Stamped somewhere on that off-white envelope were the words in bold, "On Government Service."
Inside, the letter said:
Dear Leong Wai Kit,
You are hereby required to report for National Service at the Police Academy on 30 April 2002, where you will meet other dudes - some very nice, others not necessarily so - but regardless of race, family backgrounds and education statuses, you guys are required to eat, shit, train, learn, shower, bitch about NS life, march around like toy robots together for the next nine months, whether you bloody like it or not.
Okay, that wasn't exactly the contents of the letter.
But that's the gist of it.
Indeed, there are some dudes in NS who are not necessarily nice - some are pure fuckers (though none is from my squad).
Then again, even if there had been one or two of them, that would be part of what NS is all about. You'll have to learn to live harmoniously together and try not to poison your bunk mates or set them on fire.
I think I managed pretty well in communal living.
And so did my squad mates.
In fact, we got along so well that most of us try to make time to meet up at least once in a while.
Earlier today, I again met one-third of my squad mates at, of all places, Seoul Garden.
It's an effort which can be difficult to make given our current commitments.
Sure, we have all transited from boys to men (thankfully), attaining some form of adulthood - evident in the wrinkles, receding hairlines, swollen tummies and tufts of white hair we were each sporting...
But none of us forgot how to revert to our cheeky, youthful selves we once were (thankfully).
As with all catch-up sessions, we had the usual rounds of updates on family and our respective jobs.
Some of them are civil servants bound by the Official Secrets Act, so it was tough prying their mouths for industry gossips.
So we quickly moved on to J - who's in the aviation sector - for sordid details of bored crew members' activities onboard, as well as a detailed guide on how to successfully smoke in the plane without getting discovered, and getting flung out of the flying aircraft by annoyed pilots.
And when we were done trading horror stories about our jobs, we dug up horror stories of yesteryears just for laughs.
Of how some braver ones would, ahem, smuggle certain items in camp to share the goods with likeminded friends - and lived to tell the tale today.
There were also fond memories of S, who, for some reason, have zero psychomotor skills. The poor fella simply cannot march in synch with the rest of us.
Once, out of pure mischief, I called out to S while we were marching: "Eh, S, I can't see you but wherever you are, change leg."
Everyone else turned their eyes on S and true enough, our un-rhythmic friend was struggling to keep pace with us, as if he were a puppet handled by someone with Parkinsons.
We also roared with laughter, as we talked about the man bits of some of our squad mates: One of them has a piercing on his favourite appendage (ouch!), another has low-hanging balls comparable to those of a German Shepard.
And then there was the infamous one who has a weener the size of a rolled-up bus ticket.
Of course, our all-time favourite memories were those with supernatural elements.
We spoke about sightings of black shadows jumping from one bed to another, mysterious knockings on the roof in the toilet, and how I was kicked by something under the blanket while a friend and I chatted in the bunk late into the night.
As I reflected our day's outing, I realise just how different we all have become.
Already, we had come from different schools, belonged to different cliques, and had different interests when we all first met as freshly-shaven NS boys.
And the distinction became even more stark after NS, when we each embarked on our respective education and career paths.
From bankers and entrepreneurs, to a reporter and several civil servants, all of us literally come from all walks of lives.
We also have very different hobbies - some collect expensive watches just because, another buys branded goods once in a while just for the heck of it, and at least two of us love paying to torture our own bodies - in a purely sporting context, that is.
Yet, when we come together there's always something to bind all of us: The common memories of the good old training days, in the old Police Academy.
No matter how different we all are, we were forced to interact and accept the differences and shortcomings of everyone else.
And that's one thing I appreciate about NS.
That apart from making us tougher (and giving us the chance to serve the nation), it's led us to mingle with others so different from us (and to befriend some of them in the process) - something which we wouldn't have thought of doing under normal circumstances.
I'm looking forward to the next NS outing - as soon as my buddy gets down to planning it.
