[Sunday, August 31, 2003 9:48 PM]
yeah i survived yet another week of my course. it's been quite a xiong week with a couple of major exercises. had ex. hotwash on monday (or was it tuesday?) where we had to walk from choa chu kang all the way to lim chu kang. walked thru lots and lots of cemetries, a crematorium and a columbarium, witnessed bodies being buried as well as graves being exhumed, and breathed smokey air as bodies were being cremated. yup and they had to choose to do this in the 7th lunar month. bleah.

had ex. softsand on wednesday.. a defence mission, which meant we had to dig trenches and stuff. as if the digging wasn't enough.. we still had to set up con wires which were a killer man. did it thru the night and we couldn't see a thing.. and the vegetation was so thick the wires kept getting stuck. thanks a lot to the rain we had to prone in our shellscrapes which were filled with mud. had to throw away my nightsnacks cos wildboars were sniffing around my area. its one of the worst exercises i've been thru man.

yesterday was our Max Challenge where we had to swim 1km and then run 4km with our rifle and sbo.. think it wasn't as tought as i expected. lucky i could swim cos many struggled with the swimming part.

had a major shopping trip today and spent quite a lot of money. think i spent like 350 bucks in this weekend alone. made up my mind to get my kewell jersey today after he scored in last night's match against everton. haha. got a couple of tshirts and stuff as well.. oh and my liverpool season review vcd. hehe. damnit forgot to buy goggles.. mine's strap broke during the swim yesterday. lucky there aren't any swimming lessons this coming week.

saw the new nokia 3100 today and it's damn cool. small and sleek and hasn't got any of those funny cameras and stuff.. which makes it a perfect phone for an NSF. hahaa. might get it next week.. together with this sony discman i fell in love with. its super chio and slim and plays mp3s as well as some new compression sony came up with that takes up half the space of an mp3, which means it can record like 400+ songs in one cd. cool huh.

ok time for me to pack my stuff already.. looking forward to some of the stuff we'll be doing this week.. heliborne and fibua (fighting in built up areas). will be back soon.. :P

[Sunday, August 17, 2003 6:14 PM]
happy birthday fiona and huiting! heehe. and also to derek and lixuan in advance since i won't be around during their bdays.

the past week hasn't been too good. we were outfield on most of the days and the rain made it a lot worse. exercises cannot be stopped halfway, rain or shine, even if it's Cat 1. going back to camp every night in soaked and muddy clothes really dampens your morale totally. fortunately there won't be anymore outfield trainings this week if i didn't remember wrongly. it'll be mostly GPMPG (general purpose machine gun) lessons followed by an IPPT test on thursday. wonder how fast my 2.4 will be now, after all the 7 and 8km endurance runs we had.

my overseas trips have more or less been confirmed, with the first being exercise wallaby in queensland australia, on the 21st of october. should be back on the 7th of nov, just in time for my bday. hahaaa. after that will be ex. crescendo in thailand in feb next yr, followed by trips to taiwan and then thailand again. hope we get lots of R & R days during the overseas trips to look and shop around. hehe.

sigh won't be able to catch liverpool's season opener against chelsea later. need to book in by 2245, and the match only starts at 11pm. reminds me of the season finale last season where liverpool also played chelsea on a sunday night. hope they'll show the replay next weekend and i'll definitely catch it.

[Sunday, August 10, 2003 9:04 PM]
had a long day today. took my erm.. distant cousin(?) out for a tour of our city area. hmm actually i don't know if she's considered my cousin.. she's a year younger than me and we're not related by blood at all. yah anyway took her out on a shopping trip. walked from one end of orchard to the other, and then walked around the raffles city and suntec area, and then all the way down to bugis. kinda tired now, haven't got much sleep last night. well at least i could see she enjoyed herself very much today. heh i noticed we've received a lot of attention around, especially on the packed mrt. i think its because of her american accent. she's an american born chinese but she don't really understand mandarin. she knows a bit of cantonese though. she's only here for 3 days and will be leaving on monday.. don't know when i'll get to see her again. hahaa. the last time she came was like 7 yrs ago. anyway it was fun being out with an american babe. heheehe.

haiz damn sleepy now, gotta pack all my stuff to book in and after i book in i'll have to pack my stuff for tomorrow's field camp. sianz. maybe if i still have time later i might get to watch the charity shield match between manutd n arsenal.

[Friday, August 8, 2003 9:57 PM]
feels good to be back on mainland again after 6 long days. hardly had any sleep during the entire field camp.. as well as the day before we moved off. had to wake up at 3.55am to prepare the weapons and stores that day.

we were made to do all the platoon movement shit on the first day in tekong.. and weren't allowed to sleep at night. had to do platoon harbouring, which is something like.. everyone had to prone and form a huge triangular shape to protect our base. we're only allowed to sleep in shifts so that there'll always be people on guard.. but because section 1 (there are 3 sections altogether) screwed up their section battle thingy in the day and were made to redo it all the way till like 4am... we had to take up their positions and didn't get to sleep in shifts like we were supposed to.

second day was worse.. we were given a recce mission in groups of 4-5 in full battle order, and one whole platoon of "enemies" were released to capture us. it didn't take long before everybody was captured and were put in this deserted house in tekong for POW treatment for 22 hours of constant torture. if we weren't being physically tortured, then we'd either be sitting down facing the wall or blindfolded with our hands tied. if we requested for food, one huge styrofoam box full of crap would be given to us n we'd be forced to finish every bit of it. yup it contains a mixture of 6 or 7 different types of combat rations, biscuits, fresh rations including rice and bits of vege, powder from 3-in-1 tea mix, chilli sauce, and god knows what else is in there. trust me you won't wanna touch the food even after starving for a day. if you asked for a drink, water will be poured down your face from a jerry can. they've got many many different ways of torturing you and forcing you to reveal your mission and who your commanders are.. like locking you up in a locker and then keep shaking and kicking it. but the worst treatment would be when u're pushed and submerged inside a rubber dinghy filled with ice water. just 2 seconds in the water is enough to make you hyperventilate like siao and your skin hurts like crazy. and after they take u out of the water they put you in this room with a ventilation fan blowing at you. its truly an orgasmic experience i tell u. oh and all these are done while we're blindfolded so i have no idea who the fuck was the guy who tormented me like that. a few of my course mates couldn't take it and gave in to the enemies, and instead of getting the luxuries they were promised, they were made to dig shellscrapes and fire trenches as punishment.

the next 2 days were the usual section exercises, this field camp's supposed to be a section summary exercise anyway. on the evening of the 5th night, when we thought we could get some rest, we were given this naviation exercise that lasted from 8.30pm to 10.30am the next morning. had to go round and round tekong in fbo to look for our respective checkpoints. the maps we were given were super outdated so most of the roads and paths there were different from the actual thing, making it damn difficult to topo around, especially in total darkness. we weren't even allowed to use the torch at all for tactical reasons. rovers kept making their rounds to check on us, and everytime a rover gets near we have to duck inside the vegetation to make sure we cannot be seen. we made it in the end.. became the 4th group to complete the mission at 10.16am sharp. those who didn't make it in time were made to do all the fatigue work aka sai kang yesterday and didnt get their long weekend.

oh i saw lots of fireflies in tekong! hahaa never knew they existed in singapore. its quite cool.. bright green coloured spots flying around in the darkness. oh and speak of flying insects.. kenny and a few other guys were stung by hornets during on of their section's missions.. they were sent to the medical centre immediately but fortunately it wasn't too serious. only one guy had to stay in the sickbay and was put on a drip.

ok gonna sleep now gotta get up real early tomorrow for kenley's farewell err.. breakfast. haha. we'll be meeting up for breakfast with the rest of the 1st 3 months pple cos ken's going back canada for good this sunday. i seriously doubt i can wake up on time though..