BB Day 08

After the 2 practices, me having to learn a command and execute it in front of the school in less than 1 week (seriously, I hadn't heard of maju before Saturday's practice...), and some comments about my uniform, there was one question that I thought of as I was standing senang diri before the parade started.

Why am I a BB boy?

My relationship with the BB is probably best described as a fairly inconsistent one. I found Year 1 a very 'flat' year for me, possibly because I did not get to know my cohort-mates well then, and furthermore, Philippi - to be more precise, Philippi 2 - had an NCO who was busy with other commitments for a large part of the time. Hence, in Year 1 I didn't really like the BB, and there were times where I wished I could quit. Still, for some reason I stayed on...

Year 2 brought about the LTC and a memorable, albeit difficult Adventure expedition due to rainy weather. Actually, there weren't too many changes from Year 1 because, for some reason, there was still the issue of a missing NCO, and I, at that time, was probably too preoccupied with my own existential problems at that time to really care much about others. I was very self-centered then...

Year 3 was a challenging year because of the shift to the pre-IB course, and also because I took up a 9th subject, which would make my schedule like this:

Monday - CS
Tuesday - CS
Wednesday - Math Training
Thurs - None
Fri - None
Sat - BB

Four days a week is probably nothing to some people, but it still stands in rather bold contrast with the amount of staying back I did in Year 1 - two days a week. My reactions to becoming Admin were rather mixed. At that time, I didn't feel very close to the rest of my cohort-mates; however, on the other hand, I remember liking my officers then. For me, this resulted in a painful dilemma during the Admin Interviews. Eventually I was assigned to be the Juniors NCO.

Year 4. I was quite appreciative that I became the Juniors NCO, as for most of the year especially after the June camp, things were relatively light - a parade length of between 1.5 to 2 hours contrasted with the expectable 6-ish hours (report early, admin meeting after parade) of a Saturday parade. Still, as I said earlier, I wasn't very close to many of my cohort-mates, and being Juniors NCO may have exacerbated this problem due to the lack of common bonds forged over the shared experiences of developing and training the then Sec 1s and also that of preparing for the National Day Parade. I guess the break in class from 2.12 to 3/4.9 may have helped as I had a lot of BB boys in my class (me, Russell, Sam Chan, Shaun, Shaun, Bryan, JX, Xi Min, Seng Wei, Jerrold. 10 out of 29) and naturally I did get to know some of them better over the course of the year.

ROD and the end of Year 4 would have brought another tricky decision - should I become a Primer? To answer this properly - which of the four Ways of Knowing (WOKs) can I apply to this issue? I don't think language would feature strongly here, because the position of 'being a Primer' does not seem overly difficult to define - in this context, it just means continuing in the BB during year 5 and year 6, without entailing being active or dedicated or anything else positive or expected of a Primer. Sensorial messages would appear not to help very much, so that leaves two - emotion and reason.

What my 'cold' reasoning would tell me about becoming a Primer is - Spend between 1 and 2 days each week helping out in the BB. Get 200ish CAS hours, aim for NYAA (Gold), other awards etc.. Somehow, thinking of it in that way leaves some kind of emptiness and hollowness to becoming a Primer. There is a song of praise, Consuming Fire, that I remember and thought about upon typing that... probably because of these 2 lines:

There must be more than this,
O breath of God, come breathe within

Perhaps an answer that seems more appealing, apparently based on both reason and emotion would be to develop the (now) Year 2s as well as the rest of the company, to serve them out of love and dedication to them. Yet, how does one define "(service) out of love"? Without expecting return? Shaun (Lee) showed me one of Shaun (Ong)'s books - C.S. Lewis' The Four Loves (if I remember correctly) that touched on this, and it's something I'd like to finish up reading if I get the time... That book might have the answer somewhat. I might have also been drawn back due to my relationships(?) with the Officers and some of the members of the cohort...

This makes me think of something else - what is meant when one says he is doing something for the glory of God? It doesn't seem to be an easy question for me to tackle... perhaps I'll go discuss it with some other people and think through it with them...

Anyway, I digress; back to the point - why did I choose to become a Primer? The CAS hours and accolades is one factor, but those alone seem rather inadequate. I think the main factor is some sense of loyalty that I have developed to the BB, and arguably to the officers and some of my peers as well. It's quite hard for me to express this kind of strange feeling in words.

I guess this should complete my analysis of why I've remained in BB over my 5 years in it.

i never knew i hurt you by that
i've been using double standards. not good.

jk