Attended my MR Ceremony today and it turns out, I am still not officially done with my National Service duties.
I had assumed that after today's ceremony, I will officially join the Mindef Reserve and no longer have any National Service related obligations, which was mainly my IPPT in this case.
My IPPT window for the year closes on 14th March, a day before my birthday, today is the 8th, I had initially thought to myself, how lucky I was for the dates to align so nicely, to be able to skip my IPPT window because it will close just a week after I MR, but nope, turns out my MR status will only kick in on 1st April, which means if I don't complete my IPPT by next week, I will get charged and have to take leave to go to CMPB for disciplinary action in my smart 4 uniform, and I think if I don't attend the Summary Trial for it, it will affect my MR status. It's honestly not worth all the hassle, so I decided to apply for a half day leave for Wednesday, report to the FCC camp that is the nearest to my home in my sports attire and attempt my IPPT, beats having to report to Depot Road wearing my No.4.
Hopefully I can pass with incentive and get myself the $200 incentive to add that to my Taiwan shopping expenses, I think I only got a pass during my last IPPT so we will see how it goes, oh, and I will be going to Taiwan again next week for 6 days! Exciting, will be spamming my Instagram again soon.
Anyways, back to the MR Ceremony today.
I decided to rent a car to attend the event today and had made an advance booking for a Suzuki Swift from GetGo earlier this week, I was honestly a bit undecided if I wanted to go through with the rental the week leading up to today or not because taking a Grab back and forth would be about the same price and I am just not a huge fan of driving in general unless absolutely necessary, but then by the time I was exploring the option to actually go ahead and cancel the booking, a last minute cancellation fee had already been implemented, so I just went ahead with it. It would be good to refresh my driving skills every once in a while too.
The car is located about 3 bus stops away from my house, so I booked it from 7am - 1.30pm, which was a bit of an overkill because my MR Ceremony was scheduled to last from 8.30am - 12.00pm, I was allocating a lot of buffer just in case. The great thing about the Army is that even though their reporting time may always be a lot earlier than the actual starting time, they will always end earlier than their stipulated timing, or at least that's my experience as a Reservist personnel.
I left home at 7am today and reached the car at about 7.30am, was a bit later than I had anticipated because I dropped off one bus stop earlier thanks to the misguidance provided by Google Maps. The Suzuki Swift was one of the smaller cars available for rent within my area, the others were bigger SUV type vehicles, so it was a no brainer for me to travel just a bit more for a car that I was comfortable driving.
Compared to the Kia Picanto, the Suzuki Swift drives really smoothly, it's on par with the Mazda 2 I had rented for my last Reservist. The quality of the GetGo cars are generally quite good, so I should not be expecting anything less, which goes to show also how shit horrible the Kia Picanto that I had previously rented was, and the older Mazda 2 model that I had originally rented and returned after less than a day of use because of how shit it was.
The drive to the airbase was about 30 minutes long, traffic was alright, there were a lot of cars but thankfully no traffic jam of any sorts and because I had already been studying the route on Google Maps for the past week, I was already somewhat familiar with how to get there, by the time I reached the public carpark located outside the airbase, my reservist buddy was already there. Realistically speaking, I believe this will be the very last time I will be seeing him because we rarely ever meet up for non-army related stuff, unless it is work related, which has only happened twice in the 12 years we have known each other. He is a very good "army" friend, but we don't do much together outside of the our army commitments.
We had a quick catch up and then headed into the camp together, registered our names and headed off to the cookhouse/canteen to just chill until the ceremony started 45 minutes later. He had a quick meal, I had a Teh Ping, once we were done, we headed back to the registration area and a lot of us were just standing around outside because once we headed into the auditorium, we would all be split up and seated according to the order of our award taking.
When I entered the Auditorium, it felt like such a full circle moment because the auditorium is really similar to the one in Tekong when I first enlisted 13 years ago, back then, regimentation was at it's peak and everyone had to sit really straight and keep really quiet, you had to be vocal and respond to every rhetorical question from the commander who was giving the speech with "Yes Sir", but today, it was the complete opposite, most of us were slouching in our seats, playing our phones, and we were just waiting for something to happen.
My friend and I headed in at 9am.... the ceremony only started at 9.40am, and I remember the timing because the Commander who was giving us the opening speech started his speech with...
"Punctuality is important and I think it is important to start on time..."
... the guy who was seated directly in front of me, and myself, looked at our watch to check what time it was. It wasn't 9.00am that's for sure.
The commander then continued his speech and explained that he wanted to start the ceremony on time, but couldn't because a bunch of us went to the wrong Airbase and he didn't want those guys to miss out. The ceremony was being held at Paya Lebar, but they went back to Changi, and my friend would have been one of them had he not double confirm the location with me yesterday.
So the ceremony officially started at 9.40am, my teh ping was already making it's way to my bladder at that point, so I really needed to pee, but I couldn't because it was really hard to get out of my seat, my legs were literally pressing itself against the chair infront of me because that's how close the seats were to each other, and I was sited right in the middle of the middle row, the row seats about 12 people, if I wanted to get up, half the row would have to stand up just for me to make my way out, so I just held it in for as long as I could.
The speech that the Commander was giving felt so long winded because I had to pee and I needed him to get on with the ceremony so I can go to the toilet asap. When he was finally done, they started handing out the plaques and I guess it was actually going relatively quickly, but when you need to pee, everything just feels really slow, I was so worried that when I have to stand up and wait for my turn to get up on stage to get the plaque, I would start shaking from the pee trying to burst it's way out, but thankfully, everything stayed in place, I walked up on stage, shook the commanders' hand, we took our photo and I headed to the back of the auditorium to get the photo (I looked really horrible in the photo), I noticed there were exit doors at the back as well, so I told the person who was giving out the photo I needed to use the toilet and if there was a toilet outside the backdoor, and there was, so I was able to relieve myself, which was a really great feeling.
Time suddenly felt like it was back to normal after that number 1,
I headed back into the auditorium and I think after about 15- 20 minutes, all the plaques were finally given out and we were done. The whole ceremony ended at 10.30am.
There was actually a buffet spread for everyone after the ceremony, but my friend and I honestly couldn't be bothered, so we just left after that. I think majority of us skipped out on the buffet, which is a little sad since it had been specially prepared for us, but alas, no one had any mood to stay when the alternative is to be able to leave and go home. We said our goodbyes, I told him I will see him when I see him, he jokingly responds back with..
"Very unlikely."
... and that was it. I got into my car and drove back home. Probably the last time I will ever see my reservist buddy in person.
When I reached home, it was only 11am, I still had 2.5 hours left for the rental car, so I left all the MR stuff at home, took a quick shower, changed out from my uniform and decided to do a site visit for one of my ongoing projects that was near my place.
It has honestly been a while since I went to do a site visit on my own, the last few times, it was either with my boss or the Project Manager in charge of the project. I ended up spotting a few carpentry mistake and had to alert the carpenter about it, he couldn't do anything because everything had already been installed and it was too late to do any changes, so I had to alert the homeowner, who happened to be our company's accountant.
Our company account has certain expectations for her renovation, so I was honestly a bit peeved when I was talking to her. As a customer, she doesn't ask you to do something for her, she tells you to do something for her.
Asking to do something would be...
"Can you help me check what is the height of the shelving?"
Telling to do something would be...
"What is the height of the shelving?"
"This configuration is wrong."
... and even though it might just seem like a non-issue, to me, it was a bit triggering because site visits and checking up on the progress of the renovation are not within my job scope as the designer, this is the role of the Project Manager. I am doing an extra service for you, and she is very aware of that.
Anyways, once I left the site, I was already feeling really aggravated by her questions, and when I was returning the car, the app had some issues, so it couldn't connect to the car, which added on to my frustrations, so I ended up snapping at my accountant in the chat because when I was asking her if the drawings that I had done for her was correct, and she kept telling me to follow the 3D. The drawings were based on the 3D, but she just kept insisting to follow the 3D, so I replied to her with...
"Yes! But the changes are the same as the 3D correct?"
... to which she agreed.
After that, I apologized for my aggressive response, but she told me not to worry because she didn't sense any aggression in my text.
It's a good thing my tone couldn't be captured in that reply, because if I were to accurately type out how that reply sounded in my mind, it was more like...
"YES! But the changes are the same as the 3D, CORRECT?
I ended up just standing at the bus stop near the car rental return point for 15 minutes, messaging her and my carpenter to find a solution to the problem, it was not great because again, not my job, this is the PM's job, and also this fuck up was caused by my carpenter, so I was essentially helping my PM deal with the client to clear up my Carpenter's mistake. And I am suppose to be on leave today!
It was frustrating.
When all that was settled, I could finally focus on getting on a bus and headed to Westmall for lunch, on the way back, booked my IPPT for Wednesday and also applied for a half day leave with my accountant in order to attend the IPPT.
It's going to be a busy week, I also have to meet Terrence and his wife next week, so fuck my life. Nothing like meeting a shitty customer before your overseas trip to really sour the mood.
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