All about NS: Part Two

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

Part One: here.

Mer­ci­lessly, the sec­ond day at camp was what we have all dreaded for — the hair­cut. All of us were at the mercy of three bar­bers. Whether we liked it or not, all of us walked out of that classroom-turned-barbers’ sport­ing crew cut hair­styles. Agh! My head heats up like a fry­ing pan in like, 5 sec­onds of expo­sure to sun­light! As weird as it felt at first, it does allow more ven­ti­la­tion through the scalp, which is a good thing, not to men­tion I only used up a frac­tion of the tub of sham­poo I brought.

That after­noon itself, the uni­forms and its acces­sories and what­not were given out. We were most excited though, to receive the infa­mous blue shade-striped cam­ou­flage com­bat uni­forms. Or what­ever that is called. Other uni­forms were the class and sports uni­forms. At the end of the visit to the logis­tics, we would be hug­ging large sacks of clothes back down to our dorms.

Then came the time where we had to design flags, come up with slo­gans and goals for our Com­pany. It was the Kon­trat Kita Janji, or more famously known as KKJ. Go fig­ure. XD The Delta flag were designed by Harry as you can see in part one. And we came up with the slo­gan ‘Agi Hidup, Agi Nge­la­bat’ which basi­cally means ‘fight­ing to the end’ in Iban. The goals, were well, those bor­ing old stuff, you know, those derived from the objec­tives of NS.

Best thing since sliced bread

I really wanted to mean that one of the best parts of NS were the char­ac­ter build­ing classes, under the char­ac­ter build­ing mod­ule. While being ‘class­room based’ would cre­ate the notion that ‘it’s gonna be hell’, the teach­ers would have proved us dead wrong.

That said, if you haven’t met an NS trainee that had come skip­ping towards you, breath­lessly telling you how the CB classes have been the best thing since, er-sliced bread, let me be the one. ‘Cos they’re so damn fun!

Jason, Yan Pin and I were assigned to class PK7 with about 60 oth­ers and were led by Cikgu Fari­dah Ani, or just Cikgu Ani. But we often just called her Cikgu Honey any­way. XD She is one cute and chubby teacher, so much in fact, that she would go leap­ing around when every­one were in high spir­its, a sight we just couldn’t get to see enough. Don’t we all just miss her..aww.

Activ­i­ties, games, quizzes, draw­ing, cheer­ing, you name it. All crafted into the mod­ule, which in my opin­ion, had really suc­ceeded in get­ting every­one in a class of 65 seventeen-year-olds to par­tic­i­pate fully.

There were two sub-modules, Mod­ule one was ‘Bring­ing the best out of your­self’ and two was ‘Bring the best out of oth­ers’. Dur­ing the last day of mod­ule one, Cikgu East told us to give our grat­i­tude to Cikgu Ani for there will be a reshuf­fling of teach­ers for the next mod­ule. A sad song was played. She gave in to tears and the girls fol­lowed suit. It was emo­tional. Cikgu Ani was a good teacher, she never failed to make the class cheer­ful. A cute and ded­i­cated teacher. We’ll miss her a damn lot.

We argued if there was any way Cikgu Ani could be reas­signed to our class. We even begged her to ask to remain in this class. Cikgu Ani said she couldn’t promise she would suc­ceed in doing so. She told us the juru­latih CB’s will have a meet­ing that after­noon which would final­ize the new classes they would be assigned to.

Next morn­ing, Cikgu Ivy and Siti and Cikgu Sani were wait­ing for us in class. It was the first day of Modul 2. While danc­ing out­side the class­room, we searched for Cikgu Ani and found her with PK1. We waved our hands to say good­bye. It was sad to see her in another class. So the class started and the 3 new teach­ers in our class intro­duced them­selves. They man­aged to cheer us up despite us try­ing to get Cikgu Ani back.

Then they told us that they had to attend to a tech­ni­cal prob­lem at the Bilik Ger­akan which was just beside our class and just left us alone, all three of them. Sec­onds later, to our great delight, Cikgu Hani and Cikgu East came run­ning back and entered our class while we cheered out throats off in joy to see her back.

It turned out to be a huge ploy! Every­thing was flaw­less. Cikgu Hani her­self told us that she her­self didn’t know about the ploy until their 3pm meet­ing yes­ter­day, that would explain why she cried yesterday!

Ah, well enough of Class CB stories.

Nation-Building

God..there are so many things to cover. I could go on writ­ing but I’m sure you wouldn’t wanna read every­thing any­way. Words make a post look unat­trac­tive, in all it’s irony.

After the CB classes, the Kene­garaan classes fol­lowed. And they were dead bor­ing. I was assigned to KN2 with the charis­matic Cikgu Sani as our teacher. He is the favourite moti­va­tor among the jurulatih’s. But he wasn’t all that as he was on stage while in class. To add up to the dis­may, out of a total of about 30 LDK’s (Group activ­i­ties) in the Nation Build­ing mod­ule, only one or two were actu­ally fun. Like Jo said, it’s like mak­ing a usu­ally bor­ing activ­ity like mem­o­riz­ing elec­tion pro­ce­dures more attrac­tive by mak­ing us cut and paste cards thus fail­ing mis­er­ably at doing so.

The Sports

Feel the heat, peo­ple! Sports was one of the most heated events dur­ing camp life. After the Com­pany Games com­menced, there had never been a quiet evening. The games involved were Speak Takraw, Vol­ley­ball, Table ten­nis, and Net­ball. And because all these con­tributes to the over­all com­pany marks, win­ning does mat­ter. So it was a bat­tle between Alpha, Bravo, Char­lie and Delta. And it was fierce.

There was a des­ig­nated event for every evening, if noth­ing pops up. Every­one would gather at the respec­tive courts and cheer as their team fought on. The spir­its were always high and it’s amaz­ing how strong the com­pany spirit could be. All of us, regard­less of race or ori­gin, cheered on for the sake of the com­pany as one. Pretty sen­sa­tional I must say.

The Com­pet­ing Spirit

Other than sports, the Com­pa­nies com­pete in every other activ­ity in camp. There’s the obsta­cle course, which con­sists of 9 obsta­cles, the 6-feet wall, 10-feet wall, Mon­key Rack, Tarzan Swing and so on.

There were also water sports such as raft­ing and kayak­ing, held at the camp’s very own man made lake.

I rep­re­sented my pla­toon for raft­ing and along with 19 oth­ers, rowed our way to sec­ond place in the wira cat­e­gory. Though we didn’t excel in water sports, as they aren’t exactly our major.

But mind you, we were the proud cham­pi­ons of the most pres­ti­gious cup of National Ser­vice, the march­ing com­pe­ti­tion! XD The wira Delta pla­toon is noto­ri­ous within the camp for being the ones with the worst dis­ci­pline. We took lead in prac­ti­cally every­thing involv­ing punishments.

We led in demerit marks, drag­ing the the Delta com­pany down in over­all marks within the first few weeks, we bore a record num­ber of smok­ers, the firsts to get pun­ished for smok­ing were from our pla­toon, the worst dorm lay­outs were Delta dorms, we were prac­ti­cally a pain-in-the-ass for the jurulatih’s and yet..we won the march­ing com­pe­ti­tion. Which iron­i­cally, the core aim of march­ing is to instill dis­ci­pline and team­work in each and every mem­ber. Go fig­ure. XD

Nonethe­less, we were ones with the biggest smiles that night of the prize giv­ing ceremony.

Stay tuned for part 3!

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Inde­pen­dent Thoughts

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