In Continuum.

You took back that little pink card, you signed those documents and you gave that handshake. In truth, though, those were just procedures you go through on the last day of your military term, not to tell you that you've completed your time but to remind you that there are more to come for the next ten years of your life. As if the newly implemented law of shortening the reservist period from fourteen years to ten, it is going to make a difference at all. They like to reel us out and back into the ocean like cods, but never willing to let go of the line because they want to pull us back again just for the fun of it. Perhaps it is the cheap thrill of seeing the old army boys suffer all over again on a yearly basis, back in camp and doing the things that they so happily ran away from so many months ago. They call it a duty, and the most of us would suck it up and just roll along with the punches. But when they are calling you back four to five times a year just for you to stain alert and ready to sacrifice yourself for the country, the line reeled out into the ocean really hasn't been that long. As long as you are still in the vicinity, the country is not going to let go of your noose anytime soon, because they are power hungry people and they want you to be their cheap labor for the next ten years or more.

A friend of mine, Naz, received a call last night, telling him that he has two army briefings to attend, an in-camp training scheduled for May and another ops-manning in July at Amber Alert, which is basically the euphemism of "The country is almost in crisis! Be ready at anytime of the day to sacrifice for the glories nation of Singapore!" It's a very cute idea if you think about it, to color-code the national level of crisis in different color schemes. But the colors really don't matter, because the only reason why Singapore would be under the Amber alert would be if they are pretending to be under threat. That is always the case, because the Singapore Arms Forces really is just playtime with plastic knives and spoons, not to mention plastic ham and cheese sandwiches coupled with a plastic hard-boiled egg. They'd like to think that they are always ready for war, always ready to aid some other war-ridden country out in the Middle East, to show their neighbors that we are a small country, but we have the power to fight back! In truth, the actual fighting would only take about a week or two at best, because you only need human waves to defeat the kind of military power we have in Singapore. Everybody knows, especially if you have been in the army of Singapore, everything is just a joke that has been taken way too seriously.

It is supposed to be an annual thin, to be called back to the army for a week or two's training. A lot of us can handle that, because it is merely going to be a yearly thing, on top of the fact that we still have to maintain our fitness for the next ten years. It's annoying, but you kind of see where they are coming from. The question then is why is the military calling back my friend for five times a year, when he has already passed out of the army ever since 2006? It doesn't make any logical sense to keep pestering the lot of us who have already passed out of the army, the lot of us who have already signed those documents and gave our handshakes. We even swallowed the fact that we have to be called back once every year and have our ordinary lives disrupted for playtime in the military camp, and the government just can't have enough fun at doing that. They got to drag you back more often each year now, which makes you question the point of shortening the reservist period from fourteen years to ten years, when you are increasing the amount of times one has to serve the military all over again annually. It's like shortening the working hours in an office but then piling more work on your employees - it's much much worse than before. 

It doesn't help that the amber alert is going to be activated on Naz's birthday in July, and when you are roaming around in the amber zone, you are probably going to be called back into camp for sure. That's the reality of things, and it really does suck especially for people like us, who have already been through the horrors of the army, and have lived to tell about it. We were just talking about it last night after our project discussion, and it seems like the army is - in some ways - worse than a prison in so many ways. Sure, you are not forced to have a skin head in the army like the prison, you are forced to stay behind bars for a long period of time with limited family visits and stuff. I still fear the idea of being imprisoned, with those recurring nightmares in the middle of the night being the worst dreams I have had as of late, I do not welcome the idea of imprisonment at all. But still, when you are out of the prison and back into the society, you don't hear about prisoners going back to prison because the prison warden thinks that it is necessary to remind them how bad it was behind bars, to threaten them not to commit the same mistakes again. You don't hear about ex-convicts doing re-prisons, in fact there are yellow-ribbon projects to help the ex-convicts to integrate back into the society. Hire an ex-convict and you might be able to pay lower tax, that's how considerate the government here is to ex-convicts. It is a beautiful thing, it really is. 

But the ex-army boys don't have any kinds of ribbons tagged to us. Red, white, or blue, we have none of those. Just letters of various different colors to call us back when they need us for free labor all over again. We don't take buses out of the military camps to be treated like heroes on the way home, and we don't get any aid when it comes to integrating us back into the society either. When dropped to the rank of civilians, we are much higher than any generals in the army but just the same as anybody else in the real world, and we are immediately ushered to find a job, find a school, find a decent girlfriend to marry straight after the army. Not a lot of care and concern goes into what happens after we passed out of the army, we are just like old toys being tossed out of the house for some reason, thrown out because we are no fun anymore. Besides, keeping us for more than two years is going to generate a lot of unhappy parents, and the last thing the government here wants is a revolt against itself. 

For the UGC class on Friday, my group is supposed to present the English Bill of Rights. In a nutshell, the monarchy in England in the 1600s wasn't very good in the treatment of Protestants, and disregarded the importance of the Parliament. So a new king was chosen, and this Bill of Rights was basically a list of things that the current king did, and a list of other things that the new king should adhere to, and it basically gives a lot of power and authority to the Parliament, which set the standards of the monarchy and Parliament relationship in England, as well as the role of Parliaments around the world - like Singapore. One of the unfair things that the monarchy did that caused quite an uproar within the Parliament was the keeping of an active army in times of peace. The reason for this dissatisfaction was not mentioned, but a reason my group concluded was that a lot of people were forced into the army, and the presence of an army during peace time would also pose as a threat to neighboring countries, as a result. So the Parliament came up with the Bill of Rights to get rid of this system, and that is why military service is no longer mandatory in England. Only in times of war would the people be called to arms - unlike Singapore.

You see, we are still stuck in the medieval times, still keeping an army despite the obvious peace and harmony within and around the country. A war waged upon the country would be folly, as Singapore is really the economic center of Asia, which in turn means that if you intend to drop a bomb in Toa Payoh, it is more than likely that your own economy is going to bomb the next day as well. Nobody is going to be stupid enough to attack Singapore, which is why they always say that the army here is pretty much for show. I mean, we are using World War II and Vietnam war vehicles as of now, not to mention the fact that changes in the army usually takes more than ten years to come about - and that's a rather optimistic projection. Nobody in the right mind is going to attack this little country, which really defeats the purpose of dragging us back on an annual basis, especially when there are new soldiers joining the army every bloody month. 

So yes, in a way, we are better off imprisoned. Every year, we are being forced to go back to an army camp just because it seems like the right thing to do. There are not a lot of countries with mandatory military service in the world of today, and most countries with mandatory army are also the ones with very real threats. The threat Singapore is facing is probably Malaysia, though Malaysia really shouldn't be considered a threat, but brothers since our economy are very much complementary of each other. It gives me yet another reason not to remain in Singapore any longer, amidst the soaring inflation rates. I might be better off in some third world country, or maybe my contingency plan of running off to Mongolia may just work out sooner than I expected. Singapore, this place feels so stifling these days.