It may be unavoidable, but it doesn't mean I have to like it

The title says it all. Its basically my attitude to National Service.

Not that any foreigners (or anyone for that matter) reads this blog, but in Singapore all boys once he passes age 16 and graduate from secondary schooling must go through 2 years of National Service in the Singapore Armed Forces. He can defer the thing for a few years for tertiary schooling, but after that must enlist. Must, Mandatory, by Law.

To many of previous generations it is a tenet of Singapore society. One of the pillars that uphold what being a Singaporean is about, a sense of pride, a rite of manhood. In my 19-soon-to-be-20 year old eyes, though, this is nothing but an utter waste of two years of my precious life. I have no doubts it'll teach me survival skills, dicipline, and all sorts of other skills that would prove completly and utterly useless in life.

2 years. Imagine what can i do within them? I can get a degree. I can get a job that pays around 2k a month. I can get an advanced diploma in game development, while enhancing my portfolio, in preperation for my entrance into the game development industry. Instead, I am being forced into serving into serving National Service, where I am paid less then a part-time worker cleaning the floors in the arcade underneath Parco Bugis Junction, do weather all kinds of shit my superior can throw at me.

Sure, my dad, uncles and even my colleagues at the company where I am interned right now says we are much more fortunate then them, with all the new facilities and catered food and all the shiny stuff. But to me, being forced to serve NS is simply so .. so... utterly farked up that it cancels any perks that stem from it. Who cares I'm wearing a better boot? who cares that my food in there will be chicken rice? I'm being pressed to enlist in the army of a country i dont give a rats ass about. For a guy who values FREEDOM as much as me, this is hell. "Adopt a positive attitude"? Your robbing us blind through GST and ERP and taxes, then you take 2 years off my life? I'll adopt a positive attitude when i have the launch codes for some nukes on ICBMs that i can use to wipe the smug faces off you damn politicians.


... sorry about this post. had to get it off me.

...

fuck you Singapore.