Brothers in Aluminum

» Written on April 13, 2008 at 2:21 PM «

m113I’ve actually managed to ascertain certain aspects of my new vocation in the army, and upon such relevations vast, I think that I can safely determine that, to a large extent, my new job will probably not have me dead from heart failure at the end of it. It may, however, leave me needing prosthetics for just about every organ in my sad excuse of bio-machinery that you might otherwise refer to as a body.

That was not really a joke, in case you were wondering.

My new job essentially entails me the responsibility of taking a 12 ton vehicle and putting it through its tracks hard enough to give even Fernando Alonso a run for his money.

Seriously, one of my fellow drivers does exactly that, and while it’s rather exhilarating to watch a mass of aluminum charge down a dirt road, leaving tracks etched and smoke billowed worthy of Sonic the hedgehog, it’s also rather disconcerting to guide one of these benemoths and have to constantly check-six to make sure you aren’t about to become the next dirt mark on the asphalt.

Before all else, I must first rationalize my lack of updates ever since I got my posting notice from the decidedly unintuitive Army portal. I’ve been getting back a little late these days, even though I am not required to stay in-camp, and thus I’ve mostly dedicated my time to Team Fortress 2 and Call of Duty 4, which I’ve only just recently acquired. Lacking any artistic endeavours to speak of recently, I decided to place updates on hold until I had something other than raw text to substantiate a rant.

Ever since I entered my new camp over at Sungei Gedong (which is, incidentally, the most remote location on the whole of this island), I’ve seen what some might call the other extreme of the Army life. Throughout my Basic Military Training, my company and I were subjected to all sorts of horrors, some I had already expected, some I thoroughly despised, all of them deemed necessary by higher powers for shaping us into the soldiers they envisioned in their recruitment brochures.

In Gedong, however, I was immediately struck by several aspects of the enlisted men there that piqued my curiosity. The lack of marching, or for that matter, drills. The muddy, crusted boots covering even officers’ feet. Scroungy uniforms, with hastily-rolled up sleeves. The ease with which the men were at, walking around, making jokes, strolling towards fall-in during a roll call.

Of course, I later confirmed my observations with a fellow driver: my vocation’s discipline and regimentation was “different” than that of BMT. Yeah, no shit. I quickly discovered, though, that such perceived lack of standards did not mean that the rough waters of military life had completely calmed down. It is true, however, that the lightning has finally stopped. Now I just have to watch out for sharks.

Our platoon had a recent unit cohesion exercise, in which we proceeded over to a moderately posh hotel’s dian xin restaurant to enjoy a cachophony of Chinese treats, all oily, all delicious, and more importantly, all of it on the company’s payroll, though each of us had to fork out an additional fifteen greens for some arbitrary reason.

Whatever. It was a goddamned fucking buffet; even a $30 charge would have been fine given the amount of sustenance each person was ingesting, especially if you count the activities that we had later on.

Naturally, I brought my D50 along as I do on such occasions (it was on a Friday, normally a work day, but obviously we’re not going to barge into a restaurant all wearing our uniforms and berets), which proved to be a fatal error once my warrant officer saw me with it. He promptly ordered requested me to help the platoon take some shots of the event, which, as I found out later, was to appease the HQ folk who would undoubtedly be looking for proof that we had actually gone for said cohesion and not stayed at home playing TF2 or something.

You, dear reader, naturally know where this is going.

I’ve got a few other events to talk about that transpired during my Netizen absence, but I think I’ll savour said flavours until the time is ripe, the more to have backup content of sorts when I would otherwise have nothing else to write about.

   

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