My Life Journey Part 3 - The Chinese High

I spent a significant part of my youth life at The Chinese High School. As mentioned before, what drew me to this school was its sheer size and good reputation. Every day, in order for me to travel to & fro the school, I need to spend at least 1.5 hours on the road. But I've never regretted it.

One of the main reasons was because I joined the National Police Cadet Corps (NPCC) as CCA. When I first joined the CCA, it was because I felt that the uniform looked smart. I didn't think so much. I didn't know what I was in for.

My squadmates & I went through 3 years of really really tough training. When I was in Sec. 1, we had to gather at the monkey bar every day after school. Our NCOs (officers) would meet us there and made sure that each of us cross the monkey bar a few times. As a result, our hands were always filled with blisters. Eventually, these blisters hardened and became hard skin.

Besides physical training, foot drill was also an essential part of our training. It's really crazy, marching up and down in the hot sun, doing amazing numbers of push-ups and sit-ups. The record number of sit-ups my squad did was 500. Crazy right?

So, the question is why didn't I quit the CCA? After all, some of my squadmates did left us & I don't see the purpose in all that tough training at all. 2 reasons that I can think of. Friends. And pride.

Friends
My squadmates and I began to form a bond, mainly because of shared experiences (shared sufferings to be exact). My closest friends till date, besides my church-mates, are all from The Chinese NPCC unit 1994 - 1997.

People like Lenin, Jianzhuang, Jingrong, Tianshen, Kaiyang and Junqiang all left footprints in my life. Every one of them had been a tremendous blessing to me personally. Even now, we still keep in contact.

Of course, there're many other squadmates who had also influenced me but I have kind of lost contact with them - Kangliang, Liangbing, Shukun, Shane, Marcus, Zhong Hui, Weiwen, Gim Teck, Ah Phua, Yunxi, Danny, Dalian and Junchao.


Pride
Even at that age, I hate giving up halfway. I preferred to endure the tough training and show people that I can make it. There was a lot of pride in me, and that sometimes caused me to do foolish things in the latter part of my life.

At the end of 4 years, I attained the rank of Staff Sergeant and was the Publications Chairman in the Executive Committee. I had the badges as shown below. More importantly, I made many many good friends, who had been with me throughout my life journey.

Don't give up. Persevere on in the things that you really believe in. We need this in every stage of our life.