Me, Myself and MyLife

I walked in many type of shoes.. One of the most important of them all was this one.. It is called Marching Boots. The boots was given to me by my uncle. Wearing these boots with the uniform, was my pride as a commander.. Penang’s Commander.

Row of shining boots.. Mine is 1st

I wore these shoes for 2 years now.. From the day I became a commander until the last day of morning assembly in October 2008. It had march several kilometers since I wore the first time, walk through the path of Penang’s Commander. It has been a good buddy for my green uniform. I would shine it always especially Tuesday night every week because the next morning (Wednesday) there would be morning assemblies where all the commanders will be gathered in formation. At that assembly, new information was given out and there would also be dress code check for each commander.. My boots was shining as always.. It was black, shiny and spotless.

You can see your face.. So shiny

To get it shining like that, it would take hour of shining it. Cloth, candle and ofcourse black shoe polish. Last but not least, water was the secret ingredient to make it eye-popping shine.

How to do it?

1) First step to shine the boots, is to clean up the surface from any particle and dust.

2) Next, by using fingers, smudge the black shoe polish on to the surface of the shoe and make sure smudge it until it goes dry on the surface. Ensure that there were no oily surfaces left because it will ruin the smoothness of the shining surface.

3) When the previous process is finished, light the candle and parch (layur) the boots on top of the candle heat. Make sure not to low that it might melt all the shoe polish. Just nice, just to make the shoe polish bond together and look much smoother surface. Leave the boots to cool down, and the bond will get stronger when it is cool.

4) For a much better result, normally process 2 and 3 will be repeated for about 3 or 4 layers.

5) This is where the shoe shines. By using cloth (pagoda singlet cloth is the best because its texture is soft and smooth), wrap the cloth around finger(s). There are two ways of doing this:

See the finers are in motion

a) Put the boot under water streamline from pipe and starts rubbing the surface using the cloths.

b) Dip the cloth into water and rub the surface.

6) After the surface is shined enough, leave it to dry. It is much better to do it under sunlight.

Well, skills are the main important thing here. To get a smoother surface and shinier. You must practice a lot, and I mean a lot.. For me, I took hours to finish just one boot. And I had mastered the skills of boot shining after 1 year of practice.

Back to the boot, I wore it to Kesatria Negara Co-Curricular activity every Wednesday. Each time I wore that shoe, I am a different person. No smile, no laugh. Fierce is in the face of all the trainees when they saw me in that boots. No sweet talk or any kind of it. Just straight orders that came out of my mouth.

I like the shoe very much.. When I march or even walk on the Marching Field, it’s the sound of fierce that what the trainees heard. Those sounds also astonish people when they hear it during our marching demos or even in National Day marching. That’s the shoes that lift out the power of marching.

My uniform when I was Komander Rendah Muda

December 2008, the last time the shoes will serve for the uniform, serve for me. But the respect that I had for it for being my company all the time during my time as Penang’s Commander.