Hurricane Ike, Typhoon Sinlaku. 177km/h, 209km/h. 1 million displaced. 5 bombs rock New Delhi. 20 dead.

These are just some of the terms I picked out from today's Sunday Times.
Yet, I don't feel appalled or shocked.
This is because news like this has practically turned into an everyday thing in the news.

Disaster has somehow turned into part and parcel of our lives in only a few years.
When was the last time you saw a newspaper edition without some form of disaster one way or the other?
I must say, its been a long time since I saw much heartening news.
The work of mankind.. how destructive.

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I never expected my new camp to be so bad.
I believe Seletar Camp wasn't built by Singaporeans.
It was built by the British before 1940, in other words, before World War II.
Since then, it has undergone much renovation, which is definitely invisible to my eyes, because the place looks disastrous.
The CCO's office looks like my urban operations training grounds and my bunk looks like the old National Museum, lest a whole lot dirtier.

The mosquito population is greater than the human population by a lot.
The Seletar area is ravaged with dengue fever and chikungunya, yet there are negligible measures in place to counter the mosquitoes nor preventive methods to stop the mosquitoes from breeding.
And I thought I was in a 3G army.

That wasn't all.
I can face it if my training is tough. I get at most 5 hours of sleep each night, work from dawn to midnight, get little rest and a lot of mosquitoes.
But what I cannot stand is this:
An equipment supporting 2,100kg of metal plates was deployed even though its brakes weren't working.
Reason: Most of the equipment were involved in an overseas exercise and this was all they could spare.
So when the metal plates all came crashing down because the brakes didn't work, all they could say was: Opps, the brakes aren't working.

F-cking hell. This is the darker side of the 3G army that people can't see.
Look at the news: New army uniform, amazing urban ops technology.
Let me ask you, have you seen the headlines "SAF soldier injured because of faulty machinery" before?
If it doesn't go on the news, does it mean it didn't happen?
No. Its just covered up.