What is a home? Is it simply a place where one lives, a place where one feels a sense of belonging or attachment to? Or is it a place where one’s family resides, a place where a person spent his formative years in? Recently I toyed with the idea that my bunk can actually be my home (I could hear the gasps and cries of protests from fellow soldiers already).

But technically speaking, camp is home. It is where I spent most of my time in (five days a week to be exact); where I sleep, bathe, eat, breathe in. It is not so different from my family residence after all. Actually, when I think about it, camp can sometimes be more of a home than what many of us can care to admit. Where else can you walk around in your underwear without people staring at you? It is a place were guys can be guys and where all nose-digging, burping and other bad habits are practiced with impunity.

But with underwear and dirty laundry all over the place and the toilet reeking of urinal fragrance, I’ve started to think that my bunk is becoming a pig sty. That is why I’ve embarked on a project to make my bunk more homely and worthy of human occupance. I’m convinced that the enviromment you’re in has an effect on your mood and behavior.

A famous experiment was conducted in the US where volunteers were thrown into a prison-like environment complete with unbreakable iron bars and dirty prison cells. Volunteers were split into two groups: prisoners and wardens. The results were not what one would expect. The wardens began subjecting them to harsh treatment, which grew more sadistic day by day. The prisoners retaliated by starting mutinies and fighting against the prison wardens, who would then subdue them to even worse maltreatment. Fearing that the experiment would get even more chaotic, it was ended prematurely. When the volunteers were asked what caused them to act so abnormally throughout the duration of the experiment, they could not provide a reason. The conclusion of the experiment was this: it was in fact the environment, the circumstance under which they were kept that influenced their behaviors subconsciously, causing them to become increasingly agitated and violent.

After reading about this experiment, I’ve decided that I’ve got to change my environment. The first thing I want to change (and have already done so) are the bedsheets. The ones supplied by the CQ have already turned from white to yellow. Who knows what kind of creatures and bedbugs lurk under those sheets? But all that is changed now, with a bargain buy from a neighbourhood shop. The design is a bit "gayish" for my tastes, but I guess one could use a bit of feminine touch in a male-dominated environment. The next thing I want to do is to decorate my grey cabinet. I want to make it splashy, colourful and cool. Something that reflects my identity, something to call my own. At these moment I’m still searching for ideas. So stay tuned.

And of course there are many other things which I would like to do: like putting in effort to keep my cabinet neat and tidy, pulling the bedsheets after I wake up and many other nitty-gritty things. Small things do make a big difference.

Time will tell whether these changes have any effect on my morale and outlook while I’m in camp. And if these changes do make a difference, I hope that it will be big. But when I think about it, it doesn’t really matter actually. Afterall, I will be living in the same place for the next seven months so I might as well just do something about it. Mo harm making my bunk a nicer place to live in.