We hurt without moving.
We poison without touching.
We bear the truth and the lies.
We are not to be judged by our size.
What are we?
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Friday, March 9, 2012
its been a really long time since im back here. now a 3SG in the army. currently posted to 23SA at khatib camp. specialised in the HIMARS while in fact im just an ammo truck driver, thanks to SAF. life is not hard here as compared to tekong. cadet days were a breeze. other than doing infantry stufff in PLC, all i did during the artillery spec course was to learn driving and now im able to drive class3, 4 and 5 military vehicles. and im going for a forklift course 2 weeks later. just came back from CAMP MAD. a magic camp where i teach hougang secondary 2 school pupils magic and they go perform to the elderly. went to renci long term care today. it was quite an interesting experience to have and i feel that having been a mentor last year before i enlist prepared me for what was coming up. made a couple more of new friends. lastly i hope that that i can still stay in touch with those kids. be it my first or second batch. okay i think i seh alrd. ttyl. ciao
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Tuesday, July 5, 2011
heck, i dont know if anyone else still reads this but today marks the first day as a private in the SAF. POP was yesterday. finally tossed my jockey cap up in the air. went through blood, sweat and tears to get there and here documents what i went through.
5th may 2011. the day i enlisted into the army. the day where i grow up. went in the first day, blur like sotongs. scared of everything after hearing stories from the past generation. received this slip of paper that says i got into R coy, and sk happen to sms me and tell me that r coy is one of the xiong coy in sch 3. then during this first collection, i forgot to collect my green file. i though then shit. haven properly swear to serve the nation alrd so blur. swear alrd sure gg.com. then had lunch with my family and off i go, towards coy line.
i remember standing in the sun earlier that afternoon and 3SG elian asked us to go stand in the shade. i thought then wow. army not bad siol. then collected all the barang barang which included the duffel bag, which was heavy like hell, the field pack which was also heavy like hell, this plastic bag with stuff that both the field pack and duffel bag couldnt fit in and my own civilian bag. surprisingly, i saw naufal, my hockey senior at the coy line and kuan yuan, another enlistee. i couldnt find my bed after i managed to lounge every single shit up 4 stories. had 2 interviews, shaved my head and our very first water parade. that whole parade lasted for 10 minutes. well, it started cos people didnt fill their bottles to the brim, then people did not raise their arms parallel to the ground. it was quite a scary experience especially with commanders shouting at u all around. my arm was seriously trembling. well, not only mine but also the guy beside me. when order " drink up" was given, i so happily drink up, thinking it was the end of it. little did i know that i had to wait for the order to caps on and bottles down. apparently, it wasnt only me who thought so. in the end, we continued "happily" holding the bottle until the sergeants realised that we were at our limit. the night ended, with me enjoying the night snack and looking back at singapore shoreline, which i could see from my bunk after calling my parents.
the next day, for fall in for breakfast, i rmb this guy who came down with his shoes not worn properly. first thing i thought was aiseh, this guy must be wake up late. just as soon as i completed this thought, i think it was 2SG joshua that shouted at him. and that sad soul happened to be from 2SG joshua's platoon. lol. settled a lot of admin stuff that day, educating us on standardisation. from the way we wear our black sling bag to holding our bottle to the height of our bags. in short, every single damn thing that can be standardised, the army standardised. first failed attempt at marching to the cookhouse. taught how to exactly march, basic commands and 2LT daryll gave us his intro speech, with his 3 golden rules. 1) dont test the system, 2) dont play punk with him and 3) always maintain ur integrity and character. of course i didnt remember it. it was only during the closing speech towards the end where it really strikes me.
physical training then started. with ippt, they sorted us out into our ability groups. i got into B. and i just passed that ippt. clocking 11.40 for my 2.4km. pt includes stuff like ability group runs (agr), speed training, strength training, cpt(combat pt), gym and swim. agr was serious training that can shag anyone out. even the commanders. running at 15mins and above at a quick pace and keeping compact definitely pushes us to our limits. i felt speed training was kind of lepak. sprinting for 30 secs and jogging for 60 secs. i do rmb for speed training 3, we were supposed to increase it to 60/120, that is to say sprint 60, jog 120. but fortunately, the next day was ippt 2 and they decided to call it off and let us relax our muscles instead. strength training was hard on the muscles, especially on the arms but survivable. had fun throwing the medicine balls around, but it sucked when we had to push cos of some r-tards that dropped the ball. most memorable was cpt. heck the first lesson was when the whole company started to push the floor. and oc was the one that ask us to knock it down. and all we did was to down 6 only. lol. xin jiao ma. still in confinement week leh. i do remember in push up postition and when i ask this sergeant for permission to wipe the sweat that got into my eye and all he said was, "permission for u to shut the fuck up". lol. now thinking back it was super funny la. fortunately that sergeant ord liao. hmm glad to announce that my final ippt was a gold. didnt think it was possible at the very start. the one requirement that hindered most people from getting that gold was that 2.4km run had to be under 9.45. fortunately i got a 9.44 flat. phew. didnt know how i managed to do it, but i just did it.
combat training like bcct (basic close combat training) was fun. its like kung fu lesson from tv and all u do is just punching, kicking and shouting. damn fun. until they incoporated the rifle in it. lol. rifle bcct was shag beyond anything. fortunately we had one lesson only and its good day! i do rmember that day. it was the day before our 16km route march, and we had agr, rifle bcct and ioc. it was the shaggiest day and we had some tekkan session after agr also. plus not to mention the hot sun in tekong.. but we survived. and speaking about ioc. a total disappointment. u guys shd have heard of soc, standard obstacle course and i thought it was fun to do. but they changed it now into ioc, which bmtc has not yet finish building. we had to resort to using table n jerry cans and white tapes to create the obstacles.
first high key event we had was btp, basic trainfire package. essentially, it means using my sar 21 with live rounds. before i actually fired anything, i thought, how hard is it, to just aim and shoot. like look through, align the crosshair and pull the trigger. lol. shooting aint that easy. u gotta withstand the recoil, which i think i did quite a bad job with. kept missing the target. dont think i got a marksmen but somehow on paper it wrote that i got a marksmen.
field camp was one of the most memorable event in bmt. for every recruit. there, the commanders showed another side of their character. raven hellstrike was memorable, with us proning down until 3SG xavier came shouting at us to tear down barsha (which we did not do) and assemble. had a "great" pt session with 2LT daryll, bryan and 3SG elian. dug our shellscrape halfway through and had more pt. all before getting our letters. shouts of wild boar pierced the last night as we, platoon 3, had our first encounter with the oh-so-fabled-wild-boars-of-tekong. one thing i definitely enjoyed about outfield was that u could eat as and when u like. and 3SG xavier always had food with him.
i felt the hand grenade was overly emphasised. people were all worried about getting blinds and it was a saturday. a simple 10 seconds affair. run in, pull the pin, throw, count and wait for explosion. then its over. spent quite a lot of time sleeping there. and that concludes the last high key event.
the last week in bmt was the most enjoyable week. all lao jiao recruits alrd. friends with commanders. singing while marching was always the same song. the song taught when we won games day again for raven company. got so much ninja van break, until we got so sian of the ninja van. area cleaning was a common sian thing during the last week also. we had it every day. it got really emotional on the fri and sat. fri, 2lt daryll came to spoke to us, giving us his closing speech. looking back at how much we have grown. from all the blur cocks to trained soldiers ready to pick up arms to defend what we all hold dear to. sat was the day where the sergeant came to speak to us. sacrificed our compulsory rest to hear the last words of our sergeants and 2LT bryan. well, the interesting thing wad that 2LT daryll told us ghost stories on fri night until 1am sat morn. and we did not have enough rest for the whole day in lieu of the 24km route march. well, somehow or rather we made it, as a section, as a platoon, as a company.
and so, i finally stood on the floating platform like every singapore son before me and tossed my jockey cap up in the sky. i am now, a trained soldier. a singaporean son.
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Monday, March 14, 2011
i came home tired, then saw a letter by NTU, office of admissions. opened it and it says i am accepted into college of science to read mathematical science. checked my email and saw an email titled scholarships. We are pleased to inform you that you have been awarded the College Scholarship.
WOOOOOOOOPIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
although it wasnt what i aimed for at first, im quite contented now. :D
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Saturday, March 12, 2011
seriously, im considering snsd's photobook. since im too stressed recently about scholarships and uni admission. hmm i think i'll most probably get it la. lol. since im giving myself so much excuses. like doing well for A lvl (ref to prev post) and being stressed (ref above). haiz... well, on the bright side, i been through camp M.A.D and it was fun ttm. sotongs 72 :D
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