There are definitely times when the smell of human urination just hits your nose. It’s this horrible scent of metallic substances, just really sour, and pungent. It hits your nose when you approach a toilet that hasn’t been cleaned for very long, or sometimes when you walk past an exhaust fan outside a toilet. Other times, a weird neighbour might have let himself or herself go in the lift, or at a staircase, and you walk past it, smelling last night’s liquid going straight into your nostrils.
My bunk in my reservist camp is next to the toilet, and it smells like piss.
Maybe the smell of piss wouldn’t have been that offensive to me, but it seems to pile on my feelings of the Reservist portion. It’s something that comes naturally time to time, this feeling of dread having to go through a refresher for conscription. But at the same time, it’s absolutely necessary.
If I banned everyone from taking a piss at that toilet, it would inconvenience everyone. If I closed all the windows, it’ll be the room incredibly hot, and we would be stuck with the smell of each other instead. It’s just not a very pleasant set of experiences.
Likewise, the conscription sucks in a big way. Having to come back yearly to do it sucks even more. But if it’s not done, then a lot of other shit would happen instead. The prevailing lack of nationalism might decline, although possibly not as well. The general fitness of a Singaporean male might also drop dramatically. There are a lot of other shitty things that would happen.
So I’m just trying to survive. I’ll figure out a way next week to deal with this smell of piss and shit. Like every year, just figure out a way to survive this annual visit of conscription, of national service.