Ended a Chapter of My Life

Yesterday was my ORD day, which means that I have completed one of the periods of life that most guys hate. To be honest though, my National Service had been at times enjoyable and filled with tasteful bits of lessons, which have helped me mature and develop. For example, I picked up a variety of soft skills including how to interact with superiors effectively, how to position yourself as an expert and how to smile. Yes, learning to smile had been a particularly difficult ordeal for someone like me who’s used to showing a come-beat-me-up face. And by the way, I’m not showing attitude, but I’m simply too scared to smile just like any other recruit.

I can still remember vividly that I was disliked by some officers in my first two months for showing that consistent i-just-stepped-on-dog-shit face plus the fact that some officers and supervisors were prejudiced against me for being married. And no… I’m not being overly sensitive, that was what an officer told my friend. Anyway, after getting sick of being complained for no reason, I decided that I needed to change their perception of me since I had another two years there. Greeting everyone I see is a fundamental approach, smiling should be natural (facial muscle aches is not an excuse) and going beyond the call of duty was essential to the plan.

After two months of taking on more arrows and always being the first to offer help, officers started to be kinder to me and I started to learn the art of surviving in an office. I took on more work and even revamped the intranet as my first major assignment, but thinking back, it’s certainly worth the effort. Yes, I did curse and swear sometimes for being so busy while my predecessor is playing games by himself. I did not totally enjoy my service at this point of time, but I did feel that I’m at least doing something good for my resume, rather than whizzing through forests and mud.

Before long, my direct officer left and that was when I had a reduction in work load temporarily. After some time though, my work load started to increase exponentially. The reason was due to the fact that previously, my direct officer likes to use me exclusively, so the other officers did not really give me any task. Once she’s gone and the other officers start getting used to it, they started handing me tasks, since I have a natural tendency to stand up whenever any officer approaches and I sit nearest to the door.

Anyway, time flies and the seniors left and a new colleague, James Chan, came in. I have to say that his existence is one of the best things that happened to me throughout my National Service. He was a major source of entertainment with his chatterbox character and free flow of nonsense. He was one of the key people in my life that contributed to pulling me from the introvert quandrant towards the extrovert region. He is also someone that would lend me a helping hand when I was busy, so our teamwork is better in a sense.

Anyway, going few months into my service, I made friends not just in the branch, but throughout the entire department as well. Some friends exist because of games, while others because of work. Since I was working on the intranet, many other personnel would approach me to update content into the web and it was nice to be working with so many different people. I just have to mention how nice all my officers were, even standing out for me when officers from other branches showed me unreasonable behavior.

One of my favorite officers is a person who gave me a lot of work. I had to stay back after office hours on several occasions to handle seminars and meetings, but as far as I recalled, I have never complained about her before. She was such a nice person to work for just because of her cheerfulness and that she’s always smiling no matter how busy she was. Even when she’s stressed, she talks to clerks with the widest smile she can muster and had never requested work to be done with a demanding tone.

I remember a lot of meaningful experiences and writing all of them here would take me weeks to finish, so I’ll probably end this prematurely even though there’s still a lot going on in my mind. Firstly, I have no special feelings when I ORD and did not feel particularly ecstastic, since I know that I will be approaching a more challenging stage of my life. What I will become ten years down the road may depend on the decisions I make in the next ten weeks.

I look forward to life and think back to the skills I have learnt in National Service. From today on, my life should face a major difference and inaction due to being a National Serviceman is no longer an excuse. I can tolerate failure, but I can’t tolerate not trying to reach out for what I want and I strive to stand up and continue running after each failure. Some day, I know I will celebrate.