POP: H05 S01 B09

It's true what they say, that when you look back you only remember the good things. Maybe that's why I'm finding this so difficult to write, since so many good things happened during my BMT experience that I can't hope to fit them all in here, much less do any of them justice. As for the bad things, well, let's just leave them locked in cupboard 13 for awhile.

There's a sign at TFT that we see as we book in every week - "BMT: It's not what you leave behind, it's what you'll gain in the days ahead." When I first saw it I was still a civilian, stepping onto Tekong with my parents with precisely that kind of mindset. I thought I would stand to gain something substantial from NS - what exactly I didn't know; maybe maturity, maybe greater discipline, maybe self-control and personal composure. What I gained was none of the above, yet something singular and completely different - friends, and hopefully lasting ones.

To my section mates especially - Shao Wen, Ibkaar, Nick, Aaron, Ryan, Greg, Duan, Enrique, Xavier, Julian, Nizam - thanks for making the whole thing so much more than tolerable. Congrats... we all made it. I'm gonna miss our bunk.

I don't regret any of my BMT experience. Not even that hellish first week as armskote 2IC, or consistently making mistakes in front of the commanders and PC (who I found, as time went on, to have his own problems and perfectly human flaws), or - actually - the whole first 6-7 weeks, during which I suffered from a tired combination of bad luck and simple blurness, but which now seem like a distant memory. I now realize that all those episodes were just passing moments and, looking back on the whole thing, I can say that none of them were as serious as they seemed to me to be, and that in the truly important things - in making friends and dealing with people and maintaining my own integrity - I've not compromised myself. And, in the end, I got the hang of things after all.

Nonetheless, if I may be so permitted to say, BMT is almost absolutely about what you leave behind. It's about no hair, no junk food, and lacking the freedom of civilian life. I don't mean that in a bad way - I just mean you learn to appreciate it all a little more.

I don't think I've necessarily come out of Pulau Tekong a better person. Still, I've gained a lot of lasting memories from the experience. Perhaps the one that encompasses them all, for me, would be our marching back onto the floodlit parade square at the end of our 24km graduation route march, high-porting our arms, singing at the tops of our voices and then finishing it by marking time, everyone raising their legs to a perfect 90 degrees, our sore feet banging convincingly onto the ground in perfect time; and then stopping and hearing Sgt. Elias say that finally, he has seen the true spirit of platoon 5. That feeling of pride and triumph and personal accomplishment, I think, will stay with me for a long while yet.