one thing we lack in total defence

Earlier this month, a full time national serviceman from the army died during training. Subsequently on facebook I caught a post about a girl making a comment that Singaporeans are too weak. While I do not know both the deceased serviceman and the girl who made the comment, but I have some sort of a related encounter myself.

Some time back I attended a call-up. It was short but physically exhausting nonetheless. Many people would apply leave after reservist, but I went straight back to work the next day. Nothing heroic, I'm just stingy over my annual leave balance. So back in office I just remarked that the training was tiring. It wasn't a bid for sympathy, just sharing how I felt. Then a female colleague commented that I was weak, cos she hadn't heard other males complaining about feeling tired after going for reservist.

You see, I'm sorry but I really can't help having some naive shallow people in my social circle. Here we are training hard and disrupting from our daily routine to do our part to protect our nation, and then some people just have to be so cynical. We are not playing boy scouts. We aren't asking for appreciation, we aren't asking for bed of roses or kisses for the heroes. But understanding and validation would be nice. Some members of the other gender find it unfair that males who have served national service get higher starting salary. Turn the table around, are there males who complain that females have too many maternity leave? *shrug*

I'm sure most of us have heard about Total Defence umpteenth times. It won't be total if not everyone is doing his/her part.

throwing spanner and screwdriver

The other evening I was at a gathering with fellow mechanical engineers at the club. Over dinner we chatted and shared our experience at work.

One engineer, who works at the polytechnic, shared a scene at the school's workshop. A student was asking the workshop assistant where he could find a spanner. So the assistant pointed towards the rack and told the student to grab it himself. The student returned with a screwdriver in hand.

Seriously, I fail to see the similarity between the spanner and the screwdriver except the fact that you use both with your hand. While I did not go through the polytechnic path, I've always have high respect for them because of their relatively richer hands-on experience. This may just be an isolated case, or is it?

Recently there has been some discussions on the newspaper regarding university qualification. Something along the line of the emphasis on technical education during the nation's early years and blah blah... Somehow I find it sad if a mechanical engineer has never touched a spanner or screwdriver. Just the other day, a colleague was surprised I could recognise a crank shaft, even though my industry has no connection with engines. Well, am I not supposed to know, as a mechanical engineer?

At least I can say by the time I received my university certificate, I've touched the lathe and mill before. What about our next batches of engineers? I wonder.