Amoy Quee

Okay, so it turns out that the college recently decided to pay for the awardees' meal at the Graduation cum Prize Presentation cum Silver Jubilee dinner. Some good news at last. Considering the fact that the book prize money'll probably barely cover the cost of the dinner, the sponsership is gladly welcomed. =) Maybe it's because no one wants to attend the event huh. Haha.

Watched A Few Good Men on Monday, with regards to the effective use of punishment - something that we'd come face to face with in the not-so-distant-future when we deal with our men. Being able to control them and to earn their respect would be one of the biggest challenges, besides being able to be highly proficient in our area of technical expertise of course. Especially since they'd be second-year, "seasoned" soldiers and we'd only be newly-graduated rookie sergeants with no FATEP or live firing experience. Oh well... We'll see. Not all of us'll be going to 20 SA. Staying back in Khatib with 23 SA, HQ SA or even KTSC sounds like more fun. For the time being at least. Heh.

Went over to what'll probably be our future home for the remaining 15 months of our NS life (as of December 2006) - the training areas of Amoy Quee for our first laying exercise. In which I must say our detachment didn't do exactly well. So much so as to us suffering rather badly, both physically and mentally. E.g. the abrasions on my back and side due to the combination of soil, wet long 4 and webbing all rubbing one another. Morale was at an all-time low, so much so we needed corrective training on... well this afternoon. The good news is, guess what? More of such things to come for the next two weeks! Yay. The best form of welfare is tough training as they say. Bah. Two more weeks and the worst'll be over.

But I have to add that despite all the muscle cramps and blood and toil and sweat and tears (okay I'm just exaggerating), sometimes, yeah just sometimes, the experience may have be worth it. Small isolated incidents count. Things like sitting (and sleeping) in the back of the 7-tonner during Cat 1 and talking cock with your mates, watching every other vehicle on the road trying their best to get out of the way of the six-gun, six 7 tonner convoy (simply because we're too big and too slow), and the buzz of civilian life that we're supposedly training to defend, enroute back to camp make it all worthwhile. I guess that's part of what they call the NS experience. And of course, there's much more of it to come. =)

Oh and did I mention that I almost got lost in VivoCity last Saturday. Yeah it was my first time but still, kinda embarassing not to be able to find the cinema. Kinda partially cut off from the outside world and most of the news that's happening in it. That's the effect of not being able to access the papers/TV, and solely focusing on eating good food everytime we go to town during night's off. For all you know we could be at war with our dear northen neighbour and we wouldn't have a clue about it. The only tell tale signs would be we (yes, the barely training arty specs) having to deploy the guns facing somewhere northwards of Singapore and suddenly finding ourselves dealing with live ammunition. Like huh, what's going on right. Well the focus and priority has to change man.

Okay kinda tired. Been talking cock for the whole entry man. Sleep now.