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!