I realised I haven't been blogging lately. Somehow, I just don't feel like blogging anymore. Every week is the same old thing over and over again, so theres not much to talk about. What other than army do I have in my life right now? Nothing!. All I can talk about is army.

Anyway, After that block leave 3 weeks ago, Our Field Pioneer course finally started. Training got tougher and more tiring, but at least its in less intensity, so we have time to rest, unlike the Combat Engineer course before this. Our 2 weeks that just passed was quite ok, last week was plain slack, but somehow that was supposed to be rest time to prepare for our next few weeks. Next week is the start of a chain of field camps back to back that stretches all the way to christmas. Not a pleasant thought, rather, it just makes me feel really unmotivated to do anything at all.
However, after that, our field pioneer course will end, followed by another 7 days block leave. I guess thats something to look forward to.

Finally, my first phase of my course is drawing to an end. CEC field camp just ended last week, and I was exhausted like never before. 2 days 2 nights of field camp, which we revised everything we learned in camp through practical, and god, all of them needs lots of brute strength and guts.
The field camp was basically launching of class 30, etc etc, the stuff we learned in training, plus some deployment drills, which, all in all, i found was ok. What was horrible was that the sun was so blazing hot on the first day, I got sent to the MO for high fever (39 degrees). Scary. But my fever went down fast, so I went back to the field camp.
The only other thing that I totally hated was the 2nd morning, when we didnt sleep the whole night and we spent it doing a beach obstacle, setting up constantina wire on low tide in knee deep mud. Yes. KNEE DEEP. We could barely walk man, much less to say double up from place to place. Everyone was tired, everyone didnt feel like moving fast, so we got punished. On top of falling down trying to get our boots unstuck every single step, some were more sway and got pumped. in the mud. - except, they couldnt do push ups cuz the mud were already near to their face even with arms outstretched.
After lots of shouting, punishment, and mud, we finally pulled through the whole event and packed up the whole place to go back to camp. The whole day was dedicated to washing of stores, then keeping them, and finally, dinner and BOOK OUT. it was so unexpected, though I heard rumors from the status personnel who did not go field camp. And so, I got to book out on wednesday night.

I'm booking in this wednesday. 1 week break =)

Gosh, i've been so busy training on the weekdays that catching up with my typical stuff on the weekends made me forget all about my blog.
3rd week of training just ended, i'm halfway through the first stage of my super long course, and damn i'm tired.
week 1 was basically spent mastering the M16; we had lots of technical handling and practice then finally the real live firing on the saturday. Half day bookout followed that, and then week 2 came.
Week 2 was lots of outfield work: Launching of a "mat" called a class 30 to allow tanks to go over muddy roads, building a small bridge with just 6-8 people for tanks to cross rivers, and finally doing camo-ing of vehicles and stationary objects. Ended the week with some constantina wire work - the con wire was damn sharp, so much so that brushing against it give me a huge cut on my thumb.

Got silver for my IPPT, which won me a extra day off. Booked out thursday afternoon (supposed to be friday), and wow, it did feel good to have multi day bookouts for once in a long long time. What I basically did these few days was:
start playing world of warcraft (on friday)
visit the school + watch GI Joe (the show was quite decent) + attend renee's recital after that. (friday)
Go out shopping with family (saturday)
Run safra bay run (sunday)

The rest of the time was, of course, spent playing WoW. Man its damn addictive =D
I was so damn addicted I forgot the time and now its nearly book in time. blah!

Finally, days of funpacking are over. like, really, over.
Initially, funpacking was ok, was not boring, since everyone was new to it and all that, but as the days dragged on, and everyone kept doing the same thing everyday, it got pretty draggy. Packing those funpacks is something I won't wanna do again in a hurry, since its pretty useless and tedious. you sit there for the whole day doing assembly line work, end of day, your back is going to ache like mad.

Thursday last week was the last day of packing, and boy, everyone was rushing at 125%! Probably even more. Normal days, we need 4 production lines grinding at full speed to get 7k done by about 4-5pm, and wednesday last week, we did 11k by 10+pm. However, thursday everyone went into "bookout gear" since we were given a half day bookout that night, so everyone packed like mad and finished by 12+pm. That was indeed crazy =D

Anyway, ITS ALL OVER!!! wahahaha!

To the main topic: NDP.
As expected, we had a even crazier crowd this week, with 27k people watching. I missed most of the show, and got to watch only 75% of the fireworks at the end, which was a pity. Anyway, rolling back to the start of the day...
Lucky for me, I was selected to be the "bread party", which is this group of few people who goes down to sunshine bakeries and pack a few thousand sunshine breads (the long one with cream inside, and it is sugar butter this week) into boxes while the rest goes down to marina bay to carry barricades and all that. Since its the last time everyone's doing it (again), we finished 1 hour early and had a long canteen break.
When we reached marina bay, the security there was crazy. We had to bypass 3 security checkpoints before the bus could get into the road beside the stadium. Everyone unloaded about half the boxes (10000 bread in total) and passed them through the scanners before bringing them to each of the sectors. Had lunch, then we loafed around for quite a while before we had to do predumping again.

Predumping this week is just as crazy. Basically it means placing VIP funpacks on the red seats on the stadium in as random an order as possible. At 1pm, this was not a good time to be under the sun too.

Following which, we waited till 3+pm when the crowd finally came, and we gave out the fun packs as usual. AND, as usual, there were quite a number of people who complained on their colour and wanted a change, but we kept firm on the rule and did not change for them.
Ran into Cheryl and her family while giving out the funpacks! ahha. she happened to be wearing our red odac shirt, which i totally forgot about =P

Distribution ended at around 7, we packed up, ate dinner, and cleaned up the area, so we were done at around 8:30. That gave us just enough time to run straight to the end of the stadium just to catch the last of the fireworks, which was better than nothing. Our sector helped the other sector clean up after that, then we got dismissed and booked out at 9+.

Sigh, gonna book back in so soooon. =(

And training's finally gonna start. I really got lots of mixed feelings about it though.

First time helping out at an actual NDP show, though its still just the preview. I didn't help out the last few weeks cuz I was doing sentry duty, so I booked out in the morning while everyone else stayed to give out funpacks for the show.

Anyway, this time I didn't get to do sentry duty, so I helped out on the NDP show. After an entire week of really tiresome packing of funpacks, which I am really really very sick of, I finally get to give them out to the public.

Sat morning was spent getting all the tables, barricades, and funpacks ready to be distributed, then we slacked for a bit, and then prepped some NDP stuff for the public to take and go, followed by lunch, and then more slacking. The morning wasn't very interesting; the better parts were in the afternoon.

After lunch, we had to move some of the funpacks to the VIP seats, which are the red ones in the center of the stadium for those who have seen it. I ended up staying there and arranging the bags to make them look more in random order rather than have clusters of the same color. Was under the sun for over an hour, but funnily enough, I wasn't feeling uncomfortably hot. It was hot, yes, but I just felt hot and sweaty and thats it, I didn't mind staying under the sun nor did I feel like taking shelter to take a rest. Guess its just the endurance training army gave me that toughened me up a bit =D.

At around 4+, the crowd started coming, and almost everyone was stationed at the tents outside the stadium to give out the funpacks. And gosh, when the audience come, they come in huge hordes, and there was a super large queue outside the stadium. Those who come early are of course those kiasu ones, and gosh, they make a lot of noise when we don't give them the funpacks they want. We were not supposed to let them choose the colors, but to just pick any and give.
Quite a few kept arguing on why they can't choose the colours they want, and ended up hogging the line. And they can get damn irritating. blah, typical kiasu singaporeans.
After a while, the people that came just took the colors given to them and left. I guess it were just the kiasu ones that make noise when they don't get the colors they want, the rest just say in passing the ones they want, and don't say anything much if they don't get them.

At around 7pm, there were finally no more latecomers, so we all took a break and ate dinner, cleaned up, then slacked. Luckily for everyone, today's crowd stopped early, so my PC came and brought us all up to watch the final part of the show, which was (i think) around the climax. This year's NDP was more unique, and I think many people would agree with me on that. Previous years consisted of mainly showing of army tanks, gun salutes, marching soldiers, formations, flybys, and lots and lots of army stuff. This year they actually gave a live demo of the defusing of a bomb, as well as terrorist threats. Of course, there were still the standard NDP stuff. I had the chance to watch that from the stadium when placing the funpacks in the afternoon; the evening climax we watched had lots of singing of the NDP theme song, tons and tons of awesome fireworks, some nice lightshows, which all mixed well together IMO, and finally ended with the national pledge and anthem.

I realised that life has been so monotonous these few weeks that I'm having less and less to talk about. Its the exact same every week:
Monday: Pack funpacks
Tuesday: Pack funpacks
Wednesday: pack funpacks
Thursday: Pack funpacks
Friday: Do sentry at floating stadium
Saturday: Rest at home, check email, play EVE for a bit, go out.
Sunday: Slack at home, book in.

I have absolutely no commitments, and I don't feel like committing to anything right now. Not until I get through my field pioneer course end of the year.

A few hours left to book in. I just feel so...sick of this. While life in camp is quite ok, its the feeling of booking in and getting back to all that regimentation and discipline that makes me feel all depressed on sundays.