old soldiers never die, they just fade away
i can't believe it's all coming to an end. almost 2 yrs on, and it's time to say goodbye. had our ord parade yesterday....well not exactly 'ours' as in mine but the mono guys. it all started early in the morning at seven plus. the ord guys proceeded with their rehearsals and we the corporals started the long long day launching an assault boat into the wet gap. then it was the setting up of the comet stage, and damn it had to be crouching balls who was in charged. but in retrospect, the burning displeasure towards crouching balls has kinda reduced, i must say he has toned down a little...either that or it's that the fire within has blown towards the piece of shit. anyway, after that, for some weird reasons they needed ppl to jaga the assault boat...not like the boat's gonna float to malaysia or something (and not that the latter never happened before!), it's the WET GAP for christ sake! lan lan, so me hai soon pcb and tianfa hung around the wet gap till the parade began. so the parade went on and ended with a resounding 'ORD LOH!' we the CPLs only looked from afar, no one went up to offer congratulations nor anyone wanted to join in the photo-taking except me. sigh....suan or no suan, these are my brothers. we have been through hell all together and the parade is testament to their survival. thinking that this might really be the last few times i'm ever gonna meet them, i felt i must at least go up and offer some words. but hell was i at a loss for words. then i saw xiaoyang with the ops flag that was newly bestowed upon alpha, without a thought, i borrowed the flag from him and ran near the slipway where the guys were taking group photos. 'CHOTOMATE!' i shouted and to my relieve the photo session ain't ended yet. and i joined in the photo holding the flag, if not for the fact that the No. 4 i was wearing din have my rank sewn on (chargable offence mind you), i would have appeared to be odd one out haha. fuck it la, nothing to be pai seh of, after all CPLs are also part of bravo coy, but sadly it appears the other CPLs dun seem to think that way anymore. then it was the much much less anticipated moment - unloading of bbq stores and again the having crouching balls co-ordinate the whole thing was not helped by the fact that almond were arrowed solely to do the unloading....u can call that the 'sai kang persecution complex (s.k.p.c)'...whereby everyone thinks they did the most sai kang. it was sweet revenge as almond turned on the the 'attitude' mode dumping the GS tables and benches loudly, with no one doing it better than toh kian chong.
the CPLs all sat one corner resting, we were really pretty shagged (wonder what's the real spelling of the word in the non-sexual context), but looking at some of the guys who are gonna be civilians in barely 4 days time sweat it out, i can't help but to feel something hitting my platoon integrity so me and hai soon went to help. then party began, there were karaoke and winning eleven competitions, pretty creative stuff by SAF entertainment standards. food was decent, curry, otak, taiwan sausage, chicken steaks, satays and even durians! not to mention the many many many many Tigers placed rather distastefully inside SAF rubbish bins filled with ice (albeit clean ones from QM) and for the first time in my life i tried the lethal mix of beer with durians against the advice by murali and eugene. it was divine. well what can i say, at least i lived to type this so far, but i'm not so ready to dispel this age old advice as pure urban legend though. then again i might be down to the fact that i drank in moderation with the sheer scale of the post party sai kang detering me from getting wasted. gaya and eugene however din quite think that way. gaya got really pissed by about nine and had to be dragged back by murali. a real pity on their part considering what lies ahead in the hangar.......and the party officially ended, the big fucks left and so did alpha, na beh chee bye. trust them to let old soldiers do such a tua zhong sai kang. they are supposed to be the OPS COY now....and being 1st Bridge Coy means being the first to be arrowed. times have changed....oh well, it's back to the S.K.P.C (refer above). we were about half way into the cleaning up when we were told to fall-in. haha, is that a joke? ord men falling-in? but we did. it was OC who gave a farewell speech to the guys. we were each 'issued' with a can of beer a la water parade. somewhere in between his speech, i was divinely inspired to raise hell, and after jio-ing jessel, we spread the msg telling everyone to shake the can. it feels real good to be a ringleader this time. and when OC kinda ended his speech with 'all the best', ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE. we sprayed all our beer on him. there was no disrespect. and for the benefit of all you wusses who have yet to serve national service, that was a mark of real respect, sorta like the way when stone cold steve austin offers someone beer. men only do that to commanders they like, which is why no one bothered to talk to the piece of shit, much less waste our precious on the turd. anyway, OC was sporting enough to launch a counter-offensive and too ran around holding beer cans. the skirmish almost immediately spread to the rest of the coy and it was no-holds-barred. we got pontoon real wet and even tham and crouching weren't spared either. perhaps only fangzheng got away dry, and that's only becos it ain't coke! Asia Pacific Breweries should have filmed the entire thing, that would have made a hit commercial. we were literally bathing in beer, now how many of you could claim to have done that =p! a took a good 30 mins at least to actually calm things down. then LTA Cliff appeared! as far as almond pl is concerned, we only had 2 PCs, and Cliff is THE man having held the helm since bmt till end of BPC. everyone was pretty glad he came. it's just so weird, even almost a yr and a half after he left for OCS, and almond still seem pretty much to be in awe of him, now THAT's the mark of an acomplished PC. (beat that, piece of shit, disgrace to the sword of merit) as usual he gave the ord speech and hell, he's half an ord personnel himself after perhaps swayed by NSFs like us bitching whole day about the SAF, he decided not to continue his bond which ends in august. not wanting to let the chance to go by, we all each gave him a hug rubbing our beer-soaked No.4 on him. we then gave him a few tosses and fortunately, the alcohol have yet to affect our motor co-ordination and we safely caught him and he bid us farewell on his motorbike. it's either the ord mood or the alcohol, bravo coy hit inspired form. even marcus and chun siang were damn garang about the cleaning up. and apparantly alcohol can unleash creativity too. to clean up the beer on the hangar ground, candace guys used the camou net as a 1 x gigantic mop to mop the floor, now that's a true Engineer core value personified. and so after 30 ++ GS tables, 40++ GS benches, countless rubbish bags and 130 + student chairs, the job is done. i went back to bunk, only to see gaya
and eugene totally wasted. from what i heard from murali, it appears that eugene called up his gf and talked to her thinking it was her ex.....now that's one hell of an explanation. so after bathing a gave murali a hand. together we looked after gaya, endured his whims and fancies...bringing him to toilet only to bring him back when his bladder decided against the better advice from his head, washing his face, helping him unbutton his pants etc. i wonder when shall be the next time, almond platoon can have such a great time, getting wasted, talking cock altogether. sure we will definitely meet together someday, but how similar would that be? i hate to sound pessimistic but affinity and brudderhood in the army is shaped by the collective psyche and common experience we shared. years on in the civilian world, can this fabric of memory hold our bond together? sure i believe that some of the closer brothers would stay on as life long frens, but how many of us will actually remember the pornstar who arty bombarded the wrong site? or the concoction in crouching balls' cocktail? or the dopuleh who wanked off on the first day of enlistment and got impaled by OPH pins causing him to surgically reconstruct his belly-button? or Qinghui's and his 7-ton exploits in Crescendo? or even the names of our buddies who slept beside us? Eternity lives on, not in the memory of every intricate detail, but in the fondness of rememberance of the happy times we spent in Bravo Company, the shitty times in Bravo Company and the bittersweet times of leaving this place that we called home for 2 yrs. So even if you should forget my name, deleted my no from your phonebook, or not see me for the rest of your life, just remember that you hailed from the portals of Bravo Coy, Almond platoon and that itself, in each and every way to each and every one of us, is our way of achieving eternity. after all, old soldiers never die, they just fade away.
the CPLs all sat one corner resting, we were really pretty shagged (wonder what's the real spelling of the word in the non-sexual context), but looking at some of the guys who are gonna be civilians in barely 4 days time sweat it out, i can't help but to feel something hitting my platoon integrity so me and hai soon went to help. then party began, there were karaoke and winning eleven competitions, pretty creative stuff by SAF entertainment standards. food was decent, curry, otak, taiwan sausage, chicken steaks, satays and even durians! not to mention the many many many many Tigers placed rather distastefully inside SAF rubbish bins filled with ice (albeit clean ones from QM) and for the first time in my life i tried the lethal mix of beer with durians against the advice by murali and eugene. it was divine. well what can i say, at least i lived to type this so far, but i'm not so ready to dispel this age old advice as pure urban legend though. then again i might be down to the fact that i drank in moderation with the sheer scale of the post party sai kang detering me from getting wasted. gaya and eugene however din quite think that way. gaya got really pissed by about nine and had to be dragged back by murali. a real pity on their part considering what lies ahead in the hangar.......and the party officially ended, the big fucks left and so did alpha, na beh chee bye. trust them to let old soldiers do such a tua zhong sai kang. they are supposed to be the OPS COY now....and being 1st Bridge Coy means being the first to be arrowed. times have changed....oh well, it's back to the S.K.P.C (refer above). we were about half way into the cleaning up when we were told to fall-in. haha, is that a joke? ord men falling-in? but we did. it was OC who gave a farewell speech to the guys. we were each 'issued' with a can of beer a la water parade. somewhere in between his speech, i was divinely inspired to raise hell, and after jio-ing jessel, we spread the msg telling everyone to shake the can. it feels real good to be a ringleader this time. and when OC kinda ended his speech with 'all the best', ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE. we sprayed all our beer on him. there was no disrespect. and for the benefit of all you wusses who have yet to serve national service, that was a mark of real respect, sorta like the way when stone cold steve austin offers someone beer. men only do that to commanders they like, which is why no one bothered to talk to the piece of shit, much less waste our precious on the turd. anyway, OC was sporting enough to launch a counter-offensive and too ran around holding beer cans. the skirmish almost immediately spread to the rest of the coy and it was no-holds-barred. we got pontoon real wet and even tham and crouching weren't spared either. perhaps only fangzheng got away dry, and that's only becos it ain't coke! Asia Pacific Breweries should have filmed the entire thing, that would have made a hit commercial. we were literally bathing in beer, now how many of you could claim to have done that =p! a took a good 30 mins at least to actually calm things down. then LTA Cliff appeared! as far as almond pl is concerned, we only had 2 PCs, and Cliff is THE man having held the helm since bmt till end of BPC. everyone was pretty glad he came. it's just so weird, even almost a yr and a half after he left for OCS, and almond still seem pretty much to be in awe of him, now THAT's the mark of an acomplished PC. (beat that, piece of shit, disgrace to the sword of merit) as usual he gave the ord speech and hell, he's half an ord personnel himself after perhaps swayed by NSFs like us bitching whole day about the SAF, he decided not to continue his bond which ends in august. not wanting to let the chance to go by, we all each gave him a hug rubbing our beer-soaked No.4 on him. we then gave him a few tosses and fortunately, the alcohol have yet to affect our motor co-ordination and we safely caught him and he bid us farewell on his motorbike. it's either the ord mood or the alcohol, bravo coy hit inspired form. even marcus and chun siang were damn garang about the cleaning up. and apparantly alcohol can unleash creativity too. to clean up the beer on the hangar ground, candace guys used the camou net as a 1 x gigantic mop to mop the floor, now that's a true Engineer core value personified. and so after 30 ++ GS tables, 40++ GS benches, countless rubbish bags and 130 + student chairs, the job is done. i went back to bunk, only to see gaya
and eugene totally wasted. from what i heard from murali, it appears that eugene called up his gf and talked to her thinking it was her ex.....now that's one hell of an explanation. so after bathing a gave murali a hand. together we looked after gaya, endured his whims and fancies...bringing him to toilet only to bring him back when his bladder decided against the better advice from his head, washing his face, helping him unbutton his pants etc. i wonder when shall be the next time, almond platoon can have such a great time, getting wasted, talking cock altogether. sure we will definitely meet together someday, but how similar would that be? i hate to sound pessimistic but affinity and brudderhood in the army is shaped by the collective psyche and common experience we shared. years on in the civilian world, can this fabric of memory hold our bond together? sure i believe that some of the closer brothers would stay on as life long frens, but how many of us will actually remember the pornstar who arty bombarded the wrong site? or the concoction in crouching balls' cocktail? or the dopuleh who wanked off on the first day of enlistment and got impaled by OPH pins causing him to surgically reconstruct his belly-button? or Qinghui's and his 7-ton exploits in Crescendo? or even the names of our buddies who slept beside us? Eternity lives on, not in the memory of every intricate detail, but in the fondness of rememberance of the happy times we spent in Bravo Company, the shitty times in Bravo Company and the bittersweet times of leaving this place that we called home for 2 yrs. So even if you should forget my name, deleted my no from your phonebook, or not see me for the rest of your life, just remember that you hailed from the portals of Bravo Coy, Almond platoon and that itself, in each and every way to each and every one of us, is our way of achieving eternity. after all, old soldiers never die, they just fade away.
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