My Army Daze (Part 2)

Amy talks

The first thing that we recruits have to get used to in the Army was the army lingo and especially the colourful expletives often uttered by the lau cheow on us recruits. It started almost as soon as we stepped onto Tekong. The word lau cheow, by the way, is the army lingo to mean a veteran in Hokkien. In this instance, a reference to the BMT instructors who are mostly NCO, or the CO, the officer in charge of the platoon, or the recurits who have since passed out and obtained their ikan-bilis stripe (a Lance Corporal) before you.

Other lingo:

• Fall in - to get into lines
  
• Double up - to run instead of walk
  
• Standby Bed - and inspection on the tidiness of your bed and cupboard by the NCO or officer
  
• Extra Duty - usually a form of punishment in the form of performing guard duty (to patrol around the came on foot) over the weekends while your lucky camp-mates book out.
  Talk cock
  Tekan
  
• Knock it down 20 - drop down and perform 20 push-ups
  
• Extra Drill - well, this is not really an extra drill, but rather a drill that you have to perform in double quick time, i.e., you kebelakang pusing in double quick time, you march in double quick time. This is really a torture and it requires a medic to standby just in case any of us recruit drop dead or pengsan (faint)
  

Then there are the many expletives uttered by the instructors and NCO alike which is enough to make a soldier, I mean a sailor brush. To a goody-two-shoe like me, it was a shock. And to be sworn at in this fashion, it was total humiliation, well, at least in the early stage. Eventually, everybody got sworn at, and I realised that everybody around me, except the gods in the form of the NCOs and the officer, was an a**hole, everybody was a blur f*ck, and you just don't feel the humiliation any more.

........ next "Let's Get Physical".....