...as commissioned officers of the Singapore Armed Forces. "YES SIR!"

With the above-mentioned words, 26 hours ago, I was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Singapore Armed Forces. This day has been long in the coming, on 31st July 2000, I walked out of OCS to regain civilian status, forgoing commissioning in Jan 2001. Honestly, that decision seemed right at that time. Siam the tough OCS training to have fun for 4 years in London. During the last 32 weeks, at times I regretted leaving, asking old and unfit me to cheong suah with all those 18 years olds just seemed wrong, I was definately fit then, now less so. Nonetheless, I survived, although training now seems less tough than it did 4 years ago. I also got to make many more new friends. One phase of my NS life just ended and another will begin soon. Lta Jerry said that once the white bars become black, our world will become black. I suppose all the shit will start happening soon.

The parade itself wasn't too bad, no major cock-ups, some minor mistakes were made, but that's to be expected I suppose. Think we did too many reheasals, the novelty is gone, the 1st time I did the slow march to 'auld lang syne' and when we practised the peak cap toss, there was some stirring of emotions. Yesterday just felt like another rehearsal. The speech though was suprisingly short and for that I'm grateful. Dinner after that was a boring affair, father didn't want to attend, so he got sister to take his place. Our table host was a Lta Gerald Seah from Foxtrot Wing, think he's a PC but didn't get to talk much with him. He has a 5 year medal plus 2 more for participating in UN peacekeeping in East Timor. Think he was more interested in SMSing on his phone than to talk to us, although in his defence, we sort of decided that we'd more or less ignore him during dinner. One thing I noticed is that Lam and Yijian are lacking in basic etiquette, when he shook their hands, they just remained seated whilst he was standing. That's just wrong, mother commented on it during the car ride home. Oh well, at least I behaved properly in her eyes.

Today was pretty uneventful, gave Simone tuition in the morning, then came home to play Disciples 2 and had dinner at Newton with Zhenghan and the others. Walked around town for a bit after that before coming home. The walking around town is the most unproductive I must say. But that's what always happens when we go out without any plans.