2 days to Pass-out day
Booked in to Tekong BMTC for the last time as a recruit.
That night when we just booked in, most of the section 1 guys slept late because we had to do write-ups on issues related to BMT and our instructors. That was one of the last few times we would gather at the bunk table and talk crap... Sergeant Ramlee joined us too, and added to the excitement when he recieved some wierd SMS from a mysterious individual... I shall not eleborate.
1 day to pass-out day
There was this "dekitting" (don't know whether I spelt it correctly) thing whereby we return stuff that was loaned to us... like groundsheets.
After which was the End-of-course debrief when representatives of the 4 platoons share about issues regarding how things were run during our BMT.
Followed by area cleaning... area cleaning... interview by platoon commander...
I discovered that Leon's handphone has a cool ringtone composer... it's much more user-friendly and has more functions than the composer in my phone. However, it allows only 5 ringtones to be stored, whereas mine allows, erm, it doesn't have a limit as to how many tones I can compose lah. I used Leon's phone to do 5 ringtones for him, and sent some of them to my own phone. Mostly songs by SHE.
Canteen break. Bought Cravio ice-cream and iced coffee. Watched Campus Superstar.
Marched back to company line. Got bombed by a bird on the way. Discovered it much later when we collected our company and platoon photos.
Talk about photos...
Some of us were wearing quite peculiar expressions in the "official" platoon photo (as in the one done by the photographer and we're supposed to buy)... Chin Seng was pouting, "Section-4-Wei-Kiat" was having constipation... James was "eating" (but then again, he's the "Food I/C" for Section 1...) Darrel and Chong Wee were daring the viewer of the picture to a fight...
As for I myself, that shot turned out to be the most Ah-Beng shot I have posed for so far... apparently because of my expression and also the way my collar looked.
And I should have discovered that silly nicknames were allowed for the platoon photo name list... like "3SG Badaruddinovic" and "3SG Ramlee is good burger". Not to forget our section commander, "2SG Eugene Yew ORD Spec!" and our absolute-ZERO-vulgarity (can you believe it?!) platoon sergeant, 1SG Sam How (a.k.a. "Somehow").
I would have written W Q "Manhunt" Wang.
Night attack!
That night would be the last time I sleep on the 11th bed of L4 P4 Section 1. Yeah, I slept...
...and woke up to find my face and arms covered in toothpaste and foam!
My first impression was that some joker had been brushing his teeth over my head... but, what about my arms?
On the way to the toilet to wash myself, I saw the clock on the corridor showing 1:20 a.m.. I thought that it was already 5 a.m. (our wake-up time) and the clock had stopped.
Why, Habib has awakened too... and shortly after I arrived at the toilet, a bunch of Section 3 guys joined us as well. Hence I was further convinced that I was right about the time. I tried explaining what happened to the guys there (it seemed that something similar had happened to Habib as well) and Jimmy (his name's Jin Ming but it's much more convenient to call him "Jimmy") was, like, saying-
"Don't take it too hard lah... this is the last night before passing out..."
What the heck?
The toothpaste-and-foam thing turned out to be a prank played by Section 3 guys! In fact, I should be thankful... Lionel even got camouflage cream on his face!
And I really woke up at 1:20 a.m..
After Habib and I cleaned ourselves and went back to bed, there're 3 new victims from our section: Alex, Colin (both of whom are minor cases) and Shixiang (his was the worst compared to even Habib and I). Originally, our dear King Kong only applied foam on Shixiang's face. However, when he didn't wake up after some time, Kong began adding foam to his legs (which weren't covered by his blanket).
What ended it all was Letian's (our beloved "Lieutenant") reaction when he kena'ed the foam and all... he was stunned and he shouted so loudly that I thought it was some specialist who came up to see what in the galaxy was going on. He calmed down later when he realized that it's just a prank.
Section 2 and 4 recruits were safe from the attack as their bunks were locked.
POC loh!
Passing-Out-Ceremony-was-held-early-morning-in-the-company-lecture-room(I-expected-it-to-be-auditorium)and-our-OC-gave-us-a-concluding-talk-and-we-tossed-our-jockey-caps-and-shouted"POC-loh!"and-all-I-think-it-lasted-for-about-45-minutes.
Our OC said that he would mark the historical PES C Games Day victory by having us sign a mahjong paper with our company photo pasted on it. We would sign 2 copies, which will later be framed up. It was fun adding "Manhunt'2006" under my signature, but it was even more amusing to look at Norman Lim's (our excused-upper-limb-activities platoon mate) signature -- Norman "Upper" Lim.
Clearing up our mess (and theirs)
Then we did area cleaning and cleared our cupboards... then we had lunch... then the ground floor cleaners went to the Platoon 4 office to help "Somehow" rearrange the stuff. We found a lot of hidden treasures among the mess, including a few pairs of boots, sandals, a whole new pen-knife salvaged from a uber weathered field pack (Sergeant Sam kept that knife), a Poncho (I kept that one with me... I knew it would come in handy some day), and lots of extra field rations packs (I kept all the instant tea and instant cereal packs for myself! Hehe...).
After dinner, we're supposed to do saikang (or what James affectionally calls "Service and Support") for those who were done with the Passing-Out Parade. Basically it's just rolling up some banners and picking up dry leaves on the parade square.
There were those large boards with the Company names' initials printed on them. They're being put all around the parade square to mark the positions for th respective companies. Some guys from our company had to carry back the boards belonging to Mohawk, Ninja, Orion, Pegasus, Raven, Taurus and Viper.
Those guys actually had the ingeniuity to arrange thse boards to form "PORN MTV".
Now before we really leave...
After all the saikang was done and there's still about 1 hour before we book out "for good", Colin took more photos for us... there were pretty gross photos but I'll publish them here only after I got them.
Now when it's really 8:30 p.m. and most of the company were cheering away, some of us were getting quite emotional... I could tell that some came close to tears. For me, I was just... feeling glum.
I'll miss the days of being Manhunt.
