Dang1 ping1

My brother just called home. From the army. At the pay phone (they give army boys free phone cards; they should really just give them spare handphone batteries). Last Thursday my whole family went with him to Tekong (where all the other boys were accompanied by hordes of family too). At Tekong, after the ferry ride, the parents and assorted relatives have to go one way, to tour the premises, and the boys another, to get their kits and a pep talk. The tour of the bunks and recreation room is conducted by a rather cute army boy, very much like the smiling Sarayon. There is an air-conditioned recreation room decorated with army propaganda and equipped with a TV, some chairs, a fooze-ball table. The guide explains that it's for rest, but since there's one room for each company, 200 boys, the boys will have to ask their commanding officers for permission to use the room. The commanding officers (the guide hastens to say) will generally agree, but sometimes they won't, for example if there's some tough training the next day, and the boys should sleep instead. Not that the training's tough; ok it is tough (tough is good, says a parent), but these boys have all passed their IPPT, so they will be ok, and if they do very well they can win the company awards. (Our guide was the best recruit, or best something, of his platoon.) Then there is a guide to army gear, with a different and less smiling host. He (the different host) has dissected a pack or whatever it's called and pinned its entrails to some billboards. He has also dug up a demonstrator dressed in full battle order (I presume; war paint on his face and unconvincing rag leaves on his helment and the new load-something-something vest on this, though not hung with grenades). Someone asks about the weight of all that gear, and is told that that varies with weapons and the amount of food the boy chooses to bring along (which seems odd). We troop into the canteen to wait (there are many groups of eager relatives shuttling into Tekong). We are called to the auditorium. The commanding officer is a middle-aged man running to fat who takes some pains to explain the training architecture of the army to the parents. An army, he says, marches on its stomach, and so we have improved the army food. The boys sit together in the middle of the auditorium; they all look small and skinny and slight. Too small to wear the army pack and carry 20kg of weapons and ammunition (my father says), to small to be away from home. The commanding officer calls the boys to take the oath, which is flashed on powerpoint (of course). He starts the oath, I, Name, NRIC number, and there is a moment of confusion as every boy speaks his own name and NRIC number, loudly of course, because they've all been told to talk the army way now. I suppose the scene is meant to be touching, and it is a little, because they're so painfully young, but mostly it brings to mind the City Watch taking their oath (I comma square bracket insert name here square bracket comma do swear by square bracket insert deity's name here square bracket...). Then he says to the boys, I want you to promise to call your parents tonight, after 9.30 pm, can you do that? YES SIR! (Their training must have already started.) Now you've promised, you must call your parents first, not your girlfriends, ok? YES SIR! The girlfriends in the audience (not that many of them) shift in their seats. The boys leave first, line up in the corridor. The parents troop out row by row and claim their son. We all go to the dining hall to taste the SAF food. The boys are restless; perhaps a little eager; perhaps a little apprehensive, but not really by much; it's probably all a little unreal at this point, like a massive school camp; there isn't much to do after we've eaten lunch (which was edible); this is just waiting time, like the time in an airport before boarding the plane. We look for the bus back to the ferry. My brother walks us there, and there are hugs all around - my father shakes his hand instead, because he is all grown up now - and last minute instructions on washing clothes, sleeping early, not exhausting the handphone battery the first day. Other boys are hugging their assorted relatives, all a little sheepishly. Call us! we say. And then we board the ferry back.