Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Foodage Episode 3 (Okto Channel, Thursday 18 Aug, 10 pm)

Whenever you watch any show about food, they will tell about all the places where you can enjoy wonderful food. But Foodage is different. As you might expect, the bulk of the first few episodes contain snippets of old-timers reminiscing about the nice food experiences of times past. But tonight you will (probably) hear something quite different. A few of us will let you have a taste of the atrocious food that we NS boys had to endure during our army days in the 1970’s.

Do tune in.

The two photos below were taken during my first route march as a recruit in Safti in 1971. The place is somewhere behind the Nanyang University; and probably within the grounds of the present NTU campus. We were having a break and waiting for the rations truck to arrive with our lunch. These rations come in ugly metallic containers and we had to queue up with our mess tins into which the cookhouse personnel would scoop everything; rice, dishes and soup.

I remember our route march took us past the cemeteries near the end of Choa Chu Kang Road and not far from Safti Live Firing Area A (Sungei Poyan). This part of Singapore has not changed much and remains beautifully green and serene.


9 comments:

peter said...

The track behind NTU was some Lorong XXXX. Seeing the slopes in the photo reminds me that this area was often used for ambush/withdrawal/attack exercises - section and platoon level. Opposite the hill slopes was a small stream. For exercise on attack, it was often used as FUP.

Funny thing every time come to this area, always rain.

peter said...

Wah that guy second from the left in the bottom photo very handsome!!!

Lam Chun See said...

Yeah he looks familiar.

Peter. I seem to recall being told that the hill on the left of these 2 photos was the same one that the OCS Green Beret people have to do the final attack. Possible?

Lam Chun See said...

Wow. It suddenly dawned on me that these 2 photos are 40 years old! How time flies.

Keith said...

You all very lucky. My recruit time all 4x2 hairstyle. All the girls run far far away from us. Maybe Tekong especially hot then !
I'm looking forward to tonite's program.

peter said...

Call it insconsistent MINDEF/SAF policy on hair-cut, you end up with different styles. Why?

1. If you were undergraduate doing part-time NS in the army, your hair-cut is normal. This was the case for those enlisted before 1970. But somehow SAF had a habit of losing track on the number of days you spent doing part-time NS. As a result some friends I know did more than 2.5 years.

2. If u enlisted in Dec of any year but before Christmas, they spare the rod and cut a little bit. After Christmas botak.

3. Depends on the Enche's preference and also whetehr support arms or infantry posting or even different service arm. Navy NS men more lenient but depends on whether you got "Seow Inche" who tell barber what to do.

Lam Chun See said...

Did you see the show last nite? I may be biased, but I thot it was quite good.

Phew .... Thank goodness this time I didn't appear so deadpan as last week. Hope viewers realize that I was only joking when I said that the meat chunks could bounce off the floor.

Keith said...

Congrats to all the best actor potentials!
Wow, Peter when young cadet quite dashing, must have lots of girlfriends then, I jealous leh! I recall me basically botak until end of course.
BTW Chun See, how to watch ep 1 and 2? On youtube ?

Anonymous said...

Wow, except for the helmet, the equipment didn't change even when I was doing NS in 2005.