Far far away in the south china sea
I left a girl with tears in her eyes
I must go where the brave men dies


My first sleep in Pulau Tekong was surprisingly peaceful. I thought I would have trouble sleeping. But no. The weather was cooling. The fan whirring.  Maybe also because lights off was at 2230hrs. So it was good timing for me. 


A soldier has to fight the front because he love his land
A soldier has to fight even if he has to die
Cos we are the one who fight the front


We were told that there would be mosquitoes. We were also given malaria pills. We had to sleep under the mosquito net. So I didn't have to fight anything. I was just fighting my own images in my head. A few times I woke up thinking that this was all a nightmare and I will wake up at home. But no, I kept waking up at the same bed. Bed 10.


We are the one who hold the gun
We are mighty warriors of our land yaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!
​

Alarm clock rang at 0515hours. I used a brand new old fashioned analog clock to set my alarm. The instructions the previous night was, 


Reveille 0530hours
Fall in 0545 hours 
Breakfast 0600 hours


It was my 1st morning there and I didn't want to be late. I didn't want to rush for the toilets also. I wanted to brush my teeth and take a bath in peace before anyone else. Plus, I was adapting with the shower cubicles being doorless. It felt weird to me. 


But apparently I didn't have to rush. After I finished bathing, I realised no one else went to the toilet. They just sat there, stoned and then went down to fall in at 0545. So no one bathed. Ok. So it's like that. That's good then. We marched on to the cookhouse for our breakfast. 


Everywhere we go, we had to march or walk in steps. I really don't like the regimental way of life. I mean it is good to maintain discipline and order. What I hate is, the superiors screaming and shouting at us. They behave like they have been through 25 world wars and that we are all insects and we need their screaming to survive. The 25 world wars experiences justified their capabilities of being the best soldiers on the planet and we are supposed to look up and respect them. 


But heck no. The sergeants and officers were at most, 1 year older than me, meaning 1 year more NS experience than us. If you read my previous blog posts, I am naturally confrontational. Anyone screaming in my face, my 1st reaction would be to punch his teeth. But I cannot do that here, else you could be charged for insurbodination. So yeah, to me these instructors are just rude, obnoxious and arrogant. There was a platoon commander in my company. He knew who I am. He was in the same madrasah as me. He didn't even look at me. Just plain rude and arrogant. But humans are like that. Ranks and authority make one arrogant. 


And that was what I was fighting with. Arrogant superiors. They didn't make me enjoy the moments. Really. The activities were all fun. I looked at the timetable and I was looking forward for the activities. And I would be there for 16 weeks.


Why 16 weeks?


I had to go through 6 weeks of "Physical Training Phase" (PTP) before I start with my 10 weeks of  Basic Military Training (BMT). The sergeants told me that for Mohawk company, it would be an "Enhanced PTP". I had no idea what it meant. I only knew I had to go for that 6 weeks of PTP before BMT. This is because I did not pass my IPPT in poly. So those who didn't pass would have to go through 6 weeks of physical training. It is not an "extra" 6 weeks. It's just a phase. We will still have to serve 2 and a half years of NS. Yes. It was 2.5 years then. Unlike just 2 years now. 


So these 6 weeks, we would be trained on our physical fitness. On week 4, we will have to do an IPPT test. If we pass the test, we can get a "disruption". Meaning we can go home and come back 2 weeks later for BMT. If we don't pass on week 4, we will have another test on week 5. Pass that one and we can go home for 1 week. 


I didn't think I would pass. I cannot run. I was given a yellow tag to be worn everywhere I go, to indicate that I am a "weak runner". Yes. Any of my RP students reading this. I am a weak runner. So I cannot see any excuse why any of you who are so much younger than me would run slower than me. 


As I said, the activities, on paper, were fun. It was, sleep, wake up, breakfast, exercise, lunch, exercise, dinner, cool down, sleep. There were other routines also such as area cleaning and inspection after breakfast. Yes we cleaned the bunks, corridors and toilets ourselves. There were no external workers to do them at that time. I heard there are Bangladeshi cleaner in camps now. Also there were the hourly water parades where we had to gulp down 500ml of water every hour. It took us a few days to get adapted to the water intake and constant peeing, but once our body got used to it, we didn't pee much. 


Because...


We perspire. The exercises. I told you they look fun on paper. It was, supposed to be, static stations, fartlakes, sprints, swimmings, gym, partner resistance exercises. Awesome right? It could have been productive. But... all the sessions. ALL the sessions were mostly taken up by punishments. For example, a 2 hour swimming session, we will spend 1.5 hours doing punishments instead of the actual swim itself. Push ups, sit ups, run here, run there, hold push up positions, hold sit up positions, hold planking positions. I find the Physical Training Instructors (PTI) seem to have a kick in punishing us than doing their jobs of training us. If punishing is part of their idea of physical training, then a 40 year old me now would say, they were definitely ineffective and time wasting. Instead of lifting weights half of our body weight in the gym, we spent more time holding 1/4 of our weight doing push ups. Definitely ineffective. Instead of doing long runs, we spent more time sprinting to trees and touching them and coming back to push up positions. Yes, thats what we did for the whole of 6 weeks. It was the most inefficient PTP ever. I don't know how other PTP in other companies were like but, they were definitely ineffective.


Saturday, 24th June 2000


Parents' visiting day. My parents came over and brought me snacks, some food and essentials. I haven't book out yet, so they had to bring for me some extra soap and powder and stuff. They were there from morning and left after lunch. 


After our parents left, the sergeants told us to put on the table everything our parents brought. Everyone of us did. Most of it were food. The sergeants took all the food and placed them black trash bags and threw them. I was very very angry. Those were food. Not some contraband stuff. If it was not for insurbodination, I really would beat every sergeant there to pulp. Really. I was very angry. Then I realised that Mohawk company was a "tekan" company. With arrogant instructors and non-stop punishment. Because after we threw away the food, we were told to go downstairs for our routine punishment. We were punished because our parents gave us food. And that was when I saw, while in push up positions, the recruits in the other companies, namely Ninja company which was just beside us, were sitting and looking at us while eating food brought to them by their parents. I realised, Mohawk is different. I need to get out of here. I better pass my IPPT and take every chance of leaving.

Saturday 1st July 2000

My 1st book out day. I was in Tekong for a good almost full 3 weeks before I was allowed out. Yes. A Saturday. NS during that time was a 5.5 days work week. Meaning, we booked out at about 2pm on Saturday and book in back to Pasir Ris Interchange at 8pm on Sunday. Mcdonalds tasted so good. Book out felt so short.

We reached week 4. Remember I told you that the tekan sessions were not effective? Yes it was proven here. The tekans were all just to boost the instructors ego. Many of us did not pass our week 4 IPPT. Like, 85% of us did not pass after 4 weeks. Neither did I. I was frustrated. Yes we did get a bit fitter than when we 1st came, but we could have been better if the training sessions were better utilised. 


IPPT then had 5 stations. Sit ups. Shuttle run. Standing Broad Jump. Pull ups. 2.4km run. Let me give you 
My score / Minimum passing score


Sit ups 42 / 31
Shuttle Run 9.5s / 10.7s
SBJ 225cm / 216cm
Pull ups 0 / 6
2.4km run 12min 40sec / 12:20


I failed my 2.4 and pull ups. 4 weeks and I cannot even do 1 pull up. You know what I did? I observed how people did pull ups and looked at the muscle groups used. The push up punishment didn't help. It worked the pectorals and hurt the shoulders and triceps. But we need to use our triceps and shoulders to do pull ups. I sat down and think what exercises could strengthen the triceps and shoulders. Guess what? I did DIPS. Yes. I made a point to do 100 dips a day until the next IPPT in week 5. 100 to be spread out throughout the day. 20 dips repetition each time. So I did 5 sets of 20 reps per day. 


IPPT week 5


Sit ups 42 / 31
Shuttle Run 9.5s / 10.7s
SBJ 225cm / 216cm
Pull ups 6 / 6
2.4km run 12min 07sec / 12:20


I managed to do 6 pull ups in 1 week. Compared to zero pull ups in 4 weeks. Can you see how inefficient the training were? The sergeants asked me how I did it. I told them. 100 dips a day. 


I passed and off I go back to the mainland. Disrupt for 1 week. I will still be back at Mohawk though, but it is still a precious 1 week off the island. 


As I marched off the company line with the recruits, with the odd maybe 14 recruits; who passed in week 5, towards the ferry terminal, I saw the whole Mohawk company at the training shed in front of our company line, doing dips with the sergeants. 


Enjoy the dips people. I'll see you again in a week!

Categories : The Army Series

So here, we go. The army series blog. This blog is supposed to be an “Arts” blog but since there is nothing much happening during this period and I really have nothing much to do, I shall blog about something else. I have always wanted to write about my army experiences before my memory fails, so I guess this could be a good time. Also from an encouraging  response from 33 persons out of 110 viewers out of 313 followers on Instagram, I’ve decided that it is a good time.


I spent quite some time jotting down notes and arranging my thoughts on how to arrange this series. I hope it will be easy enough to be read and in some logical order. I really hope I won’t get into trouble writing all these down. I hope the pictures will all be safe for viewing. Of course I will omit some things that has happened which we all know can never be made public. Maybe you can meet me and ask, but generally I am a boring person so there won’t be much interesting things to share and also I have trust issues about sharing some things with people. But the main point is, I really want to write all these down before my memory fails. Already I have forgotten some details, so I better start as soon as possible.


We’ll start with enlistment day and the months after. Well technically it is not my 1st day because about 6 months before this, I had to go for a medical check up and IQ test. Got a PES A status. To be honest I was quite proud/happy with my status, meaning I am fit and healthy but also quite disappointed because it means there will be possibilities that I will be posted into tough units. I was hoping for some slack vocations. As for the IQ test, everyone else in the room just breezed through the test, like pressing “Enter” button incessantly and getting the test done quickly. I actually enjoyed the test and really took time to to calculate, formulate the questions before answering. I kept asking for extra papers for me to draw out the questions and formula. I was just actually enjoying myself. Many years later, I believed the tests did actually pre-decided my vocation.


So, enlistment day, Tuesday 13th June year 2000AD. Almost 20 years ago. I wasn’t ready. I am sure there would be people who are excited and all, but I wasn’t. A few days before that, I received my 1st army salary. $240 for a recruit. I used them to buy stuff for enlistment. Most memorable was $80 for a spare battery that was supposedly could last me for 2 weeks for my Nokia 6150 handphone. I wasn’t a rich kid, but not many people had handphones. I was one of the very few who had one. The phone wasn’t expensive really. I think it cost about $50 at that time. It was the plan that was expensive. I think it was 5cents per sms of 120 characters and 10cents per minute of talk time. That was expensive. $1 to talk for 10 minutes as compared to 10cents for 3 minutes on a public phone. We were also told that we can bring handphones to camp but we cannot charge them from the power sockets. I have no idea why. The other recruits just say that Pulau Tekong power supply is not enough to support everyone’s charging. So the spare battery made sense to me.

My parents accompanied me. We reached Pasir Ris Bus Interchange at about 8am, I think, I forgot (see i am forgetting and it annoys me), but definitely early morning. We then took a bus from the interchange heading towards SAF Ferry Terminal at Changi. My then girlfriend waved me off from the interchange when I was in the bus. She couldn’t follow. It was a sucky feeling. I still can feel that feeling every time I set foot at Pasir Ris Interchange. At that time, there were 2 Basic Military Centres. 1 in Pulau Tekong and the other at Nee Soon Camp. Of course I preferred to be at Nee Soon. Not only was it nearby to my place, but also because it is on the mainland. I had to be sent to Pulau Tekong. Why such a desolated place? Why not Nee Soon? I heard, Nee Soon camp allowed enlistees to charge handphones.


We reached SAF Ferry terminal after about 10 minutes bus ride. Board a ferry that looks like a ferry to Batam (I realised the ferries are the same ferries to Batam! Penguin ferry company) and said goodbye to mainland Singapore. It was another 10 minutes ride on the ferry. I was very anxious and nervous. I played them all down because I thought everyone would feel the same. Only recently I found out I may be having a condition (will get a diagnosis after the circuit breaker period) that causes anxiety to travelling and changes in routines. The island, Pulau Tekong, look so near from Singapore’s mainland, but the funny thing is, Singapore looked so far away from Pulau Tekong.

Arrived at Pulau Tekong Basic Military Centre. Did the same thing as everyone else now. Go through the administration stuff, go on a tour, take the oath and so forth. The only thing different then from now is, we were given a “Welcome Package”. It was really a cute paper bag given by a very civil servant auntie who looked jaded. The paper bag contained our NS Identification card (called 11B), it had a chip planted which I had no use of and no one had any idea what it was for. (The current 11B issued does not have the chip anymore.) Legend says it that you can put money into the card and use it as cashcard for payments like ERP, library fines and the army “Emart” stores. The paper bag also included administration papers like my details and my BMT assignment, a pincode for the 11B (which I assumed it is for the chip that we never use, thus I don’t remember the pincode) and a phonecard. I cannot remember how much was the value in the phonecard. Maybe $2? Good thing I brought spare battery for my handphone.

Notice that cashcard looking chip. I had an annoyed face because prior to the phototaking, I had below shoulder length hair. And then I had it cut to shoulder length to take my final exams. Any male student with hair length longer than shoulder length would not be allowed to enter the exam hall. And then the day before my medical check up, where they took this photo, I cut my hair myself to above collar level because it was stated in the instructions that hair longer than collar level and can be seen from front profile will not be allowed to enter Central Manpower Base (CMPB) for checkup. I was annoyed because upon reaching, I saw a lot of students with long hair! And when they took their photos, they tied up their hair and tucked them inside their collar. I was so so annoyed.


After all that, we had our “final meal” with our parents at the cookhouse. It was said, that the food will only be nice when there are visitors to the centre. Once the visitors leave, the food will go back to being terrible. In all honesty, the food was nice. Very nice indeed. Western fried chicken with fragrant rice, mushroom soup, vegetables, apple. It was nice. But I didn’t feel like eating because it was a sucky day. And the talks that the food won’t be nice after the visitors leave, it was partially true. It would just be normal rice with meat, fish, soup, vegetables and fruits with occasional ice cream. BUT… in retrospect, it was because we were all choosy, spoiled youths. Thinking about it now, the food is actually great. Low calorie meals with the correct proportions. Very healthy. And the drinks are free flow. I would pay to eat them everyday now. Really. But at that time, everything sucks.

My parents left and off I marched with the rest of the enlistees to our various companies. I was assigned to Basic Military Centre School 2, Mohawk Company, Platoon 2, Section 4, Bed 10. I figured out that the arrangements were based on the enlistees birthdates. The oldest person would be assigned to platoon 1 section 1 bed 1, while the youngest would be in platoon 4 section 4 bed 12. So you can do your math and calculate how many enlistees were there in one / the company. Never mind, I help a bit. 1 company = 4 platoons. 1 platoon = 4 sections. 1 section = 12 beds.

I also found out that I was in a polytechnic enlistees batch. It made sense of course as we all just finished our year 3. I think there were about 8 companies enlisted that day and the enlistees were generally polytechnic students. They called it the “Poly Batch”. At that time, polytechnics’ academic year arrangement was like “July to November” for semester 1 and “January to May” for semester 2. We got enlisted on the 13th of June. That was like 13 days after I completed semester 2. I haven’t even receive my exam results yet. I was kind of hoping I failed some subjects and go back to school. Which I didn’t. I passed all. But we definitely have to go back to school one day to attend graduation.

Just some how, almost all my polytechnic friends were assigned to the police force. Only a few were assigned to the army and their enlistment day would be in July or August. I was kind of sad as I was hoping we would all be at the same place together. But there were a few people I know who were enlisted on the same day with me. Some secondary school friends and madrasah friends whom i haven’t met for very long. They were all in other companies. Mohawk company was a Ngee Ann Polytechnic company. 95% of the people there were from NP. There were only 4 persons from TP. Faizal Khan, an acquaintance in the Malay Cultural Society (MCS). He was in platoon 1. Shaufi, a good friend of mine from MCS as well was in the same platoon as me, in section 1. And Wan. I have no idea what is his real full name. There were too many “Wan”s in TP at that time so we had to give them nicknames. Wan Ching Chong is a friend of mine from School of IT but not the same course. He was from Diploma in IT. He was in platoon 4. 


The first day in the army. We collected our army stuff, checked them, and checked in into Mohawk Company. Got to our beds and lockers and was told to change to T Shirt, shorts, white socks and running shoes. This attire is called, the “Admin Attire”. We got into our admin attire and then sat at the corridor near the staircase landing where we were introduced to our section commanders and platoon sergeants and to get more administration done. I was terribly disheartened. My only relief was looking at the only familiar face of Shaufi and that we are in this together. I cannot remember the names of my sergeants and officers. I told you I have started to forget details. But I remember my platoon sergeant’s first few words.


“You have no choice. You are already here. Might as well enjoy it.”

Categories : The Army Series