While he was still in the army, Cliff had been hoping that his brother would be coming to join him in Singapore but a certain "incident" scuppered the chances of that happening.
Cliff had made friends with somebody who lived on Pulau Ubin. Naturally the only way to get there was by boat so, in his time off, Cliff used to borrow his commanding officer's boat to row across for the day.
On one occasion, he decided to take a pair of soldiers newly arrived from the UK along with him. On the way back he decided to let them row for a change. Unfortunately despite the strong current, they completely refused to heed his instructions to row aiming upstream of the intended destination so they were carried out to sea past Changi Point.
By the time they were rescued they were all badly sunburnt and quite dehydrated. The commanding officer was not particularly impressed, probably partly due to the fact that Cliff had never actually obtained permission for the trip in the first place.
The unfortunate consequences were that his brother was posted to Sri Lanka instead of being allowed to join his "troublemaker" brother in Singapore.
.....and remind me to tell you of the time that the boat had a leak and they rowed a semi submerged boat to Ubin....
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