JaggedIce's Xanga

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Sat, 26 Mar 2005 15:21:10 GMT

Just finished the biathlon yesterday morning. Wow.

Woke up at 5:20 to shower and eat and everything. Reached there 6:20 and registered and got my body marked with my number. Today I would be number 840 for the race.

Anyways, the race was flagged off at 8:10 and the course would begin in the water for the 1.5 km swim in a triangle around big orange buoys followed by a 10 km run up and down East Coast Park. We all line up at the entrance to the beach and the horn sounds. We were briefed that this morning the current would be pushing us towards the right so I run around to the outside of the crowd and dive into the water hoping to avoid the mass orgy of flailing legs and arms and bobbing heads. 1100 people splashing around in the water wearing red and blue swimming caps is quite a sight to see if you ever get the chance, even if you don't ever plan to participate in a biathlon ever (which everyone should give a shot anyways ).

Anyways, I'm off into our wonderful Singaporean green water where the only thing you can see are the legs in front of you that are about to kick your face. Oddly enough I get little pinpricks every now and then all over my body...have no idea what the heck it is because it can't be jellyfish. In my entire swimming training never once have I swam out in the open water so this is a new experience. I find myself having to bob my head up every now and then just to make sure that I'm still swimming on the right course. Forget to look up for a while and all of a sudden you find the entire group way off to your right and you're basically swimming by yourself in the wrong direction....suck it up and turn back again. It's the hugest waste of time losing your direction but swimming on the outskirts of the group is the only way you're able to move forward without constantly being threatened by the legs of the swimmers in front of you.

Oh yes, almost like half of them were swimming breaststroke too which annoyed the heck out of me. You'd be swimming freestyle and all of a sudden out of nowhere a big foot comes out and whacks you in the head or chest. Yea ok breaststroke every now and then to get your bearings is alright but these guys that did it for the entire length were downright irritating.

Ready to go. This is the attire of -choice- for the biathlon. Saves the step of putting on shorts later. Of course you'll have the occasional guy that decides to run only in his little trunks...lets try not to think about that

Other than those little irritants the swim itself felt quite good. Throughout the entire swim strangely I didn't feel tired at all and it seemed that my strokes were pulling me right along. Or so it seemed, because in the green water you have no way to gauge whether you're moving fast, slow, or even in the right direction. For all you knew you could be splashing as fast as your arms could go but still not going anywhere!
If it weren't for the fact that I had to constantly keep slowing down to check whether I was going in the right direction the swim probably would have gone quite well once I got into the correct rhythm and form. But on the other hand, that's exactly what makes open water swimming that much more difficult.

Actually I heard that last year's biathlon had rope guides to mark out the path because it was held in Sentosa where the water had NO current...ah too bad no more this year.

Most of you should know that swimming for a long period of time dehydrates you and leaves you quite thirsty by the time you leave the pool. Now combine that feeling with the feeling of salt burning your mouth and nasal cavity. Finally add big whiffs of gasoline that last several minutes on end caused by the engines of the safety boats that were floating around. That's pretty much the experience you get when you're swimming out in the ocean for a long time. So you can imagine by the time I finally reached the beach again my throat was screaming for water.

On my way back I get a strange stitch on my right side that only lets me breath from the right side otherwise it hurts to breath from the left. Disappears by the time I reach the shore.

Feet finally hit sand again. Quickly dash up the beach to the transition area where they've demarcated little squares on the ground to put your stuff. My trusty bottle of Gatorade is sitting there and I quickly grab it for a drink. Two gulps. Actually two HUGE gulps because when I looked back at the bottle two-thirds of it was gone. Too much. Shit. Quickly dried my feet, socks and shoes on, running singlet on, off I go.

People putting their stuff at the 'transition area' before the race. Each box is only like 2x2 ft.

Me putting on my shoes after finishing the swim. I look really burnt don't I? I think it's just the camera...

If you look at the map carefully you'll find that I have to go out 1 km to the left and then back again before going through the majority of the running route. This inital 2 km was the most painful part of the entire race. The transitioning between swimming and running is something that can be done well after many practices. Frankly I haven't practiced enough and I have neglected running for favor of swim training...and it shows. After swimming your legs are surprisingly tired and if you don't take it easy when starting out the run you'll end up with either cramps or stitches.

Turns up I wound up with stitches pretty much almost right from the very start. This made the beginning of the run really painful. The 700 mL of Gatorade sloshing around in my stomach doesn't help either. 1km, 2km, 3km, still got the stitches, stomach in pain. Also start to feel like throwing up. I was told before the race by a captain from my unit that this might happen because of the salt water that you swallow during the swim (although I don't recall swallowing any). He recommended to vomit it out and then 'feel better' after. I didn't see how this would work (plus the risk of dehydration) so I decided to stomach it. The slight urges puke left after a while. Keep on running.

As a matter of fact, my body transition from swimming mode to running mode was so slow that it wasn't until the 5 km mark that I finally reached 'the zone' at which you feel that you're just cruising along. Prior to this I was being overtaken by countless numbers of people. With 5 km down and only 5 more to go, I gradually start increasing my pace. 7 km mark and I feel like I'm flying. Such a shame that it started so late in the run because now I'm overtaking people one by one with my quickened pace. This pretty much continues on until the end where I'm basically sprinting past the people in front of the finish line. My mom and dad happened to be watching on the side of the road cheering me on. Heh feel sorry they had to wait so long just for that moment. Well at least I didn't end the race by slowly stumbling over the line and then collapsing afterwards...

Basically just feeling wasted after the race...

I'd like to think of the run to be 'my style' where I start slow and 'finish strong' -which is true to a certain extent- but the fact that I was able to all out sprint at the very end without much effort goes to show how much energy I still had left and hadn't used properly. Heh, goes to show I hadn't conditioned myself for the swim-run transition which sucked up a lot of time.

Oh yes, my time. Irrelevant...haha ok fine it was 1 hour 50 minutes...kinda like crap but oh well. There's always next time (but as to how I'm going to do it up in Cornell I have no idea). As for my placing I have no idea until they come out with the full results (plus more photos) in a few days time.

Right now my legs are killing me. Ah I have a rugby match tomorrow morning too...against last year's champions...joy

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Wed, 16 Mar 2005 11:42:19 GMT

Hey wassup. Hah well a biannual update seems well in order right now. Right now I've just gotten back from an inter-formation rugby match. Hahah we managed to beat Signals formation after only 1 day of training! Heh, yea long story. We were supposed to have like 2 months to prepare for this tournament and because of some stupid screwups we ended up only have this Monday to practice for today's match. Pretty fun, considering I've never played anything beyond touch rugby in PE. Managed to call Richie down to play as well since he's also part of 9th Division and we clobbered those signal guys. And they hit us pretty hard too. Being a right wing it's not too fun to have to stop forwards that are like twice my weight from breaking through the last line. I remember one of my attempted tackles head-on knocked me off my feet and two meters back and all I managed to do was stop the guy to leave him open for teammates behind to knock him down. Yea ribcage still hurts from that as well as being trampled by cleats.

Life right now is...hmm how to say it. I've been drifting around the battalion with no real job. It became pretty apparent when I was posted to another branch in HQ that I knew nothing about for over a month. After that, I've been bearing the brunt of odd jobs and stuff that no one else wants to do...like being neutral officer for like the 6th time for another unit's range - yea basically spend the whole day at the shooting range making sure they don't cheat- since I'm so "free" (actually I am, but that's besides the point). The main reason for this is because I have a regular officer that's occupying the same job as me, so I'm kinda like the extra ready to be arrowed for any shit work at any time. But it has its ups also I guess. Take today and the previous inter-formation sports (vball and swimming) that I've participated in /helped organize for example.

Outside of army life...meh nothing much going on except that I'm training for an upcoming Biathlon that's run by the Navy. March 26. 1.5km swim followed by a 10km run. Should be quite interesting although it's kinda hard training when there's only one other person (a captain from charlie company) to train with and is not always available. Yea long distance training can get pretty boring, especially since you can't listen to music in the pool :p Anyways, I'll be sure to keep you guys updated about that and rugby.

Later

Monday, September 27, 2004

Mon, 27 Sep 2004 03:43:17 GMT

I woke up today.... OOUUUUUUCH!

Sunday, September 26, 2004

Sun, 26 Sep 2004 12:37:31 GMT

Army Half Marathon was today! And my now legs are like jello.... Of course mandatory to go because we have to 'support this army event' but instead of the full half marathon, school of logistics (where I'm having my logistics course) was only running 12 km. But, I mean, what's the point of running only 12 km when you can run 21 km! So yeah, joined up with my buddies in my original unit - 3 SIR and ran the half marathon with them.

It was crazy. The starting point was at the Padang, on Esplanade bridge to be exact. There were sooo many people there you couldn't see the end of the line. Essentially every single army unit and formation was there at 5:15 in the morning. Well, that was the time we were -supposed- to get there. But somehow our transport from our camp to the starting point never made it and we got there very very late. Late as in the race-had-already-started late. And yet, the last row of the running crowd had just crossed the starting line nearly 20 minutes after the race was flagged off. Yea, so you can imagine what kind of crowd was there. The entire length of the Benjamin Sheares bridge (and then some) was covered with people. Even though they closed one or two lanes for us, moving in the beginning stages was nearly impossible at some spots - a whole 20 minutes needed for only 3 km, 40 minutes for 5 km. But as the race progressed it thinned out enough to only have to dodge a couple of people every now and then as you ran.

The race route briefly: Esplanade, down Shenton way, over Benjamin Sheare's Bridge, run the length of East Coast Park, do a U-turn, go over to the National Stadium, do a loop, come back down to Esplanade. Click below for a clearer picture

Having absolutely NO running preparation (or any physical activity for the past two weeks for that matter) at all (last serious run was 12 km a few months ago?), my legs started to give out during the last 5 km. Sorta like dragging them along like they're strapped with weights.... but as long as I didn't stopped to walk (although I got pretty close to doing so) I was happy. Finishing time? 2 hours 12 mins....bleh, was aiming for sub 2 hrs. Oh well, there's always next time...Dec 5th? Anyone coming back early enough to join me? By this time next year I'll finally be GONE! College at last...

I'd like to thank Nature's Valley Granola Bars for breakfast, my Power Gel for energy halfway through the run, and most of all, GATORADE for hydration before the run and more importantly, being one of the SPONSORS for the run (yes! gatorade water points!) - providing much needed energy, or at least the illusion of it.

Alright that's all from me today. As much as I'd like to talk about training in Brunei, I am pretty much drained today as are my legs and entire body. I think I'll just lie somewhere and vegetate before going to sleep

Friday, September 03, 2004

Fri, 03 Sep 2004 09:25:49 GMT

Well what do you know? It's ANOTHER bi-annual (or so it seems to be becoming) entry. Hahha. Kinda been putting off this entry simply because of the enormous number of things to talk about since...May?! And of course yesterday was my birthday so we need something in here to mark it (aka gigantic post). Well shall we get started then?

Entry #1 of many more

ROC a.k.a. Republic of China a.k.a. Taiwan

Our camp in Taiwan

Our platoon squashed into a room

Date: Sometime in April

Probably the most fun of the two overseas exercises that we embarked on during OCS training. Essentially we go there to..."borrow their mountains" simply because Singapore has none. Our accomodation interestingly enough is one of the few Singapore-run military camp from which overseas army training takes place. The training there is basically split into two main phases: navigation and missions.

Part 1 - Navigation

For navigation, oh joy of joys, we get to be the guinea pigs for the all new navigation package that OCS is thinking about implementing for future batches of cadets. Previously the navigation exercise was named "Red Beret" and it consisted of basically a long but quite easily manageable route through the mountains from start point to end point. On this trail cadets could get through by sticking to trails and sometimes roads (although you're not supposed to) for most of the journey. Listening to senior cadets, it was supposed to be quite fun because of the oh-so-famous NINJA VAN. They seem quite a common site where you would see a van parked on the roadside with all sorts of cooked snacks simmering on the grill. Basically all the burners and cooking utensils are stored inside the van and wherever they stop, they simply open up the doors and there you go. It so happens that because the SAF has been sending troops over to Taiwan so regularly, a couple of vans have gotten the knack for being able to scout our training grounds and pop up out of the middle of nowhere ready to sell their snacks to the troops.

The ninja van parks itself at one of the endpoints...and we aren't allowed to buy from it!! Argh...

So troops taking part on the old "Red Beret" exercise would have many many opportunities for these illegal (but who really gives a shit right?) snack stops on their way to their endpoint.

THEN, some people had the bright idea of telling OCS that Red Beret wasn't navigationally challenging enough and lo and behold! In comes the -new- Red Beret and along with it commander OCS Colonol Peng.

Basically this is how they do it. They find a nice mountainous region on the map. They plot a start point. They plot a end point. You fill in the rest. Ok maybe not so bad, they go through the liberty of plotting out a route for you that you would have drawn out yourself anyways. And what's in between those two points? Mountain after VIRGIN mountain. "Nobody has been there before or taken those routes before!" Obviously commander OCS' excitement is our nightmare.

Well let the nightmare begin, Enter "Green Beret"

Green Beret was put in place because this would be our and OCS' first time attempting this kind of navigation exercise so they decided to stick an instructor with each of the navigation groups. Each group had about 6 people. The problem was, this was the first time for many of our instructors too! Yea...see a problem there?

Anyways, so off we go after being dropped at our start point. We are at the base of one of the mountains. Ok, we are here *point to a dot on the map*, we need to get to the top of this mountain to get to the next one and to the next one. The spur is this direction. *Sets the compass*. Bashers to the front! *Me and another guy go to the front of the group, armed with machete and clippers*. Ok go this way! *shoots forth a imaginary line with his arm*.

And so it goes. The vegetation at the beginning isn't that thick, as in you can actually see more than 10 meters in front of you. But take note that we -are- carrying our full battle order (minus the rifle and helmet but add a sleeping bag). So rest stops along the way up the first mountain is a must; not only for our legs but more importantly for our shoulders which have a tendency to cut off circulation to the arms under the weight.

Taking a break

Yep vegetation not that bad yet

Along the way we manage to bump into another group who coincidentally happen to be heading to a checkpoint which will take them along the same route as us for most of the way. We figure 2 instructors are better than one so we transform ourselves into a small convoy of 13 some cadets trudging along the taiwan ridgelines.

Take note that along the whole way we almost NEVER used even a path. It would basically be "ok the ridgeline and the top of the mountain should be this way, lets go" and you'd be faced with these huge thick bushes and vines that you'd have to cut your way through. Yea, the back people have it easy.

Heh, for those that have seen Band of Brothers....

So the story continues, our position on the map moving ever so slowly across the terrain (we'd jump for joy every time we would cross a grid line, marking 1 km intervals...that would take anywhere up to 3 or 4 hours). Near the end of the day, we found ourselves in a pretty tight situation. Darkness was setting in and we still hadn't found a harbouring (sleeping) location. We planned to reach the peak of the mountain that we were climbing and sleep there but all hopes for that was instantly dashed when we found the vegetation at the top was just as thick as the vegetation going up. So sleeping there was out of the question. Nearest possible harbouring location: a road some 300 meters downhill. From point to point the road shoulders sometimes include a large portion of grass so that was our plan.

Interestingly enough there's one of these planted on the peak of every major mountain in the area

By the time was started our descent almost all light was gone. Without the typical singaporean city lights or the moon to light the sky, we were thrown into pitch black. Usually you NEVER want to bash through the vegetation at night simply because it was too easy to become disorientated and movement became very difficult. But this time we didn't really have a choice did we? But as we eventually found out, what look like a relatively uniform descent on the map turned into a series of spurs that we had to cut across on the way down. So essentially we would be going up and down, up, down, up down, while the GPS claimed that we were always hovering at 200 meters from our end point. Throw in the wonderful frigid mountain rain and the painstaking process of having to cut through literally walls of vines (yes, by yours truly) simply to move forward for several meters only to meet another wall, and you have a recipe that would demoralize anyone. Oh yes, and throw in the time that we wasted looking for one of our lost clippers and the time it took to rescue this guy the slipped/slid/fell down a ravine that went down a good 5 or 6 meters.

From sunset we bashed for a good 4 and a half hours, to move 300 meters. Oh the joy to see black asphalt again! Needless to say, we soon after collapsed on the side of the road and slept till the morning.

Basically that was the highlight of Green Beret. The next day we found out we had only a little way more to go to reach the endpoint and finished the exercise around noon.

Ohhhhyeeeeaaah, the end point in all it's glory. (Note the insane terrain, the yellowish line is the route)

Red Beret, turns out to be almost the same as Green Beret, except you are given different start and endpoints. Almost the same Green Beret, except we got lost a lot more. Stumbled into entire knolls that didn't make it onto the map, went off the route only to have to turn around and go back the way we came lest we fall off the mountain completely, yea all that good stuff that comes with navigating without instructors. In the end, we made it out (and even managed to run into the ninja van along the way through a nice...uhh...detour along the road )

Chris Lee's team finally makes it back...one of the last teams because apparently they reached the endpoint but nobody responded to their radio call to pick them up, making them walk several kilometers to this shed.

I think that should do for now, I haven't even begun to talk about the second half of the training in Taiwan...hmm I'll save that for tomorrow or something.

Resting before setting off on the last leg of our journey

You wouldn't imagine the number of thorny plants and vines...And this is WITH long sleeve uniforms...

Sunday, May 16, 2004

Sun, 16 May 2004 12:39:39 GMT

Wow it's been forever since I've updated (yes second time saying that...). Haha I guess I'm too lazy to face up to the fact that there's been a ridiculous amount of things going on since I've last posted and now I have the energy to start from where I last left off (how many months ago) only because I have a ridiculously long amount of free time in the cadet mess computer room....hahah I'm actually supposed to be taking the entire day off, while my wing is off instructing delta wing cadets on how to use weapons, to plan my wing cohesion event on May 13th. Actually it's pretty exciting, the entire event will be 2 days long conducted something like the Amazing Race all around Singapore. But Amazing Race = many organizations = logistics nightmare. Hence, here I am. But I'm done for my part at least for now, so I essentially have the rest of the day free!

Since I'm not at home, I won't be able to post up pictures until later, but hey, at least you get to read something right? Maybe people will come to read my dusty xanga site once again

Holy cow, I just looked at my last real entry....section field camp?!? Hahaha seems like chicken shit compared to what I've gone through since then. Ok ok, time to recap like a third of a year's worth of events.

Review: OCS is split into 3 main terms - Tri-Service Term, Service Term, Pro Term.

Where I last left you guys on this site was halfway through Service Term (specifically, at the end of Service Term 1.. going onto Service Term 2). Service Term 2 comprises of a lot more mission-oriented exercises: namly 3 main ones: Exercise Spade, POI, and Platoon Field Camp. Skipping through them briefly (with photos to be added later).

Exercise Spade

As its name implies, it means lots and lots of digging. Yes, by far one of the worst field camps Service Term has to offer, its proper technical name is a 'deliberate defense exercise'. Deliberate defence in the sense that you occupy a knoll in the afternoon, dig a shellscrape (basically a hole long and deep enough for you to lie down in and shoot from...lol, like digging your own grave) in about an hour as the sun goes down. THEN, we proceed onto digging our firing trenches. A firing trench is basically in the shape of a very wide U, deep enough to stand up in and have only your head above the ground. Dug by 2 people, it took essentially the whole night and morning to dig. Yes, that means digging from dusk to dawn and more non-stop. So the picture would be something like this. You're looking up at the hill at night, and all you can see are small patches of candlelight and the sound of cangkuls (i have no idea how to spell it... pronounced Chahng-Kuhl, equivalent to a hoe i think) whacking the ground. So this goes on all night. And if you're extremely lucky like me and my buddy was, you'll run into rocky ground that barely seems to dent with each swing that you make, and you'll also run into numerous ant nests which we basically had to smoke out to get rid of. Needless to say we didn't finish by morning, and my buddy and I were at the point of exhaustion where you could literally swing the cangkul, hit the ground, then proceed to fall asleep standing up resting on your cangkul stick. And to make matters worse (hooray), a storm happened upon us sometime in the afternoon and what we were left with were waist-deep swimming pools - which we so happily plopped into when it came time to conduct the defense mission...mmm cold muddy water

POI

Haha more of a test of how long you can stay awake more than anything else (or so it seemed at the time). POI stands for protection of installation and is probably the most relevant skill in today's world that you'll train for (yes, some people do get sent to Changi Airport to do POI). So basically you'll have everything that you need to protect our 'base', which includes sentries, guard post, patrols, and the like. What makes this field camp so fun is that one platoon will be the 'enemy' and try to pull off all sorts of stunts just to disturb the guards, or they can actually try to sneak into the place to plant a 'bomb'. When I played enemy, we got access into the camp by acting as electrical inspectors. Of course they did a body search for any illegal items (ie. BOMB) but they didn't seem to notice that i had stuck the bomb (light stick) inside my boot. So basically walk into the area, act like i'm tying my boot lace, pull out the bomb, laugh at their dumbfounded faces. Mission cut. We win. Muahaha

Platoon Field Camp

Shit, can't remember much from this...hahaha see what happens when u forget to update...just remember that we did a lot of platoon movement and fighting with various 'enemies' (which were actually just injured cadets sitting on the hill firing blanks at us)

Platoon live firing

Nothing too special. Basically you have a firebase from which several weapons fire from. They're suppose to initially fire at the enemy while the rest of the platoon runs towards the hill for the attack. The platoon eventually reaches the hill and the firebase shifts its fire so that you don't shoot your own guys. So basically.... firebase sits there on its ass and fires away while everybody else runs like mad then charges up the hill some more to attack. I got to be at the firebase firing the rocket launcher Lets see....nothing much else to talk about, although we did manage to set half the hill on fire with our sustained machine gun fire! (Tracer rounds turn out to be very hot I suppose)

Transition

And so, after these main events (with undoubtedly a lot of other training in between), comes the end of ST2. Which also means a change of location. From this point onwards, we shall cease to be Tango Wing cadets, as everybody will break off into their own vocations of Armour, Signals, Combat Engineers and Infantry (unfortunately there is no Artillery intake for our batch). There is actually a part where you can write down your expressed interest to see whether it will affect where they will put you for the next 6 months of your OCS life. Armour (armoured infantry, tanks) looks pretty interesting. So I put it as choice #1. Combat engineers also doesn't look bad (demolitions+obstacle making and bridging, depending on which you specialize in), so i put it as #2. Infantry (which is essentially what we've been doing since BMT) = lots of walking = nothing much new to learn in terms of weapons and stuff (compared to other vocations) = boring AND the fact that it takes place in ALPHA wing, best known for their endless whacking of cadets and freakishly long field camps = I put it as LAST choice for my preference sheet.

Results come are made known after we complete our graduation 23 km march (where you can get tired and sleepy to the point where you manage to hallucinate and turn clumps of leaves into humans before having them disappear as you approach them). The result is.....INFANTRY! SHIIIEEETT. Just my luck. Hellooo Alpha Wing....

Ok fast forward to a few days later. We're sadly packing up our bunks in Tango Wing before we go off for our break that we're supposed to get before Pro Term. Except that we have to go to Alpha Wing to get our photos taken. This will be my first time setting foot onto Alpha wing, so I was pretty nervous as we marched into the parade square. Look on the left and I see the TCO (Training Coordinating Officer, the guy that supposedly just sits in the office all day doing computer work) making the cadets do pushups, change to situps, change back to pushups, pushups and hold it there in the 'down' position...hmm how typical of Alpha Wing. We march in and stop right in front of the building. Sitting on top of the raised floor that exists between the parade square and the ground level is one of the platoon commanders. He walks down to us and asks us what wing we are from. "Tango Wing Sir!" we all reply at the same time. "Ah Tango Wing issit?! Go run and touch Delta Wing (which is about 80 m away) and come back!" So our group of about 20 cadets run like mad, touch the Delta Wing signboard and run back to Alpha Platoon Commander.

He asks us again "Where are you from?" We think that we didn't reply loud enough the last time so we shout "TANGO WING SIR!". "Hah! Still Tango Wing?! Go and touch Delta Wing and come back!" Shit what the heck...so off we go running again and come back. Keep in mind we're supposed to be taking passport photos for our trip to Taiwan later but now we're already sweating.

"One more time, WHERE....ARE...YOU...FROM?!". We hesitate, and some venture forth a little peep "Alpha wing sir..."

"WHERE?"

"Alpha Wing Sir!"

"WHERE??!!?"

"ALPHA WING SIR!". As you can see by now we're all yelling at the top of our lungs.

"Form up one row in front of me NOW!". We quickly scramble into position

He then procedes to go up to each one of us and asks us "WHERE ARE YOU FROM?!!" and one by one we yell back at his face (which is only like 1.5 feet away from us) "ALPHA WING SIR!!!"

And so it goes on, each person yelling 'Alpha wing Sir!' as loud as they can. It's a bit funny, because some people really can't yell for crap and their voice ends up cracking in all sorts of funny ways. That, plus the fact that this particular ass of a platoon commander got in no means a small amount of spit splattered across his face from every Tango cadet (some obviously more than others). Hah, serves him right. Turns out that that PC (platoon commander) was the PC for platoon 1, and also the biggest self proclaimed bastard (literally self proclaimed, he said it himself to everybody!) in the whole of Alpha Wing. Yeap, welcome to Alpha Wing. Better enjoy that break while it lasts...

Now let me tell you something about Alpha Wing. Ever since TST, they've been infamous for their discipline, dishing out pushups as they wish for any meager infringements in disciplines (like moving when standing in formation, standing with weight on one leg, leaning against the wall...). Go up another level and you have turnouts where they wake you up in the middle of the night to give some more whacking. Ultimate (or so I've heard) is the Alpha Typhoon where instructors all dress up in their full uniform attire and tear through every floor doing bunk inspections and subsequently punishing ppl/throwing things around for any mistakes in arrangement. I think.

Now there's the point, "I think", because I've never actually experienced it. Alpha wing has supposedly taken a turn for the better as we are now "pro term" cadets, supposedly self disciplined, self governed, and self sufficient. All those stories we've heard from ex alpha cadets during TST and Service Term haven't materialized yet. Sure they are still big on discipline, yet the instructors have taken a step back to allow the cadet wing appointment holders to take control of the situation. Only when necessary then will the instructors step in (of course nobody wants that!). So the way things work in alpha wing....any slack in discipline will instantly result in the cadet wing appointment holders dishing out simple punishments such as 20 pushups just to 'show' the instructors that the appointment holders are INDEED doing something about the situation. Essentially, they are punishing us a little to protect us from BIG punishment from the instructors

[Note: 2 weeks have passed between the above entry and the below entry]

Hah, I guess I spoke too soon. Things have become as such and I quote the platoon 2 platoon commander (instructor) "Today is May 6th, the day that we (the instructors) declare war upon you!" And off he goes rattling about something about cadets will always be cadets (essentially we're like shit) and bla bla bla.

See what had happened was that two Brunei cadets were giving the wing a briefing about the country of Brunei. Combined with their bad accents and incredibly boring presentation, half the wing had managed to doze off. Hah well that pretty much pissed all of the instructors off and pushed them over the edge. All along they had been reminding us that our discipline had been slacking and now they had good reason to whack us with full force. And so it began. Immediately after the presentation the wing marched 5 times around the cookhouse before eating lunch. Upon reaching the barracks, an immediate 'standby universe' (essentially inspecting anything and EVERYTHING that you had to ensure it was up to standard) was conducted. In that kind of environment it was inevitable that they would point out something stupid to find error in you and so in came the punishment. Countless pushups, running up and down, and the like. We have to carry rifles everywhere (yes, EVERYWHERE including lessons). Inspections all over the shop is all I can say. Essentially Alpha wing has turned into a hell hole all over again. Shit...get me out of here...

Ok I think I'll stop here for now, it's kinda a lot to absorb for one reading :-S. Next entry I'll talk about our trip to Taiwan and our Jungle Confidence Course preparation training in Tekong (yes, JCC in Brunei is this Friday! )

Saturday, February 28, 2004

Sat, 28 Feb 2004 05:52:10 GMT

Hey i just felt that i had to put something up here. Haha it's like i've abandoned my readers or something...sorry! It's been real hectic and even now my weekends are real short to non-existent. A quick lowdown on what's been happening so far (i'll explain them more with photos in a future post). I've gone through Protection of Installation as well as Platoon field camp. Service term 2 has come and gone (yes 9 weeks). I'm in pro term now, which lasts for 23 weeks. This is the term where they post you to your vocations like armour, armoured infantry, signals, combat engineers, and so on. I somehow got stuck into infantry vocation, one of the most physically demanding ones (cuz you walk like some 10 k before you start fighting...or supposedly). I'm in alpha wing now, the most physically and mentally demanding wing of the whole of ocs. The instructors here have really high standards of regimentation and stuff so still trying to get used to it. Oh yes i somehow got appointed Wing 2nd in command (don't ask why, i dunno). This weekend we're having a recall exercise. supposed to be back in camp by 7 pm when i just got home today at noon. Still recovering from my last field exercise this monday to wednesday, and now we have to move off again! argh.... ok i'll see u all later. need to sleep while i can at home cuz i haven't been getting any. sorry if that seemed incoherent blabbering but that's all i have time for :s

Sunday, November 30, 2003

Sun, 30 Nov 2003 04:42:32 GMT

First off...many of you have been wondering how on earth do I get so many photos up here. Haha first of all, yes, it is allowed provided you get clearance from your wing. Second, I'm part of the multimedia team and is in charge of filming and producing term videos as well as photos for them, so I'm like the photographer/camera man of the wing...sorta... Always running around with a camera so it seems.

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post:

Question: Have you ever been afraid of falling asleep?

Lol I don't think many of us have this problem...not unless you're introduced to the concept of the TURNOUT. Probably the worst part of going outfield for training, it's when the instructors choose some awful hour in the middle of the night to 'visit' the cadets by throwing thunderflash grenades all over the place yelling "everybody up! 5 minutes to fall in!".

For our leadership field camp that I talked about in my last post, we had to sleep under tents. So....5 minutes to pack up tents, take down rope that we used, and procede to slip and slide down the slope into the open area to assemble as a platoon. Naturally we didn't make the timing, therefore behold the 1 hour 'tekan' (whacking) session that we had:

Run here, run there, everything out of the field pack and arrange it in 1 minute. Can't do it? Everything back in in 1 minute. Still can't make it? Everything out again. Why you all so slow? Whole lot knock it down (pushup position). Down (one!). Down(two!). Down(three!). downdowndowndowndown....down(sixty!). Ah, can't do it together right? Back to zero! Can't do pushups properly anymore huh? Crunches position change! UP UP UP UP UP upupupupup. Pushup position change! Too slow! Crunches position change! Some still can't turn in time! Pushup position change! (And so procedes what we affectionally call the 'Roti Prata' -> flip back and forth). Yeap that continues for about an hour. Btw, it's 1 am. Move to another camp site. 4 hours later, thunderflashes exploding again. Everyone is ready this time...just sitting there with fieldpacks on, ready to move. Run out, "gentlemen, one of your section-mates has been hit by artillery fire, take out the stretcher and carry him back to camp", procede to run with your section of 7 or so men carrying a stretcher for 3 km. What a way to wake up. Oh yes, btw, happy birthday Byron (just so happens to turn 19 on that very morning).

Now onto the happenings for the last two weeks:

Section Field Camp

Thank goodness it's only 4 days, as compared to Alpha Wing's 6 day field camp (crazy ppl...start the same day as us, but we came back Thursday while they came back Saturday). Basically it was split between navigation and section movement. Navigation was a pain in the ass...because we had to walk around pretty much a quarter of the island to find checkpoints. For our last exercise, we almost walked from one end of Tekong to the other. Not very fun, especially when you're carrying the signal set which is FRIGGIN heavy. While everyone walks just with their webbing and weapon, I walk with webbing, signal set, and weapon. Almost the same as bashing around with a field pack. This time you can't follow the roads all the way anymore. Now it's more like...walk on the road as far as you can. Map says the checkpoint is at the top of this hill...hill is naturally covered in dense trees and bushes...out comes the parang (machete...super big knife..something like that). Chop, chop, whack, whack, all the way to the top.

Oh yes did I mention that it rained somewhat almost every day? Everything was perpetually muddy...really sucked.

Ah camo cream everyday...memories of BMT.

One of the many paths in tekong

Enemy on the right! FIRE!

This is on the last day...our "summary exercise". They told us to camoflage our helmets Pretty stupid considering the rest of our body has no vegetation on it whatsoever. I'm on the far left.

Sigh yet another rainy day...

Daytime isn't that bad...but NIGHT navigation really sucks especially when you're tromping around at 11-something and all you can see is a dim gray line that is the road that you're walking on. Even worse if all you do is stay on the same road for about 30 minutes and it never seems to end...because something like this happened:

Walk. walk. walk. Everything is some dull shade of gray. I'm the front guy, with another guy on my right and the section is walking two rows behind us. Road is straight, as far as you can see. walk. walk. walk. Damn i'm tired...hmm....straight road? So that means...if I close my eyes...*eyes close*. walk walk walk. *open eyes again*. hey! I'm still in position walking straight! alrighty then...*procede to walk on, closing eyes for a few seconds every 5 or so minutes*.

15 minutes go by...path starts to get wobbly even with eyes open (start bumping into the guy next to me for no apparent reason). Eyes start closing automatically even when i try to keep them open. but it's ok...the road is straight. On comes the oh-so-sleepy state of mind where you think you see the road even tho your eyes are actually closed most of the time...walk. walk. wobble. wobble. walk. THUNK.

All of a sudden there's no ground. I'm feel like I'm dropping and dropping. Open my eyes. I'm standing in a cheset-deep drain on the side of the road....what the heck...which is what precisely everyone else in the section is thinking as they saw me veer off 90 degrees from the rest of section and procede to walk straight into a drain. Hoo shit am I really that sleepy?!...Needless to say, I stayed awake for the rest of the journey.

As for section movement...ah nothing much. Just learn various ways to attack as a section. Run here, run there, instructor randomly tosses a thunderflash and says an enemy just attacked you. So you proceed to attack the fake enemy. We finished off the field camp with a route where ppl would fire blanks at your section and you had to react accordingly

Rappeling

There's this 4-story high wall in Pasi Lebar camp that we went to for the better half of the day to practice rappeling. We were supposed to do it 3 times...once in just plain uniform, again with webbing and rifle, and once more with FBO (full battle order)...just add an extra field pack. However, due to the numerous ppl who couldn't seem to get it right (ie. slip off the wall and hang upside-down and the like) we only got to do it twice. Or should I say, MOST got to do it twice except for my group because we were the last of the last. Sigh.

Nope, no harnesses, only ropes...very TIGHT ropes. Ouch ouch ouch!

See...the cause of all of our delays

Oh look another idiot Dunno what the heck he's doing...

...And look what happens to idiots!

Section Live Firing

This is what we had been training for during our section field camp. Here, we would be using live rounds and shooting at targets while moving as a section. Definitely dangerous if you don't watch where your rifle is pointing. However, the area is set up so that there are straight rows of stumps where you're supposed to run to, so unless you're a complete idiot, everyone should be running as one straight line to their stumps where you prone down and fire.

This is what i'm talking about. Straight rows of stumps all the way

Running, proning down, fire, run again, for a total of 50 meters shouldn't be so bad. Or so I thought until it started to rain about halfway through the exercise. It started with a drizzle. So the instructors herded everyone into the trees that surrounded the waiting area. Yea right, like that's going to give us protection. 5 minutes go by and you have a full fledged downpour. Take out your poncho, put it on, find out that the poncho is essentially crap because water goes straight through (it's only waterproof when there's nothing touching the underside of it. Stupid right?). Struggle for the next 15 minutes taking off ponchos and tying them to various trees in an effort to make some sort of shelter. It sorta works, except that everyone is drenched by that point in time so the only use it served was just to stop us from getting even colder. Sit for about two and a half hours in the stupid storm and feed the mosquitos (even now my hands and back are itching like mad). Eventually the rain died down, and we started again. Except that this time, in front of every stump is a huge puddle of water. Crap. So it'll be like run, jump into the puddle, stay there to fire for a while (the weapons got so muddy...i'm so glad our platoon didn't have to clean them...another platoon did ), get up, run again, splash and lie in another puddle. From the time that it rained to the time when we reached back to the barracks, you were absolutely wet, muddy, and cold. Boy did that suck...

In a few hours, this spot would be soaking wet.

And look who came to visit us... Brigadier General Tan, Commandant SAFTI. Wow...check out that star!

This was the day before yesterday.

Tomorrow...we do something similar, except it's flanking...i'm not sure how they're gonna do that (yes they -did- brief us on what's going to happen, except that with 3 and something hours of sleep, I sort of was half dozing ). However the good thing is that it ends in the evening before dinner

Hmmm...haven't heard from you guys in a while. Must be busy with finals or something...only two more weeks left till everyone's back!

Thought of the day (I'm sure anyone who's been in BMT knows this):
The most demoralizing thing in Tekong when you're out for several days in the field is to see airplanes fly over your head every 10 minutes. Imagine...all those people sitting up there enjoying their orange juice or what not....grrr..

Sunday, November 16, 2003

Sun, 16 Nov 2003 03:37:13 GMT

Ahh these once-a-month xanga updates are beginning to become a bad habit Here comes more from my collection of hundreds of photos taken during training.

Anyways, last week was our first outfield exercise in OCS. 3 days and 2 nights, they call it the Leadership Field Camp. Basically what we did was a mix between problem-solving missions on the first day (yea those team-building games everyone is familiar with except they just twist it a bit so it sounds more military-like) and compass navigation on the 2nd day.

Here's a typical mission: scaling a wall that has no footholds on the side that you start from.

River crossing via pathetically lashed inner tubes and jerry cans that are supposed to resemble a raft

Compass Navigation. By compass navigation I mean like they plop you in the middle of this large approx 3 km by 3 km square with a million various hills and paths and ask you to navigate around using only your compass and map to various checkpoints. It wasn't that bad, because we were mainly sticking to the roads (although there were quite a few that didn't exist on the map). One time we tried to be "smart" and cut through this area of trees rather than take the long road around, and we bumped into THIS:

Yes, if you haven't figured out by now, that's the tail of a rocket sticking out of the ground- and it wasn't just one, because as we looked carefully around we could see the whole area littered with them. As a matter of fact, we had walked into a 84mm Recoiless Rifle (an anti-tank rocket launcher) Live Firing Area! NOT a place you would want to be as any one of those rockets could have been a 'blind', meaning that they haven't exploded yet...which means trip over one of those and that may very well be the end of you... naturally we did a 'kebelakang puseng' (turn 180 degrees) and went back out the way we came in.

Here's a photo of the 84mm RR with all sorts of different ammo. We won't be able to fire this until Service Term 2, which should be around end of December to March (right now I'm in Service Term 1).

Here's some photos from navigation:

Oh no, a dead end after 15 minutes of walking! What to do?

Yes unofficial shortcuts are the best

7.62mm GPMG (General Purpose Machine Gun) bullet heads lying all over the ground on one of the live-firing knolls (not firing on that day, of course).

Mm...a nice treat as we reached the top of the final and highest knoll of our course.

Of course, what would be a field exercise without a 'happy hour' to come after it! Yes I'm somewhere back there, the one with the arm stretched up the highest- don't worry, I don't like beer... the can is just for show

Get a load of this!

Weapons Training

Leadership field camp and our 'happy hour' marked the end of our Tri-Service Term. From then on, we would be in Service Term 1. Basically this is the period where you learn all your weapons. In the course of 4 days, we learned how to use, strip, and assemble 4 different weapons:

The SAR 21

Haha the scope on this rifle is so cool Oh, and did I mention that it has a laser attached to it under the barrel?

The M203 GL (grenade launcher that is attached to the M-16)

The SAW (Section Automatic Weapon, aka the Ultimax 100 Mk III) - basically a light machine gun. We don't use the cylindrical drum magazines, just the normal M-16 ones.

And finally, the LAW (Light Anti-tank Weapon). Smaller than the 84mm RR mentioned before but still a bit heavy.

After one week of technical handling lessons, naturally we were able to fire them at the live firing range. The SAR 21 feels a lot more accurate than the M-16, and the SAW feels like there's almost no recoil at all. As for the LAW and the M203....it was just fun blowing stuff up with grenades and rockets

Wooo....look at all the grenades!

Introduction to Demolitions

The art of blowing stuff up. We were taught by this guy who has been in the business for 28 years, and has the tip of his last finger (the segment with the nail) missing due to an accident many years back...hardcore. Except that with his hokkien accent he can't pronounce "s" sounds (no not lisping...more like he doesn't say them at all if they come at the end of a word. So like he would pronounce "ambush" like "amboo". Lol, so hard not to crack up when he was talking! That, and we could barely understand half of what he was saying)

For our first lesson, we were taught how to set up a claymore anti-personnel mine and a tripwire flare (trip on a cord at night and it'll go off, blinding everyone in the area). We would be able to set off the flares at night, but the claymore mine would have to wait until later.

Me practicing on a dummy claymore mine. In the SAF, anything that is blue is for practice.

The tripwire flare assembly.

FIRE! Pretty impressive at night with no lights on Leaves you blinking with a huge patch of white in your eyes wherever you look. Haha we'll be using this in a future field camp to guard certain places.

Yesterday was the "OCS Challenge", basically a competition between the 9 wings of OCS. What you have to do is complete as many stations as you can to earn points under 2 hours. Stations include stuff like rock climbing, swimming, obstacle course, shooting range, etc. The stations are spread out all over the SAFTI MI camp as well as the old Pasi Lebar camp 2 km down the road. So basically if you want to get points you have to be running everywhere (with field pack on your shoulders, because you have to change clothes for different stations as well). Lucky me, I was put in charge of the fastest and fittest people in the entire Tango Wing. So we were supposed to be the best group of the 10 groups that represented Tango. Ah stress stress, but in the end we earned the most points of all the groups in my wing, so I guess everything worked out . In the end, they add up the points for all the wings and see who has the most. Sadly, our wing didn't win anything...as a matter of fact, I hear that we've NEVER won anything! Hmm...

Everyone dashing to get to their stations first at the starting line.

Ok that's basically all that's been going on in the last few weeks. Fun right? Yea, and very busy too... basically from the time you wake up you're running around on a super tight schedule until about 9 pm. No time for rest...ah so happy the weekend is here. Tomorrow I head off back to Pulau Tekong (noooo!!!) for a 4-day section field camp. Eck...more rain and mosquitos... wonderful.

Take care of yourselves, one more month till everyone is back!

Friday, October 24, 2003

Fri, 24 Oct 2003 15:10:36 GMT

I'm back! Haha sorry about not updating for like the last month Hm...where should I start? Ok lets start one month ago (yes, there are photos at the end, so that can be your reward for reading through yet another large block of text written by Justin)

After BMT we finally got a 1 week break as I have mentioned before. On the weekend of the last few days of that break, they gathered all of us at the Singapore Ferry Terminal (yes, all the way at Changi) to tell us of our posting - where we would go for either vocations (i.e. medic, driver) or advanced school (SISPEC and OCS). SISPEC is the place where they train sergeants, and OCS is the Officer Cadet School. For our batch, the intake for SISPEC was probably more than double of the intake for OCS, so the majority of my platoon ended up going there except for 10 ppl, including me, that went to OCS.

The training at OCS, however, is about like 4 to 5 months longer than SISPEC (i think), but that's ok...because we get about 300 dollars more than them per month when we start out

Basically on the first day that I went there I didn't know what to expect. OCS was the top school so I was pretty on edge in everything that I did. Out of the three wings (companies) Alpha, Sierra, and Tango, I got assigned to Tango wing. Hehe pretty lucky for me I think, because this was the exact same wing (and also platoon) that Jeremy Chang went to when he was in OCS, and he claims it's the most easygoing wing of the lot. A few unfortunate friends from BMT got assigned to Alpha wing...which is NOT a place you want to be, because it's the wing that trains the infantry and the instructors there are a little sadistic... justifying their actions such as waking up cadets in the middle of the night to do 1 hour of pushups, situps, running, and other senseless physical exercises, among other things, as "first-class training". Hahah first-class my butt...i'm so happy i'm not there

The reason why I seemed to have disappeared for the last month is because in OCS you get confined for the first 3 weeks, only letting you go home after the 3rd weekend. So yea, we were all pretty sick of the place when this Thursday finally came around and were all ecstatic about being able to book-out and get in touch with reality.

Within Tango Wing, I got assigned to platoon 3. So we call ourselves Tango 3, or sometimes "Mango Tree" for fun My instructors I think are the best of all the other platoons. They're all pretty nice, except some of them are fitness fanatics "One step closer..." they always say (closer to Arnold Schwarzneggar, that is) whenever we do sets of 50 pushups and crunches "just for fun". Btw, my section commander is HUGE! So scary...luckily he's a nice guy tho. I'll show you guys a picture of him later.

On the whole, I like the people and the atmosphere here. You can feel everyone is putting in their effort even in simple things like singing marching songs. I guess it's mainly because in OCS they've grabbed the top bunch from BMT, so everyone is pretty "garang", as they like to call it (zealous and enthusiastic). Being late is not much of a problem (thankfully) anymore. Also in OCS, they hand more responsibility over to you. Gone are the days in BMT where instructors had to walk with you wherever you went. Now, the instructors just pass the timetable to the Cadet Platoon Commanders and Cadet Platoon Sergeants, who are in charge of the platoon, and the cadets by themselves make sure they get to where they're supposed to on time. By some odd twist of luck, my BMT buddy from my bunk and I got made CPC and CPS respectively right from day one, so we have been in charge for a while now and only just recently handed our appointments over to someone else.

For the past few weeks, our schedule has been pretty much nothing except for lectures, lectures, and more lectures, with brief endurance training runs scattered throughout. The lectures range from military history to defence technology, to national education, and more. However, the lecturers are sometimes superbly boring and often you'd have to fight with "The Z Monster", 'nodding in agreement' while trying to do so

The more recent and rather interesting events that have happened include the Initiation Ceremony, Compass Navigation , and Chemical Warfare training. Ok I'll try to keep this short:

Initiation Ceremony

When you first come into OCS, they issue you this white lanyard (a braided cord) to wear around your arm during the first two weeks of training. This identifies you as new to OCS, which also means that if you do anything stupid, as new cadets will tend to do, you won't get any big punishment for it. The initation ceremony basically marks the point of time when you take off that lanyard. What will happen is that the senior cadets will come around early in the morning at about 4 something to wake up the entire wing. Then subsequently they'll make you change into all sorts of attire, like from PT attire to full battle order in 1 minute. Then they'll make you run all over the place doing stupid drills like arranging equipment at certain locations, doing pushups, situps, alternate leg thrusts, basically harassing you for a while before you proceed off to the Ceremony Hall to take off your lanyard. I got to be torch bearer (which costs a couple thousand dollars) and had to read out this scroll thing for the entire wing. I'll get a picture of it later.

Compass Navigation

Basically this taught you how to use a 300 dollar prismatic compass (yea so drop it, and you're screwed). It just so happened that our training ground is in this really steep and hilly terrain with almost no grass. To top it off, it had just rained in the morning, so mud was everywhere. This wasn't so bad during our daytime exercise where we had to find checkpoints using our compass, but at night, when we had another exercise, you could barely see a thing. It wasn't uncommon to step into nothingness where you once thought was ground and process to slip and slide down, getting yourself all muddy in the process. All in all, it was pretty fun tho, and surprisingly I didn't get lost

Chemical Warfare training

This is the most fresh in my mind because we did it only 2 days ago. Basically they train you how to act in a chemical environment. They issue you chemical suits, gas masks, gloves, and overboots for you to train with. You have to go through drills like putting on a mask properly in 9 seconds when the instructor says there is gas. The suit is really thick- it's like a sweatshirt and sweatpants worn on top of your t-shirt and shorts, and lucky for us, we got to train with it the entire day when the sun was shining brightly outside. Never-ending sweat...yeck.

Our final test of our skills was to dump us in this smoke chamber that would be filled with tear gas. We would have to perform some drills inside there and at the end, take off our mask and respond to stupid questions that the instructors asked us like "what's your name", "where do you live", and so on. Expose your face for about 10 seconds to that gas and it feels like its on fire. "as if someone rubbed wasabi all over it" as one of my friends described it . Your eyes tear, your nose runs, drool flows free....yea you get the picture Not very pleasant.

Ok yes too much text already! One good thing about OCS is that our Wing Commander allows us to bring in cameras to camp. And it just so happens that I'm on the multimedia team that's responsible for making video presentations at the end of each term (there's Tri-Service Term, Service Term 1, and Service Term 2). So I get permission to walk around taking pictures of training. Here's some of them:

OCS is within SAFTI MI (Singapore Armed Forces Training Institution Military Institution <-- haha pretty stupid isn't it? it was just SAFTI at first, but when they built this new camp they added the "MI" to it)

Yet another cadet falls victim to the "Z-monster"

The view from the 5 m platform when we did our "confidence jump". It looks really high from the edge and some ppl actually freaked out for a bit. When you jump it feels like a rollercoaster...falling and falling...stomach at your throat...splash!

Yeap one of the better photos that I got with my new Canon 300D digital camera

Our "Tomb Raider attire" as we call it. This is what we wear before we put on our chemical protection suits...looks pretty stupid right? But this guy from UWC apparently doesn't mind

One instructor demonstrating on me how to put on the mask

Taking a break during our day of training in our suits

Me attempting to do a Kenny from Southpark impersonation

Decontamination powder everywhere! By the time we left that training shed you would be able to leave footprints in the powder that on the ground

Hey look! You can even drink water through the masks via a tube! So cool

Just a little sign above the door to the smoke chamber

This is the smoke chamber. There's a burner in the middle of the room where the tear gas pellets are burnt. I just happened to be the absolute last group of the entire wing to enter this room, so all the smoke from previous groups was still in there. Woo, extra strong!

This is me running from the smoke chamber! The fence at the back is where everyone runs to and grabs onto while their skin, eyes, nose, and mouth recovers from the tear gas

Hrmm....yes very pleasant. I was wondering whether to put this up Ah yes the suffering face of an officer cadet.

Yeap this is my section after finally washing up. That's my section commander on the left...friggin huge arms, I dunno how he fits them into his uniform.

One last group pose in our ghetto suits before we return them for good.

This is one of the funniest guys in our platoon. Haha super extra, cuz he's actually from the Phillipines and doesn't need to do army...but chose to? I think...

Alright that's all I have for now. Promise to keep those photos coming...but till then.... all you guys have as much fun in college as I'm...err...having here (right). Cya later! Time to watch the much anticipated season premiere of Smallville that I downloaded!