Sunday, December 28, 2003

   So Christmas's over!! presents anyone? haha.. i benefitted from christmas 5 ten-dollar cash voucher at Swensens. all thanks to aunt elsie n uncle john. (aka godma n godpa) a nice grey INSTYLE collared, short sleeved shirt. i like it !! thanks aunt pui yee n uncle cheng hoo.. i liked it so much i wore it for christmas. haha... it's been a while since i last wore a collared shirt. (other than the SAF smart 4 that is...)

   Friday morning was spent sorting out the "Char Bee Hoon"(aka D-10 Cables) left over by the previous batch of trainees at the School of Signals. afternoon was spent in a practical exercise on laying cables n setting up the exchange on a switchboard. after we succeed to comms thru the laid cables, the sergeant began his fault-finding exercise. what he did was he messed things up by cuttingthe cable at certain parts, connected cables to the wrong places n the killer was when he cut the cable of hongyu's group. he cut then green taped it. on the surface it looked innocent but... heh heh.. damn... luckily i was the group setting up the exchange. so after setting up the exchange, i sat there picking up calls n looking at them slog..

   haha.. finally evening was supposed to be ippt training. but instead, we did only a one-round run then ended the exercise. this was becoz we had been granted "nights out" by our Course Commander(CC) 1WO SivaRaja. After a "chop chop" dinner n bath, we booked out for Lot One. hongyu, bryan n me walked together. shopping n eye balling. haha.. had an extra dinner at long john silver too!! there was a pasa malam beside the building n we walk thru it too... hongyu bought an original chinese game about the 3 kingdoms @ 15 bucks. then we went over to another shop n it was selling at an amazing 40 bucks!!! overall it was fun n tiring.

   upon reaching our bunk, we bathed in our now doored-bathroom. yes, it has a door now. unlike in bmtc. our toilet is high class sia.. newly renovated n we all thought we would really trade sleeping in the bunk for the toilet when we first came here.. fyi, my bunk will commence renovating april'04 where all the kingcoil beds are moving in. so, we had the worst of luck sia.

   saturday we had an exercise for us to try out laying cables across soil paths, metalled road, overhead crossing & culvert crossing. firstly, we had to dig a small trench for the cable. lay it across n in the trench n then cover it up n comms thru. upon success, we proceed to do the metalled road crossing. this took a rather short time for my group as i took initiative n lead my dettachment well. i was detachment IC for our group of 3 including Ng ShuWei & Foo WeiKwang(who was one of the few ppl i wanna avoid to be grouped with coz i find him irritating.)

   then we did the metalled road crossing. we had to lay the cable across the road. this is done by laying a stripe of soil diagonally across the road. next we lay the cable over the soil which acts as a cushion. finally covering it up again with another layer of soil. note that, the soil must conceal the cable fully n must withstand a kick by the sergeant without revealling the cable before you could pass the part of the exercise. the reason for it to be diagonally layed across the road is so that at any one time, there'll only be one tyre on the cable. the digging was okay i find. it's the transporting of the dug up soil from the hoe to the sandbag n then to the road which i find troublesome.

   then we did the overhead crossing. the cable was brought up one tree then across the road & then finally down the other tree. the height must satisfy the 6 metre requirement. due to inexperience, we were rather slow n often discovered mistakes only after committing them. worst part was forgetting to bring along our 2 TAs to comm through n test the laying of the cables. but thru the experience we did learn quite a bit. & i'm sure we'll do a much better job than this first try. culvert crossing's next.

   culvert crossing... hmmm... how should i start.. you noe beside roads there're always those pavement for ppl to walk on? then on those pavement there're those drain covers? the square ones? sometimes got gap in between for rainwater to drop & seep through. our CC opened up 2 of them. told us to carry a R-11 in our SBO attire which includes the webbing, helmet & m-16 rifle and get across from one opening to the other. simulating laying cables thru it.

   firstly to do culvert crossing, the water level's gotta be lower than waist level. then we basically duck-walked thru the culvert. the worst part was in the middle there's a drain rushing water in from the side into the one we're walking in. i was lucky i din wet myself much. only a bit on my right sleeve. i din even feel it. i guess i'm lucky as my sleeve wasn't wet so thoroughly that it'll seep n touch my hands. others like hongyu had his whole sleeve wet. haha.. but, it was a special n unique experience overall. i remember in my primary school days i did try to walk thru one of these drains too.. haha... but then i was so small n moving around was much easier.

   1200h we booked out! thought of going to visit jm at OCS coz his parents not visiting him. but, jonas din collect the tix from his parents n kp n dn either couldn't make it or wasn't "ON" in visiting jm. haiz. he'll be out next weekend. actually he's already veri lucky liao. coz when david was confined, he was confined entirely. while jm n kelvo were "confined" while there were public holidays in between. had lunch with apple, saw her home then went home to surf surf surf... haha.. i have so much to do online eh? lotsa reading lah... catch up on some news n also check my mails n blogs of others.. add testimonials for my friends on friendster too... too much to say lah.

   evening i went over to uncle john's place as usual wanting to catch the soccer action at nite only to be disappointed. coz due to the fact that they played on boxing day, the usual saturday fixtures were shifted to sunday. to add salt to my wound, they're showing newcastle vs blackburn at 9.55pm on sunday. yes! S-U-N-D-A-Y !! the day i had to book into Stagmont Camp at 2100h.... Grrrr..... ok, i'll stop here. updates will continue next wednesday! when it's new year's eve. here's looking forward to it now... cyaz
Blabbered bean @ 18:39 //