until i met this girl
who turned the tables around
she caught me by surprise
i never thought i'd be the one breaking down
i can't figure it out
sometimes i feel perhaps i might just do uni in sg instead of going abroad. even though the experience beckons but there's always going to be a little bit of inertia and all the "what ifs" in your mind. and of course the fact that studying locally'll mean that i wouldn't have to serve any scholarship bond (being tied down for 6 years doesn't seem like much initially, but it will probably seem like a lot once you're a fresh grad and staring the bond in its face). i've got the opportunity to do a double degree in social science and economics (dang i shoulda have put business management; i really can't foresee myself doing any more of that awful macroeconomic bullshit which i bumbled my way through in jc) in SMU. spanking new city campus and all, and i kind of like the vibe of the place. and SMU scholarships even have some kind of allowance, i've heard.
army market with ec yesterday, who was up in arms over the apparent disappearance of her ambush set. sierra's off for field camp from tomorrow, so she was understandably distraught when she realised that their section seemed to have misplaced the small gadget. "Aiyah I'll be confined till the end of service term la! How?" "Don't worry la! Ambush sets don't just disappear like that. You'll find it tomorrow when you book in!" "What happens if I find it after field camp?" "You'll find it TOMORROW la!" and so it went on and on and on and i bet you anything she'll find it later haha. pillioned on her bike to orchard after meeting up with yeeling and her boyfriend for all of ten minutes.
dinner yesterday was great- lots of laughter, tons of food, heaps of funny memories. not forgetting gs' unabashed showcase of her assets, which she never fails to do (i inadvertently remarked that they'd somehow increased in size, to which she was particularly elated). she kind of thrusts them in your face so you really have no choice, you see.
GS: (looking at her top) Hey I never realised that this top was low-cut!
Yours Truly: Well perhaps it wasn't low-cut before but maybe now it is because... because, uh, you know...
GS: (looking truly delighted) Oh really? (erupting into gleeful giggles)
so there you have it.
but a round table'd have been better because i could scarcely hear the people at the other end, and them us, so we ended up having two separate conversations going on at the same time. after dinner we adjourned to (where else?) lydia's favorite coffee place (which i fondly remember as the-place-with-twelve-dollar-flambe-coffee-and-who-the-hell-would-ever-pay-twelve-dollars-for-a-cup-of-ground-beans-and-water-with-a-stupid-blue-flame-on-top- well, perhaps lydia would, HAHA), TCC. so gs and i resorted to downing bacardi breezers from 7-11 (such cheapos, we are) and making monkey faces at the rest from the outside till we finished drinking. the TCC staff kept shooting us the oddest looks imaginable but they still gave us ice water with mint leaves when we returned which i thought was pretty nice of them.
i'm so
caught up
got me feelin' it
caught up
i'm losin' control
this girl's got a hold on me
Saturday, April 16, 2005
cpl bernard was so nice as to give us our photos collated from the entire length of our BMT. so i posted below some for your viewing pleasure. and hey if you left a comment on my tagboard i've replied below too.
when i look at the pics now it's damn shiok- like you've been there, done that. and it doesn't seem so awful like how it did at that time. but gosh some of it was fucking hell bad then.
try digging a trench for twelve hours straight with your PC breathing down your neck, your head spinning from the turn-out the night before. the stench of day-old sweat mingled with freshly-dug soil permeating the air around you but you don't give a shit because everyone smells like you too, going for a crap in the woods when you can't take it any longer. at that time you wonder how you could've done such an inanely stupid thing like actually volunteering to subject yourself to such duress. but when you think about it now it's one hell of an experience that i'm grateful i had the chance to go through. it just makes you that little bit more resilient.
after walking around in a dilemma for the past few weeks, i've bid farewell to the Army and crossed over to the Republic of Singapore Air Force as a Weapons Systems Officer(Air Defence Artillery). not pilot la huh sorry haha. but i do get to shoot them down, which is a mighty big thing in itself. moved from sierra to air wing on friday after a complex transfer procedure which i don't want to get started on. giving up Guards was a tough choice, not sure if i made the right decision. but i thought i ought to go for something i felt thoroughly passionate about, rather than just be motivated by prestige and the prospect of being the first female scholar in Guards. well perhaps there aren't any right or wrong decisions in life, it's just what you make of them.
anyway ADA is like army in the air force culture which is exactly what i've been looking for. damn siong from what i've heard- the pro term male cadets average 20-30 chinups by the time they commission. SOCs complete with sandbags in SBOs, chinup regimes and endurance runs! not forgetting trench digging and troop deployment 24/7! and of course field rations, E.C.'s Thai Noodle special which tastes exactly like what it looks, which is quite disconcerting especially since it's a squelchy mess. and my favorite dry dog butter-flavoured biscuits. oh and actually i've developed quite a fondness for those biscuits. i think i could eat them and be quite happy for the rest of my life. well basically WSO (ADA)s chiong suah, crap in the woods (my favourite) and do everything a typical Army soldier'd do. One thing, however, which I'm eternally grateful for: no Section Battle Drills. hahaha! we're not called the commandoes of the RSAF for nothing. the Green in the Blue! this is gonna be bloody fun man.
***
passerby>> i applied for the saf merit scholarship for women after my As. BMT and OCS are prerequisites for the scholarship board to evaluate you, besides your Alvl results and the usual criteria. but if you're signing on as a regular then go to the SAF career centre at CMPB in depot rd and check out the vocations and services open to you. there're 2 intakes of women officer cadet course (WOCC) BMT a year- once in jan, and the other in aug. i think you can make it for the aug one if you wanna apply now or something. BMT is 10weeks of hel... errr no, heaven. haha! i'm not sure about the women specialists BMT though. it's in tekong unlike WOCC BMT where you go straight to OCS.
jon>> haha nope as i mentioned above i'm not going to Guards. i say this with a tinge of regret because i know i would've pushed myself and made it through. but after thinking a whole lot i decided to pursue my passion in air defence and so i joined RSAF. no looking back now! haha. anyway ADA is just like army so i guess that's what i really like heh. btw how are you? you take care too man.
ncc girl>> *read my reply to passerby above first, it might help a little too.* during BMT i had both male and female instructors. let's see. my platoon comdr (PC) was male, assistant PC female. section instructor-wise we had both males and females. all officers. so there was a pretty good mix la. and we got tekan-ed by both, so don't worry about not having the opportunity to Knock it Down Twenty! their attitudes towards female cadets are pretty much the same. but one thing i must say is that they were brilliant instructors. not the sort who tell you to go and eat shit and die and make all sorts of unreasonable requests. they're strict and all but they were inspirational and caring at the same time and i think those are the hallmarks of a truly good officer.
number of pushups huh. wow i like this question. haha apparently there's a SAF directive that says that recruits/cadets cannot be made to do more than 20 pushups within a 10min timeframe or something like that. well anyway that's a non-existent rule in OCS. the most i've personally done at one go is 65 for dragging my shoes on the ground and somehow not hearing my APC telling me to drop 20, so she got damn pissed and started counting 21-22-23-24...-65 until i finally got her idea and dropped into pumping position. hahahaha but ya la that was quite funny. i guess it depends la. on how many mistakes you make. like during field pack inspection- 1mistake=10pushups. so if you have 10 mistakes (which is highly probable given the rigid inspection standards), you can go "permission to carry on, ma'am" and proceed to knock it down hundred. now you know why it makes you stronger. actually i've got a lot more stories just not much time now cos i've to start mugging for my air force exams haha. oh wow this reply could be a blog entry all by itself haha.
when i look at the pics now it's damn shiok- like you've been there, done that. and it doesn't seem so awful like how it did at that time. but gosh some of it was fucking hell bad then.
try digging a trench for twelve hours straight with your PC breathing down your neck, your head spinning from the turn-out the night before. the stench of day-old sweat mingled with freshly-dug soil permeating the air around you but you don't give a shit because everyone smells like you too, going for a crap in the woods when you can't take it any longer. at that time you wonder how you could've done such an inanely stupid thing like actually volunteering to subject yourself to such duress. but when you think about it now it's one hell of an experience that i'm grateful i had the chance to go through. it just makes you that little bit more resilient.
after walking around in a dilemma for the past few weeks, i've bid farewell to the Army and crossed over to the Republic of Singapore Air Force as a Weapons Systems Officer(Air Defence Artillery). not pilot la huh sorry haha. but i do get to shoot them down, which is a mighty big thing in itself. moved from sierra to air wing on friday after a complex transfer procedure which i don't want to get started on. giving up Guards was a tough choice, not sure if i made the right decision. but i thought i ought to go for something i felt thoroughly passionate about, rather than just be motivated by prestige and the prospect of being the first female scholar in Guards. well perhaps there aren't any right or wrong decisions in life, it's just what you make of them.
anyway ADA is like army in the air force culture which is exactly what i've been looking for. damn siong from what i've heard- the pro term male cadets average 20-30 chinups by the time they commission. SOCs complete with sandbags in SBOs, chinup regimes and endurance runs! not forgetting trench digging and troop deployment 24/7! and of course field rations, E.C.'s Thai Noodle special which tastes exactly like what it looks, which is quite disconcerting especially since it's a squelchy mess. and my favorite dry dog butter-flavoured biscuits. oh and actually i've developed quite a fondness for those biscuits. i think i could eat them and be quite happy for the rest of my life. well basically WSO (ADA)s chiong suah, crap in the woods (my favourite) and do everything a typical Army soldier'd do. One thing, however, which I'm eternally grateful for: no Section Battle Drills. hahaha! we're not called the commandoes of the RSAF for nothing. the Green in the Blue! this is gonna be bloody fun man.
***
passerby>> i applied for the saf merit scholarship for women after my As. BMT and OCS are prerequisites for the scholarship board to evaluate you, besides your Alvl results and the usual criteria. but if you're signing on as a regular then go to the SAF career centre at CMPB in depot rd and check out the vocations and services open to you. there're 2 intakes of women officer cadet course (WOCC) BMT a year- once in jan, and the other in aug. i think you can make it for the aug one if you wanna apply now or something. BMT is 10weeks of hel... errr no, heaven. haha! i'm not sure about the women specialists BMT though. it's in tekong unlike WOCC BMT where you go straight to OCS.
jon>> haha nope as i mentioned above i'm not going to Guards. i say this with a tinge of regret because i know i would've pushed myself and made it through. but after thinking a whole lot i decided to pursue my passion in air defence and so i joined RSAF. no looking back now! haha. anyway ADA is just like army so i guess that's what i really like heh. btw how are you? you take care too man.
ncc girl>> *read my reply to passerby above first, it might help a little too.* during BMT i had both male and female instructors. let's see. my platoon comdr (PC) was male, assistant PC female. section instructor-wise we had both males and females. all officers. so there was a pretty good mix la. and we got tekan-ed by both, so don't worry about not having the opportunity to Knock it Down Twenty! their attitudes towards female cadets are pretty much the same. but one thing i must say is that they were brilliant instructors. not the sort who tell you to go and eat shit and die and make all sorts of unreasonable requests. they're strict and all but they were inspirational and caring at the same time and i think those are the hallmarks of a truly good officer.
number of pushups huh. wow i like this question. haha apparently there's a SAF directive that says that recruits/cadets cannot be made to do more than 20 pushups within a 10min timeframe or something like that. well anyway that's a non-existent rule in OCS. the most i've personally done at one go is 65 for dragging my shoes on the ground and somehow not hearing my APC telling me to drop 20, so she got damn pissed and started counting 21-22-23-24...-65 until i finally got her idea and dropped into pumping position. hahahaha but ya la that was quite funny. i guess it depends la. on how many mistakes you make. like during field pack inspection- 1mistake=10pushups. so if you have 10 mistakes (which is highly probable given the rigid inspection standards), you can go "permission to carry on, ma'am" and proceed to knock it down hundred. now you know why it makes you stronger. actually i've got a lot more stories just not much time now cos i've to start mugging for my air force exams haha. oh wow this reply could be a blog entry all by itself haha.
Friday, April 08, 2005
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
in the sierra wing project room checking my mail and trying in vain to log in to my miw account. as far as i know, it isn't working yet. three days into service term in OCS army and it's been okay so far. i've been ingesting too much chocolate too, which isn't exactly the best thing to be doing. i really can't wait for friday when i'll get to book out! haven't inhaled civilian air in ages and ages, haven't used any money save for buying a foolscap pad at the OCS gift shop, haven't been able to sleep on my bed in a long while. we had a 6km endurance run this morning which wasn't half bad save for the "stairway to heaven", a rather inappropriately-named flight of steps, the top of which you can't see from the bottom. anyway i almost perished there but luckily i didn't which is why i'm still typing this now. sometimes i wonder why i stayed in army haha GUARDS some more i'm just going to keel over and faint now hahaha.
after the run we had signals lecture. for an awfully long time, only breaking for lunch. hope i don't fail my signals prac on thurs! that's one vocation i'll never consider, immediately after WSO C3. well i guess it's better than sitting in a training shed, SBO and all, having technical handling lessons with the M203 or SAW or some other vaguely incomprehensible weapon. but that'll all be happening next week so i better enjoy my relatively sedentary lifestyle while it lasts. oh well.
after the run we had signals lecture. for an awfully long time, only breaking for lunch. hope i don't fail my signals prac on thurs! that's one vocation i'll never consider, immediately after WSO C3. well i guess it's better than sitting in a training shed, SBO and all, having technical handling lessons with the M203 or SAW or some other vaguely incomprehensible weapon. but that'll all be happening next week so i better enjoy my relatively sedentary lifestyle while it lasts. oh well.
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