this week

went to bishan mrt at 0800 to meet up with clay. he was late for near 45 min but it was understandable though. went to yakun for a french toast breakfast set before setting off for ang mo kio mrt. Took bus 25 to Ubi where clay wanted to sign up for his basic driving theory test. Along the way there, we exchanged stories of life in army - any interesting stuffs that happen to our platoons, sections, companies etc. There maybe something wrong with regard to the schedule over at Jaguar - 3 SOC-practices-within-a-week! Perhaps that is either due to field camp, poor scheduling for the early weeks or that they wanted the momentum to be instilled in each and every soldier as after all, SOC is rather crucial in the determination of the admission to command school and apparently, there are many who have yet to overcome the jacobs ladder and balancing beam at this point in time, not to talk about the swing trainer and low rope. Had Sitest this week which i found was rather ok; contributed mainly in the tying of the lashings, be it shear or square instead of coming up with ideas. The short quick marches prior to the 2-day tests serve to warm one up, though it can be quite a feat to some, considering the fact that some have to bear the responsibility of holding on to the stretcher and store items. After signing for his test, we headed down to fu lu shou complex (travel expenses damn ex sia ) at bencoolen where clay bought his casio watch for a good 75 bucks (it is both digital and analogue and's damn formal). he took quite some time though. There were the i-watches from germany and cool swiss watches too. Today was valentine's day but didn't get to see many couples, perhaps because of the early timing. Stopped over at a mini hawker centre for lunch as the big one was under renovation :( . Went to OG to shop around...He wanted to get a belt and a pair of jeans but realised that it was more of a want and also that the sale items were not really very appealing. Went to Bugis junction next. Stopped for a small survey with regard to prudential savings plan- 2 ladies beckoned us to upgrade our POSB account and in doing so, told us that we could enjoy more returns in the future and stuffs like that.. One of them mentioned that i didn't look like a singaporean and i did not know whether i should feel offended of not. lol. Took quite long before we told them that we would go home and think over it. Went to basment level to snack on japanese icecream and sushistik from OCK before heading back to j8 where we coincidentally saw some cat high school mates- wai kit, samuel,etc...talk army cock for 30 min before heading home....


Thankfully field camp was over in the blink of an eye and even more gratefully, i recovered my gas regulator at my own candywrapper at the basha tentage area upon realising few hours ago that it was not secured to the chamber when doing the equipment check. Imagine during the sitest, halfway through, when you realised that you are bound to create a big hoohah in the campsite and delay precious administration time. This was seriously a blessing and of course, a warning for not taking good care of my own weapon (i knew that the regulator was about to be detached just the night before) While counting down to the remaining days before booking out, we had SOC which, disappointingly, I didn't do well in as well as IPPT which yet again I failed though I managed to secure a new record of 9.24min for the 2.4km run kudos to several factors. wooohooo. just 5 more pull-ups and the achievement will be even clearer i guess. grenade throwing was cool and eventful, though i was a bit apprehensive from the start. I would say that everything was executed quite well much thanks to the dummy grenade practice just before the real exercise as well as the lessons conducted the day before. Arms drill was the best, with all the rigorous warm-ups and for the drill squad, quite a number of fixed sequences to be adhered to. Hopefully we can pull this off quite well as a company. Range and IPPT test coming up, oh yes, and MP interview...