Reservist!

My first ever reservist!

I'm deployed to a unit to do base defence, meaning it's largely a 'lobo' job which entails participation in mock defence exercises against intruders into a military base. As this is the first year, we are in the training phrase, doing revision of all our combat skills acquired during our military training when we were NSFs, but after this year, no more of those 'leap and bound' chiong swa.

The commanders were in a week earlier than the men, and most of the time we were just listening to lectures in the training room. For the entire week, we booked in at 9am and booked out at 2pm or slightly later. This week, the men came in, listened to the exact same lessons, and so the book in-out schedule is still the same! Next week will be as 'siong' as it can get though, doing IMT, ATP shoot, battle course and a summary base defence exercise (that is the only night we had to stay over).

Roughly half the people there used to be from that unit, and I got to know most of the other specialists eventually through the long one and a half hour lunch breaks. Quite interesting and refreshing to talk to a big group of people who ain't teachers, and somehow, me being a teacher makes for an interesting conversation topic for them, or maybe they're just being polite by actively asking about life in school.

Anyway, it has been a very good 2 weeks already, so slack that I feel guilty to waste time doing nothing in the training room. Wow, I can't ever remember such a time since I started working that I feel such an urge to do something productive out of pure boredom! And it makes me realise that I have been stagnating in terms of personal development for so long, just ignoring the need in the face of ever-present deadlines at work. Such a time is good for some self-reflection, and sadly I only feel frustration for not being able to feel that I have any goals to work towards even with free time on my hand to dream...