Basket.

The time finally came this week when my coursemates and I reached our individual physical limits. The stress, fatigue and various injuries accumulated over weeks of hard training hit home with a vengeance - we had by no means fully recovered from the tremendously exhausting outfield exercise last week when we were pressed right into deployment drill on Monday. The result: we dropped like flies and the medic became the busiest man on the field. Following almost immediately was the second outfield exercise of our course, Wednesday-Thursday. Not surprisingly, the casualty rate was even higher, and I was one of the worst-hit - strained my back and missed an entire night (literally) of the exercise. Watching my coursemates deploy the radar at 4am under the baleful eyes of the instructors, I was almost glad I got injured despite the pain (actually the Deep Heat hurt more) and potential seriousness of the injury.

I can get used to most things if I do them often enough, but I know I'll never, ever get used to being outfield. The less we go, the better, but I know we'll be out there fairly often.

I also severely dislike being treated as if I am made of iron, which is what the people who planned this course seem to expect of us trainees. 3km run in SBO the day after exercise? Ought to be a stroll in the park. The result? One more ICU case for Tan Tock Seng Hospital. No fucking joke, my coursemate is still in there and word has it he's been medically downgraded. It's that serious. For all the talk about safety first, the SAF still does plenty of bloody unsafe shit. It's not like I thought they would change, though. I guess they need more valuable male citizens to die and be all over the media and Parliament before they even think more about it.

And they call people "Singapore's only natural resource". We certainly aren't treated as if we are something half as valuable.