Army Open House 2012

Visited the Army Open House (AOH) this morning. They call it an organized visit but it is an open secret that they are trying to get more numbers to fill up the place. I am not sure but it seems that the army is emphasizing on comfort these days because there were two buses catered for transportation when one is sufficient to contain all of us.

In the end, everybody was entitled to occupy two seats in the bus and there were still a number of empty seats remaining. We arrived there a little after nine and could only be released at half past twelve. So, what to do to kill that three odd hours? We toured around and saw lots of familiar things which we have been seeing on almost every weekday.

The female secondary school students and some others might tell you that the event was interesting and full of fun. Here is my honest opinion and experience about it. The volunteers, or rather NSFs who are kena arrowed work at AOH, showed little interest in entertaining fellow NSFs like us. They were friendlier towards the students on "organized visits".

I stared at them and they just acted like a mirror and reflected back what I was doing. No smiles, no approach, no words spoken. If I wore a school uniform, chances are one of them will be busy explaining to me the military stuff which they are trying to boast about. Unlike many other units who wore army fatigues, we were dressed in the Armour polo tee but the logo on it gave us away.

After strolling past most of the places, we decided to end the tour by heading to the Singapore Flyer. It was my first time visiting the Singapore Flyer building and it wasn't impressive at all except that I could enjoy the air-con while resting there. Honestly, the best place at the entire Singapore Flyer/F1 Pit Building area was the SF toilet. It had air-con, music, low human traffic and was sparkling clean.

We paced around the circular building for quite a while before going to Subway for a meal and continued resting there. Saw quite a lot of tourists there like the photo-snapping ang mohs, the fascinated-at-everything Indians and of course, the irritating and noisy China people. However, they are completely outnumbered by the sheer amount of soldiers who are, like me, eating snake there.

I cannot really say if the AOH was a success or not because today (and yesterday) is for organized visits. Most of the visitors did not come on their own accord. Let's see what will it be like on Saturday and Sunday. Maybe regulars will be "encouraged" to bring their family and friends there.

If that happens, the organizers are bound to brag "What a huge turnout!".