occasionally: receive briefings by the Government on confidential issues, and the matters to be briefed will be determined by the Government

These duties and privileges are based on the conventions and practices of other Westminster-style parliamentary systems, but reflects adaptations to Singapore's political and parliamentary context.

Personally, I find it quite heartening to see the members of the opposition working hand-in-hand with the ruling party to improve how Singapore is governed. I can only hope that as Singapore is able to establish an identity for herself, her political structure will evolve to be more mature and empower talented, caring people to influence decisions that will shape the society of the future. Perhaps, it can even become more robust and innovative, with parts that are uniquely Singaporean, just like our financial system.

National Day SG Together Pack

With the cancellation of plans that involves hosting this year’s celebrations at The Float @ Marina Bay, the original fun pack was repurposed into the SG Together Pack, which would be available for collection by every Singaporean and PR household starting from 20 July 2020, Monday.

I was involved in the packing of this too! More details can be found in upcoming posts of the “My Year 2020” series (will be linked there when the post is out).

The pack has received much attention in its conception stages - but for the wrong reasons.

The opt-out petitioning

The question that everyone wants to know about was, “Do we really need that pack of things as a physical token to commemorate this year’s National Day?”

A lot of Singaporeans believed that the resources poured into the making of these packs could be put into better use, amidst the pandemic crisis. Hence, there was a petition directed at the organising committee to allow Singaporeans to opt-out from this initiative.

https://www.change.org/p/ndp-2020-opt-out-from-receiving-ndp-2020-funpack

Yes, their voices were heard, and as Defence Minister Dr Ng Eng Hen mentioned in his parliamentary address, the production will be scaled down to cover only 80% of households, as compared to around 90% to 95% in previous years. In addition, uncollected funpacks will be donated to homes and institutions who would like to have it.

However, the Minister raised a good point about the need to have these packs. Prudence is necessary, especially when the nation’s finances have been stretched. But it cannot be at the expense of overcoming the mood of despondency that has caused us to be further apart from one another. As with the unwavering, and if I may, defiant spirit that Singaporeans have shown ever since the inaugural National Day Parade in 1966, the unity and collective confidence for the future that it engendered among Singaporeans was priceless.

That brings me to the significance of the SG Together pack this year.

Significance of the pack

As I was involved in the packing of the pack this year, I could tell that it was designed with Singaporeans in mind.

Let us start with the bag. The visual design of the bag was done by students who were mostly at Primary School level. No wonder these innocent-looking designs spark joy in me. What is more impressive is that pupils with disabilities also contributed to the designs. I was told that some of the drawings were done by the visually impaired students. What a powerful message for those feeling depressed under the bleak days of COVID-19! To learn more about the different types of designs, click here: https://www.nylon.com.sg/2020/07/ndp-2020-singapore-together-pack-whats-inside-and-where-to-get-yours/ 

The bag is environmentally friendly too. The cloth is quite durable and my parents like to reuse it as a recyclable bag when they shop for groceries. The bag itself may look a little flimsy, but it has a velcro at the top to help close the bag, which neatly makes up for the flimsy appearance by ensuring nothing in the bag accidentally spills out.

Moving on to the items in the bag. There were very practical things like a thermometer and quite a number of face masks inside. There were also a lot of Singapore flags and symbols included in the items for us to feel that we are a part of the nation. I bet they look lovely in photos and videos. The snacks were quite healthy (biscuits, chips or energy bars, depending on what you get) and the drinks were replaced with cans of chrysanthemum drink. I loved this change because it would be a great help to those who would want to binge-eat during this stressful period and lacked awareness of healthier alternatives to the usual snacks, plus the aluminium cans for the drinks are one of the most recyclable materials out there, satisfying environmental advocacy groups who wished for a reduction in single-use plastics in the pack.

Although there were not many things in the pack, it was a physical touchpoint from the organising committee to all Singaporeans, and symbolised a whole-of-nation effort to celebrate how far our country has come despite all the challenges that were in the way. In this sense, the pack was an uplifting gift that would hopefully bring smiles for all Singaporeans.

WORLD

NASA Mars Rover Launch

As you and I may get tired from reading through all these lines and lines of text, here is a quick video to bring us up to date on what this Mars Rover is all about:

NASA’s Perseverance rover, the fourth of its kind to be launched to the red planet, has taken off in July 2020. It is expected to land on Mars by February 2021.

What will the rover bring us?

In short, it will bring back soil and rock samples from Mars. What is this for? 

According to NASA, a drill on the rover will collect core samples of promising Martian rocks and soil, then will deposit them in a "cache“ (inside very clean tubes to avoid potential contamination from Earth’s microbes) on the planet's surface. A potential future robotic mission could pick them up and ferry them to Earth for analysis in laboratories by equipment too large or bulky to go to Mars. Perseverance will also help us learn more and test technologies that could benefit future human expeditions to Mars. For instance, it brought along Ingenuity, a robotic flying machine, which will be doing test flights on Mars. This will pave the way for similar machines to be used to aid rovers, landers and even humans in future exploration missions.

DISAMBIGUATION: landers vs rovers Landers are spacecraft that are designed to land on the surfaces of another planet and last long enough to telemeter data back on Earth. Rovers are vehicles that are activated upon reaching another planet. On their way there, they will be part of the payload in spacecraft.  One special thing about rovers that aim to land on Mars is that they need some way to decelerate when they enter Mars’ atmosphere to avoid itself from being fried alive by the heat generated from the air resistance. Find out more about the excruciating details of landing on Mars here: https://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/timeline/edl/  Asides from landers and rovers, there are also many other types of spacecraft. Fortunately, NASA has helpfully provided definitions to classify spacecraft: https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/postsecondary/features/F_Spacecraft_Classification.html

Why is such a mission important?

Under NASA's ongoing Mars Exploration Program, previous missions have helped us look for signs of habitable conditions in ancient times. The program's series of missions is helping us answer key questions about the potential for life on Mars.  Perseverance will take it one step further by searching for signs of past microbial life itself. This will be done through the search for biosignatures through studying the texture of the rock and soil samples, as well as the composition and distribution of organic molecules. Biosignatures are patterns of texture or substance that require life to form.

We can also look forward to a richer experience of Mars than we have now, as the rover is equipped with microphones that allow us to hear the sounds on Mars, and it will have many high-end tools to research more into the various questions of scientific interest on Mars.

As this is the closest to finding definitive proof of life on Mars, we will finally be able to answer the question of whether we are alone in this universe. There are countless planets out there who have habitable landscapes that are suited for life, but only Earth is currently inhabited by living creatures. If there is life on Mars, everything we know about the origins of life on Earth could change.

Other missions bound for Mars 

July has been a pretty busy period for Mars exploration. I did not plan to include the other missions in this post, but since the Seeker videos have touched on them, I will give them a quick look.

Other than NASA, Japan’s very own space agency, JAXA, has sent its spacecraft to land on Phobos, one of the two moons that orbit Mars. This will finally unravel the mystery behind the origins of Mars’ moons.

For the red planet itself, China and the United Arab Emirates have also launched their spacecraft toward there. The main highlight for China’s mission was that it was the first to send off a rover, lander and orbiter to Mars all in one go. While for the UAE, the star is its objective to better understand Mars’ atmosphere and geology by recording them for a few Martian years.

Find out more through these videos:

Japan: Martian Moons eXploration (MMX)	China: Tianwen-1 probe	UAE: Hope Probe

California’s Wildfires

California has been battling wildfires for some time now, and in the months to come, the fires would only get worse. This natural disaster is unprecedented in scale and complexity, so understanding such incidents will help us to be much better prepared for future waves.

Epic and record-breaking

The fire has been raging, burning millions and millions of acres. In October, months after this issue of the Kaleidoscope is supposed to have been published, the fires have now burned more than 4 million acres, a record for the most acres burned in a single year. The figure, which equals an area larger than Connecticut, is more than twice the acreage burned in the state’s previous record-worst fire season, in 2018.

In addition, due in part to human-caused warming and a drying climate, California recorded its first “gigafire” since modern records began in the early 1930s. The August Complex, a group of fires burning in and around the Mendocino National Forest, has torched more than 1 million acres and counting. 

Effects of the fires

Loss of land, lives and properties, toxic air, the sky turning red… All these descriptions are measly in compared to the visual impact images from the fires have given us.

Here is a video that gives a comprehensive coverage of the wildfire situation:

Causes of the fires

Such devastation begs the question of how these fires came about in the first place. The New York Times gave a detailed overview of the 4 main factors that have contributed to the fires, and over here, I will be expressing them in simple English:

1. Climate change - global warming causes vegetation and basically anything that can serve as fuel to be burnt up to be drier. Drier things catch fire from a spark more easily. That spark could come from lightning or humans setting fire, intentionally or unintentionally.

2. People - downed power lines, the vehicles’ rim scraping against the road surface and fireworks have all been contributing to the sparks that are needed to set vegetation and other objects ablaze. More people have chosen to live in areas that are near to forests (term for it is “urban-wildlife interface”), increasing the likelihood that some accident might cause the vegetation to blow up in flames.

3. Fire suppression - in the history of firefighting in the US, much of the vegetation avoided being burnt away, but that led to an accumulation for more vegetation that fed materials to keep the fires going. As such, now controlled fires are taking place to get rid of unneeded material that will contribute to the spread of fires.

4. Strong winds (Santa Ana winds) - each fall, strong gusts known as the Santa Ana winds bring dry air from the Great Basin area of the West into Southern California. These winds drive the second fire season which is thought to be from October to April. As these winds bring fires to urban, built-up areas, the economic losses in this season tend to be more severe.

 V 

Official release of Life Challenges #4: The Gamification Challenge

 

I N      C O N J U N C T I O N     W I T H

Life Challenges #4 & Habitica Crossover #3 | Gamification Challenge

Part 1: Release of challenge

Background of this challenge

Have you ever done or experienced anything boring before, so much so that you really wanted to doze off or do something else? That was the kind of feeling I had when I went about doing most tasks in a day. I started to dread most of the work I did and wanted to dive into something that felt good, like going on social media and finding out the high life my friends were having, or bingeing on shows and manga, which mostly ended up to be a waste of time.

But before we think, “Life’s like that. It sucks. Suck it up,” let us give ourselves the chance to entertain the thought of making the most monotonous tasks more interesting. I did a bit of Googling, and it hit me back with this term, “gamification”. 

The gaming industry is massive, with games being increasingly popular and engaging. Games have allowed us to see traditionally boring tasks like walking, reading and doing housework in a new light, by employing some of the features in actual video games that affect us psychologically.

Seeing something that could be boring turned into something that everyone wants to be let in might sound far-fetched, but take a look at how this presentation (on presentations) was turned into fun games: 

As such, I have started exploring this concept with Habitica (you can learn more about my exploits in the “Habitica Crossover” series). However, I became disenchanted with it after some time because it did not offer much engagement for this. It is hard for me to be invested in pretty pixels without a compelling story to back them up, and only be focused on logging in my tasks and watching my points gauges get filled up. For gamification, this RPG for being productive was doing its job, but it was not good enough for me. I wanted more customisability and unpredictability in the mechanics of the game.

Description of the challenge

Overarching purpose

To help myself in staying accountable and productive in completing this goal, I have set up a motto for this challenge. It is semper prorsum,  a Latin saying for "always forward". Through gamification, I hope to create something that I can look forward to, be it to see what kind of rewards and achievements I will be unlocking, to look out for what crazy challenge awaits me to be conquered, or to find out how much progress I have made in my work. In this way, instead of being held back by past mistakes and fears, I can take the one step forward in the direction of my goals that is set to generate countless steps more.

Having a cool motto is nice because it can serve as a catchphrase to remind myself about how deeply related the challenge is to my life, which makes it too significant for it to be ignored and be left on the back burner.

The specifics

I will be giving myself until the end of this year to complete this challenge, since trying to gamify my life from scratch is a really challenging undertaking.

For my first phase, I will complete a system where it will quantify what I do and develop some rewards and penalties (so that the reinforcement of any behaviour that makes me more productive can be done in both positive and negative ways).

For my second phase, I will make use of analytics tools such as point gauges and graphs to make my progress behaviour and motivate myself to improve on my previous performance in my tasks.

For my third phase, I will be integrating these personal systems into Habitica. With the points or rewards I accumulated in these systems, I can use them in exchange to make myself move faster in the game. Also, I can measure up to how another Habitica user has been progressing to add in the element of competition, so that I can catch up to others. Finally, by mixing my own games and the mechanics of Habitica, it will make the element of play stand out more in every task that I do.

As I could not wait to get on this challenge, I have already started this in August. However, it is going to take quite a lot of time before I can conclude what I am doing in this challenge, because I have to test these systems out and determine whether they are fun enough for me to progress smoothly in my work, but not so addictive that I push off the important work to get on with the game.

In my next post under “Life Challenges”, I will share some sneak peeks of what my gamified task management systems are like, and what kind of features I have built in to hack my own psychology that drives me to work harder.

Semper prorsum.  V 

Inspirations from Habiticians! (and official release of new blog!)

Habitica Crossover: Issue #2

What makes Habitica so great is its diverse community of players who want to get things done. In the time since I restarted using Habitica this year, I have found myself in a guild where I stayed active for some time. In addition, I have tried out some challenges and used the guilds and taverns to find out more about the awesome people they have there.

I was involved in a guild named as “Inspiration Station”. What it mainly does is to allow members to uplift each other by sharing quotes, poems and stories. The guild master motivates everyone to do so by giving out gems. I received some too, but the amount of gems I have is so little that it is not quite enough to get anything. In addition to the gems, the appreciation given by others through their likes and replies really boosted my morale and drove me to commit more time in searching or coming up with good quotes.

However, as the length of my posts became longer and I can’t quite seem to make up my mind on how many quotes I should share, I have since shifted my attention to maintaining a quote blog, on which I lovingly create collections of quotes. Link to blog here: https://embersinspiration.blogspot.com/ 

Hence, this guild master soon became my inspiration.

That level was simply crazy! It is quite rare to meet someone who has exceeded level 100! Each level requires easily hundreds to thousands of experience points. I cannot imagine how many tasks this person has to check off to get to this stage.

I also looked around in the tavern to get to know some strangers. Many of their profiles have their life stories and some of their achievements was mind-blowing. But before that, allow me to introduce the one behind the well-known “Use Case Spotlights” guild and the column that goes by the same name on the official Habitica blog.  Their posts could easily reach many Habitica users.

I was amazed by the number of blogs and book reads shanaqui maintains. And I saw some lingo that I have not encountered before. Time to search up on these! Part of the fun about playing games, even on gamified productivity platforms like Habitica, is that you feel like you feel good about learning new “made-up” things even though these have no bearing in the real world (unless the community of famers become large enough or the game interesting itself for people to attach value to it; then the game becomes more of a commodity than a pastime).

I did not know that profiles can become so colourful that they put a smile on your face. It seemed like many Habiticians have many things going on for them. For me, I have the same situation too. I definitely have enough things to do and habits to maintain to get myself to level 100!

Back to the amazing users I discovered while scrolling through the Tavern.

It seems like the profiles I stumbled upon (I chose tiered users and high level ones to find out more about) usually present themselves as solo players or guild leaders. Maybe being in a party may not be as common as I thought.

This Habitician is a legend because of what comes next in the profile.

Through this serving wench's being overwhelmingly above my current level, and reaching heights that I have not even imagined before, I now learn that when one’s level is sufficiently high (maybe at 100?), one can rebirth and choose another class (be it a mage, warrior, rogue or healer). And it is kind of daring to start from all over again just for a class switch in order to get limited edition equipment. Just HOW NICE are these pixels?

On a side note, that pink coloured tree must be the beautiful cherry blossoms that stand to be admired during spring. Unfortunately, there are not quite enough pixels to faithfully recreate the shape of the sakura flower.

To sum up, I could not have sustained myself on Habitica for long without these amazing people. Unfortunately, the stats and characters that aim to simulate a role-playing game are too superficial to imbue much meaning to checking off your task, and not many challenges have stories that are interesting enough to get people hooked to fulfilling their tasks and acquire their next purpose in life.

The finale of the Bookworm Challenge

 

Post identifier: Life Challenges #3: Bookworm Challenge, Part 3

After 3 months of painstaking effort, I have finally produced good news for the Bookworm Challenge - I managed to complete the goals that I set out to do (read a book, do a reading summary and read the news for at least two days in a week), even though it took much longer than I had expected.

Results of the challenge: A partial success.

The task of reading itself was not that difficult. I just needed to be consistent in how long I read and how much time I spend reading. But being consistent was not easy because of other competing priorities and commitments. By the time the training of the day had concluded and I had some time to myself, I realised that I was usually too tired to be able to understand what I was reading.

This was especially the case for the task that required me to complete reading a book. I had 210 pages and just reading a couple of pages would take me an hour. Progress was slow, especially in the middle part of the book because I felt that I was so far away from my goals that I would despair and give up on this challenge. Fortunately, I gave myself more deadlines to help me see this challenge as a priority, and tracked my progress to motivate myself.

Completing the reading summary was relatively easy. All it took was for me to type out the key takeaways in bullet points for a new article in one sitting. Only a few hours of work was required for this.

I also had some trouble with reading the news on a regular basis. They took up mobile data and I only had enough time to scroll through headlines before I felt less interested. I think reading the news can be the main focus for the sequel to this challenge. I get the importance of reading the news as a means of staying informed so as to make better decisions in my life, but I get overwhelmed by the many things that are going on that I have trouble concentrating on understanding current affairs.

The lessons I have gathered after reading the book (which was written in Chinese) would be published in my Chinese blog. As for the reading summary, it will be uploaded soon on the Vincent’s Academy website. When these things are ready, the links for them will be appended here. As these outcomes were delayed for too long, I cannot say that I have completed this challenge successfully.

Delays after delays - what went wrong again?

There were a few weeks when I just got exasperated by the many things going on at the same time, which drove me to give up and indulge myself with all sorts of distractions for days on end. After a while, I eventually realised that instead of feeling good, I felt more guilty and unsatisfied instead, because losing myself by mindlessly watching videos and seeking forms of entertainment and pleasure was not what I had wanted. I got back on track by measuring my progress in the various things that I got involved in, and put in more effort in planning my time so as to maximise my productivity.

Most of the time, it seemed that reading was not so high on my priority list. I also had the thought of delaying it till my weekends because I thought that it would be easy to catch up on the pages that I have missed. This was blind optimism unsupported by any knowledge of how much work I need to put in to complete the reading. When I got back to reading the book I started on a more regular basis, I realised how wrong I was - reading just a couple of pages took me up to an hour, and reading a chapter or two could easily let me spend half a day!

This was also why I had not been updating my blog as regularly as I liked to. The permanence of the blog as a space to write out my thoughts and the lack of viewership made it hard to nurture any kind of urgency in completing my posts. It became a side hustle that was not unlike an untended backyard, with wild grasses growing unchecked, flowers and potted plants withering, and branches becoming tangled and messy. I was always looking for some suitable time, such as the period of time where I had a long break, before I would pick up blogging again. The key to overcoming this was to develop systems that helped me to keep track of all my tasks and help me be more in control of how I spend my time.

Unexpected consequence of this challenge: systems to maximise my productivity

As I became increasingly frustrated with my lack of productivity. I took breaks from this Life Challenge and worked on the upcoming one, which was about gamification.

In the process, I created a role-playing game that had a lot of features, which purpose was to encourage players to check off their tasks in order to get access to more items, features and stories. It was meant as a healthy form of recreation to get a change of pace from the usual grind.

I also devised a motivation system and assigned points to my tasks and habits based on the duration it took me to complete them and how much value I place in them. This was integrated with yet another with my creations, the Commitment Tracker, which was a spreadsheet that monitors all the tasks that come up on a regular basis (these include habits, dailies and pseudo-habits).

Lastly, I brought in these new systems and the task management systems that I have already been using, such as Habitica, Google Keep and Google Calendar, together by visualising them on a flowchart map. This is what my entire Productivity System will look like.

More elaboration and sneak peeks of these systems will be revealed in my upcoming “Life Challenges” series post, which will be introducing a new Life Challenge.

My Year 2020 Series | Part 3: Unit Life in the Army during the Coronavirus Pandemic

 

Part 3: Unit Life in the Army during the Coronavirus Pandemic

My BMT journey came to an end with an extremely tiring 24 km Victory March, the parade for the presentation of my division patch for mono-intake recruits like me and the momentous Passing Out Parade which changed me from a recruit to a private. I came back home, legs shaking, back aching, uniform smelling, and eventually passed out on my bed (disclaimer: I showered and had lunch) for a solid 6 hours in the afternoon.

While waiting for my unit posting, I got to enjoy the longest break I ever had ever since I enlisted into the Army. That break lasted a week, and was called “block leave”. During that long break, I had the time to sort out my personal life. I signed up for a scholarship, did reflections on my performance as a recruit, did a stocktaking of my army items and caught up on the shows that I wanted to watch.

I made a pretty depressing dedication on Instagram, noting how weak and helpless I felt during the tiring route march, thanks to my tendency to be affected under the heat easily. I took the opportunity to thank those who have helped me along the way too. I append the caption here:

END OF BASIC MILITARY TRAINING For me, this phase of life ended on a sad note. I did my best, pushed myself beyond my physical limits in my fatigued body, and ended up in a wreck. Yet, I believe I have grown as a person. During the route march, I had non-stop sweating. The heat I felt was so bad that it made me giddy. I felt so warm and so thirsty that I thought I would be able to suck the whole of the Singapore river dry. I learnt to focus less on the embarrassment of being the only person to take off my helmet (and later even my field pack that I carried) and channel my attention to the kind people looking out for me to keep myself sane. I thought I could walk for very long distances, for I spent much of my free time in that way while I was still a civilian. But by the time I arrived at the floating platform, I could barely stand up straight. My knees kept on bending, and my body swayed, about to faint any time. I tried to forget about the pain, and just move as fast as I can without being concerned about looking like a zombie. In the end, the results matter the most, all the other things are insignificant. Unfortunately, I could not attend the parade with my rifle. I only made it for the re-entry, where I did the pledge, anthem and cheer. Still, I was too tired to notice my surroundings and missed the platoon photo. I learnt not to despair, and did the things that only I could do at the time, that being helping my company mates to adjust themselves before the re-entry part of the parade. I could only receive a closure from this mad phase of my National Service thanks to the efforts of the commanders and my platoon mates. Thank you. I will always be grateful for their taking care of me. And sorry, for not being able to make you guys proud and kept on disappointing you. Fortunately, I had no regrets from my BMT journey. I did whatever I could, and understood more about myself from the success and failures that resulted from my actions.

Saying farewell to my BMT section

Things were pretty messy after the parade ended. Everyone was tired, and I even missed out on the platoon photo because I wanted to go home so badly. We did not really manage to say goodbye to each other properly. Therefore, my BMT section planned to have lunch together to get in touch for one last time.

The meeting was on a hot Tuesday afternoon, at a Korean BBQ restaurant in Orchard Central. We did nothing much but to talk and eat. I had quite a big appetite, so for almost 4 hours straight, I kept on eating, barbequing and taking more food and drinks. I have tried out most of the food and drinks, and have also learned how to cook a soft-boiled egg. Not everyone was so into eating, some spent the time mostly on their phones and some took a smoke break.

Anyway, by the end of it, we were pretty happy with how much we ate. Some of my section mates decided to linger around the area, while I headed to Mount Faber SAFRA e-mart to stock up on supplies - only to come back home empty-handed because it was closed on Tuesdays. At least, I got to enjoy the massage chair there, so the trip was not completely wasted.

As block leave ends, school holidays start and postings are released

My family had relatives over who had come to gather, have fun and eat meals together. These were relatives with my younger cousins since the March school holidays started and they had time on their hands. The gathering felt pretty festive and reminded me of the reunion dinners we had on Chinese New Year. For me, I exchanged pleasantries with the guests and mostly kept to my own devices, since I got hooked on a few anime and Korean drama shows.

On a bright Sunday morning, the much-anticipated unit postings were released online. I was relieved to be posted into infantry as a trooper, but part of me felt bad about the opportunity cost of having forsaken the path to a commander. At the end, I rejoiced, knowing that as a trooper, I would probably have less duties and could have more rest time.

New faces, same commanders

Being placed into a mono-intake batch meant that most of the people would walk the rest of the NS journey together with me after BMT. As such, most of our commanders were familiar faces. There were surprises - my platoon had a new platoon sergeant who is a good-looking Indian lady, and there are quite a lot of men from other companies in BMT posted into my company.

It took some time before we broke the ice and began to mix around more. At the start, there was a lot of explaining to do and lessons to go through for the new people. Fortunately, everyone is a quick learner and we get along well with each other. It was heartening to see the new guys open up more and become more involved in what we do at our unit.

In a couple of months after being posted to my unit, there were even more new and familiar faces joining us in our NS journeys. These were mainly the fresh batch of commanders who went to training institutes after BMT to learn how to command people.

Being a rifleman in an infantry unit - during a pandemic

Being a rifleman meant that I had to carry my SAR 21 rifle wherever there was a mission and to take down enemies or defend an objective. Since I was a reserve, I switched to the semi-automatic weapon when its original holder had to retire for a while due to knee injury. My unit is a motorised infantry, so I can expect less walking and spending more time on the terrexes in future, when training and missions gradually introduce the motorised aspect of operations. For the rest of the time, there were physical activities to build up my physical and combat fitness, and also cleaning and maintaining of the equipment and living quarters. We would also celebrate festivals together and commemorate milestones with parades.

Training changed drastically under the Covid-19 measures. The amount of movement we can do at any one time has been reduced. That meant when moving out of camp for training, everyone had to do it batch by batch and that was especially the case for live firing exercises. As such, there were some sessions that had to be conducted during the weekends where there were no more available slots on other days. Everyone also had to abide by safe distancing rules and wear their masks. Coloured tape started appearing everywhere to guide people on where to stand, and “spider webs” made up of paper strips demarcated different parts of a building to their respective functional groups. I welcomed the change because it meant that the tempo of training had been lowered and that we also did not need to camouflage on our faces in the field. As for large scale events like parades, they had to be scaled down significantly - only those that were involved were to be in the mustering square, while the rest stayed within their individual functional groups in the building.

As Singapore started moving on to Phase 2 of exiting the Circuit Breaker period, things gradually returned to normal. The camouflage was back on, and more of us could gather in any place at any point of time. Still, there were stringent measures in place. These included the enforcement of mask-wearing and social distancing, frequent temperature taking, banning most sports and games, making declarations using SafeEntry and not mixing around with other functional groups.