Now some of you who come to this site are probably also doing NS or already ORDed (you lucky bastards). So i'm sure you guys will know what i mean with this topic. Its basically for route marches or runs where the officer in charge just wants you to sing out loud so he will have an orgasm while running, and by singing i mean those manufactured in 1980s army songs which we all know. Now for those not yet enlisted guys or females, sorry but you might not understand this topic but either way, enjoy.

So what happens when the song IC (in charge) gets to the "shagged, cannot think" mode after running 8km already and still with 2km left to go and the officer wants him to lead a song? well disaster happens when lyrics go wrong or when the song he leads doesnt come out clear and the rest of the platoon sing something else...well in my past few months in the army/navy, i've come across a few incidents like this and i'll share them with you...by first putting down the lyrics of the actual song, and the disasterpiece.


Training to be Soldiers (Actual song)

Training to be soldiers,
fight for our land
once in our lives
2 years of our time
have you ever wondered?
why must we serve?
because we love our land
and we want it to be free, to be free yeah
stand up
be on your guard
come on everybody
do your part
come on every soldier
soul and heart
do it for our nation,
do it for our Singapore yeah
looking all around us

Day 2:

1) This is the day where we were awakened at 5am with loud thunderflashes around our campsite thrown by our instructors to simulate an artillery bombardment. And then we were told to brerak our basha and fall in in 5 minutes( Note this is the infamous tekan session every company goes thru during the 2nd day of their field camp).

2) So after doing abt 40 push ups, crunches, jumping jacks, jumping jacks with rifles and god knows what else, we finally got ready for a route march to the new campsite

3) Oh yeah i forgot we had to do push ups halfway during the route march cos we were moving too slowly...hehehe welcome to the world of field camps and very bored instructors

4) So we reached the next campsite, and wala, god greeted us with pouring rain

5) Reached the next campsite, was greeted with the sight of a centipede

6) If i recall properly, our uniforms werent green anymore but was mostly brown

7) One thing about field camps is the powder baths. You dont get to bathe with water during those 7 days so you have to make do by stripping yourself completely naked and then pour prickly heat powder all over your body from head to toe.

8) So everyone, regardless of race, or religion all ends up looking very white.

Ever since i got enlisted in the army on August 20th, which is almost 2 months ago, i never had enough time to come here and update this site and i dont think i ever had or will have the energy to write long long cock stories abt local music since im almost losing in touch with it, but fret not faithful readers, i know some of you are impatient and waiting for the next entry so from now on i'm going to change my concept a little and revert to doing army humour or in other words, the lighter side of army life which i have encountered so far and i'm going to do this in point form, pretty much like the national education part of Mr Brown's website. So to start things off, i'm going to list as many things as possible that i have learnt about army life and most of them are actually true.

(By the way i wont divulge in any military information or whatever, its just whatever that happened which i thought were damn funny.)

Ever since recieving the green IC, i have learnt a lot of new things, and they are........

1) "A Sir is a sir, a sergeant is a sergeant, a sir is not a sergeant, a sergeant is not a sir....i am blur"

2) In Pulau Tekong, there is a weather system thingy which blares a siren everytime the weather deems it to, and at the end of the siren, theres a female voice saying "cat 1" or "normal weather", "cat 1" is the term used to describe lightning risk. But from what i observed, the cat 1 warnings come wayyy after the rain and storm subsides...and when the rain comes back 2 hours later with obvious thunder and lightning, the "normal weather" siren comes instead.

3) In Pulau Tekong you can find a lot and i mean an entire battallion of flying insects which somehow get attracted to the lights in the bunk of my platoon level, especially section 3. Its a very interesting sight to see half naked 20 yr old guys running around in their underwears using the broom to whack the clueless insects.

4) In Pulau Tekong, you only hear 2 female voices....1 is the famous "cat 1" or "normal weather" siren, the other is the cookhouse aunty yelling "BOY AHHH" to the clueless NSMen queueing up for their food. Any other female voices you hear would probably be in your sleep.

5) Only in Pulau Tekong will you be able to see huge monitor lizards suddenly crawl out of a nearby drain and as a result, about 140 recruits, sergeants and even lieutenants run around to check it out like they never saw a monitor lizard before

6) I also learnt that some people dont know the difference between a monitor lizard and a snake.

7) I learnt that army barbers are so proficient in their jobs, that they cant even cut the simple standard army crewcut properly....reminds me of one guy in my platoon who has 3 stripes of longer hair on the back of his head, a.k.a the adidas logo...you can imagine the number of nicknames that guy got

8) That in a section comprising 13 people, there will definitely be someone everyone hates......i'm glad that someone isnt me :D

9) But unfortunately that "someone" is sleeping in the bed right beside mine

10) And very unfortunately, that guy is also notorious for having bad body odour

11) Its times like this i'm thankful i have sinus problems :)

12) In every platoon, theres also bound to be one guy who will be the scapegoat or the "sai kang warrior". He is the guy who will be given extra duties by his platoon sergeant like to become the report sick ic or the parade state book ic or whatever fuck ic the platoon sergeant wants him to become

13) It feels shitty to be a sai kang warrior sometimes, especially when the whole bunk is resting at 7am after breakfast, Mr Sai Kang warrior has to do the bloody parade state book. %@$^@$

14) When the entire platoon is marching to a certain area be it to the cookhouse or parade square, this is the best time to be one of those at the back so you can see the different ways your fellow platoonmates march. There are many different categories and i will go into them right now.

  a) The Tua Lampar Category
        this is where the person marches with his legs jutting outwards to make it seem like he has extraordinarily huge testicles.

  b) The Little Kid Category
         this is where all short people with short legs fall into, due to the constant "left, right, left, right" timing given by the timer based on the length of his legs, those whose legs are shorter than his tend to suffer more as they have to take bigger strides and watch a little guy take big strides can be pretty funny at times, especially during route marches.

  c) The Clueless Giant Category
          this is the category where i fall into, being the tallest guy in the platoon i have the reputation of being one of the worst marchers in my platoon all because of the simple reason that i just cant keep to the timing of the bloody short legged time keeper. So as a result i either take smaller steps yet try to keep in pace or i play cheat and march at the back and pretend like i'm following the timing. Thats why i always suffer during route marches.

   d) The Cannot Make It Category
            this is the category where some guys i know fall into comfortably here, no matter how much the sergeant drills them, they still dont know how to march, it comes to a point that the sergeant has to give up

This is all i can think off at the moment, besides im high on medication right now, i'll post back somemore when i can get them off the bowels of my mind.

     
         
       

       Ok basically what i'm going to talk about is our local music scene in general and especially for the readers of pure-rock.net. Ok i know a lot of people have talked about this and are probably sick and tired of reading the same shit about the local music scene being so and so and how this is bad and that is good and stuff like that. I'm going to talk about that as well as list a few very important points i observed during my time in this "scene".

        Firstly lets start off with how the state of our current scene is. There are a lot of bands, in different genres in a very small country. You could call that very healthy, but what a lot of these bands lack is originality. Face it out of the 10 bands which sprout up, only 3 plays something which sounds original, the other 7 tend to try to emulate what their idols been playing which made them famous. I'm not saying theres anything wrong with that, go on ahead and play like your idols but at the end of the day, question your objectives. What exactly do you want to achieve? If you are playing music just for the sake of playing music like your idols then thats cool, but if you are playing for the sake of gaining recognition both locally or internationally then i would suggest you forge your original sound because there are bands from other countries competing with you for the same recognition in western countries. And dont forget you are asian. Asians tend to be the most overlooked continent in this world as everyone is concentrating on America, Europe and now even Australia. There are a lot of good asian bands around, some of which are already known in the western world, but it took these bands A LOT of hard work just to get known and it also depends a lot on luck. So in Singapore its double the difficulty.

         Now secondly i dont understand what exactly is the division among scenesters about bands who are "mainstream" and bands who are "underground". To me, in Singapore ALL bands are underground in some way or other. Face it, how many local bands have you heard on the radio? The local radio bigshots have already said it themselves that they dont owe it to anyone to play their music, to them radio is a business which means they play popular overseas stuff which people WANT to listen to in order to get advertisers to advertise their stuff on the radio, hence a source of revenue for these "businessmen". So we all know the shit work these radio guys do so therefore a local scene only left with us, the scenesters and several record labels here and there left to organise gigs or to sell their CDs and stuff. From the surface it seems fair enough, one big community of undiscovered and unappreciated talent, but delve deeper inside you notice cracks. Big huge cracks everywhere. So what exactly are these cracks?

           Ever notice how when a local band of any genre suddenly gets itself known by the local media, be it as a review or whatever, suddenly there will be a whole army of detractors calling this band "a bunch of sellouts" or "posers" and "not being true to the music". And this is exactly what i mean by the scene being divided, there is too much jealousy, misunderstandings and politics.

           There are 2 different groups of local musicians in Singapore, one is the kind who are all about the music, they dont really care about the "cultures" involved in the genre of their choice or the internal scene politics. All they care about is making music, playing the music they love and going on to make CDs or playing in gigs. The other group of local musicians are the kind who are all about the "culture" and the ethics. All they care about is communication among local scenesters, keeping true to the culture and so on, so basically musical ability is only secondary to what they believe in. Now that is one big problem seperating the local scene. The question would be, which group is the better group and which is in the wrong?

            The former would definitely work very hard on their music, jamming a lot and spending money on real good equipments, playing the music according to their feelings and so on, and of course some of these guys would definitely have the mindset and ambition to be able to go "mainstream" if not in Singapore then overseas OR at least to make a bit of money here and there be it playing gigs or by selling their CDs. Of course making money in Singapore through music is like being impotent and trying to screw a hot chick at the same time. Its near to impossible, but that doesnt stop all these bands from at least trying. Besides some of these guys play music in the sake of earning pocket money, maybe because they dont have a job yet or they need to pay their fees. Theres even a small number of musicians who play to feed their families.

              The other group see all these as nothing but a hobby. So therefore they are just in it to make friends, to widen their social circle and of course to have fun. Organising DIY gigs in small venues with fairly decent equipment cos these bands are going to care more about the fun than anything else, they wouldnt care if their bands earn a single cent through playing gigs or selling their CDs. Its all about their passion but the problem is, in this particular group there is a small minority of extremists who usually tend to create rifts between the other group by starting flamings and dissings and stuff. See how they diss the bands which are trying hard to be mainstream and so on, they would accuse these bands of "playing for the money" and "lacking the passion". And its these small petty arguments which eventually turn into hatred for one another that you see these "groups" hanging out individually. Its really sad to see a scene which is barely recognised by the government, trying hard to keep itself from dying, yet having a "civil war" of its own, its just like an ingrown disease damaging the scene from the inside out.

                I know these comments i made would surely infuriate a lot of people, some of whom already know who i am in person and honestly i dont care what you think because i am just going to give my opinions on what i really think about the scene in general. Seriously i've always said this all the time even if you read my previous articles you will definitely know what i'm getting at. Take my last article for example, the one where Susan talks about posers in the scene. Basically i got nothing against posers because everyone has to start somewhere. I started out by listening to electronica in sec 2 and then i heard the Prodigy, and Korn and i got hooked to metal. I still listen to electronica though but does that make me a poser? after all Korn isnt what people would call a "real" metal band and Prodigy isnt even metal. But it was these 2 bands which paved the way for my interest in that form of music which eventually led me to discover the whole genre lying behind it. Thats why i find it funny when people blast others who listen to nu-metal just cos those bands arent real metal and that they are posers. Tell me how many of you metalheads started out by listening to bands like Anorexia Nervosa or Melechesh? How many of you punks or emo people started out by listening to Suicidal Tendencies or Rufio? Probably none or maybe 1 or 2 because the fact remains that most of you started out by listening to more mainstream of commercial bands like Metallica and Slayer for metalheads and bands like AFI or even Blink 182 for punks (no matter how much you try to deny). So its the same here, why fuck up people who listen to Blink 182 now or Linkin Park and claim they are punk or metal? Its their wish on what they wanna listen to and if they like the genre they will eventually delve deeper into it and find even better but less commercial bands, its all a personal trip and as fellow punks or metalheads, you are supposed to help them discover the new bands, not diss them for being posers, cos you were one yourself at one time.

                   Lastly for goodness sake, stop the petty arguments and politics. If you dont like a person in this scene, tell him straight to his face, not tell everyone else behind his back. And support other local bands. The keyword is LOCAL because if you dont support them, nobody else will. It doesnt matter if the band is DIY, Underground, Mainstream or just plainly suck because they are local. If they suck they need your constructive criticisms like "your guitar tone needs to be more sharper" or stuff like that, not comments like "you suck you bunch of faggots!". You help them with your constructive criticisms they can only improve and you can have one more band to be proud off. Seriously it would be really good if you, as Singaporeans can support local bands irregardless of what they play and what status they are because at the end of the day they are your fellow scenesters and countrymen. And i dont see why its wrong for a metalhead to support punk bands or an indie rocker to support a metal band and so on. I myself am in 4 different projects in 4 different genres and i dont see myself as being in a part of 4 different scenes, to me i'm just in 1 scene, thats it.

        It all started 3 years ago when Jonathan entered poly and made friends with a bunch of guys who were into metal music. As a result Jon picked up the music and enjoyed it. He went to local gigs frequently, picked up the guitar and even bought himself a $400 ESP explorer guitar with lots of multi effects pedals and he would be in his room all day and night satisfying his newfound obsession. Mdm Watson said "I knew the kind of music he was into were mostly black and death metal, it bothered me at first since i was brought up in a strict catholic family but i wanted my son to have the freedom to do what he wanted so i let him be". That, as a result saw him being very evil, often freaking his poor mother out by painting his face and buying all sorts of spikes and weird accessories which could just get him arrested if the cops saw him loitering around in Plaza Singapura wearing those and freaking out the 13yr old chinese girls with their 14yr old pimply boyfriends.

         His brother on the other hand was the total opposite of him, he was a vegan and was totally every mother's dream son. He would often score straight As in his exams and he was also active in charities often helping out in welfare centers or organising fund raising events in his school. And all these became worse when he started listening to hardcore/grindcore music sometime last year and he became obsessed with all these charity work. His grades started slipping as he spent most of his time trying to correspond with sick ethiopian children and getting his peers to raise money for the save the green backed copper diamondback snake fund.

         "I knew his intentions were good but by overdoing it, he was only destroying himself and it became worse when his friends got sick and tired of his bickering and called him a loser. He entered a state of depression and he locked himself up everyday blasting hardcore music in his room which broke my heart". Said Mdm Watson.

          We understood that the whole feud at home only started one day about 2 months ago when Jason could not find his Terror CD and he started screaming and shouting and accused his brother of stealing his CD. His brother, who was utterly clueless and already sick of his behavior started verbally abusing him, calling him a hippy and it was then that things turned ugly.

          "One thing about Jason which i noticed", said his mother "was the fact that Jason never drank or smoke and never had a girlfriend, something totally opposite of his brother who was a big drinker, chain smoker and a playboy". And when they both fought, Jonathan was at a clear advantage as he had a bigger profanity vocabulary.

           "What would he know about being a man? that bloody hippy hardly bathes or has a life", screamed Jonathan, and proceeded to walk to Jason's room and burn his World Wide Fund for nature posters.

            "He thinks he is satan, he yaks so much about how the world is doomed, but he doesnt know he can play a part to make the world a better place...that bloody sellout listens to bands which play for the money and not for the passion of music and........" it was at this point that a book thrown by Jonathan landed on Jason's nose knocking him out cold.

             Our reporters had to then be evacuated from the house as things got really ugly and Mdm Watson started crying...we did however ask her for some last parting words in which she said between tears, "I just hope they grow up and realise that life is more than just music." and with those words, we leave you now, goodbye.