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