Just Enough Strength To Live For Today

Friday, October 30, 2009

03wks x ROC

well the last major activity for pro term is finally over. so i shall try to digitize the past 3 weeks of memories here. this is gonna take some time.

ROC: 071009 - 291009

071009/081009: met at airport t1 at 2330hrs. most guys wearing penguin. some wearing coloured shirts. like me. the funkay people. basically hung around chatting with everyone. then some of the infanteers came to send us off and it was great to see them after so long. hui jie, jun jie etc. uncle ray came to see me off too which was cool. didn't get to spend much time hanging around with all of them though, coz soon after getting our boarding passes we had to go clear immigration already. first time away from home for such a long time. felt kinda weird leaving and saying goodbye. but the moment just flew by as we brushed past the security personnel and gathered on the other side of the immigration counter in our packets. thereafter met some signals friends and walked towards our boarding gate. had a good time catching up with the signallers from tango 3 and had quite a few laughs as usual with this bunch. sat with longzhao in the waiting area and had a good chat. somehow we always seem to be on the same wavelength which makes talking very easy. a while later, we boarded the plane. so marked the beginning of our 3-week stint in taiwan.

081009: arrived in taipei, boarded the bus in packet level headed to a place in taizhong where we would be settled in for a good 2 weeks plus. sat with fabz in the bus and alternated between watching random movies being screened on the bus tv and sleeping. had a few stops along the way for toilet break and what not, but fabz and i stayed on the bus, occasionally just standing to stretch a bit. all this time i was still rather excited about the prospect of training in roc, with the different climate and culture and language mostly. and this feeling lasted all the way until the moment i woke up and found our bus entering the gates of meilin camp. then the anticipatory mood simply plummeted. when we got off the bus and fell in with all our stuff, all i could think about was how depressing the atmosphere was. it wasn't really the impression the camp compound gave coz it looked absolutely fine. it was just knowing that that was only the first day of 3 weeks in a foreign country. and training hadn't even begun. the rest of the day was spent doing in-pro. our bunk was separate from platoon 1's. anyway i found a nice bed on the 2nd tier of a double-decker bed, between kenny and cheuks, with damien and matthew below. the rest of my syndicate found beds in the vicinity, so we managed to have sort of a syn 4 area. of course with permanent member wayne in our midst (next to cheuks). found that the showers had hot water which was fantastic (since the temperature fell to the low 20s at night), and there were vending machines on the ground floor selling snacks, drinks and instant noodles (our bunks were on the 3rd floor. signals occupied 4th and 5th).

091009: spent the day doing stores and had vehicle orientation. squeezed 11 people in the back of the humvee (9 from my syndicate with 1 v.comd, +lta wang and lta liang). got to see part of taizhong and somewhat familiarize ourselves with the road conditions and perculiarities of driving in taiwan. like the blatant disregard for red traffic lights and illegal u-turns. only thing worth mentioning is our halt point, where there were strange scantily-clad beings trying to catch our attention from the 2nd floor of a building in front of us. and syndicate 5's humvee crashed into a civilian lorry. thank God no one was hurt.

101009-121009: begin ex logstride. 3 days 2 nights of foot topo in half-syn level. meaning nick, sean, kai jun, myself and zhang. and our fat-ass field packs that seemed to be heavier than in brunei. start point was in some temple a distance away from camp. again, i was quite excited at the idea of 3 days of unsupervised topo, by ourselves, without instructors. but after climbing up and down the slope just to get out of the temple and hit the road, i wasn't feeling too enthusiastic. nonetheless our team was determined to push hard and finish all our check points quickly so that we could return to camp early if possible. all in all, topo was probably the most fun part of training in taiwan. we managed to find all 6 day and 4 night check points over 2 days, even if 1 or 2 of them posed a huge challenge to us. but the feeling when we found FIRE (our first cp) after hours of searching several everests was phenomenal. couldn't stop smiling for minutes after that haha. day 2 was even great fun as we had lots more time to find our check points and we found 2/3 day ones before noon, so we found a nice rest spot next to a stream and camped there for about 2 hours, lounging around with another team we met along the way, cooking noodles, washing up by the stream, lightening our field pack load :p anyway the locals were all extremely friendly and ready to help. even when we accidentally trespassed on someone's plantation, the owner still offered us directions to where we were going. apparently a few teams even had fruits offered to them by the locals, and some were granted shelter from the rain in their houses. fantastic. in the end, we all managed to meet the required number of check points and had 100% accountability of all controlled equipment. only mishap was when an overly friendly dog decided to nibble on karwai's finger when karwai was trying to be nice to it. nothing serious though. so we returned to camp after 2 days essentially.

131009-171009: begin ex summary eagle I. infantry battalion css ops. syndicate level. maj lian and 2lt matthias as DS. we got hit with the first no duff execution of movement to conc area, so had to work way past the time everyone else finished their presentations. mad rush in the night and the next morning preparing for cohort briefing and what not. anyway. interesting deployment areas. first was a carpark. 2nd was a park (which i navigated to at night from the carpark as convoy commander! and didn't get lost! whee). cool though. got a sense of how urban deployment would be like. vehicle navigation was fine, no major mistakes and no one got really lost or anything. had quite a packed schedule during this exercise with 1 day in camp planning and 3 days outfield. weather got cold at night. really cold. even more so in the wee hours of the morning. had to use my winter jacket coz i was freezing. but during the day it was hot. really hot. like 35-38 degrees hot. and there were 30000000 houseflies during the day. which got really irritating. as usual didn't get much sleep, but slightly more compared to previous exercises in singapore, i guess because our syndicate dynamics played a huge part, and also coz we more or less knew what we had to do. i'm still thankful for my wonderful syndicate members who have thus far made pro term so memorable and tolerable during the difficult times. we managed to have some fun even during this exercise. everything went well generally. and once again we didn't lose anything so that was good. returned to camp on the 16th. PAR on 17th.

181009-231009: begin ex summary eagle II. CSSB ops. maj tan, 2lt chua, 2lt rolland as DS. functional coys level. assigned to Bn HQ/Bde Rear. along with tau herng, kah hwee, qing quan, kai jun, melvin, wayne, matthew, aaron lim, andrew, jem tay. wayyyy to many indian chiefs. lots of times melvin and i would just stare at each other and go do our own things once a discussion began among the rest with everyone talking at the same time and no one listening, ending up with nothing being accomplished. not to say that the quality of our work and presentations was lousy. we produced great stuff and got things done eventually. we got hit with the first no duff execution again. movement to bsa 1. and again didn't have much time to ourselves the first night after planning in camp. at least the next morning was a lot less rushed than ex summary eagle I coz the cohort presentation was the night before. besides that, the first 2 days were quite busy, but after that the next 2 days were quite relaxed. somewhat like how a real CSSB operation would be like. we had 2 displacements after our initial deployment in some really crappy place with dense overgrown grass taller than us which we had to flatten with our humvees before deploying. bsa 2 was in a camp on a nice flat field which was super. they even cooked a whole tray of beef noodles for us that night. which was super too because it was a cold night. and i volunteered for prowling duty with melvin jem and matt. the same night we had taskings. which turned out to be nothing spectacular either. bsa 3 was outside a columbarium. which would probably be creepy what with all the tombs lining the road and the main building standing right in front of us. but after 4 years of studying next to one, it wasn't a big deal. another amazingly cold night. worse still, i left my winter jacket in my field pack which was in our trooplift humvee and i was too lazy to walk all that distance to get it. and 2 of our sleeping bags were left there too. so i ended up curling into a fetal position to stay warm. albeit unsuccessfully. woke up lots of times during the night and just sat on the table hugging myself while jem was snoring lightly next to me. then finally got up at 4am to prowl around the columbarium with tau herng. sort of enjoyed CSSB ops. more interesting than inf bn. and since we spent lots of time on the humvee travelling from 1 deployment ground to the next, we had quite a bit of time ot chat and stuff, which was fun too.

fast forward to the end of the exercise. navigated >100km from tainan back to the temple we began our foot topo in (in taizhong). there we officially found out about the 16km to commence at midnight (we reached the temple at like 8pm?). i was ranting about how dumb and lame it was to have a 16km route march right after our exercise for no reason other than to "end taiwan training with a bang". we heard rumours about it throughout the exercise but i was clinging on to the almost non-existent chance that it wouldn't happen. sigh. so we lazed around and slept a bit waiting for field pack inspection prior to move out. lay on the ground next to fabz melvin and john looking at the stars and chatting. soon we all dozed off. then it was time to make sure our field pack loads were evened out. ended up carrying a total of 20+kg worth of field pack load. and that was without the signal set. i just carried the signal accessories. first 4 km sucked. felt like forever before we reached our first rest point. then the next 4km i hung back with wayne, melvin, kai jun and can't remember who else, and played mind games, which was immense fun. actually more so for them coz most of the mind games were played on me -.- anyway i figured everything out just before reaching the halfway rest point. yay me. so that was a good distraction from the pain in my shoulders. but i wasn't gonna complain, after all those carrying signal sets weren't, so i wasn't about to. but the pace was really slow. when we finally reached meilin camp we were all madly happy. at least i was. sang lots of songs/cheers while marching around camp to complete our final 4km and everyone was high and loud. and i initiated the "together" song :) after that we had fresh breakfast! a bowl of porridge (ladled out by who else but sarge jonathan) and a stick of you tiao on the basketball court. nice. and spent the rest of the day resting/doing stores/preparing PAR points. stores were completed very quickly. we were the epitome of efficiency. so much so that we had the weekend totally free because we finished everything that friday. wayne and i presented PAR sometime later in the day. at least i think it was the same day. i totally accept that i'm a lousy speaker. but it still sucks.

241009: did next to nothing the whole day, apart from snacking and listening to music and talking. had canteen break in the evening, when all the instructors and supporting staff were out being treated to dinner by CO. watched Eagle Eye in our bunk projected onto the wall and ate nice ji pa (chicken chop) and drank milk tea while snuggled on the floor on a blanket with a jacket between john and kevin. when it ended and they began playing Hurt Locker, john and i went downstairs to sit at the steps at the car porch to look at the sky and think and chat. meanwhile the soccer and basketball people were still going strong (ended up playing for about 4 hours). had a nice reflective chat, then wayne, kaijun, jin yang came to join us and we shifted to sit on the slope so we could face one another and talk. continuation of nice chat. only bad thing was our legs were ravaged by evil sandflies. too bad our chat couldn't last longer.

251009: had random MT line/QM stores tour in the morning, but most of it was done in the QM's office talking about random things. spent most of the day preparing for end-of-frame dinner. poor melvin was working on the end-of-frame video since we got back from ex summary eagle II. with an annoying prat blaring away next to him constantly whenever he wasn't sleeping. i wrote nice labels with names for the VIPs attending the dinner to be pasted on their chairs at the table. turned out SO under-appreciated. after spending more than an hour writing 11 names and designing and cutting and waterproofing, they just went into the rubbish bin. zzzzz. dinner was ok, the food was nice, the music was nice (coz i was the one playing the music hahaha), the trailer and video (all prepared by melvin) were spectacular, the photos were reminiscent, and the impromptu speeches by darren and other people were hilarious. especially darren's. heh. had quite a good time la. the rest of the night was spent packing and clearing up, to get ready to leave for taipei the next morning for R&R. this last night, i squeezed into the upper double bed with cheuks and wayne coz mine and kenny's shared bed was in danger of collapsing on damz and matt. nice last night. apparently i stole chueks pillow halfway through the night but returned it. all unconsciously. haha.

that's it for now. its been a long long post. R&R post coming up next! exciting exciting. i absolutely loved the free time we had in taiwan when we could just chat about stuff. in fact all my favourite times were spent doing just that. its not so much where you are or what you've been through, but more of who you're with that makes the journey so much more meaningful and bearable. i love my loggy friends :)

now back to reality. yet another scholarship rejection. this time its one that i really really was hoping to get :'( was nervour out of my mind when the email notification suddenly popped up on msn, and when i opened it i almost cried, just that my mum happened to come home at that time which put an end to the emotional vulnerability. felt so sad after that..did my own things in a daze. i don't even understand why. its not even the first setback i've faced when it comes to scholarship apps. anyway after i completely unpacked my stuff from taiwan and washed everything, i was looking through old photos on my comp and reading some chat logs, which made me miss the past again and all my friends who used to be so much closer, who i was so sure would never drift apart even a little bit. not that i don't have close friends in the army. after reading the last part of my pre-taiwan post i realised i really did find best friends over the duration of the trip. but i don't want to lose my old friends who became so dear to me over the years. bleah. in a state of emotional confusion. once again. :(

i don't want to grow up so much. i want to be innocent and absolutely care-free again, not having to worry about what other people think about me or what i say or what i do. i miss being crazy and doing crazy things and being funny and making people laugh at everything and anything and being fun. sigh.