Saturday, May 05, 2007

Navy Day...

Today is Navy Day and how could the Navy celebrate it without a parade? So, on a fine Saturday morning like today, I was at Changi Naval Base, attending the parade as part of the marching contingent. Nah, not as the Guard-Of-Honour contingent. Not so garang.

Wah, standing there, not moving and having to look smart for a long period of time not easy leh. Really a test of determination and an endless fight against distracting thoughts. So I sincerely salute my other batch mates, who are going to be part of the Navy’s Guard-Of-Honour for NDP.

We don’t see a lot of parade going on, save for the annual NDP and most of the time, we are the spectators. So today was rather special as for the first time, I am part of a parade, not as a spectator but rather, part of the marching contingent. But actually, it is nothing much lah. I mean, being in the military, you will definitely learn foot drills and the commands commanding your actions while in a formation. So a parade is basically the same as a foot drills session, just that the commands are a bit more complicated and you are wearing formal clothing.

Anyway, from the parade, I learned that practice really make perfect. You see, in order to make sure that everything run smoothly on the actual day, there are a lot of rehearsals. Rehearsals after rehearsals under the blazing sun had everyone so conversant with the parade sequence that we could even memorise the emcee speech. So it sort of become second nature to us and on the actual day, the parade went on smoothly without any hiccups.

Next week will be a busy week. Almost every night I have something on. Will be attending the finals of the competition Jamie is in at NUS on Monday, catching The Phantom Of The Opera at the Esplanade on Tuesday, doing duty in camp on Wednesday, going for my medical appointment on Friday and spending whole day in PC on Saturday. Wow. If only every week is as power-packed as this.