I was forced to learn swimming. Being a citizen of Singapore, boys at the age of 18 must serve National Service ie trained as a soldier. This training and service process normally would change a teenage boy to a responsible man with a fighting spirit for the country.
One of the criteria for a combat fit soldier is to be able to swim especially in this tiny island like Singapore which is surrounded by the sea. Being brought up in a kampong, there was no pond, canal or other facilities to learn swimming and for many years before reaching 18 of age, I had no opportunity to learn swimming.
When I was 2 month from enlistment, I began to feel inadequate and pestered my friend, Michael Ong to teach me swimming. Michael, definitely just an amateur in swim, tries his best to coach me. I had 4 sessions of swimming lessons from him before I was enlisted into the army.
In the first lesson of swimming in the army, I declared that I was not a swimmer and was put in the non swimmer category. Later did I realize what I was in for. The swimming instructors, some of them are younger that me, march us to do the confidence test. This required the new, non swimmers to jump into the deep end of the pool which was about more than 2 meters deep and accesses our ability to cope in that situation! Wow – too much for non swimmers to handle – I thought.
When it was my turn, I did not have a choice but to jump into the pool. I found myself sinking and froze in the deep pool. Suddenly, someone picked me up from behind and shoved me safely to the side of the pool. He was one of the swimming instructor, who is younger than me, and had pick me up gracefully and lead me to safety.
My mind began to wonder as I felt embarrassed but I promised myself to learn swimming to the level of his standard. That was the driving force towards my attainment of my lifeguard certificate later in life.
When I passed out from my basic military training and instructor course, I was still not competence in my swimming skills. It was my posting as an instructor in School of Basic Military Camp that I had the opportunity to train further in swimming. As an instructor, I had the other colleagues who are trained as swimming instructors and that's where my swimming skills began to improve with leaps and bounce.
With the swimming skills, I went on to teach other friends of mine who like to learn swimming. Deep in my heart, I know that I was still inadequate, as I did not know life saving skills which was necessary as a safety precaution for carrying out good swimming lessons.
The opportunity finally arrived during my undergraduate days in Nanyang Technological Institute. I was admitted to the second year degree course and being a host élite, I have the spare time in the evening to take up the training as a lifeguard. I jump at the opportunity and never looked back since.
The training was every Monday and Wednesday nights for 3 months with each lasting three hours into the night. At the end of this journey, I was certified a trained lifeguard by the Royal Life Saving Society (UK).
Till today, swimming had given me a lot of benefits. I had trained 8 ladies and 6 gentlemen on swimming based on goodwill of personal friendship. One of them even represented the constituency in swimming competition. Nowadays, I would rather encourage my friends to take up swimming as a healthy exercise. I had also continued to use swimming as my aerobic exercise on a weekly basics.
