Saturday, October 03, 2009

post #2!

yet another exciting but tiring week in SOL.

spent almost the whole week having integration exercise with NS men. monday's 5km route march with the NS unit was really funny coz it was only in SBO and the pace was slow, like really slow, and they follow road traffic regulations like slowing down when approaching humps hahaha. and everyone walked/marched however they liked. and their comments and the things they did during warm up were hilarious. so we were off to a good start with the integration, knowing that we would probably get along with the NS men just fine. that afternoon, kenny, seth, matt, fabz, melvin and i hung around ISC comdrs and learnt quite a bit. it helped to have super friendly and kind ISC comdrs who were incredibly approachable and entertained our questions patiently. and the day wore on. and ended eventually.

tuesday saw the 6 of us heading off to join the ISC at their block early in the morning, and kenny, matt and i were the first to take off with the advance party. interacted quite a bit with the NS men during stand-to which was fun, and matt and i did the first sentry duty when we arrived. it was really hot and there were mosquitoes infesting the entire area, which kinda sucked. not to mention matt was trying to convince himself and me that we were best budds (or had the potential to be) as usual. but we did have a decent long chat. maybe for the first time. heh. after many many many minutes of toasting under the unsympathetic sun at noon, both of us finally got to link back up with the rest of the ISC attachees. got to observe the NS men at work and did more miscellaneous work. i realised that although they may be very sloth-y, when it comes to getting things done, they're definitely all there in terms of efficiency. then the day wore on and the 6 of us camped outside on our groundsheets for the night, cooking and snacking and chatting and sharing laughs. lots of fun times. just that lots of ants found our spot and continuously tried to bite us to death until we shifted location and stomped all over them. would have been a more restful night if not for the lack of any breeze at all and the ever-present mosquitoes.

cat 1 during the unearthly hours of the night/early morning, so we moved into the tentage and subsequently the tonner to seek refuge. got a lot better sleep there. woke up quite early, did our routine, had our breakfast, sat together and had a nice chat for most of the morning waiting to see a helicopter do work. highly enjoyable convos, while kenny tried to smoke everyone to death with his pyro-obsessive behaviour. fabz slept through most of our chat coz he had sentry during the night, and matt slept coz he's turning into a sloth :p finally got to watch our helicopter doing its day job. thereafter, matt, melvin and i stayed to help out and wait til night-fall to watch the chopper do its night job. the other 3 returned to help out with other stuff. we ended up having a long chat with 1 of the NS men who was really nice and shared lots of stuff. waited a long time for the night op, which was actually nothing spectacular. at all. then we did more manual labour before heading back to find the others. but didn't get to see them coz we displaced immediately so we stayed on our tonner while they were on theirs. -skip boring details-

FINALLY arrived at our new site early thurs morning and did our stuff as usual. got reunited with fabz, kenny and seth, after being separated for more than 12 hours. hung out a bit the NS men while waiting for things to happen, and cooked a little breakfast. did some drills which were rather fun after 14 weeks of being "non-combat" 8-) did more stuff, then collapsed everything and moved back to camp. -skip more boring details- said goodbye to ISC folks in the evening and returned to our SOL lives. so that was it for our integration exercise. i think those of us attached to the NS men really learnt a whole lot. and supply coy was especially fun to be attached to. and the NS men are really really really funny haha. ok next.

friday was sort of like recovery day from the exercise. managed to get lots of sleep the night before, and woke up when the sun was up, which was a first. we attended our ROC briefing after breakfast, which was when i made up my mind that SAF is definitely not the place for me to be at any point in my life in the future. found out that i'd be sitting next to val on the plane yay. well at least val's decent to sit with :D can't wait for R&R in ROC! after lunch we went to safti to draw our no. 1 and 2 ceremonial uniforms, which was quite a hassle, but we managed to find what we needed. while waiting to board the bus again to return to camp, i saw eric at his wing line! haven't seen him in a long long long time. felt good to see him back and surviving still. when we got back to camp, the 6 of us doing guard duty that night had to quickly pack our kit bags which were to be submitted the next morning. -skip boring details- kevin, chian fern, darren, seth, melvin and i came up with our own principal consdiration for the duration of guard duty: to sweat minimally and not dirty/stink up our nice and freshly-washed LBVs. so we took our time to march around and had a leisurely dinner before reporting to the guardroom. i was to prowl with seth, which was cool. but we were the 2nd pair to do duty, so the 4 of us sat in the recrea room to watch tv and chill in the air-con and eat many tropicanas and potongs while kevin and darren did their first shift. when it came to our turn to prowl, the route was so annoyingly planned that we just followed our own route where convenient and ended up sweating a lot anyway. finished up our round and went back to recrea room to cool down and have our night snack, finding that everyone else had gone to sleep. so we hung around for a while then went to wake melvin and chian fern up for their duty, after which we went to sleep. i hate not being able to fall asleep because there are too many things going through my mind. sometimes i wonder if it'd be easier if i had the ease of falling asleep that cheuks has XD anyway then we woke up to do our 2nd shift at 3am, completing our round in about half the time we took for our first shift. then went back to sleep a little. but got turned out around 5am by the annoying chunky BOS. and darren was being a psyduck as usual which was extremely funny, just that it only seemed a lot funnier when i was more awake later during the day and thought about the incident. (omits recalling of incident to save darren's image). rest of the day was uneventful. just had our kit bags inspected and kept in the store. then thorough area inspection with collective push-ups dished out to the wing upon detection of area cleaning mistakes in bunks and common areas. then booked out. -skip skip skip-

left for sime darby scholarship tea session with wayne at their performance showroom. had a good time chatting with wayne throughout and found out how attractive the sime darby scholarship actually is. now both of us want it. just like how both of us are waiting for EDB's 2nd round selection. yay future colleagues! =p how cool would it be if we both were offered the same scholarship and worked together next time! and i wanted to blog more about the tea session but somehow i can't remember what to blog about anymore. i need to sleep. spent the afternoon settling cohesion day stuff once and for all. and missed the 90-ers dinner that ruth has been pressuring me to go for. oh well i'll definitely try to make it for the next one.

ROC in 4 days! can't wait for summary eagle to be over wootz.

i think i liked today. yay. hopefully will get to go out with some friends tomorrow at least for a while. COHESION DAY ON MONDAY!

ok goodnight bennett (:

whizzer; 9:44:00 pm