Haiz i'm in this "i'm in a pissed off mood but can't do shit about it" situation at the moment. And it's mainly because almost everyone's weekends are about to start at the moment, while mine's about to end. Yep...army people would know..it's SATURDAY GUARD time.
My 2nd time doing it on saturday in my whole NS life, and i've done it on sunday 2-3 times before as well. Weekends? Haha, i can't count that anymore. Not too bad for the average sergeant, i suppose, but it still sucks because this guard came right out of the blue (well..not really, since i knew about it last week) because a fellow sergeant (the one that asked everyone to empty their water bottles on their heads which i mentioned in this blog a long time ago..) enrolled in some external (a.k.a. not related to army) confidence course and so couldn't do any saturday duties until who knows when. 0_o
It isn't really the right thing to do...i've always believed in internal swaps if you can't make it for guard duty - you don't ask the duty planner and get it changed just like that - and if no one wants to swap, you just have to cancel your plans; it's easier on everyone else that way. I still have the right to say it, since i've never initiated a guard swap of any kind as yet (I remember skipping a wedding to do my last saturday duty).
In any case, i'd better brace myself for more, 'cos we've got NINE duties coming up next month, 3 of those weekends. And with only 4 sergeants in the company to spread around..urgh. Talk about a manpower shortage.
Anyway, guard duty really sucks! Your health goes bad from staying up the whole night and your sleeping schedule gets horribly disrupted. It'll be very difficult waking up at 5-7am every day to consume breakfast next month when we have more than one guard duty a week to create a whole company of jetlagged soldiers. And they're trying to get us punished with even MORE guard duty if we fail to eat in the morning! Oh...what irony, what tragedy... :(
Ahwell. So i'll have to wake up tomorrow at 6am to make my way to camp, and then (as guard commander) try to keep awake as much as i can until 8-9am on sunday. And after i reach home and take a shower, which'll be at around 10am, i'll be so sleepy that i'll knock off until around 2.30pm...just in time for driving lessons! And i'd probably have to sleep more after the lesson...and then after dinner it'll be almost time to book in. And there goes my weekend......
Sucks huh. The army really should get those automatic gates that'll make our job so much easier..and get more MPs (military policeman..not members of parliament lol) to man OUR gates as well...i'm pretty sure that there're LOTS of units out there with redundant men who're doing nothing the whole day and who're better off being...well, MPs of course! And THAT way, super-active brigades like ours can focus on doing REAL work.
Anyway, i wanted to write more, but i really need to sleep now, so i'll end off here...goodnight to all!
