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How do you say goodbye to 80 men?

Aaaaand so it was time for the journey of my camp life to end (Note, only camp life cos the meetings have yet to get started with) on a rather unexpectedly sweet note.

I completed my in-camp national service prettier than I could have imagined, where if it was a cake it’d be a blueberry cake glazed with M&Ms bits on the side, aligned with strawberry cream at the top’s edges, with a generous rain of chocolate flakes and vanilla icings for a canopy. At the center of it all, there’ll be this crispily roasted almond nut, a rather large, chunky, fulfilling almond nut that you’d probably never find anywhere else.

Like a piece of cake, I gobbled down the experience greedily, where the only regret I had, where if I had any it was to be the only one, was to have to go through the closing address for my unit. Why must there be goodbyes? As much as I know how inevitable they are, I hate goodbyes.

I have been extremely privileged to be given the honor of leading my unit and I couldn’t help but feel accomplished at the same time, after all the journey that we’ve went through and all the sweat and the hahahas that we’ve shared together. If this was a movie, this blogpost would come complete with a picture slideshow and Coldplay’s Clocks playing in the background.

Anyway, a few incidents enlightened me, where I realised where I’m placed at in their eyes and yes despite being their commander by post and rank, they’ve been rather kind to allow me the opportunity to earn that respect and giving me the trust to lead them generously. There’s really nothing more that I could have asked for than their cooperation and attention, which I’ve received in abundance, so to FK5A, thank you.

I’m glad that they’ve gotten this knack of listening intently everytime that I’m briefing and just let me tell you how worryingly — and beautiful at the same time — it can be when you have over 80 pair of eyes, intently awaiting your next words, ready to absorb the soup of letters that comes out and when you should pause for a moment, the words are going to be pulled out of you instead.

This is what I love about my unit, that they are proactive enough to ask for more information, and even debate about them. You see, I’m not the best public speaker ever and it’s certainly not easy to maintain nerves, so I dare say that they’ve made my job easier.

I could go on and on praising and commenting more occasions but I’ll probably save these thoughts and experiences of training to myself and pretend that I’m succumbing to a writer’s block.

So once again to Fk5A, thank you.

Haha, rereading this blogpost, I realise how ‘serious’ I got about my role, but it’s all good and I’m glad that I went through it.

Delectable!