During the National Rally, the Prime Mini$ter Baby Lee unveiled the NSRA, the National Service Recognition Award, to recognise Singapore citizens who have served are still serving national service. Imagine my joy when I heard this on TV – I was almost moved to tears.

And several days later, my tears did fall and it fell like the rain that flooded Orchard Road when I realised that this will not include those who who have already completed their entire national service cycle before 29th of August. The Mini$ter of $tate for Defence, Koo Tsai Shit Kee, said, “Government policy has never been retroactive. The first significant milestone is on the 29th of August when the Prime Mini$ter made the statement. Many generations who have served NS, like many of us… recognise that we have already benefited from previous policies and this policy is for NSmen going forward.”

I really have no clue what previous policies were there for NSmen in the past, but if a person of ASSociate Professor Koo’s calibre said so, it must be true. Mini$ter Koo further added that “NSmen who had completed their NS obligations had ‘benefited from the peace and prosperity that they’ve helped create’.” I am pretty sure he speaks from the bottom of his heart, considering how much money a mini$ter like him earns every year while NSmen keep the nation safe!

The Mini$ter, however, has been kind not to elaborate on all the other benefits that many other NSmen have gotten. Unlike Malaysia which gives the bumiputra an advantage, Singaporeans males gave foreigners who graduate together with them a generous head start of at least 2 years in the workforce, and a go at our women while they run around with a gun in the forest and learn the arts of war. Old NSmen like us are also so much superior (than the present stock) that we gave an extra half a year in service more than what the current batch is giving now. It doesn’t even matter some of us would have lost touch with our studies when we are done with our Full Time National Service, we believe ultimately we will still beat our foreign opponents no matter how much head start we have given them!

The army also allows us to pick up the priceless knowledge like the finesse of Hokkien, and the directness of its profanities. Everyone becomes Hokkien, as people gets names like Chow Ah Kwa, Kam Lan etc. The army even teaches us a lingo of its own, like keng, wake up your ideas, bobo king, tekan etc. All of which go forth to enrich our vocabulary in Singlish, making our conversations more lively.

Did I also mention all of the food we eat during our time in the pre-3G army have their own purposes? Hard-boiled eggs can be used as weapons when we run out of grenades. They are lighter than rocks but they are hard enough to cause as much pain. Perhaps getting hit by one of these hard-boiled eggs inspired our engineers in Singapore Kinetics to design the Terrex ICVs and Bionix AFVs.

We even get extra protein in the form of worms in our cabbage when we are lucky! The worms assured us that the cabbages bought by the SAF are of the highest quality because no insecticides were used on them. Otherwise, how else would the worms have survived? To think of it, the SAF even used its food to train us to be armed to the teeth, and literally so! We are given noodles which is like rubber band that when worse come to worst, we can use our teeth to chew right through the taut muscles of our enemies in one bite!

That’s not all. We learn dexterity in the form of change parades, changing from our Long 4 uniforms to PT-kit and back, or a mix match of both. It would have been kinky to be in long 4 shirt, PT-shorts and ‘panda brand sports shoes’ or untied boots if we weren’t men. We also learn flexibility, converting between sit-up position to push-up positions or to jumping jacks or burpees in rapid succession. I recall having fun numbering the lamp posts in the PT field, so that when the Physical Training Instructor (now known as Fitness Specialist) wants us to remember the company line’s telephone number we will be running to the lamp posts in that order. At times, the PTI encourages us by ordering pizzas and we will be running to lamp posts 2, 3 and 5 to keep our spirits high.

We shoot with primitive iron sights (not scopes!) and we can still pick out individual targets 300meters away. We are told our M-16 rifles are like our wives even though they have served (or abused by) the batch before us much like a prostitute served the previous customer. We are even trained in quick thinking by having all our gear thrown into a common pile during bunk inspection and then learning to quickly sort out our own and put every item back in their place in the cabinet within 5 minutes. Mind you, it’s only 5 minutes on a day when the Platoon Sergeant (or Platoon Commander) is feeling generous. On a day when God looked the other way, we get just 3 minutes. If we didn’t meet the time frame, we all take it in stride and do as many push-ups as we can until our arms give way. Everyone do the same and anyone trying to be special (or funny) learns the true meaning brotherly love in what is uniquely SAF – The Blanket Party. Blanket parties are such intense affairs that at times some brothers gave just a little too much love causing the recipient to end up at the sick bay with injuries.

Really, there’s really much, much more than all these. Not forgetting the then rather generous BMT Recruit allowances that started at $90 in the early days of NS. That must have caused a real strain on the country’s coffers at that time.

All of these benefits made the pre-3G NS experience so priceless that it is definitely worth more than $9000. The government gahmen is indeed wise not to give those of us who are done with NS a cent at all. If they did it would really have cheapen our NS experience. The gahmen is giving these new NSmen the money to compensate what they are missing!

The more I think of it, the more I want to use this renowned Hokkien phrase to express my appreciation of the past benefits of NS:

kan ni na bu chao chee bye!