postscripting the life of an average singaporean guy

Sunday, September 19, 2004

A week bustling with activities in Pulau Tekong.

My feets are covered with blisters....
Wearing boots almost whole day long for at least 3 days in a row and more than 18 hours somemore. Not to mention having only 3 hours of sleep from monday till thursday....
Let me enlighten you more on how my week went...

Monday:
Had our cammo lesson aka army make-up lesson. My platoon was asked to drop 20 more than 3 times for being slow in making up after more time and time was given. The technique was taught to us to use green cammo and just basically wipe our whole face, neck, ears, nose, lips, eyes hands basically any exposed skin. After that first layer, we all look like Hulks, extreme green, I do believe if you want us to fight who is more greener, we will win hands down. Next we have the famous 3 Adidas stripes added on our face! Yeah! SAF does free advertising yet our shoes are either New Balance or Brooks.

Alright I exaggerated, our first attempt on being as green as hulk himself was bull***t, so guess what after half left down and reprimanded by our sergeants, we had to use our new uniform that we were wearing to wipe our cammo off clean and redo, this time round, we were really as green as Bruce Banner. However our Adidas stripe weren't that straight and were rather too thick, apparently SAF might get sued if the soldiers did not displayed the 3 stripes well...

After our makeup lesson was kinda done, we were told to pluck wild grass to further camouflage ourselves. When we were done we had to do 30 counts of 4 jumping jets and after the JETS, many of our grass and leaves and roots had already fell out of our body. So we got another try this time, a couple of us showed some satisfactory performance and thus we only got 20 counts of 4 jumping jets. Still at least half the platoon wild grass felled off. We were then given a lecture on the importance of camouflage which is to break the outline of our body shape.

That practically sums up our Monday Blues.

Tuesday:
Reveille @ 0500hrs, we had a lousy breakfast of lor mai kai and a small pau. Then draw our weapons and changed to our SBO attire to get up the 5 tonner to be transported to the 100m range for our zeroing of our weapon, shooting began about 0830hrs. Shooting was fun to me that is because it is live rounds, meaning I can actually kill my sgts who tekan me jialat jialat if i want to (KIDDING!), i guess its the responsibility to be handle the real bullets and shooting a real weapon instead of an arcade style one. However, waiting time is really a torture! So torturing that most of us ended up sleeping on the floor. Hee... meals arrive packed boxes and we had to rush up the food just in case our turn to shoot comes. As night falls, we had another briefing on our night shooting, it was dead quiet there and also extremely dark. As the time passes by and waiting for my turn, I began to think what everyone else that I know is doing in Singapore, while here I am lying on a grass patch in a remote part of Pulau Tekong holding a rifle. The Pulau Tekong No.1 Hit song began running thru my mind particulary "Looking all around us, People everywhere, Children having fun while we are holding guns!" Night Shooting practice was completed right about 2359. We gather together to clean up the place, picked up the empty shells, took the oath that we did not secretly take any shells or bullets back. Got back our company line about 0035hrs. We then immediately clean up the rifle, and return our arms. by the time we had our lights off it was 0200hrs. Our reveille the next day will be at 0500hrs. 3hrs of sleep. DAMM...

Wednesday:
Wednesday was basically the same as tuesday except we had day practice and at night we had the test! We were told not to sleep but we manage to master the art of closing the eyes but not sleeping... and yes, we basically just lay down anywhere. Even on the road. Got a night overall of 11/16 shots. Went back clean rifle and lights off at 0130hrs.

Thursday:
Thursday same again but we only have a day shoot, everything was fast. because they had made sure everyone just required a few shots just to pass the Shooting practice test. My day overall was a 9/16 which brings my overall shots 20/36. an improvement from my arcade practice of 16/32.... Got back to bunk and clean rifle till 1700hrs before sending arms and then go for dinner. After dinner, we had an early CRO aka the last parade. Which means we can sleep already. but still I still think it is not enough to cover the sleeping time that were snatched away from us for the pass few days...

Friday:
Friday was lesson on wired obstacles, suchs as the barbwires and catallion coils.We were taught how to create obstacles to slow down the enemy and oso how to get past the obstacles, the easiest way of course is to sacrifice one man lying on the spiked wire and allow everyone else to step passed him. Next was our tent building. within 10 minutes 2 person must pitched up a tent! Woah! We headed back, then go for dinner before returning to pack our fieldpack for our route march the next day.

Saturday:
Had breakfast and almost immediately got ready for our route march of 3km. When we got back, we cleaned up the bunk a bit for our last standby before booking out. Yes Bookout time! So happy but sad thing is Sunday must book in again... Well as they say we recruits are already the lowest lifeforms in tekong, so booking out is really a privillege to us.

PS: if you are wondering i was at home the whole day! Friendless & dateless to go out with... damm sad...

jh out!~

Sometimes The Road Ahead Is Paved With Anything But Good Intentions @ 3:01 AM 0 comments

Sunday, September 12, 2004

My 2nd Bookout Weekend.

Spent Saturday having dinner with my secondary school teacher Ms Tan and a few of my secondary school friends.
It was also their first oppurtunity to have a look of my hair...
Cafe Cartel at Raffles City was good, lotsa of girls but maybe the place is just a little cramp bah...

Did not realise that Jakarta's Australia's embassy was bombed on thursday morning....until late friday night. It's funny how when I booked out I seemed to have lost touch with this island called Singapore... It's as if I was out of the civilisation world for more than a year. The only thing that somehow keeps me a bit updated is thru my friends' blog when i use the computer at home and not to mention having first hand newspaper for my platoon, hee hee benefits of a "slack" job as the newspaper I/C

Had arcade game shooting the whole of last week, training everyday was just mainly on the arcade which included a couple of tests such as first aid, giving CPR and stripping & assemblying my rifle day & night. Which brings me to my whining, I sucks in my arcade shooting, having a right master hand and a left master eye is really messed up... Being more comfortable with right master hand, I chose to use my weaker right eye to aim and somehow only when during practice shots did i get almost a perfect score but when it comes to the tests, i sucks... barely just passing, oh well the Encik told us that those who shot well during the arcade shooting does not mean that they will do well in real life and vice-versa. That's comforting but it still contracdicts the fact that why in the world they still have this electronically shooting when it does not clearly hold an equal balance to actual firing.

Watched Terminal, truly excellent movie I would say (4 airplances out of 5!), it was loosely based on an actual story. Merhan Karimi Nasseri the person who been through this experience real life provides us with his story of his stay at Terminal One @ Charles de Gaulle in Paris. Till today, he is still staying there even though he has been given the clear to either return to his home country or enter France, but having been living in the airport for nearly 16 years, he does not want to leave the shell and prefers to stay on Terminal One and tell people of his story.

Oh righty, next week my progressive route march will begin and also my live firing, I hope I can do a miracle and get a marksmanship.

PS: Word is that this month this weekend will be my last long weekend for September meaning next week I most likely booking out on saturday... not enough time to relax!! But never mind after next weekend it will be 10 more weeks to POP! haha!

jh out!~

Sometimes The Road Ahead Is Paved With Anything But Good Intentions @ 4:29 AM 0 comments

Saturday, September 11, 2004

A minute of silent

As i am preparing to lights off for my weekend, I remembered today is the faithful day when the twin tower collapse... let's have a minute of silence to remembered those who have lost their lives due to the collapse...

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More blogging when I am free, may i say this please pardon/forgive my rudeness/vulgarity/army lingo as I just can't seemed to stop all this from flowing out of my mouth!

Sometimes The Road Ahead Is Paved With Anything But Good Intentions @ 4:06 AM 0 comments

Sunday, September 05, 2004

Book In Day

Time seems to passed me by so fast on my first book out, with a turn of an eye it is book in day....

BMT was so far so good, love the song singing sessions a lot. And seriously if u listen carefully ECHO Coy has definitely got the best marching boots sounds except for a few saboh kings who likes to "drag" their boots instead of "dig" in the boots.

FYI, I am in Echo Coy Platoon 3 Section 1. Am also the section I/C, luckily for me I got the admin appointment of Newspaper I/C which means I get the outdated newspaper first everynight!

So far being Section I/C was good, Have got a few coooperative section mates but there are still backstabbing here and there, I wondered whether I was backstabbed at too... Anyway all I haave to do is keep count of my section strength which is a mere 12 compared to the platoon strength of 50. Hmm wonder if i can take the pressure if the platoon I/C duty was ever rotated to me.

Touch a real rifle finally or rather my wife now, The M16S1, apparently it was named so because it has got 16 holes and S1 means it is singapore made because asian has supposedly shorter arms... I hope I will never ever lose my "wife", cause losing her will mean going to Detention Barracks, Swore an oath already to be at the service of the President, that means if the President of Singapore wants me dead he can just ask for my life... Regimentation is how I live my life inside Pulau Tekong, being the lowest of all lifeforms(e.g. being even the dogs staying there has got higher authority than me!)

My first week inside was quite busy everyday only has a mere 20mins of bath time and prepariong to sleep but gradually as the 2nd week came we began talking cock, at the end of the 2nd week, many of us have already picked up the army language, many unpleasant words were already coming out of my mouth by then as to the others, every sentence we use to communicate would somehow consists of a vulgar word, well we did make sure everyone was fine with vulgaritys, yes that includes the sergeants, they checked with us first early in week 1 before hurling insults at us...

I digress for a while, my first bookout, sian not very pleasant, don't want to think much of it except I just might have to sign EXTRA very soon. Yesterday we had a surprise pre 21st birthday party for nigel, many of his friends and family turned up. My gosh, his family even got him a stripper to do a lap dance for him in front of all of us... of course all his friends including nigel himself was shocked! Clearly, we all could see he was embarressed, well it is really one of the happening bday parties I have been to this year, as I quote myself, "sometimes being nigel's friends has got its benefits" to which almost everyone present agreed with me.

Well, I guess I have to stop blogging now, I gtg book in soon. hopefully I will book out again on a friday and enjoy a long weekend.

Await a different JH.
jh out!~

Sometimes The Road Ahead Is Paved With Anything But Good Intentions @ 5:40 PM 0 comments

Friday, September 03, 2004

First Bookout!~

Woohoo!!! Today is my bookout day doodah doodah! Today is my bookout day doodah doodah day. no more SOC! no more IPPT! no more sergeant tekaning doodah doodah deh hey!

Oops pardon my army mood, or rather my no life mode, the only i can talk about in life now is army for at least the next 3 months... Somehow or rather my company was given the long weekend off instead of book out on saturday which i had anticipated we are booking out on friday evening!! Hip hip! Hurrah!

Of course being the lowest lifeform at Pulau Tekong is really quite a n experience to yaddle about, for those who don't know what the heck I am talking about.... in singlish terms yes I am officially a "chao recruit".

Tired now.... gtg Reveille 0530 haha i hope i wun automatically wake up and fall in that time...

till then,
jh out!~

Sometimes The Road Ahead Is Paved With Anything But Good Intentions @ 9:59 PM 0 comments

About

: Name: Peter; Location: Singapore

Not boring not exciting, not lazy not hardworking, not handsome not ugly, not short not thin, not a bad guy not quite mommy's boy either. Regular Singaporean guy who like most guys probably get several different colours of the same shirt, t-shirt, berms, jeans once they fall in love with a particular design. Been through the era of cassette tapes of walkmans to discmans(remember the anti-shock technology) as well as MiniDisc(coming out at a bad time) which obviously lost to the emergence of mp3s and the CD to LD which saw LD losing out to VCDs. Next came the DVDs which 0wned the vcds and try to act smart by having 2 groups, HD DVD and Blu Ray. 2 words BLU.RAY. Loves to reminisce the old days when A&W rootbear float was still around and KFC was still a restaurant complete with waiters serving you Kentucky Fried Chicken. The days where bus fares were 10 cents for students and pizza hut's lunch buffets. Moves/dances to the jumpy music of Ipod Ads and likes to laugh at the Hello I'm a Mac, Hello I'm a PC advertisements!

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