Looking at the new campaign for "NS45 - From Fathers To Sons" made me think of my Uncle Fong, my maternal uncle, the younger brother of my mother.
Growing up, I never heard any NS stories from my father as he was the generation that just missed conscription and so was never a soldier in the ess eh eff.
But my Uncle Fong... boy, did he regale me with stories of the Machiavellian endeavours he got up to as a cook in Pasir Laba Camp in the 1970s. They were like the hokkien peng versions of Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential - my Uncle Fong's adventures in the military "culinary" underbelly.
Uncle Fong wasn't the studying sort and couldn't complete his secondary school education, so he decided to sign on as a cook after he was assigned the vocation during his National Service.
Of all the black deeds he ever did as an army cook, perhaps the blackest of them all was literally the lttle "extra something" he served NCOs and army officers who were mean to him or who punished him....
The classic coffee-sock brewed coffee, only using real socks of course, and to be precise, his unwashed green army socks. Tainted coffee served piping hot during tea time to any higher-ups who had offended him.
And searching through the internet, lo and behold, there are loads of pictures of people using real socks too as coffee strainers / coffee socks. :-)
Sigh, just goes to show that one should never offend any waiters, food preparation or food service staff.
