National (Service) Identity

I was read­ing someone’s blog entry about how Sin­ga­pore was totally devoid of any his­tory or cul­ture or national iden­tity worth talk­ing about, when I felt awash with indig­na­tion. The gov­ern­ment had to invent national sym­bols, she wrote! Igno­ra­mus! The lion city wasn’t named for noth­ing. The lion came out of the jun­gle and scared the crap out of the vis­it­ing prince. Our cit­i­zens still do. Only we take your crap and recy­cle it, then open a vis­i­tors’ cen­tre ded­i­cated to show­ing you how we scare the crap out of you, recy­cle your crap, and make a show of it, and ask if you’d like a drink of the stuff. I shit you not.

Com­mon adver­sity is often the glue that bonds soci­eties. Be forced to drink crap together and be a Nation. How else can you get 4 mil­lion folk from diverse eth­nic back­grounds* to forge com­mon traits?

I’m writ­ing the fol­low­ing with a straight-face. I like the sub­ject mat­ter so much it is embar­rass­ing. Yes, National Ser­vice. Every Sin­ga­porean male loves it but only a hand­ful admits to it. Every Sin­ga­porean female hates it when her boyfriend bumps into a ‘camp-mate’ and begins an hour long catch up ses­sion, mostly rem­i­nisc­ing about what Sergeant Tan did when Cor­po­ral Lim shat his pants in the Armoured Per­son­nel Car­rier. Dar­ling, an Armoured Per­son­nel Car­rier is like a tank, but it car­ries troop­ers like us who storm out of the Armoured Per­son­nel Car­rier all guns blaz­ing, to fight the enemy. Isn’t that right, {insert army nick­name of campmate} ?

While we’ll for­ever dis­pute the actual pur­pose of National Ser­vice in terms of national secu­rity, the one thing that’s turned out use­ful and dare I say, good, is the gen­er­a­tion of men, after 36 years of com­pul­sory con­scrip­tion, who are truly homoge­nously Sin­ga­porean. Run out of things to say when you meet another guy? Ask what reservist unit he’s from. Excused from reservist? Which full time NS unit he served in. Excused NS? Say, ‘Whadda­fuck? You lucky bas­tard”, and con­tinue to talk about your own army expe­ri­ences.

Yes, I am glad for National Ser­vice. There, I’ve said it. Off my chest.

*75% Chi­nese, 20% void-deck dwellers, 3% Seran­goon Road jay­walk­ers, 2% over­paid arro­gant Cau­casians who steal 70% of our women.