I woke up at around 5.. looking forward to my 1st ICT, reliving back those good old ns memories..going outfield with my 54E and chilling out in the bunk with no worries abt the complicated outside society.
Took a bath, changed into my No.4 wearing Sean's trousers as i can't fit into mine anymore. The shirt feels much tighter than before, for the first time i can feel my tummy protruding out of my no.4 shirt. i felt like a retired active soldier..haha. Went down for a heavy fan choy + siew mai breakfast in case we have late lunch. As i sat down on the garage chair, i pondered between my trusted leather boots and new gortex boots. i decided to season the new boots since i have the chance to do so, the leather boots have become harder over this period and the metal piece would prick my skin while doing battle drill for sure. I took my trustee jungle hat, folded into my ampulet and got the car ready.
I went to pick Macwyn, SC, ZY and headed to Jurong Camp II. We were supposed to report at 0730 but reached about 0645.. we thought we would have been the earliest..haha. As we got off the car, a reckless lorry driver sped into the parking lot. Out came ZC and my father to be buddy Wong Lei Biao. The RSM and RP was standing at the staircase leading to the in pro station waiting to inspect our hair. I had my sides and back cut for a bloody $5! It's a bloody rip off, saf personals don't feel the pinch of economic crisis cos they tend to overdo things for the sake of image (not as if the look good at the first place). Being the early birds we were registered fast and led to our bunks early. The armskote had a glitch, my name wasnt in the armskote nominal roll, good thing is i didnt have to draw arms..haha. Guess what.. bunk is on the 6th floor, so i had to carry the duffel bag all the way up.. by the time i reached the 5th storey my kness were weak, i reckon i would take part in the next vertical marathon.
In true saf style.. we waited and waited.. there were many ppl waiting for their haircut but there really isnt much time to cut everyone's hair as we needed to start the route march. i went for the route march without my weapon. Being the first day, i brought my responsible civilian lifetstyle with me, went to the armskote to ask for my arms many times but they couldnt produce one so in the end i gave up. We went for a 4km route march before going for handing over parade. They still had a bloody parade rehearsal, the entire thing dragged till 12 plus before we could break for lunch. After lunch the signallers had to go for bike fam with the SMI instrcutors. It was so cool, it has been a long time since i rode the bike and i just got the old feeling back again. Mac took over Eric's role. Eric was outpro after his ligament problem, it seems he wont be back into 755 with his problems so mac will permanently take over the section 1 bike. The bike thing dragged till around 5 so luckily for us we managed to skip the live run.. i didnt want addtional dirty clothes to my laundry..haha. I wasnt used to the no.4 and so much sweat so i developed rashes already.
16th Jun
Today is an extremely rush and busy day, we woke up at 5am i think to take our IPPT, i had to do everything, brush teeth, change and smoke within a short time. The worst thing is we can't eat a heavy breakfast cos we were taking our ippt at 630, who the fuck takes a test so early in the morning, only saf.. only the dumb fuck CO of 755sir would plan out a shit like this.. and why does SP coy always get the earliest time?! As usual i failed my ippt, i only did 3 pull ups it was super duper miserable, pull ups is smtg even with frens beside me i cannot perform one. Unlike active days, i didnt feel the need to prove my best in every station i did cos i knew i had to do rt anyway. It definitely is different having the motivation from ur platoon when running 2.4km,, my timing on my first ippt is 12min plus.. but today i managed to run a 11:21min.. it wasnt fantastic but u can see a substantial improvement from the last.
Right after ippt we had to bathe and change to do our technical handling test.. fuck loh suddenly sar21 seem so alien to me.. but i totally missed firing a rifle man. Live firing provides such aderaline even with just 10 rounds? Live firing makes me feel like a trained professional becoz u know how to take control of your weapon and you know how to handle it well and safely. I forgot how many we fired and how many i hit.. all i know was i at least had 75-80% in the bag which was good enough for me. The great thing is you didnt have to use ur own weapon and u didnt need to clean it... i feel so privileged. However, being the last deatail we missed the bus and asked to pick up the expended rounds..fuck! It was like 6pm and we were suppose to have our dinner back in camp by now loh. I was complaining all the way to guoli on what a bad customer service provider saf is and all that.. that was really funny. The fucked up thing was.. i used to ear plugs with no wire, it was big and soft so i couldnt really tell if it was in my ear.. i felt my ears ringing thru the silence after i fired one mag. I never had this feeling but i didnt bother since i still had somemore to shoot. Only after finishing the shoot did i realise that my right ear plug had dropped, and my ears were ringing like crazy!!!
We got the tonner around 7pm.. and had some out ration after that. To my surprise the saw gunners and rifle coy were not back yet.. in the end they came back at 8plus.. wondered how a day shoot became a night shoot.. again look at saf. They still had to come back and clean arms.. i didnt really go and clean it cos cleaning arms nva been my forte since ns days..hahaha.
17th Jun
Today all the rifle coy are out in the field digging fire trench while we stayed in camp to do some mock training before tomorrow's actual battle drills. We refreshed our mini N/seas and other equipment used, it feels like ispc all over again cos we need to study again! But things are different now, we only go back once a year and they will refresh our memory every year. All of so wanted to sleep during the boring lecture, honestly who the hell cares abt the magnification of the bino? we just carry two and see which is more useful lah.. these smi sgts know nuts about what it takes to be in a real exercise, to do recon for a real battalion. when it comes to the real shit, tacticality is rubbish. After lunch we did some refresher on TAG, op drill, contact drill, link up, etc. We totally screwed up our contact drill man.. wah lao max and bingyao jus cant stop arguing who is right and who is wrong..haha. Its a lose-lose situation for me, even if i go back to 755 i still kana max and by.. but if i join another unit i will lose all my frens..,dammit right. just my luck.
It was suppose to be happy hour today, because we were in camp so we were able to enjoy the buffet. The rifle coy didnt get to enjoy it cos they were back around 9plus all dirty and not taken their dinner yet. We were done after dinner jus waiting for them to come back, the mob brief was postponed from 8 plus to 930. That fucked up indian guy told us he was only gonna take 15min but in the end he took 1.5hrs.. i so wanted to kill him. I think this is the 4th mob breif i heard ever since ord.
18th Jun
We did our battle drills today, left in the morning to some place in lim chu kang. I finally was able to ride the bike man.. the only time i can ride is when i am in army.. and i absolutely love it. Travelling around Murai area.. i can see how much it has changed.. this whole place which i think used to be vegetation is transformed into an urban training grown, a simulation on olden time singapore shophouse. I can imagine urban battalions doing an entire 4 days exercise around this area, its big enough and have the ability to conduct medium scale exercise. We left in details so i think 54E left abt 1plus, close to 2pm after having our lunch. We had some sausage before leaving for the drills. Following us was 3SG Ronnie.. wah lao this guy damn inflexible one loh.. but i heard he is still better than the 2LT John. The weather was scroching hot, the route is only 1plus km but i already felt so unconditioned for this. After 75% of the course i felt damn shagged and hot.. the signal set was weighing on me.. the sun was killing me.. i had to give my load to max for 1 bound. Only out in the field all of us sweat like fuck, totally like tap water sia. I never thought that the lapse from ns would make me so weak like i am now.. maybe is it bcos i have always been in the office for the past 2 years? anyway i asked around and it seem like i was the only person who passed my load.. looks like i really have to absorb everything in future. The arty drill was terrible, i forgot how far we ran man.. but i jus semangat only. We left lim chu kang, the worst thing is we had to clean our rifles becoz of the blanks we fired. When he comes to this, i really hate my workload. When everyone is cleaning their rifle we had to clean our bikes, it was really filthy cos of the immense amt of dust around the urban area. I will be blinded if i didnt push my visor down. Macwyn's bike broke down halfway. His bike needed too much power thats why his oil finished up much faster than ours. I had to donate some of my oil to him, i checked my oil and i was probably left with 25%. This is the best part, as we were at PIE, my bike suddenly started wobbling, dammit my oil is running out.. i thought i was gonna be a victim of giving petrol to others at the expense of myself. Thank god for reserve tank, however reserve tank only had 2L so i wasnt sure it was enough to last me to camp, thankfully it did.
Today was the last night of ICT and probably the last night i will have with this group of people. Back in those days, we had so much time together we never realise a time like this will come. How time flies, we all knew each other in 2005 and now its 2009.. 4 years all of us have known each other.. thats a long time but it nva felt so long. LTA Joel showed some appreciation for our efforts for the week by buying sarpinos pizza for us.. since active times he just couldnt stop praising us and how lucky he is to have us blah blah.. u know those mushy stuff. But well that was exactly how i felt.. even an outsider could tell how bonded this platoon is.. the fall out rate is close to none. We wanted some drinks so we asked edwin to get it, but he came back with $40 worth of wuxiang and bee hoon, and weikai's martell!! This is the first time i drink in camp man, the feeling is so shiok.. enjoying each other's company and making noise. After i had my bath, i went to join biao, sc, wc to talk to cz abt his life.. frankly he has a really sad family but then again he is using all the wrong methods to rectify it.. i can't help but say too bad to him. I left abt 1am.. my eyes were too heavy.. it was 4 straight days of lack of sleep. Tomorrow we still needed to wake up early for IPPT Part II. Unfortunately i had no time to think abt the people i would miss.. just dozed off straight way.
19th Jun
Its the last day of ICT, we all woke up for IPPT Part II.. those who passed motivated those who haven and those who havent.. have to suffer one last time. I was contented with my jump today.. i managaed to hit 23+ for sbj which is my norm. However i flunked my chin up again.. the point of consolation was i improved by 1 but thats abt it.
Since i had a long week and i already failed, i decided to go easy on the 2.4km. Too many times since ns days i have been preserving my reputation on being an above average runner.. its time to enjoy whats in front of me rather than defying the odds all the time. Although i failed time n again, i still improved be it shuttle run, sbj, 2.4, this is all bcoz of the people around me. Imagine being part of another platoon, will someone run 2.4 with u just to make u pass?
After IPPT, we cleared our bunks and went for AAR.. CO was pleased that he saw scouts helping each other with the 2.4, i was proud when i heard that cos i know no other platoons have that kind of drive and comadarie like us.. this is where i wanna be. Throughout this whole week the CO and RSM were trying to instill some form of identity in us.. they ordered us to remove our 1SIR and 2SIB badges from our LPV and put on the 755 one. Suddenly we all felt provoked, its like asking us to forget our parents, you try to take it away after 2 days after we spend 2 years as a leopard? Its a situation where u can take my body but not my soul..haha. I'm sure everyone will feel the same that even we're now 755, we are still a leopard by blood through and through, thats where we came from, nothing is gonna change that. CO tried to make us do the leopard cheer but its different. He was trying to command us like jimmy toh did but he can nva replicate it. Why? Becoz we all know what he wants to do.. he tried to force our identities away, when he couldnt he tried to go with what we wanted but it was too late.
At around 4plus we booked out after a long admin delay, as i drove home many time i almost dozed off.. especially when everyone else were sleeping too. It has been a tired week physically and mentally. Everything else went well except the part where my hp got stolen. I asked biao if he took it but he said no. I was pretty sure it was an inside job but i didnt want to check bags cos i didnt want to doubt ppl of my own platoon.. search his own conscience.. stealing a phone from a platoon mate.
So hopefully, i still get to repeat somemore ICT with 755..hooha!
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