July 28, 2008

…Riverdance…..with keyboards?

First off, I find it no small coincidence that Hendon Camp is located virtually next door to Changi Prison. I suppose that’s a great incentive for the inmates to behave well, and a great deterrent to any would be escapees – after all, no one wants to get their ass handed to them by a company of commandos.

Anyway, I arrived slightly late – at 8am instead of the stipulated 7:45am, but that didn’t seem to affect anything. Neither did the fact that I had forgotten to bring my further enlistment order as well. In fact, I’m fairly certain that whoever really wants to be a commando could just waltz in and pretend to have been called up, since they were merely writing down the names of those who showed up, rather than marking attendance from a printed form (hear that wannabe commandos?). I met Anselm there, so there was at least one familiar face. After rotting in a rather dilapidated MPH for an hour, we were split into two groups and herded into a lecture theatre to do a series of tests. A 3 hour long series of tests. This involved a visual pattern based IQ test (first pubilshed in 1958), and 2 personality tests. One of which seems to be an army issued test, dated from 1992, and it was inundated with grammatical errors. None of the questions made complete sense, and every two questions or so would have some form of typo. I’m fairly certain that I’ll be branded a political dissident now though, courtesy of my expressed willingness “not to accept the current order and attempt to change the way things are currently run for the better”.

After those tests, which finished at about 11:30am, we had a short medical which basically involved a height and weight station, eyesight test (my right eye appears to be horrible now) and a declaration of medical history, and I was stamped as a “suitable candidate”. Following which we returned to the MPH for a series of physical tests to gauge our fitness level. This consisted of maximum number of push ups in 1 minute, maximum number of situps in 1 minute, standing broad jump, standing on your tip toes with your hands out and your eyes closed for 30 seconds (to gauge your balance), touching your toes for 30 seconds (I was surprised to see that I was the only one who appeared capable of doing this in my group), reverse burpies (it’s complicated) and holding the V sit for 30 seconds. Finally, we finished off with the pullup station, where again I was surprised at how many people couldn’t do any pullups at all. This all finished at 1pm and we were released for lunch. By now I was absolutely famished, having not had breakfast. And whoever it is said that the food at hendon camp was good deserves to be shot.

Finally, we finished off the day with an interview. My interviewer was a very bored looking officer who seemed just to be running through a routine checklist of questions from the form such as whether I’ve had any working experience, or if I had any medical history they should know about (enough with these damn declarations! Don’t you guys share any information at all?!) This as opposed to some of the accounts I heard of the other people who got interviewed who received odd questions like: so how well do you gel with the people in your group? I supposed this may have stemmed from the fact that I answered that I did want to be a commando (lightning bolt, thunder crack). I mean what the hey, at least I’ll have an interesting time in NS if I get selected – what’s the worst that could happen? (Besides dying and grievous bodily harm.) Although I heard that apparently those who ‘put up a fight’ tend to have a higher chance of being selected…

Officer: So son, do you want to be a commando?
Guy: What?! No way! If you make me a commando, I will fight you.
*begins beating up the officer along with other commandos who approach him*
Captain (peering through a window): Oh…he’s good.

After the interview we were unceremoniously dismissed, and I took the mrt back home where I rendezvoused with Yiwei to lend him a shirt and got a haircut.