Good luck DX. I'm looking forward to the next picture. Should be interesting ...

*wants to see DX posing*

All that beautiful hair! Nooo!!

Sorry to hear this, DX.
You seemed like a great cherub.

Haha, thanks. I'm going off now. Bye!

Wow, I thought you were still in school, DX. Time flies. I'm sure you will be an officer soon.If you can deal with the people here you can deal with anyone.

Best of luck DX the first 2 weeks will fly by because you will be so busy

Do you know what your doing? It's never too late to change your mind.

What if people who you have conversed with on this site or anywhere else also join the army. One of you may end up being responsible for the lacerated bowels and shattered skull of the other.

You may end up being responsible for the rubble and shrapnel that slices and crushes an AoE or C3 player who is a civilian living in one of the countries that your service launches missiles at.

Bullets, missiles, landmines, grenades, shrapnel and debris don't discriminate between the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys' my friend.

A lot of countries have entered us into an endless war against a faceless enemy. Has no one read George Orwell's 1984?

C'mon, we can do better than this.

Good bye DX, and good luck.

Good luck Duan Xuan, hope you find army life ok.

My first thought when I saw this thread was 'surely Duan Xuan can't be old enough for National Service yet!'. I guess I was still thinking of you as the kid who first turned up on these forums, forgot you had grown up during those years.

Good luck DX, don't forget to stop by and say hello whenever you get access to the internet

I would also like to wish you luck DX. Keep us posted on how you are doing, but I am sure you will do fine.

Good luck, and hope to see you soon!
I'm glad my sons are too small yet to enlist.... And I'm glad in the Netherlands there is no duty to be in the army anymore.
Any way, I hope the next two weeks will be over in a pffffft.

*looking forward to seeing you with another haircut* lol

Quote:

He deosn't have a choice, either lose citizenship or do 2 years in the army. Good luck DX!

Good luck

Hack reporter, Duan Xuan is in SINGAPORE. Military service is mandatory in many countries (particularly small countries like Singapore and South Korea), but it's not like they're going to be shipped off to Iraq or anything like that. You are right that too many people think that war is some sort of game, though.

Good luck to you, Duan Xuan. With a face like that, I just can't picture you as a soldier. How's your "mad face" coming along?

[This message has been edited by Ogedei (edited 01-15-2007 @ 02:21 AM).]

With 49,000,000 population I would not call South Korea small country. Singapore with 4.5 million is just slightly larger in population than NZ. But has only 699 square kms compared to NZ's 270,000 square kms. Some of you may be interested in this page showing population and size of all countries in the world with pop density .

Or this page with population in order which shows South Korea to be 25th for population out 230 countries and not so small.

[This message has been edited by Caesar Clifford (edited 01-15-2007 @ 02:36 AM).]

Compared to neighboring countries, South Korea IS small. It has merely around 1/3 the land area of Japan and does not have a great supply of natural resources. Also, it has the dubious honor of having a complicated geopolitical situation.

Wished him over email, couple of days before he entered. Hope he stays safe in there.

When I posted my enlistment thread two years ago, the reaction was almost exactly the opposite: "You're THAT young?" Everyone in OD seemed to think I was 30 or something.

Hope he has a good two years; almost no one does, though.

Hmm, not too bad really, the army in Singapore. I did my share, I'm out now and none the worse.

Anyway Singapore's army does more of peacekeeping/aid than actually any fighting at all.

P.S Gaiseric do you play any other game? Like online games or anything?

Thanks folks, I'm back. It's 3am now but I booked out last night at 8.15pm. We took a ferry, changed to a bus, and were then dismissed at the interchange. I conveniently live near there so I walked home, giving my parents a great surprise at about 9.30 just now.

Lots and lots of things to say... First off, two weeks on Tekong island was... long. There were lots of people who counted down to "bookout day", and for them time went by even slower. I didn't want to think about it at all most of the time... only in the last few days. The moment we reached the ferry terminal at mainland, you could see the exaltation on all of our faces. I guess everyone missed home or simply wanted to get out of Tekong.

Anyway, the moment I stepped out of the bus and back into the civilian world, I felt out of place. For one, I attracted more attention because I was walking about in my uniform buying a cap. Stepping into home was the best, of course, because nothing had changed over the past couple of weeks. All my things were left untouched (got to thank my mother). Even the history folder that I threw aside after the exams last year (that's like two or three months ago) was still there. I got my first hot shower in two weeks, and spent quite a lot of time with my family.

It's kind of hard to produce a recount of my two-week experience in the army, since I had forgotten many details. The first few days were just plain boring because we had to waste time with basic administration stuff such as filling up forms and changing kit sizes. Thereafter, the pace of life sped up a little because there were more activities for us, and time passed faster for me. I also recovered from my KFC food poisoning.

We had loads of funny/useless/stupid lectures, and we loved them because we could just sit back and relax. Other than that, it was mainly physical training and military drills. My company commanders seem to be pretty slack during this two-week "honeymoon period", and we rarely got any punishment. It's funny because I'm in W(hiskey) company, and we all choose to call it Welfare company because we're treated so well in there. Life can only get worse in the army from now on.

The bunks were quite comfortable, and the food was ok for me, though many people hate it. We learnt to handle the M16 rifle, which is seriously ancient. My dad used that weapon when he was serving his National Service. We also have to do area cleaning often, and the commanders (usually the sergeants) would come up and do checks. We get yelled at and punished for the slightest mistakes. It's quite tolerable though.

Yesterday was probably one of the days I enjoyed most, because we went for IMT in the morning. It stands for Individual Marksmanship Training, where we get to do firing simulations in a room. That way we don't have to go to the live range all the time, and it's pretty cool because we get an analysis of our performance. After that, the whole afternoon was given to us for slacking, and after that we just booked out and headed for home.

But... there's a retarded arrangement for us to visit some Discovery Centre the next morning (basically... later today since I'm posting at 3+am) for some army-related exhibition. Waste of my precious weekend, I say. This weekend is going to be a really, really busy one for me. Apparently, I'll get to bookout for two more weekends, and then get another two-week confinement again because of a six-day field camp.

And yes... I shaved my head like everyone else. No pics yet though, maybe tomorrow or something.

Pictures. We need pictures.

Yessss: pictures? :-p

Ok, pics first:

*stress* Where's all my hair!?!??

In my "Smart 4" uniform. This was taken by my dad with his cell phone when I got back home on Friday night.

Btw, it appears that I only have one more bookout next week before I'm confined again for field camp. This means that I won't be able to come home the weekend after the next.

Also, for those of you who'd like to read more about my two weeks in Tekong, I think I missed out some things in my previous post. Besides the usual physical training and marching drills, we have an exercise called BCCT, which stands for Basic Close Combat Training. It's also great fun because we learn how to fight. So far we've only learnt the basics, such as punching techniques and the knee jab (ouch).

Also, I caught the notorious "Tekong cough". Apparently there's something wrong with the water, which causes many recruits every year to cough. I got it in my second week there. If there's a lecture, you can hear people taking turns to cough. I estimate that about a quarter of the people have already caught the disease.

To make matters worse, I was arrowed by one of my commanders to be the platoon i/c in the second week. Basically, I have to shout commands (which are in Malay so I have no idea what I'm shouting) and also do some dirty work occasionally. Because of the daily shouting I have to do, I lost my voice on Friday morning and still have a hoarse voice now.

Ah well... got to go back to camp again in a couple of hours. Will have to see you all in a week's time... unless I'm unlucky enough to get guard duty of course.

Good luck: take care! We'll be thinking of you ;-)