Snowglobe

+Do you guys know what a Snowglobe is? (wiki)A snowglobe is a transparent sphere usually made of glass enclosing a miniaturized scene of some sort, often together with a model of a landscape. The sphere also encloses the water in the globe; the water serves as the medium through which the "snow" falls. To activate the snow, the globe is physically shaken to churn up the white particles. The globe is then placed back in its position and the flakes fall down slowly through the water.

+Imagine a snowglobe now. A person looks at it and thinks, Hey this is too peaceful looking. It's boring. It's uninteresting. How about I give it a shake? Mess it up a little? Stir up some shit? And he takes hold of the snowglobe, shakes it real hard and watches while the city inside it falls into disarray and randomness, all the time sniggering as the snow slowly settles down.

+What about the people inside the snowglobe? How do they feel? They go around in their small confined area, doing their daily work, walking along thin lines, for fear that one wrong step would trigger off a hard shake of their globe. They would not like that, it disrupts their lifestyle, it makes life more difficult...

+The shaker however, finds real joy in doing all of the above, for he is unaffected; he has never been through all these disasters before and would never understand how the people in the snowglobe feel. He is too caught up in his act of tyranny to realize how much fear he is causing. He receives pleasure from the pain he causes people. He is too high up on his throne to care.

+But what the shaker does not realize is that how ridiculous he looks, holding the snowglobe and shaking it. He shakes the snowglobe, waits stupidly as the snow settles then shakes it again when the last snowflake floats into place. Some sane outsider will observe and ask, What the hell are you doing? Oh, I'm just stirring up shit to make life more difficult in the snowglobe, comes the reply. As if life isn't hard enough inside the snowglobe, The outsider retorts and asks, Moreover, why are you doing that to a snowglobe? Isn't whatever you are doing rather pointless; a storm in a teacup?

+I'm not trying to sound biased, but all the shit stirred up in this camp has to do with the Armour guys(which is us, if you didn't yet know). First the accusation of us not doing our work, for we "half the time stay in the canteen, half the time at cohesion". For your information, we hardly go to the canteen at all, except after working hours, of course. And just because you can't remember that our last cohesion was actually(and rightfully) last month doesn't mean that we go for cohesion every week. Secondly, the unfair imprecation that one of our guys fell asleep at during sentry duty and made someone's car wait at the gate for 5 minutes. Hey, we had video proof that that someone waited for only 11 seconds, why wouldn't you admit that you had made our guys a scapegoat just to warn the camp? Thirdly, just because our 3SG didn't answer your question about the weather correctly, you had to go to our PC and PS to make a complain, not realizing that our PS is somewhat cranky in the mind and how much repercussion your words would cause. Because of you, we had to clean all four of our tanks, both interior and exterior, clean the bloody engine, pull through all the damn main guns, clean the rammers and muzzle brakes, all within 3 days(2 of which are weekends), and anyone from armour would tell you how much of a bitch all these are to do. Didn't you realize how powerful your words were when you decided to punish our detachment by sending us all to LC to clean their armskotes(and arms)?

+This place has become rotten, it is too comfortable for too many, and there is simply too much resistance to change. People have forgotten, like people often do, all the hard work that the armour guys have done for this camp. People abuse their ranks, hell, we were scolded for not greeting an officer when we saw him 20m away, for we all expected to do so. (Point is, we greeted him when he was nearer to us; it's not like we didn't greet him at all.) To other people, CNY and SAF DAY happened just like this. To us, however, we know all the hard work that has to be put in to organize and put together an event like this. Today, when someone asked me to fill up an interview form regarding our roles in SAF DAY and what you have done, I don't even know where to begin. How can months and months of hard work be put into mere words? For many other people in the camp, however, I reckon they will have nothing to put down on that piece of paper, because, well, they did nothing. There are many more stuff that the armour guys do that is unrelated to tank work, but I shall not elaborate. The bottom-line is that we do so many things and we haven't failed at any yet, so people rely too much on us. Yet when things are done, they take us for granted and they forget. What I'm asking for is not appreciation - just don't forget the things we do. If one does a hundred good things and gets penalized for just one mistake, is it fair?

+I refer to our camp as a snowglobe because it is so small, our whole strength consists of only less than 70 people. Everyone basically knows everybody, yet they don't know anybody. It is amazing how much drama there is everday, when the camp is so small. I conclude that this can only be due to one reason: We are selfish, and couldn't give a damn to what we do everyday. But I expect this is the same in every S*F organization, where selfishness prevails.

+If only everyone can give two-hoots to their own job and to others' feelings, none of these dramas would have happened, and we would all be very peaceful, where all the snow has settled and the shaker wouldn't find a reason to shake the snowglobe.

+I have typed over a thousand words and oh today is Harry Potter's birthday. =)