:: reservist lai liao!::

after futile attempts to 'siam' this reservist order by (1) doing tricks while roller-bladding which resulted in broken wrist and enjoying 3 weeks of hospitalization leave and (2) by resigning from previous company and informed my unit that "times are hard, so give chance until i finish probation, can?", and (3) a serious bout of flu which exempted me from any physical exercise for my IPPT....finally, I 'kena'...again.



2004 was the only year in my whole reservist life (i'm still in the old school lah, not ORD in my dictionary) that i had managed to get away from being recalled for duty. every year, after ROD kena called, except the times when i was away on study...suay, suay, suay. i have friends who since their ROD have not been called at all by their unit. they told me that maybe their records are forgotten for good...me jealous :(

despite that, i managed to ace all my IPPT (never failed a single one, yet) and at least got a silver award some more....got promoted and then, always got weird and exciting operations. like making 7 arrests in 4 days in 2002 and chasing young punks in gang fights...it was really like police and thieves.

and yeah, i'm a cop, unlike mr miyagi who is an ace silencer in the covert military elite and also a poster boy for the NSmen of the army . the tales of army reservist/NSman and police are different. it is easy to identify if the guy is an army reservist, but for me, everytime when i don the police uniform for my reservist order, members of the public will think that i am a full-time cop and demand full-time cop attention. it is not easy because most of the times, you are handling real life situation, which sometimes mean, you cannot really 'play-play'.

perhaps the most stressful and exhilirating experience for me was when we had to investigate a case of domestic violence after receiving complaints from the public. when we arrived at the scene, the husband and wife are still beating each other up - badly! we had to subdue the husband as he did not want to stop and we are lucky to be able to overcome him as we have found a hidden knife at the back of his pants and things could get pretty CSI-like if we were to take it like a 'reservist duty'. the most bizarre case was when a drunk driver caused a motorcyclist and his pillion rider to fall as he was losing control of his car and his excuse was that he really needed to sh*t urgently. and guess what, he actually pee'd and sh*t in his pants, right in front of us. needless to say, the journey to bring him back to the police station, using the police patrol car was not at all pleasant - we had to use the siren to speed all the way back.

there are many other (mis)adventures while performing my reservist duties - some are mundanely routine, others are fun and exciting and the best part is to catch up with the old 'kakis' in my team.

anyhow, back to my reservist order for this year is for National Day parade, which means I do not need to ballot for the tickets to watch it live at padang as i will be there myself -in my smart police uniform, no less ...heheh. BUT, this has actually been like my 8th time on duty for NDP, ever since my full time NS until now.

all i could say is that the food provided during the NDP is always good (with sponsors from MacDonalds, KFC, Nasi Lemak, Nasi Padang, etc etc) and i still got a tinge of goose bumps of pride when i am saluting to the national flag when everybody sings the national anthem, shortly after the arrival of the president.

a little dash of nostalgia too, when this year's police parade is held for the last time at the police academy in thomson road. that spooky place is somewhat comforting for me during my 3 months of BMT, despite sightings of small boys and girls running outside our bunk in the wee hours of the morning, recruits being possessed by some strange forces and the sound of running wild boar in the bunk which has 'frozen' all of us in the bunk. wait...the hairs at the back of my neck are standing now, and it's very very late now, so i better stop before i digress.

happy reservist in august, aGentX!.