Discovery and Goodbyes

Today was always going to be a strange one; what with the leaving dinner in the evening (what with us only half way through).

In the morning however, we visited the S'pore (Singapore) Discovery Center. There was a huge array of differents games and videos on hand, designed to teach young Singaporean children about their country and to give the a sense of national pride. It was interesting to see how the Singaporean's maintain a high level of national awareness, and how they view their country's history. As a part of the visit we had a coach tour of the nearby Officer Training School, where all of the Singapore Armed Forces' officers learn to lead.

As we had the presentation in the evening we had to finish our presentation. After a few hours of tweaking and updating we had a slick powerpoint that was hopefully going to look good later on. We then got dressed into our smart-casual gear, and headed out to the country club.

The club was unlike any I've been to before; it was grand, but it also contained a childrens' play area, a bowling alley and an olympic size swimming pool, so slightly different to what we're used to. After meeting the Assistant Royal Navy Liason Officer (Lt Robert M Marston), who was here in place of our Defence Attache due to his busy schedule, we all sat down and read the menus with anticipation. It was certainly a menu that would be described as eccentric in England, but worked here (all of it's 9 courses!).

After an informative address by the guest of honour, the Chairman of the NCC Committee (Dr Beng), dinner commenced and the delegates from each country performed. As the sea cadets of the ISCEP are due to leave tomorrow, they were also taking part, so we saw a bigger mix of nationalities than we would have otherwise. The presentations were very varied, with ethnic dancing from the Indians, a Hakka from the Kiwis, and presentations about our various cadet corps from some of the others. It was definitely a mixed bag, and all were entertaining and on the main informative.

Once we had finished eating, the delegations were all given a token of appreciation from Lt Col Khoo Thiam Huat representing Dr Beng and the delegations each gave him a token of thanks for the great job the the NCC had done in hosting us for IACE 2008 (and ISCEP for the Sea Cadets present).

When the presentations had been finished everyone joined into a big circle to sing together, and as we sang Auld Lang Syne at the end, I managed to forget the words like a true Brit and started to hum.

It seemed odd having a goodbye ceremony in the middle of our stay, but as we said goodbye to the Sea Cadets that some of us had made friends with we had a taste of what was to come next Saturday.

Matt