Nasional Service l - training

As a Malaysian girls, i have a duty to participate National Service while i was 17-year-old if and only if i was so lucky to be selected for the 3 months "soldier" training..

That time was December 2004, just after my SPM test. Few months before the camp, i check my name whether been selected or not through calling the center, i still remember the conversation are something like below:

Me : Selamat petang .
Operator: Selamat petang (with linear amplitude and boarded sound, might be answered too
many related calls already.)
Me : Encik, saya nak check adakah i dah terpilih untuk khidmat negara, nombor IC i ialah...
Operator:(suddenly with excited sound) ada! ada! you telah terpilih!
Me :betul ke?
Operator: ya, u Leong Fong Thim kan? alamat u ialah.........kan?
Me : ya, terima kasih...

After that i wonder happy or sad and my brain is blank.. I need to go NS.. 3 months trained there, a good experience but i heard there were too dangerous and suck! My dad was sad, definitely...

From the government, they claimed that there are 5 objectives for this programme.

1. Increase Patriotism Spirit among the young generation.
2. To develop unity of races and national integration.
3. To form positive characteristic through moral values.
4. To rouse the spirit of voluntarism.
5. To born the more active, smart and fully self-confidence young generation.

So, what i was trained in those 3 months? What they did to me on to meet their vision?

The first, increase patriotism spirit:
We had a lot of competition among groups (we had 4 big groups, each with around 100members.) The competition includes kayaking, marching and a lot of physical and mental challenging games.

At the end our group, we named it "Mutiara" won the Champion!!
Along the competition, they trained the patriotism on us by painting our group color on our face just like the fans of their country football team who love their country so much!! So what i get is {painting symbol of your team/country = showing spiritual of patriotism.}
You can see all the girls in the photo including me cant smile happily with the paint on face due to worrying of pimples might grow after that.

I love Malaysia because the fireman can always carry the damn heavy gas cylinder to run into a fired building. However i also understand why victims always complaint the fire engine need long time to reach their places.... Thanks for the guy in this picture help me carry the kinda heavy gas cylinder so that i can "peace" in front of camera!


The second objective is to develop unity of races and national integration.
The fifth is to born the more active, smart and fully self-confidence young generation.

They trained us to love Malaysia and be more active by throw us into jungle and ask us to track in the jungle with putting 2 bags of sand in our backpack and 1 bottle of water. I miss this activity actually and i love and proud of myself that i have this experiences in life. Actually we were not only had a chance of jungle tracking but 3 chances. The first one using whole afternoon and we reach destination at evening.
The second one was at night. Each 25 members small group was provided 2 touch light and 1 compass. We had a lot of task in the jungle that night.

The 3rd was the longest and most tired jungle tracking i have in life, we used whole day on walking and running and climbing... After that we have to overnight in the jungle and nevertheless, night game was planned.

We cooked ourselves with roommates and sleep together under a tent. Inside the pictures are Thebaa (Indian), me, Yee Mei (Chinese), June and Zarina (Malays). Actually in our room, we have 3 more Malays but they went to waterfall that time i think.

While national service, i was so close with my next bed room mate, Zarina, but after a while the training we lost contact to each other already. Actually we really friends with other races in the training time but in fact after NS, i just keep contact with the Chinese the most and have gathering few times till now still keep in touch, also with the Indian girls theeba, we still sms but not he Malays, i also wonder why. I added a hat on her with photoshop in this picture because i know most of the muslimah like her can't show their hair to guys. So most of the time at outside they wear their "tudung".

They united the races by encourage us to wear other races' traditional cloth but not allowed Malay girls wear our cheongsam. The picture showed we was doing performance of *Malay traditional entertainment.

So, only Chinese girls dare to wear cheongsam to protect our culture. Ops! Sorry, i was wearing Punjabi hehe, please don't blame me because i love Punjabi and also cheong sam but that time i don't have cheong sam, so theeba borrow me her Punjabi.

The 3rd objective is to form positive characteristic through moral values.
The 4th is to rouse the spirit of voluntarism.

They trained my voluntarism by forcing me painting the road surrounding a government building under the sun at the noon time!

Our positive characteristic was formed by asking us visit a kampung (Malays village), help them clean-up their village by pick up the rubbish, clean the drain and etc. This was the kindergarten in the village, you can see we were posing there rather than pick the rubbish. hehe, ok, actually we already did our job before photographing. I miss all the girls in the above picture so much except the center one because every morning i can saw her inside the mirror just after wake up, we were gang together and we called each other with gangster aka "brothers" style...

We also asked to clean-up the orphanage house. You see, we really happy and enjoy in cleaning instead of painting under sun. Three of us are Harry Potter fans! Just with different stuff.


No matter how stuff task they gave to us, we always can make fun besides worked!! Cheers!
I was standing on the swing to see far and near and from different view to check whether our team members have pick-up all the rubbish :p

At the end of the camp, our group won the overall champion. I was the one who walked on to the stage with another Malay guy to receive the prize because i was the Leader. Actually i was not the leader of our group but the leader of the groups, ya the groups, the leader of all the four groups aka camp chief.

Our group also won the first place of marching competition which leaded by a very powerful commander. She was a little Chinese lady but have strong and loud voice, hence she won the best commander as well. I am so proud with her, ok if i continue praise her someone want to throw shoes on me already, because is me actually!! Don't believe? below is the proof.


I still remember all the others groups' commander were very tough Malays, i very respect them because they were volunteer themselves to lead and train their teams but i was betrayed by Yee Mei that time when our group's trainer want to select commander, she suddenly suggest me to him..