Here's something I wrote about UIP last week.

"When I arrived in 3 Signal Battalion more than a month ago, I was thinking to myself, “Here I am! After more than 8 months of trainee life, I’ve finally arrived at my unit.”

Boy, oh boy. How wrong I was. The Unit Induction Phase was still there waiting. Don’t get me wrong. I never thought that unit life would be slack. I just assumed that the days of being treated like dirt were over. After being in Basic Military Training, School of Infantry Specialists and Signal Institute (SI wasn’t that bad), I thought unit life would a more mature working experience.

The idea of having a Unit Induction Phase (read: tekan session) is a pretentious one at best. I find that there’s no actual useful purpose in holding these sessions. I would rather they incorporated it into a training program so that we can learn something more effectively. But of course, the answer that can always be shot back at me would be, “This is the army. Get used to it”.

My philosophy on army life would be to take everything in your stride without complaining or whining. If I wanted to complain about army, I would have had ample opportunities in the past 8 months to do so. I would try to look for the positive points in people or situations. I find that doing this keeps me sane.

An incident that comes to mind was when we had our first tekan session. A stand-by bed that was conducted by our Platoon Sergeant. He tried to wear us out with push-ups, shouting, change parades, field pack inspections, stand-by-beds and timings for every activity. But we came out the stronger. I'd like to think that we surprised them by how resilient we were. All the strenuous activity that they dished out at us could do was to make me smile at my bunkmates and encourage them by saying, "Is this the best they've got?"

I initially thought that my Platoon Sergeant was being a pain because he didn’t like the way I responded to his questions. Every time he talked to me it was as if I was his worst enemy. His words were full scorn and disdain. I was telling myself after that week that all I needed was one reason to respect him and I would. It turns out that he’s a lot nicer than I thought and he’s won my respect. The reason why he talked to me in that way was because of the way I seemed to react to his instructions. He probably mistook me not understanding his questions and failing to answer them for disrespect.

The only thing that is getting me down is having athlete’s foot and a rash on my hands. I think its called eczema. I think its because of the amount of dust in my bunk. Even with the countless area cleaning that we do, it still doesn’t seem to help my problem. Its very much cleaner than when we first stepped foot into 3rd Signal Battalion but I don’t know why my rash is not going away.

Honestly, I like this place. I find that the people are nice and pleasant to work with. Its just that the Unit Induction Phase is too long. Its purpose could have been achieved already. I feel that its being dragged on just for sake of doing so. I’m trying my best but I can feel the morale dropping.

Sometimes I worry about the physical condition of our men as well. Some of them haven’t been conditioned to this sort of treatment like we have. I find that the specialist are able to take it because of the extra 3 months we had in SISPEC but the men are straight out from BMT and SI. Just hope that we’ll be able to take good care of them and prevent them from falling out.

In conclusion to my thoughts on UIP, I would think that it has already served its purpose. Although tying it together with our training would make it more meaningful. Also, the duration of UIP could be shortened to a month. It isn’t the lack of privileges that bother me. I would rather that we be treated normally."
| 3SG DARYL GOH TIZHI |