I used to be a seaman

I am a CD junkie, and almost one whole wall of my bedroom is reserved for my CDs. This morning as I was trying to do some housekeeping on my CDs, I found one VCD tucked away in a corner. It is one of my video-editing works for my previous unit in the Navy consisting of 2 clips: Miss Polliwog contest and Crossing Equator Ceremony, both filmed during an exercise trip to Darwin in 2002. It has been ages since I last touched that disc, and I almost forgot its existence till today. I decided to watch the disc as I have got nothing to do, and memories of my seaman life started to come back; those familiar faces, sounds and places onboard...

I was with the Navy for 6 years, starting from the moment I graduated from polytechnic. I was enchanted by the Navy because of it's aggresive advertising on the mass media back then. I wanted to see the sun, the sand and the sea just like what the advertisements promised. However things weren't that rosy, but I realised it too late. Life as a seaman is not easy. Not only do one have to under constant mental stress, working routine and time are always subjected to change due to exercises and deployments. This is not the kind of life I look forward to, and therefore I decided to leave once my contract with the force end. I left Navy in July last year, and months down later, my memories of ship life started to fade away, until this morning. On looking back now, although I do not like the stressful life of a seaman, but there were memorable times too. Ironic as it seems, I still miss the times whereby I was keeping watch on the bridge in the middle of the night and having a small "picnic" with the rest of the watchkeepers, as well rushing to the galley once the pipe for dinner is ready for fear of being the last and not having enough to eat. Not forgetting those times where I had to go into the dark mess to wake up the following watchkeppers but ended up waking the wrong person, or trying to compete who can get a bunk to sleep once the bridge team secured from the watch. That is the kind of life you won't get to live in normal civilian life!

In short, although I'm relieved to be out of the Navy and will never go back to it again, I'm glad to be part of it once...

For those who are not in the marine line, the Crossing Equator Ceremony is a ceremony which every seaman has to go through on his first cross-equator sailing, whereby one has to crawl from the aft to the foxicle of the ship on all fours, with the deck littered with gash and leftover food collected over the previous few days. Miss Polliwog contest ("Polliwog" is a name for those who had yet gone through the ceremony before) is a contest whereby all polliwogs have to go through a "drag contest", and whoever emerge as winner will be exempted from the Crossing Equator Ceremony.