The more observant among my readership might have noticed that the little countdown window at the top right hand corner of my blog that has been counting down for the past one and a half years or so has finally stopped counting down. For the less informed of you, that means that yes, I have officially ORDed.
It was a rather interesting experience for me. The supposedly typical scene of ORD has always been of a bunch of crazy maniacs running around and shouting at the top of their lungs with their pink ICs stuck on their foreheads while their ex-superiors look on powerless, no longer commanding the authority to stop them. However, my actual ORD experience was far more subtle. I walked into camp and had a small chat with the people who were in the office at the time, then proceeded to the CCO to collect my IC. Of course there was joy and laughter, because in the end it truly is a happy and long-awaited milestone, but there was also a bittersweet sense of farewell as we said our goodbyes to the people we've met over the course of our journey.
Considering how I still have many fond memories of my two years of JC, it's not hard to imagine that I've also gained many meaningful experiences through my 22 months of NS. Of course, many of them are memories that bring a cringe onto my face when I remember them, such as doing push-ups on the scalding-hot basketball court on bookout day during BMT, or having to stay in SI until 9pm on bookout night to clean the toilet, and even having to polish the tracks of a tracked vehicle with black shoe polish. However, nestled amongst the many exhausting and tiring challenges that I have faced the past 22 months are also a few gems of memories; memories of sharing simple joys with new-found friends, of working together with your platoon to achieve what you initially thought was impossible, and of meeting and greeting people from all walks of life. As tough and painful as the past 2 years have been, they have also been equally precious and priceless, and as grudgingly as I have to say this it still must be said: NS has been an absolutely necessary part of my life and I cannot imagine what I would be like today without it.
So it is not with arrogant triumph or condescending sneering that I say this, but with the same nostalgic thoughtfulness with which one might turn the pages of a high school yearbook:
ORD loh
