Zheng Huiting and the death of a soldier

I am responding to a blog post I've read today about the death of Dominique Lee, a 21 year old soldier who died on the 17th April during a military exercise. He was believed to have suffered an asthma attack at the Murai Urban Training Facility before losing unconsciousness.  I offer my deepest condolences to the family of Dominique Lee. Further controversy erupted when Ms Zheng Huiting posted a comment on Facebook "Singaporeans too weak? LOL." There has been a recent spate of young people getting into trouble with comments they have made in social media, including Sun Xu and Lai Shimun.

Needless to say, I am very angry with Ms Zheng - her insensitive comments shows a complete lack of respect for the deceased family and her sheer ignorance about national service. Having faced the wrath of netizens' mob justice, she has since posted an apology on the hardwarezone forum. She also added that her first thought was that 'Singapore should have better measures as to who are able to take physical exercises'. She has since shut down her Facebook profile page, blog and Twitter account. But still, netizens are baying for blood and have a look at this thread here which is entitled "Zheng Huiting you should burn in hell".

Ooooh. Big mistake. Big mistake. 

What can I say, this was why I wrote this two-part myth-busting series aimed at female Singaporeans who know so little about what their male counterparts go through when they serve national service and I wish Ms Zheng would take a moment to read it and learn a bit more about what NS entails.
http://limpehft.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/part-1-limpeh-debunks-some-ns-myths.html
http://limpehft.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/part-2-more-ns-myths-debunked.html

I would like to compare the death of Dominique Lee to two recent incidents in the world of football. I am not a football fan but these stories do stand out. Firstly, Fabrice Muamba a 24 year old footballer for Bolton Wanderers suffered a heart attack during a match against Tottenham Hotspur on the 17th March 2012. His heart stopped for 78 minutes as he was being rushed to hospital. He spent many days in intensive care in critical condition but has since been discharged from hospital on the 16th April 2012 and is expected to make a full recovery.

The second incident I would like to refer to is that of Piermario Morosini who played for A.S. Livorno Calcio - on the 14th April 2012, he suffered a heart attack during a match against Pescara. He was rushed to hospital but died en route to the hospital, much to the shock of the Italian football community. His death was not only tragic, but sudden and totally unexpected. Both Muamba and Morosini were professional footballers who suffered heart attacks during football matches which were being televised live, under the watchful eyes of the football fans around the world.

Just two days ago, during the 2012 London Marathon, Claire Squires, 30, collapsed near the finish line and died. Ms Squires was the 11th participant to die since the event began in 1981 - such is the nature of sports which demand extreme exertion, there is a physical risk to the body of grave injury, even death. Those of us who are involved in professional sports understand this risk. The kind of physical demands made of a soldier during a military exercise is akin to sports training - just ask any soldier.

Now, this was many years ago, but I was involved in professional sports when I was younger having represented Singapore in many competitions internationally in the period 1992-1999; during 1997-99 I was already living in Europe as a student and representing Singapore in various competitions in Europe. I retired from professional sports in 2000 after I graduated and decided I have had enough - my body had taken enough punishment, I didn't think I was going to get any better and it was time to focus on building a career now that I have completed my degree.

Back in the 1990s, I used to train 6 days a week for up to 25 hours a week. It was 4 x 3.5 on 4 weekdays, followed by 2 x 5 hours on weekends = 24 hours. On my day off, I would exercise for at least one hour (jogging, conditioning etc) which makes the total = 25 hours a week. (I trained less when I was serving NS.) When one is involved in professional sports, one is driven by a will to succeed, to win the next competition. You have your enemies, you have your nemesis - it's a kind of passion that few people will understand. You don't do it because someone asked you to do so - you subject yourself to the training regime because you want to be the best.

Limpeh still works out regularly!

Sportsmen are humans too - we get the flu, we get chicken pox, we are susceptible to all kinds of infections and illnesses.  As a teenager though, I genuinely believed that giving in to illnesses was a sign of weakness. I would train when I was ill and I would even compete when I was very sick. It sometimes worked, sometimes with disastrous consequences. In 1990, I took part in a major local competition and won despite running a temperature. In 1998, I traveled to Lilleshall National Sports Centre to help my university defend a title they had won the year before despite running a temperature. I threw up during the warm up and couldn't barely stand up straight. The day was a blur at best and all I could remember was various people coming up to me and saying, "are you sure you can continue? Are you okay? Do you need a doctor?" It was pretty bad, the team didn't win and individually I finished 11th. Ouch. By the end of the competition, I actually didn't care that we lost, I just wanted to curl up in a corner and close my eyes as I was feeling so wretched. What a day that was.

We don't get to choose when we get to compete and sometimes after working months or even years for a big competition - we find ourselves unwell or injured. The weak give up and say, "I can't do it, not today" - the strong battle on and often injure themselves in the process. I will use the example of American gymnast Kerri Strug at the 1996 Olympics. It was the the finals of the women's team event and the American team needed a 9.493 to beat Russia. Strug was already injured .... well - just watch the video below. The rest is history.

I was lucky to have got away with all the times I trained and competed when I was ill - but such as in the case of Squires, Muamba and Morosini, you can even feel perfectly well and still collapse suddenly and I have seen others over the years do just that. If anything, I find Ms Zheng's remark particularly ignorant because had Dominique Lee been the kind of person to kick up a fuss the moment he felt unwell, he wouldn't have died - he would've gone to the medical centre to see a doctor. It was probably because he soldiered on despite not feeling completely well that he collapsed and died like that. His death was not a sign of weakness - it demonstrates quite the opposite. The fact that she failed to see that demonstrates incredible stupidity and ignorance on her part. What the hell do you know about strength or weakness Zheng Huiting you stupid dumbfuck? What have you done in your life? What have you ever achieved in your life to give you the right to pass judgment on Dominique Lee?

Can I just get this off my chest? Fuck you Zheng Huiting, you fucking stupid piece of PRC trash. Please fuck off back to China where you PRC shits belong. There I feel better. Thanks. Oooh I've just turned this into another anti-PRC rant.

Young men have this desire to prove how tough, strong and macho they are by refusing to give in to illness - at my age, 36 - I'm like, what the hell have I got to prove? I've been there and done it all and if I have the flu, I'm staying in bed and there's nothing you can say to convince me to do otherwise. But at 18 or 21, young men feel that they have something they need to prove. I am not speculating that this is a factor to do with Dominique Lee's death - but I can see how it can play a role.

Adolescents may feel compelled to prove how tough they are to their peers and themselves.

And then there's a culture of 'chao geng' - in Hokkien that literally translates as "smelly pretend", it refers to someone feigning an illness or injury to get out of doing something they don't want to do. There's no smoke without fire and I have witnessed plenty of chao geng in my time. Let me give you an example from my time. 17 years ago (good grief, now I feel so old), around 1995 March (or it could've been early April), British electronic dance group The Grid played a concert at Zouk. I was meant to go to that concert with my friend ... let's call him Goh. We were looking forward to getting off Pulau Tekong and return to civilization for some good food and an evening out at Zouk. I was a fan of The Grid (well, they were a bit of a one hit wonder with one big hit and several minor hits) so I was very keen to go.

Just as fate would have it, Goh was told he couldn't book out as some people were 'arrowed' to help with an event that event. Those who didn't book out that Saturday would get time off in lieu another time, but that basically ruined our plans. Goh was determined to go see The Grid, so he hatched a plan. I went along with it as I didn't want to go to the concert on my own and Goh was going to go through with this with or without my help. We picked a stairwell near the main office during area cleaning and Goh lay motionless at the bottom on the stairs. I threw a broom, pail and dustpan down the stairs to make sure it made one hell of a crash so it would get people coming out of the office. As people came out of the office, I told them, I saw Goh faint at the top of the stairs and fell all the way down the stairs and hit his head on the floor.

Sure enough, I got to help carry Goh to the medical centre where he got to lie down for about hour hours. I was half wondering if they were going to keep him there overnight if they suspected he had a concussion. The warrant officer in charge asked Goh why he didn't say anything if he was unwell and Goh replied, "Sir, I paiseh lah, I don't want people to say I chao-geng. I didn't think I was that sick."

The warrant office replied, "Waliao if you fall down the stairs and break your neck and die, then you know how many people will get into trouble? If you are sick then just say so lah, don't scared paiseh or worry people say chao-geng okay?" And yeah, he got to book out and we went to Zouk. What a great concert that was too.

You get the idea - it was people like Goh who made others doubt those who claimed to be unwell. There was this "you're guilty of chao-geng until proven to be genuinely sick by the medical officer" attitude. I don't know what is worse - to be sick or to be accused of being chao-geng. I remember there was once I was genuinely sick - I had a bad case of sore eyes, my eyes were puffy, swollen and very red and I could barely see out of one of them. Even under such circumstances, I found out later that people still suspected that I had deliberately rubbed dirt in my eyes to induce the sore eyes. Good grief, did they have any idea how much pain and discomfort conjunctivitis gave me? Such was the environment in the SAF, people treated the sick with suspicion rather than compassion - it was terrible, illogical and bloody stupid.

That was why I often soldiered on even when I was ill, because I simply didn't want to be accused of being chao-geng. I can see how it is conceivable that Dominique Lee could have been unwell but didn't want to report his sickness to a superior because of this "guilty of chao-geng until proven otherwise genuinely ill" culture in the SAF. If he had been performing in that military exercise whilst he was already unwell, then it could have resulted in his untimely death.

So there you go - I don't know how Dominique Lee died, that is what a post-mortem will find out. I can only reflect on my own experiences of how the SAF's attitude on the issue of chao-geng and how it made many soldiers reluctant to report a sickness. I have also pointed out that even extremely fit professional footballers can collapse and get heart attacks mid-game when they appear to be very healthy. For Zheng Huiting to bitch about Singaporeans being too weak - well let me join the rest of the netizens to stick a big middle finger to her and say a big FUCK YOU to her. What the hell do you know about NS you stupid PRC bitch.

Zheng Huiting probably thinks we all have a gay time in NS.