I received my enlistment letter when I got home from school. 5th Feb 2014, 0900HRS – that was the date and time I was supposed to enlist into Basic Military Training (BMT) as part of my National Service. I always knew this day would come as it is a rite of passage every Singaporean male has to go through when they turn 18. My father, having been through National Service nearly 40 years ago, had told me about how the military has transformed so much from ‘his time’ and how tough it was last time as compared to now. He started telling me about how they had to cook their own dinners (and how horrible the dinner tasted) while we had chefs to prepare our meals for us now.
Later that night, my phone was buzzing with the frenzied exchange of text messages over Whatsapp as the guys from my class were checking whether everyone had received the letter as they did. There was a total of ten of us in the class; all of us had different enlistment timings although we were to all enlist in the same week. Daniel, whose father is a regular Naval Officer, started telling us that he wished to become an Officer like his dad and how being able to make it into the Officer Corps of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) is a testament to your academic and leadership abilities. The ‘cultural structure’ in Daniel’s household had equipped him with a better understanding, and hence clearer objective, of National Service than my other classmates because I recall that none of us were particularly interested in the demands and prestige of being in the officer corps back then (Amanti, Neff, Gonzalez, 134). The conversation quickly transitioned into how we should watch a popular Singaporean movie on National Service together during the weekend.
That weekend, we gathered in my house where we streamed the movie “Ah Boys to Men”. The movie was a comedy film that depicts the life of army recruits undergoing BMT. The movie was interspersed with many military-related jokes and antics that got my father laughing so hard that tears formed by the edge of his eyes. I recall a particular scene when a recruit mishandled the rifle which I did not find funny at all but my father, in between gasps of laughter, told us that his army buddy did exactly the same thing as the recruit. According to Gee, the military represents a secondary institution which I have yet to even learn, hence my inability to appreciate the ‘inside’ jokes featured in the movie unlike my father who had acquired the secondary discourse (Gee, 22).
Countdown to Enlistment: 4 MONTHS