National
Service Part 2 of 2 27 JUN 07
WARNING: Some drawings in this article are not suitable
for kids. Minors, please stay away!
Ok.
Part 2 of my Civil Defense experience in Jalan Bahar. Our time table
usually goes like this. We would wake up at the butt crack of dawn.
And jog rounds and do some Physical training till the early afternoon.
Then we grab our food tray and eat breakfast. Now breakfast or any
kind of food at the camp is.. not consumer worthy. From chocolate
curry to squid sandwich.. I don’t know where they get the
chef from. I even saw a huge fat maggot on a vegetable and when
shown to the kitchen staff he just grinned and say “Good what
this one! Very good for making muscle!” Right... Maggot muscles?
Sometimes
the chef use the denial card even though
the maggot is right in their face.
After
that, we would start learning on how to use some hardware tools,
yup, you heard me right. The saw with this round huge blade, that
torch thingy which you can use to cut holes in metal, a mechanical
clamper thingy which you can separate major concrete blocks or give
you a super painful pinch and this leather pillow, which can make
gaps in rubble. At first glance I thought this equipment are ridiculous…
can they come up with better life-saving equipment rather than using
hardware tools, construction workers use?
But I realized that these equipment are being used internationally.
If you open any Fire engine anywhere in the world, you will find
the same exact items. Maybe different color, make and model but
it served the same purpose.
Tools
used by the SCDF
But
the funniest tool was the bush beater. It’s this limp green
thing made of cloth and when my Sergeant introduced it to us,
I thought he was joking. If you see a bush fire, you literally,
take the bush fire beater by the handle and.. beat the bush.
The
bush beater is so versatile that it can be used both on fires
AND the jerk who started the fire.
Soon,
everybody gotta take the Standard Obstacle Course. I gotta tell
you guys, since I’m not a sports kinda person, my stamina
is a wreck. What do expect from a guy who is in front of the PC
24/7? I can’t run a whole block without panting like I’m
having an asthma attack. Pull ups are no problem for me but I’m
no running man. You have to pass the SOC cause if you don’t,
they won’t let you have the 2 weeks break.. You can actually
go home for 2 weeks and not be in camp!
Call it a prize of some sort.. the prize of freedom. I wrote on
a piece of paper to psyche myself and why I should run like crazy
on SOC day and list all the crap from Jalan Bahar on a piece of
paper so as to give me some motivation. I pasted this paper on
my locker. I would read the piece of paper religiously everyday
to give me the drive to nail this SOC thing.
The list on my locker.
They
made us run laps before we begin and the 1st to come is the low
wall. You just have to get your butt up there and get over it..
nevermind if your feet is already like jelly and your boots is baking
your foot like bread. You just have to force yourself and then proceed
to the monkey bars… No problem. Since you are already swinging
like a monkey, they wanna see if you can climb like one… so
they let you climb this rope and tap the plank on top.. after that
comes the some zig zag planks.. Pretty scary if you ask me.. You
gotta walk in line cause if you slip, you gonna eat sand down below.
After
that you run some more and climb on this triangle thing made up
of logs. I hated that thing cause, one wrong move would leave
you with crushed nuts. By then, I’m already doing this spastic,
half-walk, semi-skip thing to drag myself to the finish line.
My face is blue and I’m clutching my heart. Once I finally
crawled to the finish line, I realized I narrowly passed. I got
like 10 minutes 45 seconds.. Failures are 12 minutes onwards..
I pass by 2 minutes. Heng ah!
Actually
there are more obstacles but
I'm too lazy to draw and animate them all:P
I
met a bunch of interesting characters when I was in Civil D. I
met this Indian ex gangster guy I talked about. He’s actually
a nice guy with a Red Indian tattoo. We did engaged in a arm wrestling
match once and I lost. Damn. There’s also this Malay guy
who’s bed is just by me. Now this guy is funny but he got
some serious organizing issues. When everybody is ready to go
with our uniform all sharp and pressed, he is still in his undies
and sarong. He would roll on the floor and bunk buddies would
actually help him put on his socks. Yup, its that bad.
This
guy would always be the last to get ready.
Then
comes the nudist guy. He would walk in his room naked and powered
his genitalia for all to see.. and not in a modest way, mind you.
He would spread his legs like an eagle. Now, I’m not talking
about a 3 year old boy.. this is a grown man that have gone the
last phases of puberty, so you can imagine how I squirmed when I
witnessed it but like everybody else, we grew accustomed to his
R(A) powder antics. Eventually, we can actually eat lunch beside
him while he does his personal grooming.
I practically
washed my hands with bleach after this incident.
Then
come an ex-drug addict guy and he would described to us in vivid
detail on how it feels like to be high. Although he said he had
stopped using drugs, his eyes were always in a dazed and blood shot.
He did say something like “When you use drugs.. whatever you
want to be, you can be! Anything also can.. If you want to be Superman,
YOU WILL be Superman.” Then he explained to me how he would
make a makeshift bong to “chase the dragon”.
I forgot the recipe and how many kilos of glue was needed. And yes,
there was this bapuk guy who keeps leeching on to me. Since we only
have 1 toilet for 15 guys, we would have a group pee break to save
time. However, this bapuk would always pee alone. And he/she would
go berserk if you entered the loo if he/she is still inside. I don’t
know why.. and most importantly, I don’t even want to think
about it. Shudder!
There
was this guy who would always bring top quality cookies to camp
like its some sort of a chalet. In a place where Chocolate Rendang
is invented, a cookie is a form of rare delicacy. We would just
lie on the floor eating Julie’s Cream Cookies.. it was like
a tea party. It was so good, some of them would fight for the last
piece. Even cleaning duty was bizarre. Everybody would choose the
rake because it was the best sweeping tool cause it's steer you
away from "awkward situations". The broom, dustpan and
mop will only bring you misery.
Some even “reserved” their rakes and placed it underneath
their beds. I know.. It’ sad. In all my life, little did I
know that one day, I too will reserve a leaves gathering apparatus
and placed it under my bed. Jalan Bahar morphed us into vile scavengers.
Parents will cry if they actually knew what their sons did in there.
Cookie
fights are very common in my platoon.
Then
there was the weird JC guy who would go through our things without
permission and steal stuff. Julie's cream cookies kept in our lockers
would be gone and he even threw some of our items out of the window.
I never thought it was him cause he looked like a quiet nerd but
one day we caught him in the act and I can’t actually write
what 15 plus ex gangsters, ex convict, drug addicts and an Evil
Bunny did to him that night.
Feathers
was included in the punishment...
LOTS OF FEATHERS.
About
the corporals.. Actually we are scared of them, No, the word is
terrified.. Petrified is also an appropriate term. Seriously we
are. They remind me of the agents in the Matrix. If you see them
agents coming, you gotta run or hide. And I realize the government
like to choose tall guys to act as corporals or sergeants. Nevermind
if they cannot lead, if you got the built , they are almost guaranteed
some stripes. But like I said, thank God, my superiors are nice
guys.
You can tell the good sergeants from bad ones during Pass Out Parade
(POP is when Basic Military Training ends). The good ones would
just say good bye to you and we would shake his hand, the bad ones,
have to buy boxes of cigarettes to bribe the recruits to forgive
and forget and not to whack him when they see him in the streets
of Orchard Road. One problem though.. I don’t smoke.
To
conclude this article I just wanna leave with a word of caution.
If you have not serve your NS yet, I advise you not to be a loner.
Make friends and take care of yourself. I wanna share one last incident
that the Encik told everyone, one night at the parade square. It
was coming to the end of our 3 months training and everybody was
in a happy mood and some like to play a prank on others.. most people
term it as “sabo”. We’ll this guy place a bar
of soap on another guy whom I guess is a push-over. The victim was
fast asleep.
I don’t know how you can still sleep with soap in your mouth
but I guess some people are just deep sleepers. When he woke up,
he got such a severe throat infection that he gotta be hospitalised.
The culprit confessed and he was sent to the Detention Barracks.
Don’t be the soap victim and if you have problem, don’t
be afraid to report to your instructors.
