January 20, 2005 (Day 13)

Woot! Today is book-out day!

I am so going to make the most of the 3-day weekend........

January 18, 2005 (Day 11)

To be honest, it has been a really hectic few days lately. Running around, rushing here and there, waiting about for things that might not happen, that is the standard day in Pulau Tekong. If anyone could see Pulau Tekong, or rather the BMTC from a bird's-eye view, he would think that he was looking at a human version of an anthill.

But to be serious, there really is a lot of activity going on, at least for me. My last entry is a good example; there just isn't enough time to say everything I wished to say. But anyway, from being a martial artist pretender in BCCT, to doing make-up for a manly purpose in camouflage lesson (think camo paint), to feeling like a turtle with FBO loaded onto me for the 4-klick march, there just isn't enough time to go around for everything, let alone, my own personal matters. Right now, I'm writing this sometime in the afternoon, where I have an unprecedented hour-long break to do anything I want.

And talking about personal matters, I seem to keep running into walls every turn I take. For some reason, AL, EL and JT have basically all become unavailable through calls, and I am really beginning to miss their voices a lot. It is a good thing that N is still picking up my calls, although on reflection, I should stop calling her so often, since she has a new guy in her life. Ah, N, N......how many guys will you have to go through before you find the one you are meant for?

Which reminds me. Singapore beat Indonesia 2-1 to lift the Tiger Cup. :D

Also, I am really fitting in into the whole system, although I suspect part of the reason is that the sergeants aren't really coming down hard on us yet. Still, I am looking forward to book-out-day, two days from now, when I will have a long weekend to see my family and my girls. Especially the girls. I really miss them a lot.

Alight then, anyway.......that's all, for now.

January 17, 2005 (Day 10)

Someone just told me that a suicide of a teenage girl that happened two years ago, was of someone I knew back in secondary school.

Damned.

I feel awful. I seriously do. And very confused too, about my feelings. It is almost too hard to accept that someone I knew, even how barely, is no longer alive, no longer existent. It really bothers me that I only found out after two years had passed, even though I didn't know her all that well. Right now it feels so heart-wrenchingly confusing. And I really don't need it, not at this time.

But to be honest, such bombshells are a far better, or shall I say far more efficient, way of bringing the fact of your own mortality back to you than any of Eddie Koh's field trips, and to be honest, that's saying a lot. These are the kind of things that really makes you think about life itself, and to appreciate life even more. All I can hope is that I wouldn't have to pay a far higher price for another such lesson in the future. If I'm having trouble coping with the young, premature, death of a near-stranger, goodness knows I can't handle the death of a dear friend.

January 15, 2005 (Day 8)

These few days have been tough. I was getting barely enough sleep, the discipline is getting tighter, the company is still the same few crumb balls, and there were times I could barely keep awake, let alone do much of anything.

Last night's fire drill was a prime example. Because of mistakes by a few people, the entire company was subject to push-ups, crunches, and not a few times of running up and down 4 flights of stairs between the bunks and the parade square.......while dragging along a pail holding miscellaneous stuff, and a 4KG rifle. Yes, the slack period is over, and we're all getting the brunt of it all. Tekong is slowly turning into the nightmare I always knew it would be.

But because of it, there's another change in me too. I have no idea how the rest of the crumb balss are taking it, but for me, all it has done was to bring back the negative side of me that I was in my NCC days.......the jaded, cynical being that took those punishments as just another negative aspect of a worthless life. Indeed, now all I can do is to take everything like I did 5 years ago.......with a 'screw you, too, asshole' in my mind, and jaded eyes staring back at the screaming sergeants. Slowly, I feel like I'm losing the vibrant side of me I managed to develop thanks to the girls and to N, and I'm back in a nightmare world with a version of myself who wishes only to get out of this misery as soon as possible......or to get away from it all by dying.

It is because of this that I keep this diary of my days in Tekong. Through all this, I hope to retrieve the real me, by preserving myself in these words. I do not with to become an emotionless drone who takes orders without question; exactly what the army demands. Thus, all I can do is to rant, to cry, to scream through these words, and hopefully I will come through this BMT shit unscathed.

My family and friends have also been instrumental in ensuring I didn't suffer a mental collapse, or lose my personality. Calling back home felt especially good, and N contributed an encouraging message which meant so much to me. I've also called Jessa too, and while she did help me out, I'm starting to get the feeling she doesn't actually understand just what BMT is all about :S

But anyway, I have been calling every night to one or other of my girls, and while they have given me the strength to go on, even though my phone battery has somehow managed to survive, I don't think my phone bill will :p

Alright, I'll see if I can write later.

January 11, 2005 (Day 4)

Oh, the pointlessness of it all.

Yup, that basically summed up the day for me. A damned tiring CCBT (Close Combat Physical Training) warmup, where I failed spectacularly at the pushups before having the company PC deride me for being too weak to even handle the warmup started the day.

Well.......that sucked.

What sucked even more was having to go to the firing range to watch the sergeants firing M16 rounds at watermelons to show its capability, as if I didn't already know from my NCC days. Well, perhaps it's only fair the non-NCC guys got to take a look, but it's no joke when you have to walk aimlessly around while you're suffering from "recruit's fatigue", or the fatigue recruits usually suffer after the first few days of camp. The really sucky part was, I had to squeeze with the while platoon into what of those all-purpose military trucks they call 'tonners', for the two-way trip between barracks and the range.

Let's just say that being squeezed like sardine with 49 other stinking crumb balss into one tonner with a maniacal driver at the wheel on a rocky road is, again, no joke.

And to complete the totally pointless day, I had to go for a meaningless ceremony where the rifles are symbolically handed over to the recruit's safekeeping. Seriously pointless, boring, and even cramp-inducing. I almost died of migraine from wearing the jockey cap for too long. All the things they said about defending the country......blah. Look at it this way. I never asked to be born. I sure didn't ask to be born in Singapore, where I have no choice but to suffer an indignity I didn't care for in the first place. Well. Now the only way this godforsaken place is going to earn any respect from me, is if they cut down on the nationalistic bullshit. It's about time they realised people like me, however rare, don't buy such bullshit.

Alright, I'm done ranting pointlessly for now. Now for the meaningful part. After all the shit of today, I called back to my family, and well, at least this time I smiled to hear their voices. It seemed like I was losing any sense of kinship to them, and if there was one good thing about being stuck in this hellhole, it was that it built up the meaningful relationships a lot more than you would think. And speaking of which........I called N after that.

And it's official. N has an impact on me others don't have.

I broke into tears again when I heard her voice, even though I managed to keep calm and hear about her last 4 days. I finally started tearing towards the end of our conversation, although I have no diea whether she picked up on it or not. So.......all I can say is, I didn't break down on the first day in Tkeong when I talked to N because I was a wimp...........because if I would break down everytimg I hear from her.....,

It means N means much more to me than anyone else in this world.

Bah. Well, anyway I got around to calling ST afterwards, and I got almost the same kind of talk I got from AL. Hmm. Someone should check whether they are long-lost twins or something, since they are both so similar in personality and all.

Perhaps tomorrow night, I would call Jessa, and ask her what is it about military life she liked, since I know what it meant now :p Hmm. I should ask her to pass a message to NeNe too. Alright, that's what I'll do.

Anyway, it's late. Goodnight all.

January 10, 2005 (Day 3)

It really is amazing how, when you most think that they are irretrievable gone, your hidden resources suddenly returns to tide you through the tough times.

And so it is for me. In the space of one day, I had self-engineered a transformation from crying wimo who couldn't take the discipline of Pulau Tekong, to the person I was 3 years ago, with the skills and the nerves of a seasoned NCC cadet with the resources needed to cope with the challenges of military life at my fingertips. Just like that, the prospect of spending my time in Tekong didn't seem half as bad as it was. The food has become more to my liking, the discipline has become a mere routine, and the company, while still made up of crumb balls, have all turned out to be pretty nice crumb balls, although they could never replace the company I enjoyed with the girls, when I am at my happiess. Sorry guys :p

Well, for some reason, there hasn't been much activity over the last 2 days. It was pretty much all admin stuff and lectures, and hardly any physical toil at all. I suspect that's about to change tomorrow though, but well, I'll just take one day at a time, and hope that I would still have the energy to continue the Tekong Chronicles.

That is not to say i hadn't missed the aspect of my former life though. To be honest, family was rather absent in my thoughts, and what I thought about instead was the girls I knew and loved. I called EL yesteraday, and while our talk was nothing short of awkward for some reason (maybe because of the fact that I found out she had a boyfriend? If so, so what, I'm still going to continue bullying her :p), hearing her voice was good enough for me, and I could only appreciate it. Today I called AL, and at least the old camaderie and bantering between me and her (she always was kookier than me, and that's saying a lot), and......yeah. Maybe I'll call home again tomorrow, perhaps ST, and perhaps N. I have to let my sis know at least I'm starting to cope, let her know I'm no longer what I was on the 1st day too.

I have thought about my online buddies too, and chief amongst them is "Naomi Taylor", or what the others on the RP site we frequent nickname "NeNe". She and I were playing beaus on the character RP sit before I left, and well......I kinda feel bad leaving her alone, but it can't be helped. But I'll make it up to you, NeNe. I promise.

Anyway........that'll be all for now. Stay tuned for the next episode of "The Tekong Chronicles"!!!!

January 8, 2005 (Day 1)

Pulau Tekong Besar. The breeding grounds of the Singapore Armed Forces. The island where boys are sent to become men.

And it shall be where I shall be trapped for the next 9 weeks of my life.

And so it begins. It was only half a day, but it was already enough confirmation of my worst fears. Yelling sergeants, hectic pace, crap food, brumb balls for company, and at the end of it all, I was already close to tears, as lights out, and so did the time when I could finally call out to the world, approached.

Well, I called home first, and well, I was still able not to crack at hearing my family's voices, for they didn't mean much to me in the first place, and probably won't be for a while yet. But.....I finally broke when I called N. She has always meant so much to me, and now I appreciated hearing her voice even more, in my current sorry state. Even now, I'm struggling to hold in my tears as I am writing.......but I must. I must for all of those I love......N, EL, all the girls.....enough.

Maybe in the next few days, I will learn how to be emotionally detached.......goodness knows I'll need it to survive these 9 weeks.

Until then.........

The Beginning Of A New Chapter........

This is my story, starting of January 8, AD 2005. On this day, I, as well as many other Singaporean males of my age, will be enlisted into Singapore's National Service, a defense program where boys are trained to become men. Under the National Service laws, all able-bodied males of at least 18 years of age have to go for compulsory National Service, where they will be trained to become policemen in the Police Academy, Civil Defense forces.......or, as is the majority, shipped off to an island of the main island of Singapore.

That island, is Pulau Tekong. Where boys, in the process of being trained into soldiers to defend the nation, are also trained to become men. And now, it is my turn to undertake Basic Military Training in Pulau Tekong.

I have no idea how many people who will never have to serve National Service, actually know what it entails. Neither do I care, for it is not my job to enlighten them. All I want to do, is to note down my experiences, my thoughts, so that I, and perhaps others, can see them in the future. I will write my thoughts down in a diary that the Singapore Armed Forces have provided to every recruit in BMT, and on the weekends that I get to return to civilization, I will update this blog.

And so, it begins......