Hello Hello! Are you ok?

I was doing my Emergency First Response (EFR) class today, which cover all the things a first aider might do in an emergency.

Frankly speaking, I was sniggering inwardly through the session, whenever the EFR trainers have to do the standard line when approaching Annie the victim-mannequin, "Hello I am (name), I'm an Emergency First Responder. May I help you?"

Whenever I hear that line all the images during the first aid course my squad did, when we were undergoing training in 2002, came back to me. Then, we had a squadmate whom we nicknamed 潇洒哥, just for the fact that he would walk with his arms swinging at a wide arc around his body, and at a tempo one beat slower than the normal person. Not only that, he would usually walk around with a semi-smile, aka Chow Yun Fat's "I knew what you cretins are up to" kind of smile. It was a parody of the Hong Kong 黑帮老大, and he was the only one whom we knew who rapped instead of sang 张学友's “吻别”. Anyway, the nick stuck even till now (I heard he's known as the "Space Man" now..as he would often space out without rhyme or reason. That's another story by itself).

During the first aid course, all of us being enthu students, we went through all the procedures with the necessary urgency required to simulate a real example. 潇洒哥being his true self, walked in his usual half-tempo-slower strut, knelt down, smiled at the mannequin, and ask "Hello hello! Are you ok?" Then as per procedure, he looked up at the instructor, smiled, and said "Call 995."

We almost fell off our chair laughing at our super weird squad mate.

Anyway in that span of a few minutes reminiscing the times during training, I was thinking about the 19 of us who made up C6/2001 - all the good and bad things that had happened during the 6-9 months, and following another 7 years after that. 2 left, 1 got into trouble with the law, others went to do well, some not so well, and the latest being me leaving. I remembered receiving a lot of smses and emails from most of them when the news was officially broadcasted in the force order. One was quite upset (I heard from another squad mate) that I left when it appeared that I was doing well, others thought that I had definitely left for something better.

The last time we had a gathering was during one of the squadmate's wedding, and we did the sword party for him. While waiting outside the main entrance of the church, we were clowning around in our number-1s and with our ceremonial swords. I think I will miss that kind of comaraderie which only come from staying together for 6-9 months, plus facing a wayang course manager, facing disciplinary investigation as a squad, sneaking out of camp at night for supper, bashing through Thai jungle and coming back to Sg emanciated.

It's really a one-of-a-kind experience.