Got a reply from NUS finally. They accepted me into their faculty of arts and social sciences, which was my 4th choice. Then I got another letter informing me of an interview for faculty of science. I feel pissed in a sense that, people with poorer grades than me could get into Science Fac but I couldn't. Its not that I really want to go NUS, but rather, I wanted to see where I stood amongst my peers. I didn't even get into science! It was certainty discouraging. Well, I'll go for the interview (it doesn't guarantee me a place by the way) on Monday but I think I'll most probably stick to Biological Sciences at NTU. Spent 6 days in camp this week. As a matter of fact, I just came back from camp today and will be going back again tonight. Ok recap. On Tuesday we had Exercise Grandslam. At first I thought it was going to be much worse than Ex Nutcracker, but it wasn't. In fact it was nothing! Grandslam's essentially a 3D2N defense exercise. We move to a certain place in the forest and set up our harbour base. Then we will take turns going out for fighting patrols or ambush patrols. Thing is, on the 2nd day, it rained heavily, making the ground extremely muddy. As we were not required to build shelters, we had a hard time sleeping that evening. Furthermore, we had an early morning mission at around 3am. We were to conduct a deliberate attack at the enemy's base. So we set off in the wee hours of the morning, walking in almost total darkness. Tripping on rocks, falling into ground depressions, had our webbing caught in tree vines. There was nothing fun about it, especially when you are so tired already. Anyway we reached our forward RV in good time and conducted our attack. I was given the Machine Gun Commander appointment, a position meant to cover the assault force's advance. The orders were given to attack and we did a good job clearing the enemy and their trenches. Next came the quick attack in the afternoon. I was now given the role of section commander of the breaching force. The pressure was on me to do a good job as my PC and OC would be watching. My sergeant even told me it would be the last and only chance he would get to assess my performance for OCS. So instead of just sitting around. I gathered my breaching force and briefed them on their mission. I rehearsed the breaching actions with the section for a while and briefed them too on what would happen if the breaching failed. In the end, the breaching went well, no cock ups. Everybody did their job well and properly. The only sickening thing was that the breaching was done on a steep uphill slope. After that, we had to casevac (casualty evacuation)one of my section members out of the area. We ran for like god-knows how far before we stopped at a clearing to re-org. At that point, ex Grandslam was essentially over! Had live section firing on Saturday. The firing took up the whole day, and we only went back to camp this morning around 130am. It was fun moving and running, firing live rounds with your section mates. Plus we got a chance to see the pen flare and rocket flare in action. A lucky few got the chance to fire them. The rocket flare was the best of all. Its basically a rocket propelled illumination device that reached heights of about 150 metres. That's all for now, no time to redo my blog AGAIN haha. Sorry guys. Oh yes if anyone knows what's up with activetopic.com, please tell me ASAP, thanks! Savant at 5/30/2004 10:19:00 am ; (0) comments I know I promised to change my blog's layout, but I think I'd may have to delay doing that for a while.Reason is that the last 4 days have been really tiring for me. On Thursday was Exercise Nutcracker. Its basically an exercise that tests your skills and know-how of platoon harbouring. On Thursday we arrived at our designated spot in the forest and started digging our trenches. Now digging may seem easy but it isn't. We were supposed to dig through the night and complete the trench by daylight, which was 6 hrs later. But try digging with little light, tiredness, sleepiness and you'll realise its no easy feat. Well, everybody managed to dig their trenches by 4pm on Friday, by then we were really tired considering that we were not allowed to sleep. Around mid noon on Friday, I was given the Sectional commander appointment. Had to constantly go out for section patrols or fighting patrols which was a real strain on me. I had to lead my section on deliberate and quick attacks. Sometimes when you are tired, you make wrong decisions, which results in doing the same things over and over again. Or when one of your section members make mistakes or refuses to cooperate, you'll have to do everything again. Soon everybody starts getting angry with one another, and tempers start to flare. But luckily these did not happen. it didn't end yet. Once the patrol was done and I was back at platoon camp, I had to resume digging or help out those that had half completed trenches. Then we had to make our FOPK (firetrench overhead protection kit), which was quite easy compared to digging a trench to chest level. Soon night came and sleepiness started to set in. We had to keep awake no matter what but some of them just could not take it. I had to walk around asking people to wake up. What's more frustrating is that after you have woken them up, they sleep again. Worse still, some of them had their rifles taken away from them by our instructors as they sleep, and we'll be the ones who get the shelling from them. Everyone makes mistakes too, including me. Around 3-4 am, when I had finished my rounds and sat down for the first time I immediately fell asleep, when I woke I found out that my blank attachment had been removed. After that, I was afraid to even just rest sitting down. If I wanted to rest, I'd just stand and not move. Then at around 5am, our instructors started to throw thunderflashes at us, it was chaos for those waking up to explosions and gunfire. But I realised that even those that were sleeping started to return fire and cooperating, which made the situation easier to bear. After a while Apple sector was being over-run and I had to lead my reinforcements to Apple sector. It was hard considering that we had to run in the dark, with holes in the ground and tree roots everywhere. Soon my sector, Banana sector started to get over run too, we all had to rush back to reinforce our positions and direct the incoming reinforcements. Around 6am, we were given withdraw orders, we had to put on our full battle order, packs and all, and run out of the forest and prone in the open outside space outside. At that point, I thought the exercise was over and we could all go back, bathe and rest, but I was wrong. The forest opposite our base started lighting up with gunfire, the exercise had not ceased! We had to do a platoon fire-movement towards the 'enemy'. We had to run and prone across this rocky and stony flat ground in our full packs. After the platoon had done this for about 150 meters, we had to charge the enemy. After everything ended, we ran another 300 meters to a clearing where we had to sort out our men, ammo and rations. It was at this point that I realised that one of my men was missing. We found him later, he was sleeping in his trench! How he managed to sleep through gunfire, explosions and shouting I do not know, but I do know one thing. When you are tired, and I mean really tired, anything can happen. You lose control, you forget who you are, and you start hallucinating. I'm glad its over, next Tuesday is Exercise Grandslam, which I think is going to be much worse but I guess its no problem for me, considering that all my mates would be doing it together with me. There's something special and reassuring to see the men under you carrying out your orders even though they are tired and all. It encourages and strengthens everybody. Savant at 5/23/2004 09:19:00 am ; (0) comments I'm back! But only for a while... Booked out at 5pm just now, incentive for good performance haha. gonna book in back at 10pm. Now this isn't the only good news. I got into NTU's Biological science!!! I got Business at first. It was my second choice so i appealed, and i got it! Today really is one of the best days of my life... haha Oh well to all civillians, enjoy your CV life. You won't appreciate what you have until you are in army. BYE! Savant at 5/18/2004 06:35:00 pm ; (0) comments This weekend was supposed to be good for me. Thought i could rest after all the shit i got this week. Got gold for IPPT test and ran under 9 minutes for SOC, got early book out. But in the end they had to put me down for guard duty on sunday. Sunday! that's like so fucking fucked up. You have to guard from morning till monday morning. Not to mention i'd only have until saturday night to get away from the army. Why fucking me?! Yes i'm whining, if you dun like it fuck you. Fuck you! We all know this world is unfair. Again, fuck you if you disagree. Some people get this chance in life which they should have never gotten in the first place. Others, no matter how much effort they;ve put in, it doesn;t matter. It never did matter at all. Sometimes I ask myself why i even bother, why do ieven bother doing something for MYSELF (not the army), why do i do it? In the end it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you tried and overcome great odds. Nothing matters now.... Savant at 5/16/2004 12:29:00 am ; (0) comments Ahh!If my site looks wrong, well, it does. Angelfire finally got smarter eh.. heh heh! I don't have any idea where else i can store pictures which would appear on my site. Storing pictures in geocities doesn't work either. I guess this means the end of this page. Sigh, after all the work i've put in it, its gonna be hard seeing it go. Think i'll just change to a normal plain template, its easier for me to handle too now that i'm serving NS. I'll change to another template ASAP but not yet, right now I'm just feeling lazy.. haha sorry Casey!Ok recap. This week we did ambush drills. Its damn tiring i tell you. You lie in an extended line in the jungle for almost an hour while your section commander organises the section, and sets up the tripflare and claymore mines. Luckily i was given the role of sect com and was able to walk around while the rest laid around with spiders and ants crawling all over them. Then on wednesday and thursday, we had Exercise Gypsy. Its essentially a navigation test, but the hard part was bashing through the jungle. Some places were just plain creepy. There was this check point that was situated in this dense area in the north of the island. It was hard enough getting in. But once we were in, it was really eerie. Think swarms with steam rising from its streams and weird insects everywhere. The trees look weird too, with vines and branches everywhere. It looked exactly like the swarms we see in the hollywood movies. Come friday, spent the whole day attending chemical defence lessons. Learnt how to put on the gas mask and suit. Fucking heavy and hot. After that, we booked out early on Saturday, we were going to the SAFTI smoke chamber in Pasir Laba Camp. You apply whatever you've learnt and enter the smoke chamber. They burn a few C/S smoke pellets and make you do exercises. Haha luckily my mask didn't leak. It was only when they took off our masks and asked us questions that I started feeling the effects of the smoke. Think a thick layer of wasabi and curry powder thrown at your face. You start tearing and your face burns up. Your throat feels dry and hot and you just wanna rip your skin off. The effects wore off quickly though. Think that's about it. Oh yes, i'll have guard duty next sunday. Fuck! That means i book out on saturday afternoon and book in on sunday morning at 7am! Arghhh!!! Why me...?!?! I'm getting sick of doing the same old things each week. Train train and train, then when i'm back, i go out with the same people to the same places. Argh i hate army life. I used to like it so much, i used to study so much about the army's and airforce's weapons. Now that i've seen the type of people in it and their fucked up egoistic characters, i just want to get out and be far far away from these people. Don't get me wrong, it isn't because i can't adapt to these people, rather, i choose not to. After all why should I? Who says i should? Savant at 5/09/2004 12:25:00 pm ; (0) comments Its was real fun during Live Range... The m2o3 launcher was the best, lobbing grenades 250 meters out. What's more, we were given 3 HEDP rounds, how cool is that? 3 times the fun, blowing up targets *grinz* Then came the LAW Armbrust. Only 4 lucky ones got to shoot the real "missile". Each HEAT warhead costs $4400 I think, so I guess they can't possibly let everyone in the company fire the real thing. Well back to the LAW, when the firer fires the LAW, there's very little recoil and a loud hissing sound can be heard as the missile streaks towards its target. Then when it hits, there's an almighty boom, an exceptionally loud clap of explosion which somehow sounded pleasing hahah.. The rest of the week was spent on section battle tactics. We revised our firing positions and all the 1 up 2 up formations. It was fun firing away on the SAW automatic weapon. We had two mags of about 25 rounds each, and i was the few lucky ones who managed to fire an automatic weapon. The rest had to contend with firing in semi-automatic mode. Friday was the killer. We did the obstacle course more than what was standard. Firstly we did the full run down with obstacles and all, then we ran once more around the obstacles in SBO. Then we ran in clean fatigues around the running track: Sprinting and running. Then it was doing the obstacles once again with clean fatigues. That was certaintly one of the most tiring days of my life. Next week's gonna be alot worse, lots of navigation excercises and physical activities. I hope i don't fall ill or anything. Its fun choinging with your platoon mates in the jungles, but when it gets tiring and all, tempers start to flare up. I guess SISPEC is all about finding the hidden will within us. How much shit you can take, how much stress you can receive before you break down, how many days can you go without food and rest. When there's a will there's a way, I know because I have done it. I always told myself that, "As long as you are still alive, you are not tired. The only time when you really are tired is when you die... Savant at 5/02/2004 09:50:00 am ; (0) comments
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