I was meant to start my national service journey on the 2nd of July 2020, but the Covid-19 pandemic that has taken the world by storm postponed that date till the 15th. When I received the postponement letter I had mixed feelings. I had left Hong Kong early, leaving my girlfriend, my friends, and my parents behind. I also missed my graduation. Weird fact for anyone that cares: I have not attended or had a single formal graduation since Kindergarten (4 years old). So yeah...I was kind of bummed. Being stuck in a hotel here for 2 weeks as part of Singapore's quarantine measurements didn't exactly help my mental state either. I tried to make the most of my time in quarantine, watching countless hours of Netflix and Youtube everyday and squeezing a little home workout in if I was really feeling adventurous. As enlistment day drew closer more and more resentment came, I constantly questioned the need to serve the army, whether it was too late to just run and just generally why in the fuck I was not enjoying the fruits of my laboursome schooling years. I won't even mention the shit-show that was the May 2020 IB exams as I'm sure it'd infuriate many of you reading, but the summer just didn't go how it was meant to. The dream was to be on a grad trip in Koh Samui soaking up the sun, but instead I ended up on Pulau Tekong (an island which acts as the main training centre for recruits off the coast of Singapore) feeling the sun beating down on my neck as I held push-up position.
Lets skip forward to the day itself. We get a packing list months beforehand and it tells you all the basic stuff that you should probably bring in, but it leaves out the really important stuff. Everyone knows you need toiletries, clothes hangers and detergent, but what's really important is that you have enough power banks to power a small town, enough snacks to feed a small village and most importantly, enough deodorant so that you never have to actually wash your clothes. Those were my essentials at least =). But on a more serious note, you have no idea what to expect when you're going in. Everybody you will ever talk to has had a different experience in BMT (Basic Military Training, the 9-19 week programme that every recruit must do), and so it is a very daunting experience. The typical enlistment day procedure is that your family and you take a bus to the Changi Ferry Terminal and from there you're ferried to the island, where then your family take a tour of a little museum whilst you do some administrative work. You meet back up for lunch at one of the cookhouses where you're fed the best food the island has to offer (which is still pretty shit). I'll touch on the food more later but essentially, while your family is still there the SAF (Singapore Armed Forces) want to portray Tekong as a nice place to be when in reality it is a shithole.
From there you say your goodbyes, watch your mum shed a tear, get a pat on your back from your dad and get a smile from your siblings who are yet to enlist and then set off. Yeah I was kind of a prick to my brother when he enlisted, whoops. It came full circle though as I ended up getting a socially distanced experience of being dropped off at Selarang Camp on the main land in Singapore before also being bussed and ferried to the island. One of the most well known enlistment day events is when the recruits gather in the lecture theatre to pledge their loyalty to Singapore Armed Forces and shout ''with my life'' as loud as they can. It was an extremely muffled pledge underneath those masks, but from that moment you're a soldier. There's no turning back. After that we were fed lunch at 10am which I didn't particularly understand, but it was as I expected, the best food we were gonna get. After we were given the army standard of 15 minutes to eat any meal, we then picked up all our military issued stuff (uniforms, boots, shoes etc.) and then headed up to our bunks.
Now this is when you meet the 15 guys you'll spend the next nine weeks with. If you don't like them? Tough luck. If they don't like you? You better sleep with your eyes open. In actuality, nobody really wants to be there and naturally people are hesitant to socialise when you're thrown into a room with that many strangers. But those 15 guys are your section-mates. As an international kid especially, the last thing you want is to feel ostracised or to feel like an outsider and I'm lucky in the sense that I've come back to Singapore regularly since I've left and that my brother has already finished his army stint. International kids naturally gravitate to one another, and to give credit to the SAF (Singapore Armed Forces) they do try to put all international school kids in the same company to prevent them from being ostracised or worse. So those first few hours are crucial, I was lucky enough to have fellow international school kids around me and a section of local guys that were accepting of me. The guys in your room have countless more similarities with one another than you do, they're all Polytechnic or ITE graduates so they're all older than you (ranging from 20 to 22), they've all grown up here for the most part and they all speak differently. Everyone knows how strong a Singaporean accent is, and in contrast to an international accent, you sound extremely different. The first day is pretty relaxed, people who haven't shaven their heads go and do that, you unpack everything and change into admin attire (what you wear 75% of the time). Its comprised of a green cotton tee, some black short shorts and an ugly pair of either New Balances or my favourite, the Adidas SAF 1s. The full, stylish look can be seen below.
The entire company of 200 people were brought down to the hardcourt in front of Coy line (our building) to sit down and call their parents and then that was that for the day. Worst part of the day for me was finding out that reveille (when we have to wake up) was 6am, and upon reflection 6am is probably the best reveille time you can get. Yep, most of the time during BMT when I woke up, my friends were still online playing Warzone. Depressing stuff.
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