Why NS? [ Pre-Enlist POV ]
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In a war perspective:
If a country were to attack Singapore, we don't even stand a chance. There's no use in training the population if in times of war, we have less people wielding guns than pans and brooms. In war, quantity overrules quality. A perfect example is when China sent a mass of troops to push US troops back from PyongYang in the Korea war.The "life-changing experience":
Let's say a person has an average life-span of 80 years. Out of 80 years, 20 years are forcefully imposed on the "hardcore education system" Singapore has. Through the 2 years in NS, which is 1/40 of your life, you eat stale food, shower with men, get shouted at, exercise from morning to night, risk dying from heart stops, greatly reduce contact with your family (and maybe your spouse, risking your relationship). After the 2 years, you possess bad breath, grow countless pimples not only on your face but body, ruin your hair, expose veins, become built (if you're the buff type, and you know most women don't like overly muscular men), or become skinnily muscular (if you're of average size, then you'll look like bamboo with rats all over your body). And you call that a life-changing experience. If anything, it has changed your life to worse than before.If you're studying something that's constantly changing/improving, like IT, it's even worse. You're pulled out of times and lagging behind the women who have graduated after you. The babarious behaviour that's forced onto you in the army takes a toll on you as after you got out, you're "in-charge of yourself" and "take orders from nobody anymore". Even without it, you have still 2 years of change to catch up with.
Risk death:
Men always ask, when meet misfortune, "why does it have to happen to me!?"
Although there's a chance of you dying any minute, NS is just bringing you closer to death. Even if you're fit and stuff, you may survive swimming over a river carrying a 30kg bag, which will eventually make you a hunchback when you get out of army, but you won't know when your heart will stop like all the ever so common cases of people dying when doing their jogs. You go into jungle to risk getting killed by wildlife, be it mosquitoes or poisonous plants/animals.
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Discuss. -
1. How old are you?
2. Have you done NS?
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Originally posted by fudgester:
1. How old are you?
2. Have you done NS?
I'm one year away from entering NS, so I may speak without experience. However, I'm not totally unaware of what happens inside. My brother's serving NS, and once he blacked-out from fatigue and landed in hospital. Realistically, these incidents may cause a life, and a life does not come back as though in video games.
Chances of mishaps happening to me though little, is not insignificant. Moreover, with the 2 years spent building my combat and survival skills, which does not benefit me in any way in the society, I would be already making my first 100k. I know that's overly ambitious, but compared with the remaining 13 billion people in the world, I have already lost the head start.
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Listen, kid.....
At this point in time you may feel that NS is a total waste of your time, and that you're using up two of the best years of your life running around in the jungle doing something you don't really want to do. The vast majority of guys at your age would feel the same way.
But what the heck is this? 'If a country were to attack Singapore, we don't even stand a chance'? What makes you think that? If we ever go to war, we DO have a chance if we stand up and fight. One of the guarantees to Singapore's own independence is the SAF. And the only way we can ever keep the SAF strong is through conscription.
You've totally lost the concept of National Service. It is not just to prepare for war. It is also to deter others from making war upon us. And the secondary effect of helping our citizens unite is very, very true..... in fact, that was the main reason why the Malaysians decided to come up with their own 'National Service'.
I won't lie to you: I did my time, and I didn't enjoy being in the army, either. I didn't enjoy having my brain rust over two years of not doing my studies, I didn't enjoy all the bullshit we got from bad superiors, I didn't enjoy carrying my 28kg full battle order, and I didn't enjoy the injuries I got.
But boh pian; someone has to do the job. If I don't do the job, you don't do the job, and everyone else feels the same way, then who is going to defend Singapore?
If there was no National Service.... would you still have the freedom to sit in front of your computer to whine about it?
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We may put up a fight in a war, we still have no chance of winning. The population of Singapore is just not enough to last.
I understand that having her own army would create a sort-of psychological defense for Singapore, but crippling or controlling Singapore is just pointless than if the attacker is sadist, pure entertainment. And since the world isn't as large as it used to be, any country waging war would be putting themselves on the pirate ship's plank.
As with providing citizens with a sense of unity, we do that in the workplace too. Uniting with a platoon or a division alone, which throughout the 2 years, a person may only keep in contact with a few after army. Similar to socialising in somewhere else, and clearly observable in school.
Why won't the women unite with us?
Though I spoke with flaws, I think being made 19 years through life, I should have earnt myself a better callsign than "kid".
Power to belittle; did you pick that up through NS?At least make NS mandatory for only 1 child in families with more children.
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deterrent is to make sure that even if we are taken over, the aggressor is so messed up that it is not worth their while to do it..
win?
no one wins in a war unless the aggressor can just waltz into a country with minimal resistance...
all that aside..
now, let's deal with another thing..
your self-centredness...
it's all about you you you.. right?
supermassiveblackhole syndrome.. the whole universe revolves around you..
that aside.. without the effort of each one of us, the country doesn't have a prayer of existing.. and you won't be typing on your computer..
just ask the Israelis.. and see that we're pretty much like them only in peaceful circumstances.. things can quickly turn around to be like them.. and you want to be caught with your pants down?
stop thinking about yourself for a change..
ask not what your country can do for you.. ask what you can do for your country...
and try not to suffer too much from supermassiveblackhole syndrome... black holes tend to destroy everything around them
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I think you way underestimate our armed force's capabilities. Do some research.
And read up on the politics and demographic makeup of our neighbouring countries. Perhaps then you'll see the need for national service.
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Originally posted by Paradogs:
We may put up a fight in a war, we still have no chance of winning. The population of Singapore is just not enough to last.
I understand that having her own army would create a sort-of psychological defense for Singapore, but crippling or controlling Singapore is just pointless than if the attacker is sadist, pure entertainment. And since the world isn't as large as it used to be, any country waging war would be putting themselves on the pirate ship's plank.
As with providing citizens with a sense of unity, we do that in the workplace too. Uniting with a platoon or a division alone, which throughout the 2 years, a person may only keep in contact with a few after army. Similar to socialising in somewhere else, and clearly observable in school.
Why won't the women unite with us?
Though I spoke with flaws, I think being made 19 years through life, I should have earnt myself a better callsign than "kid".
Power to belittle; did you pick that up through NS?At least make NS mandatory for only 1 child in families with more children.
as if there isn't any S'porean woman who does not have a dad, brother or husband who has served NS.. -
Originally posted by Paradogs:
We may put up a fight in a war, we still have no chance of winning. The population of Singapore is just not enough to last.
I understand that having her own army would create a sort-of psychological defense for Singapore, but crippling or controlling Singapore is just pointless than if the attacker is sadist, pure entertainment. And since the world isn't as large as it used to be, any country waging war would be putting themselves on the pirate ship's plank.
As with providing citizens with a sense of unity, we do that in the workplace too. Uniting with a platoon or a division alone, which throughout the 2 years, a person may only keep in contact with a few after army. Similar to socialising in somewhere else, and clearly observable in school.
Why won't the women unite with us?
Though I spoke with flaws, I think being made 19 years through life, I should have earnt myself a better callsign than "kid".
Power to belittle; did you pick that up through NS?At least make NS mandatory for only 1 child in families with more children.
I can call you 'kid'. Not because of your age, but because you're acting like one. So suck it up, kiddo.... you'll be given more colourful callsigns when you're in the army.
You haven't served NS. You have yet to experience it. You said that yourself. Unite in the workplace? Please. You try uniting with your bunkmates while listening to a $10 transistor radio. You try doing push-ups together while silently cursing your unreasonable platoon sergeant. You try doing area cleaning together only for your sect comd to waltz in with muddy boots and mess up your beds. Now THAT'S unity.
As av has pointed out.... have you even bothered trying to find out more about the SAF? Do you know that we are the biggest and the most technologically advanced force in South East Asia? Do you know how many alarm bells we set off around the region when we sent our ships off the coast of Aceh so soon after the tsunami in 2004?
No one ever said that we can last a battle of attrition. If it ever came to that, chances are that we'd lose. But if we have to lose, then let us make the cost of winning so great to the enemy that they'll have a Pyrrhic victory.
And that's the whole point. We don't just do NS to prepare for war; we do it to deter others from waging war on us. We may not win every war, but we can make them bleed so bad that playing punk with us is not a worthwhile proposition.
We all have a part to play. It is seriously not an exaggeration when I said that without NS, you WON'T have the freedom to whine about it on sgforums.
You don't want to do NS for yourself? Fine. But at least do NS for your family, your friends, your HDB estate, and the sarabat stall at Simpang Bedok. You don't do your part, and all those things may well be a distant reality.
As Bear has said.... take the 'me' out of the equation. Start looking at the big picture, kid!
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Double post.
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ns is not about winning a war, it's about preventing a war....kuwait was a great example, you were very young then but iraq literally rolled into it without much effort, simply because kuwait had no functioning army...... having an army is to deter, hence it's known as defence force....it's probably true that sg cannot withstand an attack for long....but who is prepared to start one on the account that sg can do serious damage before going down.... out of the many who have gone through ns, including yours truly, casualties such as your brother is rare and i served 20 years ago when punishments were meted out by sadists.....so grow up, be fit and stop whining.... p.s i hated ns and yes it took a good 2.5 yrs of my life too...do i want to go through it again, never but on a macro perspective, it's essential so that your mother, sister and girlfriend can sleep easy knowing that it will take more than just a parang for the enemy to invade....
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Originally posted by fudgester:
I can call you 'kid'. Not because of your age, but because you're acting like one. So suck it up, kiddo.... you'll be given more colourful callsigns when you're in the army.
You haven't served NS. You have yet to experience it. You said that yourself. Unite in the workplace? Please. You try uniting with your bunkmates while listening to a $10 transistor radio. You try doing push-ups together while silently cursing your unreasonable platoon sergeant. You try doing area cleaning together only for your sect comd to waltz in with muddy boots and mess up your beds. Now THAT'S unity.
As av has pointed out.... have you even bothered trying to find out more about the SAF? Do you know that we are the biggest and the most technologically advanced force in South East Asia? Do you know how many alarm bells we set off around the region when we sent our ships off the coast of Aceh so soon after the tsunami in 2004?
No one ever said that we can last a battle of attrition. If it ever came to that, chances are that we'd lose. But if we have to lose, then let us make the cost of winning so great to the enemy that they'll have a Pyrrhic victory.
And that's the whole point. We don't just do NS to prepare for war; we do it to deter others from waging war on us. We may not win every war, but we can make them bleed so bad that playing punk with us is not a worthwhile proposition.
We all have a part to play. It is seriously not an exaggeration when I said that without NS, you WON'T have the freedom to whine about it on sgforums.
You don't want to do NS for yourself? Fine. But at least do NS for your family, your friends, your HDB estate, and the sarabat stall at Simpang Bedok. You don't do your part, and all those things may well be a distant reality.
As Bear has said.... take the 'me' out of the equation. Start looking at the big picture, kid!
I hate to say it but it's my life over everything. If I die in the army, I'll be gone forever (with whatever I can do for the remaining of my life) whereas the country still lives.
But if it's all about me, I wouldn't be asking for opinions in a public forum. In-fact, I've always been referring to the concept of NS, until you questioned my status. I'm definitely sure you calling me a kid is related to our age gap, however you may say it isn't. Though that's out of the topic.
As for me lacking knowledge of Singapore's forces, I admit making a wrong point there. When time comes I'll read up more about it. At least now I know why serving NS is important. At least in the thousands of people not knowing what they're serving NS for, I have asked and been taught.
All that said, thanks for all the lecture, though it could have been better if I didn't give you all the impression that I'm only concerned about myself.
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Originally posted by Paradogs:
I hate to say it but it's my life over everything. If I die in the army, I'll be gone forever (with whatever I can do for the remaining of my life) whereas the country still lives.
All I read from your rants are me, me and me.
Yes, your life matters over everything.
I pity you.
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eh Dogs....you worried about dying in the army? Who knows....maybe you'll be killed in an accident tomorrow.
Just suck it up la boy boy.....and just get on with it. NS no time for whiners and crybabies.
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1. Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance to the State.
2. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.
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all the men in singapore lagged behind by 2-2.5 years.. so just chill.. coz u are not the only one..
seriously la.. u think abt it this way.. what if singapore has NO army?
u in charge of another country, say usa or china, or malaysia.. u want to invade or not? u think la u think, think of it from playing a game's point, red alert, or warcraft, whatever.. u see the gold mine not guarded, u go whack or not?
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Well, as you can see, NS certainly screws up with peoples' minds. Look at those who have served NS, at least in this thread. Look at how they have lost their sense of self and insist on the 'common good'. Look at how they have become so manipulatable by the government, believing that NS is all about protecting ones' family and friends when it's all about maintaining the stability of the corrupt administration. No wonder they're being replaced by non-brainwashed FTs.
Try not to lose your mind in NS, paradogs. Your 'self-centered' thinking is way better and practical than those communalists.
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So have you served NS?
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I would not hire an employee like you .....
too much "me" in you ...
neways from the sound of things, you've not served NS yet ....
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I pity the kid's wifey and family next time ....
from the sound of things, he's the sort who won't defend what's his ....
what if he and his wifey runs into some crims in a dark corner ? ... or they get robbed ? ...
will he just let his wifey take it ? ....
after all ... wouldn't he think, what's the point ? .... what if "I" get hurt, neh ? ...
so .... would you stand up for you loved one kid ? ....
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My position is 24 months of NS is too long.
It can be reduced to 20 or 18 months.
18 months should be the minimum.
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Originally posted by Poh Ah Pak:
My position is 24 months of NS is too long.
It can be reduced to 20 or 18 months.
18 months should be the minimum.
why?BMT + OCS = 1 year..
and sometimes BMT + SISPEC then good ones end up in OCS..
pass out then immediately ORD?
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another army thread -.-"
whether you like it a not, you still have to serve
and since you have to serve, then just get done with it and go on.
Whether a not you want to let your brain rust during army is entirely up to you. It's your choice; don't blame others for your choice.
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why?BMT + OCS = 1 year..
and sometimes BMT + SISPEC then good ones end up in OCS..
SAF can sort it out one lah. Reduce leave lor.
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Sad to say that u really need to grow up..