A quick summary of what happened last week.
Sunday
-Everything in, everything out. It's field pack inspection cum tekan session again. Sianz~
Monday
-SOC early in the morn. Completed in 10.43. Need to be faster by 1 min to pass. But am glad that i cld actually do the 700m run down, 200m obstacle course and 600m run to the end at one shot w/o injuring my left arm. Great.
Had field lessons in the afternoon, where we learnt how to set up claymore mine and tripflare. In the evening, while waiting for night tripflare demo, i talk cock with jason tang and frank chin. It's interesting to find out tt jason has his "emo" period everyday from 6-8pm..where he "reflects abt life in general". I joined in the "emo" period too. Aha. Tripflare is very beautiful and bright at night. But it only lasts for 40s and its main purpose is to blind the enemy. It draws parallel to wonderful things that may have happened to us. Beautiful but short, bright but blinding.
Tuesday
-Finally the 2km coastal swim is here. It's held in ECP (East Coast Park). Yeah, the public's there, but not many people.
Swimming with the current is easy..but being a slow swimmer i am, i lagged alot behind the rest. What's tough is swimming AGAINST the current. Basically, i cldn't paddle and kick my legs powerful enough...so much so that most of the time, the red bouy (chkpt) that bobbed in the distance never seemed to get any nearer..in fact, it gets smaller and smaller (further). After getting shouted at by the sergeants on the safety dinghy for god knows how long, i realized i was actually hentak kaki-ing on the same spot for a great deal of the time. I was picked up twice by the dinghy coz i swam too slowly and lagged behing my detail mates for a great distance.
I also got to inflate my life jacket for the 1st time, albeit the silly look of me floating on my back and unable to turn around initially due to the inflated life jacket. Upon completion, i felt that the salt that i've eaten the past 19 years of my life isn't as much as the salt that i tasted in the choppy sea for 4 hours++ during the swim.
Wednesday
-It's NAVEX (Navigation Exercise) the whole day. We started at LCK (Lim Chu Kang) training shed. We holan (lost our way) right from the start, and took 1hr plus to find our 1st chkpt. Our 3rd chkpt is not even in the map lol.
I got to experience to be navigator (the one w/ compass) and pacer (slackiest, juz need to click click click to count steps). Didn't get to carry the parang, which was the coolest. Signallor (Kelvin) is most xiong, has to carry xtra 10kg load.
We went very near to a muslim cemetry while navigating, and saw lotsa armored tanks that zoomed past us and occasionally fired in our directions. They are majestic, but you won't wanna get trampled by any of it or get shot.
By the time we returned to LCK training shed, we realized we were the last scouts section to reach there. We were quite sway, coz it started to rain when we were abt to set off and we got caught by staff Chong twice. He told us to walk in the bushes, so in the end Sgt Jasper, Sgt Darryl and the rest of my section had to go thru the dense forest track. Thevandran damn cool, took the parang and whack several tree branches to clear our way. Guan Yi oso damn good at navigation.
Eventually we reached the daytime navigation endpt behind the other scouts sections. (But were were still the 1st platoon to reach endpt). We napped and rested and chatted for hours b4 nightfall, where our night navigation started.
We were lucky coz our night route is direct. We splitted into 2 teams to clear 2 chkpts to speed up the navigation, which was really smart. Along the route, sgt jasper told me i'm ocs stuff, but why i'm not inside. (Haiz~ long story). If only...
We were the 1st to complete the night navigation. But 2 other sections (which combined to form a group) went to register 1st! That's abit unfair since they already noe the last clue at the endpt while we have to waste our time to find it. Anyway, my section is overall champion due to our day and night results, so i wasn't bothered too much by it. Anyway, being 1st isn't what we shld brag abt. We shld treat rankings as a form of motivation to propel us to work even harder so that we can reap our rewards. (In this case, it means we got to return to camp earlier=])
Thursday
-We learnt abt the TES kit and used it to simulate war games in camp 2dae. Scouts with pioneer VS mortar with ATGM. Our base is at the rappelling tower, while the opponents' are at the ammo dump. The rule given by our OC states that we cannot cross to 1 Guard camp while playing the game.
The game was quite boring to me, esp when i'm in defence. Guan Yi was even bitten by red ants while proning in the bushes.
The whole defence was taken aback when mortar sgts led their team to attack from the flanks, and the route they took is precisely what they are told not supposed to do -- pass thru the 1 Guards camp. I was declared dead coz the mortar sgt claimed he shot me several times. He even tried to shoot me again with blanks from point blank distance. Luckily there was a tree b/w us that shielded me fr his shot.
Althou i was revived again later, we basically lost the game as our flag was stolen. The mortar sgt even split the flag into pole and flag. He sacrificed himself by tying the pole to his back and attracted the attention of all my platoon mates to follow him, while the actual flag was taken by kar lok to the finishing pt.
From this game, i learnt that u dun always win if u play fair. Sometimes, u have to break the rules in order to win, coz the world is not always fair. If u always follow the rules, prepare to get a sucker punch when others take unorthodox or illegal moves to take u down. It's the same when u r in a war. Sometimes..u muz be abit more crafty if u wanna win something. I noe this is against my personal morals, but wld u rather admit it when u r finally stabbed at the back by someone/something u trust. The moral of the story is: Depending on the circumstances, u can either follow the rules, or break them.
Had SOC after that, even thou i'm damn shag, i managed to clock 10.35. Slight improvement. Progressive improvement.
Friday
-8km endurance run in ECP early in the morn. We ran half-naked, with only army shorts on. But we were very sway, coz when we ran past the last marshaller, he didn't tell us to turn back. Luckily, OC was running w/ us and realized sth was wrong and told us to turn around.
The scouts commanders were really good at running, coz alot of them overtook me even thou i was running way upfront. The return route from ECP back to camp was tiring, luckily Eugene was by my side and he kept pushing me. It reminds me of the time we had PE lessons under Ms Zelda in Peixin Pri, where we often ran 2gether. Sweet memories, didn't expect to meet him again here in Bedok camp.
In the end, we sprinted en route to endpt, but he was faster than me by 1 second. U can say it's bcoz he didn't overshot the last marshaller as far as i did and turned back earlier, but u can't deny he's a good runner.
I was 6th among all. Not bad after not having to train in running for a damn long time. The 1st 4 were all fr scouts (Thevandran, Caron, Liang Teck and Kenneth Mak respectively) and i bliff more than half of top 10 comes fr scouts. It's by then that i realize that scouts are physcially stronger than other platoons.
In the afternoon, b4 our SAW technical handling, i verified my doubts with Sgt Alvin. He confirmed that they do not anyhow choose scouts. Usually, only the wittiest and phsically toughest ppl are chosen as scouts. No wonder most of my platoon mates look like command sch material.
We learnt how to handle SAW (Section Automatic Weapon) in the afternoon. It's quite a cool weapon, but not as convenient to use as SAR21. The SAW technical handling test was madness, we had all the tests 2gether at one go. No time to think and revise. It's bad enuf that we had to learn how to use it and get tested on the same day.
Most of my frenz got to stay back for guard duties 2dae. I was lucky as i wasn't selected this time, so 2gether wif Linus, Kenneth Mak, Jason Tang and Christopher, we were the only one to book out earlier than the RT (Remedial Training, for those wif IPPT pass and below) that day.
I was juz glad i cld book out. Coz i really need some rest.
&its not what you think
1:55 pm
