Saving Private Gallagher

 I feel like society often misconstrues a defining moment as one that is meant to impact your entire life, and it has to be something grand or huge. I shared in this through my consumption of social media, television and just observing the people around me.  In reality, defining moments can be so minute and almost insignificant that we overlook them if we aren't paying attention. We often highlight the need to celebrate the small wins, but perhaps looking at the small losses to identify what exactly is bringing us down is just as important? A friend (hi glenn) thinks that every decision we make is a defining moment, for better or worse. I agree to an extent, but here's my take. A defining moment doesn't have to impact the next 10 years of your life directly, but it may be a moment that defines your day, your week or your month. Why don't we revere these moments in the same way if we truly want to 'celebrate the small wins'. For me this past week has felt like a ...

  July 2018, 5 years since my last trip ‘home’. A little town in the Northwest of Ireland that pretty much no one has ever heard of, yet holds a special place in my heart. Sligo. Last time round, I was a baby faced 16-year-old, just happy to be on a summer holiday. Funnily enough, I’m now a baby-faced 21-year-old who’s also just happy to have a little break, albeit under different circumstances. This is now a solo-trip, one with greater significance than just a regular holiday. 5 years back, I was able to train with Sligo Rovers’ U17 team, an opportunity which at the time was a huge step-up from any of the football I had participated in previously. I was just a boy who loved football, but didn’t really have any ambitions of making something out of it. Sligo Rovers were my Dad’s team, and his Dad’s team and so on and so forth. The small, community club was part of our family and we were a part of the Bit O’Red (Sligo Rovers’ nickname). I had been to countless summer camps in...

     666 days of service.      A satanic number. Arguably a good representation of my time in the Army.      95 weeks as a member of the Singapore Armed Forces, oh how time has flown by. My life has changed so much in the past 20 months, for the better. Definitely not how I would've envisioned my life turning out prior to actually enlisting. The nights spent sleeping in the jungle, countless pointless drills and punishments from people I didn't respect were unbearable. I didn't suffer in silence by any means, but I made it through and I think it puts me in good stead for the future where I'll have to do the same. Life isn't fair, and at some point we all have to do things we don't want to and be punished for others' wrongdoing. Its part of growing up I guess.     For all the silly drills and wasted hours, I also forged bonds with people I never would have otherwise. From my first day of basic training till my ORD day, I've spent ple...

    1...2...3...4...Stretch...and relax. With l ess than a 100 days to go, the fateful number that so many National Servicemen look forward to, there won't be many more Army-standard training exercises to endure.      Its been both mentally and physically exhausting, serving a cause that you have no say in, regardless of if you see its merits.      I've been fortunate enough to have football as an avenue to rid myself of these empty cycles of training. Doing physical training thrice a week with no purpose, no objective and no reason to try. Even when we go outfield, there is no inclination to put effort into what you do, there never is. How are you meant to motivate yourselves if there is only negative reinforcement, and even then its so marginal. You become numb to your superiors' disdain or feedback. I guess that's why its so easy to stand out in the army, possessing motivation and a slimmer of enthusiasm can get you so far. Not to take away fr...

   As I sit here and recall the whirlwind of events that have transpired over the last month, I can't help but have a massive grin on my face. I've represented my nation in front of a thousand fans with even more online, cheering myself and my teammates on as we attempted to write history.    One year ago, I was fresh out of BMT, struggling to adapt to the vigorous training schedule in my new posting, going through a heart wrenching break up and thinking that the decision I made to not attend command school in order to allow myself to chase a far-fetched footballing dream was a terrible one. I was in a hole, and I can't say I was happy whatsoever. I was so far away from my lifelong friends, in a situation I never wanted to be in, unable to do what I loved. I had a goal, unknowing if it would ever materialise. Here I am, in a position that I dreamt of for years, and more importantly that I manifested for myself.    Hearing passionate fans scream the Singapor...

  Loyalty is a trait that never seems to carry a negative connotation, and rightly so. The ability to stick with someone or something through thick and thin is extremely commendable, but to what extent is keeping your loyalty worthwhile? Does forcefully being loyal to your nation for two years (followed by another 10 in intervals) of your life even count?    Being loyal to a just cause, or a person that has earned that loyalty is respectable, but sometimes I look at people serving the army just to get it over with like me in utter disbelief. You have extremes on either end, people so determined to let the army consume their life and revolve around nothing but that position, talking about it endlessly and making others' lives more miserable for the sake of a few rules. In stark contrast, you also have 'chao kengs' or other people of the sorts that take medical leave and have no interest in being of any help to the guys they're working alongside. Loyalty shouldn't lie...

       Well...plenty has happened in the last two months since I last posted here. It wasn't a matter of my life being mundane and nothing happening, but rather me struggling with issues ranging from my football 'career' to my future beyond the army.       For the past four months my army life has changed completely, I've been able to live a childhood dream in the form of playing football for a professional team and to represent Singapore in a way that I would have never thought could materialise. However, at the same time my Army commitments haven't taken a back seat and I've had to juggle them both and it hasn't been the easiest at times. Don't take this as a complaint because I absolutely love the opportunity and challenge that 'living two lives' presents, but I can now empathise with the top professional footballers who deal with issues with their mental health. Everybody outside the world of football thinks that its easy to kick a ball aroun...

     Excuse me for the extended hiatus, but life got in the way. Between the three jungle visits, football starting back up and a host of other things on my mind I let the blog slip. However, today I feel like I have a peach of an entry and hopefully can share some tasty army life morsels.     Let's start with my top five packing essentials. 1. A   Field chair      Whether we're deployed in a conventional (jungle) or urban (buildings) setting, a field chair is a 10/10 must have. When you're sat on your arse waiting for hours at a time for your enemies to make the trek to your deployment, what better way to relax and enjoy your assortment of snacks and Netflix downloads (which I'll get to later). As you gain seniority you see variations of field chair change, the closer you are to ORDing (finishing your service) the further back your chair tends to be able to recline and thus the comfort levels. I have to mention that the equipment you bring o...

There will be defining moments in your life, that when you back on them and think wow, that could’ve gone so differently, probably for the worst. In the last 2 months I’ve been down in the dumps like never before, evaluating what it is I’m really doing, what am I chasing, what version of myself am I happy being. I almost gave up on the one thing that makes me happier than anything else in the world and yet here I am presented with the opportunity of a lifetime to grasp something I’ve been working tirelessly for. At the same time I’ve been brought back down to Earth, being forced to realise that I’m not the perfect human, and I’ve got so many areas I need to grow in and mature. Making mistakes is forgivable, but sitting in silence, not learning from them isn’t, and that’s something I want to preach.  I probably sound like some pastor worshipping different values, but in the past month, I’ve realised more than ever that the work you put in when no one is watching will always be more ...

 The last few weeks in camp have been pretty dull, so in today's entry I'll be answering some of your questions from IG as well as discussing my life outside the army and what that's like. Trying to balance my footballing ambitions and NS commitments      For as long as I can remember I've been chasing the dream to one day play football professionally and maybe represent Singapore. In the past 16 months I've been closer to that than I've ever been before in my life, training with a top professional set up in Kitchee in Hong Kong and coming back here with an opportunity to join the local setup. However, the current global pandemic has severely limited my options and left me with little choice but to wait for things to die down. Having played nothing more than a few weeks of football in Singapore over a few summers prior to enlisting, I had few contacts and didn't really have any hope that I could play over here. Since then, I've started working with some ...

 I'm now over a third into my NS journey, which is depressing to think about when I see friends constantly finishing their two years before me. With the amount of free time I have to sit in my bunk and stare at the ceiling, I've been able to reflect upon the past 7/8 months of my life.  *Disclaimer* I'm not saying any of the observations made below are unlike me or what I do, just things I've noticed =) The army is an almost entirely male organisation, and it is what I imagine a boys school would be a little bit like. Nothing but a swarm of horny, egotistical and arrogant young men. Now that is an exaggeration but not necessarily to the degree one would hope.  Horny. Any relatively young woman that sets foot into an army camp will receive attention similar to that of a diamond dropped in front of burglars. They enter a frenzy of oogling, whispering and pointing, leading to one person daring another to ask for her contact details or making a crude comment about her figur...

Do you remember the days when we used to get bored of our extended holidays and want nothing more than to be back in school and having some sort of schedule and structure in our lives again?  Yeah, that’s the army pretty much right now for me. It might sound so stupid to complain about my schedule right now, which consists of breakfast, exercise on alternating days, lunch and dinner. That’s all I do everyday. Obviously I use the gym and read and do other things to try and keep sane but I can only watch so much Netflix before I feel my brain melting. There’s obviously an abundance of things I could do with all this spare time but it’s so hard to find the motivation to get off my ass and do something. I’ve recently gotten into investing, I want to learn Spanish and I’m starting the process to get my driver’s license, but the feeling of being unproductive is inevitable.  On top of that seeing people from your past and friends outside the army living their best lives, enjoying the...

       I'd like to start by wishing everyone a belated merry Christmas and a happy New Year! I've written this blog for almost half a year now and the support that I have gotten has been so unexpected and so appreciated, I hope you guys continue to enjoy reading the stuff I write!          As I mentioned in my previous post I was going out for my last bit of my training phase, a dreaded field camp that the seniors in the company have nothing but encouraging and 'great' things to say about. There was a weird feeling going into it within our platoon because our expectations were so high in terms of how much we were going to get fucked. We expected things to be hectic and rushed the moment we got there but surprisingly for the first two days things were relatively normal, it was the standard we were accustomed to. We had to do training and an evaluation in the jungle in which we fought our way through a course which lasted over an hour...

It’s been an eventful last month. Last week I took part in my first Battalion Mission Exercise, where our company of 90+ had a simulated battle over 2 days against 600 troopers. As OPFOR (Opposition Force) we’re meant to test our ‘enemies’ and ensure they’re ready for a war that’ll probably never ever come because well we’re Singapore. You might be curious as to how a fake war would happen, but it’s actually quite simple. Laser-tag. It’s basically a glorified laser tag game that takes place in the jungle, but you still shoot blanks to simulate a real round being shot. It’s a little bit juiced up because you have different weapons, tanks driving around and artillery strikes being called in. But that’s pretty much the gist. Now for what everyone is wondering, how was it? I can only describe it with vocabulary so Jared-like, it was a fuck-fest. On day 1 of the mission, we were meant to delay their initial onslaught into vegetation for roughly 2 hours, but ended up delaying them for over 5...