All about NS: Part One

So I finally overcome’d pro­cras­ti­na­tion and got myself to com­plete this. Like I promised. Do keep in mind that the NS expe­ri­ence would never fit into one blog post, or even a few, in this case. This is my best attempt at try­ing to com­press 70 days of train­ing into these words, so bear with me if you will. =)

Batch Info: Pro­gram Lati­han Khid­mat Negara: Kumpu­lan 1, Siri 4/2007, Kem Pun­cak Per­mai, Bau.

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I would never for­get the shiver in the wind as I dragged my rolling bag down the slope lead­ing to the hall of Kem Pun­cak Per­mai, Bau. It the 1st of Jan­u­ary and it wasn’t as bad as it seemed, it had rained that morn­ing, and the winds were no help to the chilly weather. I, along with about 30 oth­ers made our way down to the hall after dis­em­bark­ing from the very first bus to arrive, savour­ing the new sur­round­ings of the place we would call ‘home’ for the next 69 days while try­ing to make sense out of scat­tered blocks of almost iden­ti­cal buildings.

A lake was to the right and right beside it was the hall, in all its glory. We observed that it was clearly the largest struc­ture within the com­plex, as we walked into it with much uncertainty.

It was there that I first met Jason, who would be one of my best bud­dies in weeks to come. We reported our­selves, had our bags screened and spent the rest of the day wait­ing bus after bus to arrive, fer­ry­ing in trainees from all over the coun­try, until the camp was filled with about 421 trainees of all races, yet with the same nation­al­ity, all sum­moned in for one com­mon reason.

Gen­er­ally

Now, to get you into the mind­set of roughly what we do, and have, here are some facts you should know.

As of 10th of March, at any given time, there are 421 trainees roam­ing around the camp’s com­pound, of which, 202 are males and 219 are females. In case you are won­der­ing, I got there fig­ures while spy­ing around in the camp’s man­age­ment office, and yeah, the females out­num­ber the males. Duh!

The instruc­tors on the other hand, had 17 man­ning the Phys­i­cal Mod­ule and 20 in charge of the other three mod­ules. And talk­ing about mod­ules, we went through the Phys­i­cal Mod­ule, the Char­ac­ter buidling mod­ule, the Nation Build­ing mod­ule, the Com­mu­nity Ser­vice mod­ule, the Weaponry mod­ule (modul kesen­jataan), and the Lit­er­a­ture and Cul­tural Programme.

Photo courtesy of Alleem
flags of Delta and Charlie

So, we were all divided into four large com­pa­nies, the Alpha, the Bravo, the Char­lie and the Delta com­pany. There were 8 dor­mi­tory blocks for the boys and each com­pany occu­pies two dorm blocks, same goes for the gals. I was assigned to block L7 of the Delta Com­pany along with Jason.

dorms L7, L6 and L5 dur­ing dusk

There were 31 dudes shar­ing dorm L7, Jason and I were one of the first ones to enter and so we had the priv­i­lage of choos­ing our beds. Each dorm has a wash­room attached to it, com­plete with 5 small sized sinks and 6 large sized sinks for wash­ing clothes. There were also 6 shower cubi­cles and another 6 toi­let cubi­cles. Not for­get­ting a large pool in the mid­dle were our dorm mates would often have water wars. XD

The facil­i­ties in our camp were rather new, it is new, in fact, for Kem Pun­cak Per­mai is the newest camp in the coun­try, com­pleted only in 2006 and we were the 3rd batch to use it. Lucky eh?

Time Man­age­ment!

So goes the trade­mark of En. Azezi, who’s often went out of tune. Fel­low camp­mates would know..hehe.

Basi­cally, the daily rou­tine life begins with the morn­ing roll call at 0600 hours where we have to be read­ily in line by that time, wait­ing for En. Leng­gang. Then PT fol­lows until 0700 where we would be head­ing back to the hall for break­fast. Classes starts at 0830, breaks at 1030 for Morn­ing Tea and finally ends at 1200 noon, where we will have our lunch.

By 1430 hours, it would be the activ­i­ties of the Phys­i­cal Mod­ule, which ends at 1600 for After­noon Tea and then at 1700 we would gather at the March­ing Field for sports. 1800 hours mark the most awaited dinner.

By 2030 hours, we have to gather back in the hall for any activ­i­ties that fol­low at night and by 2200 we would have sup­per. Lights off by 2300, where we all would have to be qui­etly tucked in bed, if not snor­ing the dorm roof off.

On week­ends though, we are pretty much free to roam around, for there are no activ­i­ties. Except of course, it is the Com­mu­nity Ser­vice day which usu­ally falls on Sat­ur­day, where we would be fer­ried out in buses to our respec­tive loca­tions serve the com­mu­nity. Every­one will be out for prayers on Sun­day morn­ings, except for the Mus­lims. Chris­tians are fer­ried to Churches, Bud­dhist to Tem­ples and so on.

I’m hun­gry.

Umm..no, the food sucks. Prob­a­bly the only com­plain you hear about is the food. Uncooked, taste­less and lack of vari­ety. Much of us wouldn’t take another piece of salted fish for the rest of our lives, if you get what I mean.

But oh well, at least it’s enough to keep us up and going, 6 meals a day, 7 days a week. Talk about slim­ming! (not me though, heh)

Well, that’s prob­a­bly every­thing all summed up in gen­eral. I’ll leave the activ­i­ties and more pho­tos for later.. I promise there will be a part 2, heh.

Edit: Part 2 here. Part 3 here.

9 thoughts on “All about NS: Part One

  1. ember

    Damn! I was hop­ing no one would notice that. Well then theres no rea­son to hide the truth from you. I sneaked out of the crowd before they even lined up and crawled through the ditches all the way up the hill, earn­ing myself a few cuts and scratches in the process.

    Seri­ously, lol. That pic was taken by my dad dur­ing the camp’s open day. Look for me in there, if you’re still aren’t con­vinced. XD

  2. Pingback: tehCpeng.net » All about NS: Part Two

  3. Pingback: tehCpeng.net » All About NS: Part Three

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