The first day of being Recruit Tan was “interesting”. First of all, I had to go to this strange place where I got kitted out with the latest and greatest in army wear, then I had to go on a depressing boat ride with my fellow recruits to an island (and to add to the misery, it had to rain. Did I mention there was no shelter on the boat?). Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse…
After getting off the boat and the subsequent short trip on a green army truck, we were ushered to a parade square illuminated by a number of spotlights. All of us had to organise ourselves in neat rows and place our new army equipment in front of us. Then we had to perform an inventory check…
Everytime our army instructors raised an item, we had to verify that we had the item and that it could fit. So you can imagine that when they raised the camouflaged shirt and trousers, all of us recruits had to take off our clothes and get familiar with one another’s undies. There were a few sniggers going around as various types of underwear were revealed: “holey” underwear, undies in funky colours, funny boxers, etc.