Solo Nights

hello hello... wow Asri that was some post! The memories that it jolted to life must now be recorded. For the uninitiated of course, solo night was preceded by the round Ubin kayaking expedition. Not a particularly big deal on the big scheme of things, well at least it was a squad level initiative and I was partnered by Boon so it meant getting away from the goons for a while. Despite his small frame and all, Boon was one excellent kayaker. He kept us both on track with his nifty use of the rudder and was able to give me all sorts of good advice and encouragement during the round Singapore expedition. Kudos to you Boon!

Anyway, if you bear with me, this was the highlight of the round Ubin kayak. We had finished the expedition and were all at the ramp leading to OBS waiting to get our kayaks on shore. Boon and I were getting a little impatient so we decided to make a dash for the ramp in our kayak despite a boat coming past and so we paddled quickly to the ramp, taking one last check, we felt that we had enough time between getting the kayak up the ramp before the inevitable backwash from the boat. Unfortunately for us though, the backwash won the race and it hit the kayak, the kayak hit me and I went over the ramp wall (which was underwater) and went head first into the water, I felt a bit of pain on my right shin but thinking it wasn't a big deal, I managed to get to the surface and proceeded to be run down by Mark and Asri's kayak. Once again struggling to the surface I managed to get back onto the ramp and hauled the kayak up the ramp with Boon and then I felt more pain in my right shin. Lo and behold! A small 1cm by 1cm chunk in my right shin was missing! I cut myself on a barnacle. I told Boon, "Check this out man, I gotta go to the sick bay!" The nurse was hardly brimming with sympathy and told me I didn't need stitches, patched it up and unceremoniously booted me out the door.

The dressing had to stay on for a few days and I had to keep it clean. So it meant skipping the running that day. I was a little worried for it during solo night. And so it came, I decided to smuggle my handphone out with me despite being single at the time. I thought it'd be good to catch up with home whilst I was out in the woods. So we were all given our rations and equipment for solo night, the groundsheets for the basha, comms cord, food, solid fuel and we had to pack our stuff into zip lock bags. Anyway, during the issuing process I decided to zip off to the toilet and I told Aziz, "Get one set of whatever is issued for me, need to go to the toilet!" I returned and the process was complete. The instructors warned us not to mix around as it was solo and we needed to reflect on our time at OBS and were given a letter to write to ourselves. Then off we went!

The instructors dropped us off at different points in the woods and I was dropped off at a clear and relatively flat spot overlooking an altar of some sort (I never went to check out the altar and had no intentions of offending the local spirits). I looked around and saw that around my spot was surrounded by high ground on three sides and I had a feeling I would be in trouble if it rained.

I decided to set up my basha quickly just in case and lo and behold, there was no comms cord to tie the basha! I sat down for a few minutes thinking about what I was going to do to Aziz when we got back, uh actually if... but then I decided to bin the no contact with others rule and ran up to the next site and found Vincent there. Thank goodness he had spare comms cord and was willing to share with me. So I set up my basha and lay down to rest. Then it happened, the rain pissed down for hours and my basha was flooded from the water gushing down the high ground which had become a waterfall. My clothes were sodden, my food bag was getting wet and the solid fuel was also wet, I managed to save a block but the rest were gone. After the rain stopped, I looked at the damage, I had to survive on a loaf of bread, some kaya and some biscuits plus I had one chance of a hot meal - instant noodles.

Going by the good old survival maxim of eat the hot food while you can, I set up my semi-dry solid fuel block to start and fire. There wasn't much of a flame and I decided to help things along by tossing the envelope and the paper for the letter into the fire. But the fuel was too wet and I only managed to get a fire for long enough to partially cook my noodles. I ate it, and it was disgusting. 

My first night was relatively unexciting compared to Asri's experience and I managed to sleep through somehow. I awoke the next morning and realised that my dressing from the wound had come off, deciding not to hang around, I decided to head back to OBS to get some attention. Of course, I was unceremoniously booted out by the nurse and was given one hell of a talking to for breaking the rules by one of the instructors. Rather pertinently or so I thought I remarked "That's fine with the rules and all but what about the dressing for my wound?" They remarked that they'd patch it up later. Round about 4pm to be exact!

The only other event of note was how I managed to scare the living crap out of myself by venturing out of the basha to relieve myself late at night. I had tried to avoid it for the longest time, but summoning up the guts I ventured to what I thought was my designated pissing tree and I noticed dark black shape at my feet, I jumped about 4 feet into the air and shining my L torch at it, it was my rubbish bag! Damn it! Wrong tree, this was the tree where I had placed my rubbish bag!

The next day, the sorry exercise was over and we trooped back for the debrief, they asked me, "Daryl where's your letter?", I had one of those Arnie moments and I told them "I burnt it" and I walked off. 

Mark-guyver

The 21-day OBS Course is supposed to teach us to live on just basic necessities, without the luxury of electronic conveniences/distractions and that everyone is given an equal share of survival materials/food.

So during the first few hours of arriving, the instructors asked us to voluntarily give up our handphones, pagers, chocolate bars, tidbits, snacks and any other "contraband" before they do a check. And if you were caught with any contraband, a suitable punishment or fine would be meted out to the person or the whole team.

Well most of us gave up some things and hid others. There were a few exceptional souls who said they gave up every contraband they had, but I didn't. I hid the nylon cord, swiss-army knife, a few chocolate bars and surrendered the other half of my chocolate bars and all my potato chips. I took it that if the SAS trainees can hide rolled notes/money up their a**es, smuggled chocolate bars and even an FM radio to overcome the Brecon Beacons, I would keep some stuff too which would help keep me sane from the boredom and discomfort to come. Of course OBS is nothing compared to SAS training, but to rationalise, we were trained to be a thinking soldier and the number one rule I learnt in BMT was "You can do anything you want, as long as you don't get caught". You can add any other caveat or exceptions you want to that as per your moral or ethical reasonings, but that was the basic rule.

Mark smuggled in his handphone and playing cards. On arriving at the bunk, Mark immediately tried to make a call back home. But as coverage on the island is pretty bad, his Sony Ericsson, which at that time was one of the latest model, can only manage a faltering one or two bars out of 5, even when he risks falling out the window by leaning out so far. Those days most handphones had an extendable antenna, or the newer ones only had a short antenna stub, which the latter was what Mark's phone had. He tried to make a call but I think the call quality was pretty bad and he got also got disconnected. And I guess the saying is really true that "Necessity is the mother of all inventions" and that "Distance makes the heart grow fonder, and I sure as hell want to hear my girlfriend's voice while the battery lasts cos I'll be stuck with 36 males for the next 3 bloody weeks". Techie Mark might have planned it all along, cos he brought a few clothes hangers, but not the normal plastic ones. He got the flexible metal wire hangers.

What he did next was either a stroke of genius or just dumb luck. He unscrewed the short 1 inch antenna stub from his phone, untwirled the metal hanger, so that it was just a long piece of wire, but which still retained its triangular shape, stripped off some of the plastic sleeving on one end of the wire, and stuck that end into the phone's antenna recess. And lo and behold, if he held the new "antenna" just right he can now get three to four bars out of 5!

Thats like 60-80% signal strength and just enough to maintain a decent quality call. From far someone might think you have a clothes hanger impaled into your skull, but who cares about looks when you can croon sweet words with your girlfriend to soothe your sagging morale.

That was just one of the innovations that Mark devised during the 21-days. The next innovation was during the solo night and it involves a humble stick. To cut the long story short, solo night for us was actually foursome night around the campfire at Mark's campsite, cos he had stashed a large pile of dry leaves under his tarpaulin. So after a long rainy day, we made our way to Mark's camp after dark and when we knew the intructors would not be back for their inspection round for the next few hours. What greeted us was a nice cosy fire, Mark sitting beside it and he was drying his wet underwear and socks over the fire by putting them at the end of a sitck. He had found a nice foot long stick with a forked end, so it was great to spread the socks and underwear a bit for it to dry faster over the fire.

So, soon we were feeling hungry and we opened up a can of sardine and hot dogs. Some of us poked a stick through the bread to toast it over the fire before putting the meaty stuff in it. Mark using his useful stick took a piece of bread put it flat on the forked end of the stick and toasted it over the fire. It was the very same stick which just a few seconds ago had a piece of soggy sock hanging over it. Well we were too hungry to lose our appetite and continued eating, but still I'm sure a few stomachs turned after seeing how useful Mark's stick was. Bleargh.....

Sailing into Troubled Waters

I suppose we all have 20/20 vision in hindsight, but I suppose the wheels that were starting to come loose during the land expedition came flying off spectacularly during the sailing expedition. I suppose I came to realise what must have been running through the minds of the men on the HMS Bounty as they prepared to cast Captain Bligh off in his boat into the Pacific Ocean or any of the infamous mutinies of the 1800s for that matter.

I wasn't best pleased at the prospect of attempting to sail a miserable little cutter replete with a sail and all around the windswept reaches of northern Singapore. Those of you in the know of course would realise that there isn't a single gust of wind anywhere up there. I think the memories are so severe that I've somehow managed to block off all other memories except the acts of idiocy by my team mates.

Somehow despite the disputes between team members, we somehow managed to get our collective acts together and load stores into the cutter and to use a sailing term, barely managed to get underway. We were co-expeditioning with Sang Nila Utama (this refers to the watch that Asri and Mark were in and not the dude who saw the lion or more correctly Sri Tri Buana/Parameswara). The in-fighting started right from the beginning and then the weather closed in so we turned on the motor and chugged our way VERY slowly to the resort island of Pulau Sajahat just off Pulau Tekong for a long night being scared out our wits in the creepy Pre WW2 British Army building on the island. It was cold, wet and all rather scary.

Of course somehow the demons only showed up on the boat the next day. Our destination was Pulau Seletar which was to our west and so off we went. The sun was out and the wind had gone on holiday, so it was us versus the sea and soon it was us versus us. We had to row and the person who was the skipper had to give the command to dip the oars "Dip!" and the others who were manning the oars would dip the oars into the water and pull and shout in return "Pull". Not being old sea dogs like Terence, we hadn't a clue how to proceed and so Aziz being the squad chairman took the poisoned chalice. "Dip!" "Pull!" and so it went on for all of 4 minutes after which the luminaries in the watch started to whine about Aziz and start to tell him what a crap job he was doing as skipper. Then I saw and heard something for the first time and have never seen since. Aziz, the epitome of calm and even nature lost his cool and started swearing at Gorbs, Ken, Leon. Phyllis our instructor was so stunned she didn't know what to say.

I think I managed to slip in the cool down bro talk to Aziz and so we got underway again. Aziz passed the chalice to me and the others kept bagging me for not rowing as hard as they were so I had a stint as skipper. It took only two seconds for the murmurs to start and 1 minute later it was a full blown mutiny as Gorbs and Ken plus almost everyone else except Aziz, Boon and Fauzi started making lots of noise about how useless I was. So I lost the plot and had a showdown with some of them and told them if they were so unhappy they could all swim back. I can't remember who backed down first but eventually Boon took the helm for the next few hours and things eventually settled down. It's quite telling when you realise who didn't take the helm at all at any point.

Somehow or other we struggled to Pulau Seletar someway behind Nila Utama and so we got off and settled down for the evening. Needless to say we couldn't even agree on the dinner menu and so the bitching went on and on and on.... But for me of course, the highlight of the stint at Pulau Seletar was Terence coming to the realisation that shit floats, but that of course is another story all together.

After enduring a night of very loud noises from the resident crows on the island, we finally could start rowing back to Ubin or so I thought. We were proceeding along rather nicely even though the in-fighting continued and then some bright spark, i.e. Ken or Gorbs decided it was going to be a good idea to put up the sail and start sailing despite the wind being strong enough to blow a feather all of 2mm. So Aziz and I were once again out voted, mind you, we weren't even consulted and so as Nila Utama paddled off into the yonder we struggled for the next 20 minutes to put up the damned sail and after all that was said and done, there wasn't a gust of wind anywhere, and we were becalmed. I was highly annoyed at all this but by this time I didn't say a word. Then the morons started to turn on each other and they finally pulled their fingers out and decided to paddle and paddle we did. 

By the time we got back, Nila Utama had already unpacked their stuff and showered and were waiting for us.  I can remember how many swear words I managed to say in one breathwhen Asri, Mark and Terence, all showered and rested asked me as I struggled up the path to the bunk with all the debris from the trip, "What took you so long man?"

Till next time folks...

Mr Gorbs I presume?

We started off ok I suppose, but in the back of my mind, I had no idea how I was going to get along in a group with a bunch of guys that I hardly spoke to with the exception of Aziz, Fauzi and Boon. And yes, I was none too fond of any of the others too.

I suppose I wasn't overly surprised by the conduct of a few members of the group as Indian chief syndrome set in, but Gorby's performance took the cake for unexpected behaviour!

We always thought of him as the 42nd cadet who showed up on the second day of training after escaping the evil clutches of SISPEC. He was always quite a low-key character around the barracks. He never really took part in the banter around the lower barrack and was always polishing his boots. He smiled and laughed occasionally and was quite a pleasant chap. He didn't do particularly well in training either, (I was no hotshot either but I sure could hold my own in PT, swimming, academic stuff and the police training, though the less said about TKD the better!) I still remember Nunis and someone else having to literally drag his backside over the finish line in some 2 x 2.4 challenge.

Then again, being stuck in some corner of Pulau Ubin tends to bring the worst out in people or perhaps to expose their real selves. Of course we should have smelt a rat on the first day when we chose our bunks, Aziz, Boon, Fauzi and I dived into a smaller room in our barrack as opposed to hanging out with the others but oddly enough he didn't join us. Next thing you know he's joined the creeps and started telling us all what to do and that really started to piss me off considering his previous status during junior term. By the second week he was openly critical of Aziz and I and was generally insufferable. He was always questioning the rationale of our actions when we were in charge I thought this was quite rich coming from him. By then I was not going to have anything to do with him as far as possible. I don't recall speaking to him again for the rest of our training stint when we got back, not that he ever hung around the lower barracks too again much after OBS except to sleep.

What makes someone change so much? Was it the environment that brought out the inner demon or was it just the real him? I really don't know, though I do know he ended up being called the Malay equivalent for backside for the rest of senior term!

Another Barrack Song

hello,

Will be adding to the OBS posts soon, but here's a favourite from the barracks! Last Kiss by Pearl Jam

OBS - The Daryl Version

Wow, since Asri has started the ball rolling, I shall continue! Well it's kind of jumping the gun since we were talking about the early days still, but anyway, Asri is the deputy squad chairman and this is our blog so who gives a stuff about chronology!

For me, OBS was a seminal event, it changed me in more ways than I care to admit, in fact I totally hated OBS, I felt that it was going to be the biggest and toughest waste of time in my life in that period of time. It was only further down the road that I realised how much good it was for me, it taught me that I could go beyond my self-imposed limits and it also taught me about people and how they would react under duress and what comes to the surface in such times. Most of all however, it really convinced me that Aziz, Asri, Terence and Mark were the people I could depend on in a backs to the wall situation and hence it really solidified our friendship.

Aziz and I were plonked in a group called Nehru. Since Mr Nehru was one of the pioneers of the Non-Aligned Movement, I guess it was always going to lead to the most factionalised and divded of all the 3 groups (they called groups watches at OBS I think) and it really led to alot of conflict and many people not talking to each other (uh actually, people not talking to me) once OBS was over. Anyway, the other group was called Elizabeth after Elizabeth Choy the great war heroine, of course that was to lead to some rather weak and cowardly behaviour by a less distinguished ah beng in our squad, we shall come to that in due course!

I don't know who gave input in the groupings but CM and FI sure tried to break up the squad cliques! But I thank the high heavens that Aziz was with me in Nehru, because he and Boon were probably the only people I could really count on when the chips were down and that Aziz was a source of sanity as he was probably the only one I could really talk to and plus Aziz had a tremendous supply of smuggled Oreos!

But yes, the rest of the watch were a collection of people from the other cliques in the squad and we just could not get along. In the end it all fell apart after the sailing expedition when we gave up all semblance of pretending to get along. OBS just had a way of bringing out the inner a**hole in many of them especially Gorby (pseudonym, we all know who he is!) I daresay I never talked to him after OBS despite the fact that we shared the same barrack.

I dreaded the day OBS came about, but it happened soon enough, the moment senior term came around, we were off to OBS. I vaguely recall having to do alot of shopping to get ready for the trip like buying a pair of boots just for the sailing and kayaking expeditions.

Despite all the information that we gleaned from the Seniors, I really did not know what to expect but after a prata breakfast at Jalan Kayu which seemed like fattening us up for the kill, we were on the boat to Ubin.

The first few days as I recall were all about team building and the initial heights confidence course. Eventually the expeditions started, land, sailing, solo and kayaking and we struggled through these expeditions and finally we ended off with a pointless 15km run! Then it was over, many of us had changed for good and relations had changed too and the men were separated from the boys. OBS changed my life, the 21 days I spent there were tough, but the time there made me a better person.

These are my memories and I shall elaborate on them in the next few posts:

• Sub-human Dynamics in Nehru: The Monsters emerge
• The Useless Fatsos: The great abseiling misunderstanding
• Land Expedition: When we realised we couldn't get along
• Post Land Expedition: The Great Homophobic Moment (No it doesn't inolve the Choos either!)
• Round Ubin Canoeing: Barnacle Bob takes a chunk out of my shin
• Getting the Crap scared out of me: Solo Expedition
• Sailing Expedition: You can all b**dy swim back to OBS! The only moment where Aziz loses his cool and Daryl follows suit shortly after!
  
• Feedback Sessions: Picking the knives out of my back
• Interactions with other people: Instructors and other OBS participants
• Reflection Journal: Finding new ways to swear
  
• Kayaking Expedition: How to Kayak with a tray full of eggs in your cargo hold and not break any.
• Going Home

It's going to be alot of fun reminiscing about old times, watch this space!

OBS

One of my most memorable moments in OCT was the 21-day OBS course. Sure it is not as exotic as the C-course Himalayan Trekking Expedition or OCS's Mt Biang Brunei tour, but it sure changed some people. Some for the good or for the better, but then who are we to judge.

Anyway, we were split into 3 tribes of around 12 persons each (less 4 persons due to medical reasons). I'll tell the story from my tribe's point of view, the Nila Utama.

I must say I never expected our tribe to get on so well together. In fact, from what I hear, our tribe was the most cooperative and least drama tribe amongst the rest, which is a surprise cos we had Nunis and Fan, Vincent and Terence in our midst. Nunis can be more irritating than a mosquito buzzing in your ear. (Sorry Nunis...you my friend! Hehehe. I can already think of your come back line. Lol.). Fan is a hard headed fella and mostly viewed as tempremental at least by myself. Vincent is a drama mama, more on that later, which I'm sure the rest can add on to. Terence is also a tempremental character. Myself, I am surly and lazy. So it was a miracle we turned out to be the most peaceful tribe ever, except maybe that time when we nearly cut Fan up for dinner cos he served up crispy under-moisturised rice. And we did relieve lots of tension courtesy of Nunis near the end of the course.

Actually there is just too many stories to tell about OBS . Just to list it out, so that we can elaborate more on them later, here are some at the top of my mind:

- Mark's Mcgyver-esque handphone booster antenna
- Mark's multi-purpose stick for toasting bread and ......
- The "solo" night smuggling and secret rendezvous operation
- Nunis cliffhanger act, during solo night
- The monitor lizard, during solo night
- The "kids" playing past midnight, also during solo night
- Mark's warm "foot bath" for me during the kayaking expedition, which I have yet to "thank" him for
- The bangla virgin
- The styrofoam muscleman
- The Fish Fan kayaking style
- The solo kayaker who got capsized for the umpteenth time
- The orange peel myth
- The Choos fight
- The butt pinch
- The morning peck
- The casevac where we nearly killed the victim
- etc...

Guys, please carry on to add and elaborate on whichever one you want to. :)

The Early Days Pics -Part II

It's amazing what you dredge out when you are clearing out your junk.

Here are 2 pics from the early days.

Quite what we did at ECP totally escapes my mind and who that is picking his nose in the front row third from the right also escapes me!



Here's another picture from the Yakult factory, I vaguely remember a consequence of the visit involving Terence consuming the CM's yakult? Terence, you care to elaborate on the said incident? I think we went there after our role as victims in some exercise on Jurong Island. Quite how going to the Yakult factory and learning about Lactobacillus Casei Shirota benefited us as future senior officers in the force is beyond me. Still, we did have fun and also improved our digestive tracts with good bacteria!

Food, Inglorious Food

Since Aziz mentioned it, I suppose I should try to get into the good books of the squad chairman by discussing the delectable cuisine from the Police Academy. After spending a large part of 16 weeks in the SAF [Yes laugh and scoff at the PTP permanent resident], the tale of crap food as a NS experience seemed to be the stuff of history books. The Singapore Food Industries catering was nothing short of edible and filling to boot, and we didn't even have to wash our mess trays because there were none! We ate on proper plates with real cutlery. I'm told the quality of food has declined somewhat since then, I suppose we were one of the first few batches to get the catered food so I suppose there was alot at stake to make the food taste good. Even the venerable old Police Mess has started to get catered food, so this might seem to be a quaint experience for anyone from the catered generation.

Nothing quite prepares you for your first meal at the mess, not even the stories of the seniors who had long since decided that lining their stomaches with palm oil from the tonnes of instant noodles that they ate in the barracks was preferable to taking their chances in the mess. And so, armed with our mess trays and cutlery we marched to the mess. During our first week, we marched off in half-u, but all subsequent dinners were taken in full walk out attire, that is shirt, tie, police pants and we even had to bring our rain coats just in case of untimely precipitation!

Then we laid eyes on it, the fighting fish, despite my best attempts to convince people that it was caught sometime before the founding of Singapore, was in its previous incarnation a selar fish that swam the seas until it was brutally hauled up by a net and after changing hands a few times found itself some time [uh actually, probably alot of time] later in the kitchen of the Police Academy and was subsequently deep fried in some very dirty oil for an extended period of time and then dumped along with many others in a huge pot and eventually finding its way onto my mess tray. Accompanying this delectable piece of seafood were some horrendously overcooked vegetables and some very hard rice and a piece of fruit.

Most of the time, those of us who ate to live would gobble down the food, wait for the others to finish and then head off to wash our mess trays using LAUNDRY detergent and then head off to the barracks wondering about the possible consequences of eating the food.

Seeing as that fish is more or less a universally accepted food, it appeared in almost every meal over the course of the week. Of course if the chef was feeling inspired, you'd get chicken in orange water (i.e. chicken curry) or if he was in a particularly sadistic mood, you'd get sotong delight.

Ah yes, sotong delight, something coined by Chia Tze Wei in an inspired moment. Of course, Mark and I couldn't resist building further on that, ocean fresh calamari simmered in a light tamarind sauce served on a plate of steamed rice accompanied by pan-fried garden fresh vegetables. Well, it was anything but a delight and it was a occasion for us to visit the canteen en masse after dinner!

Sometimes if we were lucky we'd get Briyani rice or towards the end of our stint at PA, spring chicken, for lunch, though the instructors often tried to get us to work off the calories after lunch! I still remembered running a 2 x 2.4 with a mutton briyani in the digestive system, but ah yes, that is also another interesting story!

Breakfasts were sometimes very strange too, some mornings, we'd get the bread baked by prisoners in Changi Prison with the spiciest chicken curry ever, just before PT as well or really non-descript bee hoon mixed with bean sprouts and salt! Despite all this, the teh or milo was really well prepared and was good for raising morale before the start of any day.

Let's see we've talked about breakfast, lunch and dinner, of course, for the hungry or those trying to go on hunger strike against the food regime, there was night snack. This rather quaintly consisted of a tin of Lion Brand biscuits (to last 2 days?? [correct me if I am wrong]) and 2 kettles of milo per squad which 3 unfortunates had to carry back to the barracks after dinner. Try sharing that amongst 42 hungry officer cadets when the average squad size was about 30 plus! The first to go were the chocolate flavoured biscuits, then the lemon cream biscuits and this was followed by anything with a modicum of flavour. By the end of the week, there would be an accumulation of the unflavoured biscuits and by the end of the month, Fauzi would be the one who had to consolidate all the unflavoured biscuits into one tin! But eventually, we ate them all.

Finally if all else failed, you'd bring in food from the canteen or outside the Police Academy. Now, either could be potentially hazardous. Any attempts to smuggle food from the outside had to run the gauntlet of checks at the gate on book-in nights, so that was never a good avenue to try. Even if you succeeded, there were other metaphysical barriers! Apparently the area that we lived in was formerly a cemetery, so anything with any pork content tended to be viewed dimly by the supernatural elements co-residing with us who were apparently Muslim. I've never seen it but some have claimed to have woken up to their beds shaking violently because of an errant char siew pau. Well, not for the faint hearted that's for sure.

But we, in the lower barrack, plus Terence, the permanent resident, were far more enterprising than that. Mark, who had gotten married sometime during junior term, was given a night off on Fridays to spend time with his wife, so he kindly offered to buy us food. Buy us food he did! It couldn't last, and it didn't! One night he returned bearing packs of Mee Goreng, in the darkness of the barracks we were wolfing down the mee goreng when suddenly we heard a voice, "OCT, what do you think you are doing?" Not waiting to find out if it was an instructor or an instructor come back from the grave, we, brave officer cadets dived into bed and froze. Thankfully, it wasn't someone like Liew or Adrian or Hassan for that matter because he chose to ignore the scent of mee goreng coming from the table at the end of the barracks and warned us to go to bed. Stay in bed we did!

Go Back to Army lah!

Many of the seniors warned us that everyone would hate us, I think this was one of the few very useful things that they taught us. Well the other being that no matter how bad it got, all the nonsense would end by 1730hrs.

Initially, I scoffed at that suggestion, would everyone hate us? No way..... or so I thought. Two days, it was all true! Apart from a few senior instructors such as Sri Kanthan, Hassan, Firdaus, Zakaria and some younger ones such as Gus Miao and Clifton; EVERYONE, the JO trainees, regular or NSF; the NSF instructors; the younger regular instructors all set out to try to get us during the first few weeks. Everyone was out to get the fresh meat on the chopping block, all rubbing their hands in glee, "yeah man, let's see how tough these guys are"

In the first 2 weeks every single lesson took on a hellish routine of tekan after tekan after tekan. From the drill shed to the pool to the dojo, it was all a series of tests to see how tough these former army boys were. I still remember FI Liew making us do the step up and down on the stands in the drill shed for a supremely long time. I found it tough, goodness knows what the JO trainees who were caught in the crossfire during the session made of it. Without wanting to sound too cliched, thank goodness the army training came through for us and so we prevailed somehow or other.

Certain instructors like Liew were just out to get us and out of training they tried to get us at the mess when we went for lunch or dinner, or when we were walking out, a stray strand of facial hair or a minute amount of dirt on the boots was enough to get us despatched to the barracks. They even tried the barracks but they were quite scared of treading on Hassan's toes and so eventually the barracks became quite a safe haven from the other instructors but we could expect Hassan to appear at any time of the work day and even in the evenings at a time that we least expected. But from keeping us away from the innane rubbish from the instructors he might as well have been the messiah to some of us. Later on of course, Yusman and Young Azman tried their luck, uh, well that's for another post on its own of course.

The other hazard was the abuse directed as us from the JO trainees, most of it wasn't terribly intelligent or witty like Terence mentioned in the early post, "OCT go back to army la" or just plain abuse. Of course eventually we sorted them out in one way or another, whether it was at the mess when we were on mess duty and we returned the favour by dispatching them back to their barracks for poor bearing and turn out or just by thrashing them on the sports field.

Eventually, we all got numb to the abuse and the other instructors mainly stopped trying their luck. Of course there was the odd incident here and there, but things got quite bearable by the end of the second month.

Posting Day - The Tekong Version

For us at Tekong it was not much different. I received a call from my Sgt saying I will be posted to the Police Force and to report in civvie and bring all my barang-barang to dekit. The ignorant me, never heard of OCT before, and so I asked my Sgt what we'd be doing the there? Either he said the following due to jealousy or just plain last ditch psychological torture before I escape from his grasp, he said, "You will join the VC squad and carry pump gun and jaga the station as sentry." And maybe just to add some truth into it,"But you will get to wear white shirt, more special than everyone else."

I had ambitions to go OCS, as much as it scared me, so this piece of news did not make me happy one bit. So I dragged my demoralised self to Nee Soon and when I saw my other platoon mates in Army full-u, I was still clueless of my fate till some mates threw friendly curses (you know what I mean), "Eh c*bye.. you lucky bugger! Power man!". That kind of friendly curses. And some gave me the evil eye, and some just said I was one lucky fellow. I joined the rest of the civvy clad mates and only then I found out the good news! I dekitted with a big smile even though I had to empty my wallet to replace the socks I lost, the towel I forgot to bring and some other stuff.

We were told to come back a few days later to go to PA (Police Academy). So thats how I got into OCT.

Reliving back, I enjoyed Army life. As hard as the training was, the conflicts, the arguments, the punishing exercises, somehow I looked forward to each book-in day. I really enjoyed the camaraderie!

Musings of the Chairman

I finally got my own google email account. How sweet is that? Ahem, anyway, let's get down to some serious blogging business. Can I have law & order please? This is the chairman of OCT 3&4 speaking. Well folks, this pretty much sums up my experience as the squad chairman. It was nothing less than a debacle, I have to say. After being elected (aka sabo-ed) as the honorable chairman, I was ready to take on my new role with pride on honor. Oh boy, did my pride and honor last. NOT!

It was chaos trying to manage 42 future leaders of the SPF who had raging hormones tipping the scales. Maybe the word chaos is too subtle. But I have to thank my lucky stars that FI Hassan (you guys mentioned him yet?) had the squad under complete control. At this juncture, I have to stress on the word ‘complete’ because for all his ninja and wayang antics, he did an excellent job of managing 42 bright and promising but recalcitrant individuals. Well, some had their own agenda for their nine months tenure. But I couldn’t care less. By the way, did I also mention that this FI of ours was one helluva master of camo. He could just blend into the greens that our good ol PA had to offer and make his appearance when we were least expecting it. No wonder he was notoriously known as the Ninja among the cadets. (btw, FI Hassan doesn’t know that we had a nickname for him)

Initial stage was quite a terrifying experience. When I meant terrifying, I was actually referring to the food. In the army, even though ‘tekan’ sessions took place every other minute, there was something to look forward to. The food! All hail the Singapore Food Industry for cooking up great meals day after day. When the first meal was served in PA, we were thinking to ourselves that we were better off with the SAF despite the frequent jumping jacks and thousands of push ups that accompanied every meal. The all time “Favorite” in PA was the fish delight. (I could swear that the gills of the fish moved at one point while it was lying on my mesh tray)

I was wondering to myself, food sucks, can my fellow cadets be any better? How wrong I was! On the contrary, these are same bunch of guys who I managed to clique with for the next nine months of our stay in police academy. In case I have not, in alphabetical order, let me introduce you to the famous five. Asri, Daryl, Mark, Terence (or is it Nunis) and finally yours truly, the chairman of the board. Aziz is the name.

For all the screw ups and subsequent push ups that we were subjected to, we had our fair share of fun and camaraderie. I have to say that it was one good memorable experience. I couldn’t believe my arse luck when I was not selected for OCS ten years ago. But now, in retrospect I am still thanking my lucky stars that I was selected to be and officer cadet with the SPF. Because not only it taught me criminal law, but it also taught me the law of friendship. To eat, sleep and shit with the same bunch of guys for nine months is no easy feat. I guess all of us passed that test with flying colors. We deserve a pat on our backs and some hot coffee. Pervert seats, anyone?

Barrack Songs - Stand By Me

Call me a sentimental fool but that was my favourite barrack song even though it wasn't on the radio at all. I still remember singing this song with Terence Choo (!) when he was strumming his guitar so I guess the unplugged version is the most apt.

Barrack Songs - For Terence

Here's a cult favourite from the barracks just for Terence!

The end of the beginning

Shortly after we met our CM and got to know our squad mates and seniors a bit better, it was down to serious business.

Clearly Hassan had the right connections with the logistics people because we got hold of our uniforms pretty quickly, any thoughts of the wonderful efficiency of the SPF supply chain were quickly dispelled after we got our weekend shopping list. This involved buying loads of white long-sleeved shirts and singlets which I well couldn't afford! It was only after severe groveling at home that I managed to squeeze some money out of my folks for my trip to Beach Road. Thank goodness for Rabbit Brand singlets, cheap and very nasty.

We got our books for our law and police procedure lessons, we drew huge raincoats and put in orders for our law statutes (which we once again had to pay for!) and some enterprising FIs even tried to make money out of us to buy Asics running shoes (they were successful I might add).

With the admin stuff relatively settled, we began to face up to the need of electing a squad committee. Judging by the farcical nature of the squad committee of our seniors which had more leadership changes than a petty Central African banana republic, it was vital to elect a good committee.

Even though my name was briefly mentioned in passing, I was in the midst of my hard-assed don't mess with me stage so I stood as much of a chance of making the squad committee as Ralph Nader becoming the President of the USA. By this stage I was almost psychopathic as I had already hurled a truckload of abuse at JT when he attempted to get me to organise a squad barbeque and later attempted to tell me what a good job I was doing when I was trying to iron some crease out of my pants. I thought he got off quite lightly given I was tempted to hurl the iron at the said cretin, I'm glad to say he had no iron marks on any part of his body.

Ah yes, the cretin, what long running feud would not be complete without a cretin who had a far higher regard for his ability than everyone else. How he managed to get elected as vice chairman was beyond me, I remember scolding quite a few people who admitted they voted for him though I think they wouldn't admit to voting for him today.

Other luminaries deservedly elected included Aziz who impressed all and sundry with his facial hair and his on-ness. Asri also made it as vice chairman, so they'd have their hands full trying to manage the various miscreants in the squad.

First Impressions Part II

I can't say I remember a huge deal about what transpired on the bus ride to the Police Academy which either means my memory is going or that nothing terribly significant happened on the bus. The only thing of note I suppose was Mark and I deciding to stick with familiarity and become buddies - a decision that worked out for the best in the end, though you will hear some of the domestic squabbles we used to have about the contents of our cupboard.

When we finally arrived at the barracks, it really was a far cry from SAFTI MI, for a start it was 30 in the top barrack and 12 in the middle barrack. I thank the highest heavens that Mark and I decided to move to the end of queue which meant we went to the middle barrack. Each pair were supposed to share a cupboard divided into 3 sections (hanging space, book and file space, personal space). It wasn't much but it was a price worth paying to get out of the SAF.

You can tell alot about a place through it's sanitary facilities. Judging by the 7 spouts that masqueraded as showers and the 4 cubicles to be shared by all 42 cadets didn't inspire much confidence, though going by the 'if it looks good you're not going to use it' theory, it looked like we'd be spending quite alot of time in the barracks!

The only catch about the middle barrack was that you had to share with the senior squad of OCTs. Ah yes, the senior squad it was quite interesting to see the dynamics in the squad, over the next few days we came to realise some of them hated each other because these individuals were more interested in becoming squad chairman than getting commissioned. Given the immense likelihood that the same thing would happen in my squad, I decided to set my stall out to be the most evil and foul tempered person in the squad so no one from my squad (or the senior squad for that matter) would take liberties with me.

Also at this stage, we realised that the food chain got a bit more complicated due to the appearance of our Course Manager (CM). My first impression of him was that I shouldn't mess with him too much and I felt that he wasn't a simple guy to deal with either. Well both would turn out to be true over the course of the next 9 months, more would be revealed later.

There we were.....

Woah check out this photo! At least it's got 4 out of 5 of us!

First Impressions

And so it came to pass, it was time for us to say goodbye to the Singapore Armed Forces and head off to the SPF. Of course, the SAF wasn't one to say goodbye in a warm cuddly manner, no hugs and kisses, no pat on the back and plaque, and certainly, no one told the Nee Soon people that we had to de-kit! So all of us rocket scientists left some of our army kit at home which was a dumb as dog shit thing to do, but oh well, that's all in hindsight.

After rushing like a mad man to go home to recover the last vestiges of my SAF kit, I stormed back to Nee Soon Camp in civilian and turned in all of my kit, helmet, SBO and all, but I had to pay money for the socks and swimming trunks I forgot all about. Well you'd think these items would be regarded as disposable, but not in the army!!

Of course, the other great revelation of the day was the 2 female soldiers working at the store were actually male! We swore for the longest time that they were female, and of course I'm sure Aziz was checking the Indian one during BMT. [A totally untrue remark I might add] The other great memory was Terence in a tank top and ripped jeans sauntering across the parade square which earned prompted to reflect on his bravery or lack of intelligence!

It was then that we met the Tekong people who looked alot less flustered than us, well it seems the message to de-kit got through to them. We also saw a couple of NS Inspectors who started shouting at us, we all though they'd be our PCs, but in truth, they were just a bunch of lowlifes from PNSD who just wanted to get off the bottom of the food chain by shouting at some lower ranked people.

Finally, we met the man, FI Hassan who for the next 9 months would be our instructor, mentor and tormentor at various junctures. He seemed a calm enough individual compared to those wankers from PNSD who faded away when Hassan took charge, and our Deputy Company Commander, Zakaria, a Staff Sergeant to boot! I remember thinking what type of warped organisation was this?!?

Then we boarded the big blue bus driven by our Deputy Company Commander (!) and it was off to the Police Academy at Thomson Road and out of Nee Soon Camp and soon the SAF was behind us.

I suppose it would be self-indulgent to reflect on my BMT experience, but damn it, I created this blog so I will do it anyway. I will say that I never enjoyed BMT in the least, but 10 years on, I still maintain it was an experience that I had to have. It taught me resilience and how to push myself past my self-imposed limits, it taught me never to take for granted the things that I have and it also gave me a smattering of self-confidence which I didn't really have up to that point. Of course it also taught me alot about other people and what they were like under pressure. Without this experience, I don't think I would be able to do many of the things that I have done and certainly all that training and discipline would come to good use in the days of training at the Police Academy, but that is for the next post.

The Initial Days Recollection

The posting from the SAF to the police force did not proceed smoothly. We all had to lots of push-ups & crunches as a parting gift. I remember dekitting & sauntering across the parade square. Why? Because that was the only time I could do it & get away with it. In any case, I was less than impressed with the NCOs in-charge of me. I suffered from that particular affliction of young Eurasians - hubris. I left BMT with several dozen confinements & innumerable extras. Until today, I love giving orders, hate taking them.

In any case, I had never heard of Police OCT before. It never occurred to me that there was a place where commissioned officers from the Police Force serving their NS came from. Now I was going to be one of them. Nevertheless, I was less than impressed when they introduced the bus driver as the Company Commander! (He was a staff sergeant)

I believe that Daryl, Aziz, Asri, Mark were the best of friends because we got along really well & we had mutual distaste for the ah-beng clique. You will hear more about these jokers & our misadventures later on.

In any case, we all thought that Tracom (SPF) was going to be a holiday camp. It was, but only for the JOs. Not us. They got up at 0800h; we were out for a several click run by 0630h. They swam laps in the pool; we were training for the Bronze Medallion. They did basic self-defense, we did full-contact sparring. You get the idea. Our FI, Hassan was crazy. But on hindsight, all that log PT, full-pack rundowns at the SOC & physical punishment paid off.

We had the most black belts, we had the highest number of IPPT Golds, the most number of Bronze Medallion swimmers, the most number of marksmen. The other squads hated us. They would scream when we were running, “Go back to the Army!” I think we thrived on hate.

The only time we legally got even was when we played games. We thrashed them in soccer & basically any game we played. Except rugby. I got ejected for punching an opponent. Daryl almost dislocated a knee. It was more Aussie Rules than touch rugby.

I would like to mention the Young Azman saga but that deserves a posting all of its own.

Terence Nunis

Posting Day - Part I

Well, I can't claim to speak for the Tekong people [I will leave that for Asri] because most of us on the blog at the moment were from BMTC 2 at Nee Soon Camp, come to think of it, most of us were in fact from Gryphon Company, BMTC 2.

I was absolutely scared stiff on posting day, whatever the Singapore Armed Forces had in store for me, I wasn't looking forward to it. I had seen the barracks at SAFTI MI and I was convinced the better it looked the less you were going to use it. In preparation for the inevitable let down by the supply chain, I had packed 5 toilet rolls in anticipation of a long and painful confinement period at OCS.

But, somehow or other at the back of my mind, I had a feeling that it was going to be my lucky day. After all, it was 5 Oct 1998, it was my 22nd birthday.

So as Gryphon Company gathered reluctantly to find out the fates that awaited us, 2nd Lieutenant Tay, my less than sane Platoon Commander went "Wah Lau! Daryl Tan and Mark Tan half left hit it!" I started to think this really could be my day, was it really the mythical NSPI posting that I had heard much about but knew very little off.

Numerous push ups and crunches later, it was confirmed, Mark and I were going to the SPF and of course, we were overjoyed and we let our platoon 2 mates who were going to SISPEC know all about it as well. I looked around the motley collection of individuals from Gryphon who were going to the SPF as well, there was Mark who I didn't know particularly well except he was the talkative one from Section 3 who got the whole company into pumping position during range as he was hassling the resident gay boy in my platoon. Looking further up the line, there 2 guys who stood out as they were clearly less than enamored at the posting which was rather strange to me. One was the psychopathic looking Indian guy who had a moustache and looked like he was in his 30s and looked ready to kill. There was also the skinny Eurasian dude who had hassled me on guard duty a few weeks before.

From this less than promising beginning, Mark, Aziz, Terence and I would become the best of friends during National Service!

As they say, this was just the beginning!

Beginnings

Why bother with a history of a random bunch of guys who were thrown together by a strange quirk of fate or shall I say a random allocation by some clerk working less than feverishly behind a computer?

Well of course, we are all ten years older now, we have grown (mostly in stature) and the fitness is going downhill, and I guess eventually, the memories will fade into a hazy collection of images that we can't make sense of as we get older.

Ten years on, I'm really starting to feel that those 9 months together at the Police Academy really did me some good and it really seems like a very fun time, though I really didn't think so at times back then.

So let's try to think of some of these memories and write them down for our sake and try to define some of the fun, the irritation, the sense of mateship, the immense frustration at some of the less than human members of our squad, but mostly, the good stuff!

If you have any experiences, anecdotes, quotes, pictures, etc, please do post them here.

Happy posting.

Best Wishes,
Daryl