Thoughts on last Monday -Terence

I served the country between the 3rd to the 14th of Sept by attending my reservist training. I am an NS man, meaning I have finished my 2 and a half years of active service with the Singapore Army years ago, and it is stipulated that I return to training every year for a maximum of 40 days, depending on what my battalion or brigade requires. Thus far, as is the norm, we return once a year for one to two weeks, and will be doing so for another 5 or 6 years. I believe in the system and am dedicated to it, perhaps more so than the others. I do not believe that makes me a patriot to any extent, simply that I have a home and people here I hope to protect.

I returned to my bunk, having been to a workshop at 27 Kerbau; I had a night's off, since we had completed our tasks and had several hours of free time before needing to sleep at about 2300hrs. I left the group of actors at about 10.10, in the midst of the discussion we had on the exercise conducted minutes earlier, and arrived at camp on the dot, 10.30pm, which was the time we were supposed to return to camp by. It was from one exercise to another.


When I was proposed an angle for my blog entries, to think if there were aspects of Radu that could be discovered while serving my nation, amongst other views, I thought there wouldn't be anything I could find. Because I can and I do believe in serving my country, in spite of what I feel about its government, in spite of the fact that I too, to a lesser extent, have to be careful with the words I am presenting in this public space, i.e., I have chosen NOT to state what it is I feel about this country's government for the sake of this group of ours.

But there are several things I do not understand about my character, Radu. This country's army isn't independent of the government, so while I may feel whatever it is a feel about the gahmen, I still am, in a way, supporting it by giving it my service to the best of my ability. I would want to, perhaps, actually stand up to support what I believed in, but how does one actually know such things?


During the workshop, we were walked through years of repression, not necessarily as Romanians nor with any specificity to our characters, and were allowed to experience, imaginatively, how it was to feel numb. Eventually, two of us broke into a scuffle, myself and Jonathan Lum, because he wanted food and I wanted to make a statement. I won that fight, but I lost terribly - because I did not have the support of the people I was fighting for. I was seen as being selfish, and unconcerned to the needs of the others, and the others did not understand what I was trying to do; they felt I was acting hero. And they were right. What were my/my character's intentions? How much of it was for them, and how much of it was for me, my ego and my character's?


In the heat of the discussion I had to go, without fully explaining myself to the others, not that it matters now, with my thoughts and feelings bruised. But I felt so alive, and I resented having to leave. We did experience something close to a revolution, at least, closer than what one normally gets in this country, and I believed that was what Radu looked for, and perhaps some of the other characters as well. Because what they had was youth, or whatever else was left of it, and they didn't want it squandered away. Not on mundanity, when there was something else out there, better, that they could almost grasp, and they had the ability to do so.

I did not despise the army for taking me away from that revolution, it cannot serve my every need. But I certainly did not enjoy returning to a place devoid of the action I felt in 27. And who could I talk to about these things, apart from my fellow actors who were there?