Sunday, March 28, 2004

   A-a-a-a-r-r-r-r-r-g-g-g-g-g-h-h-h-h-h-h........ !! as i try to stretch myself after my one hour afternoon nap. the previous night of guard duty i hadn't slept much. less than five hours in fact. the incredulous thing was that i had tried to restrict myself from sleeping! reluctantly, i had succumbed to the temptation of an afternoon nap. but still i set my handphone alarm clock for just an hour. no more no less.. i juz couldn't bear "wasting" my sunday away by sleeping. i always feel that that i have more worthwhile stuff to do...

   the past week's platoon ic was JiLin. this guy.. i just couldn't believe the desperado smoker he n alvin are.. for that puff, they're willing to do extra pumping etc.. always being fooled around like ... like... YES.. a FOOL!! Training was tough but the results reaped are so satisfying... My newest SOC timing (taken on Wed) was 8 minutes 44 seconds!! yes, i'm very happy with that score but i couldn't quite bring myself to believe it to be so. i had felt that i had gone slower in my first run down (on purpose though) and had felt really really shagged and walked pretty a lot in between stations.. but i believe my final run in was perhaps much better than my usual speed. my endurance had improved i guess.. i even had to baby-hug my SAR21 weapon all the way for the final run in coz the rifle sling was somehow entangled n had too small a gap for me to side sling it. in my haste, i had decided to baby-hug it all the for the run in so as not to waste too much time sorting out the rifle sling entanglement.

   feeling that i might have flunked coz of the numerous walking in between stations, i went to check my raw timing. 12 min 44 sec. being in detail 3, i have to minus the time delay of 2 minutes or 4 minutes for the delay i had to wait for the first two detail to go first. i did a quick mental calculation. 12:44 minus 4 min is 08:44... incredible!! i didn't believe i had done well.. so i thought that the interval in between details must have been a min for each detail which would mean 12:44 minus 2 min is 10:44... i failed! arrghhh.. i felt realli bad.

   it wasn't until platoon sergeant vincent had fooled me too over my timing before i knew i had pass the soc test well.. PS Vincent called my name from downstairs.. i answered n he chided me saying i had failed.. thinking i had known better, i asked whether i had failed by 44 seconds. he replied a yahlor... however, he and platoon sergeant called me again soon after to announced that i had realli did what i felt was impossible which was to clear the 9 minute barrier.. sergeant allen's impressed remark left me with much pride n joy!! heh.. i still cannot believe i did so.. haha.. thanks for everything, sergeants who have taught me well... (including a certain eerie sgt who insisted that i take off my gloves to do low rope..)

   we did 2 journal writing last week. i had let slip something which i might regret. penning my thoughts about camp, training etc ain't hard for me. afterall i do my whole weekly round-up on my blog too.. it's become a habit actually... having someone to listen to ur woes, ur thoughts is healthy too. no pent up feelings etc... like i said, my regret is that i fear to be named a PS pet. it's good to have a relationship throughout the 2 years with the PS of coz.. it's important n essential.. but it's not good to be isolated from the platoon too..

   An incident in the week which was pretty memorable was the 350 pushups we shared as a platoon one night after RO. We were given a very strict water parade check. PS wanted our water level to be at the rim. we all filled it to the brim. but the opening and closing and drill caused some spillage n he found 7 caught wanting. for every one person, we owe him 50 push ups. all half left down. the right marker in the first row would do his share of pushups... then pass on to the next person. it started off as each person 20. then when it reached eeping, he did 50. not wanting to be outdone, i also wanted to contribute 50 for the platoon. 49 was easy n perfect as i did my usual standard pushups. my 50th was a scare. i had been stuck! i couldn't get up. previously PS had warned that if we had miscounted or if one person had touch the ground, the whole thing would be restart from zero. eventually i did the 50th.. i was pretty stressed coz i couldn't imagine letting the whole platoon down.. Prasad who was after me miscounted the count n we had another shocker. prasad blamed it partially on me coz i had created a furore.. luckily PS oni backtracked the counter to 130. the whole platoon was half-left downed all this while and i was starting to sweat profusely as sweat droplets trickled down my chest drainage system.. haha.. eventually the 13 of us completed the 350 pushups as punishment for something we deemed overly extra.. but, there were the fun moments.. it'll be some experience.

   mighty long week ah.. saturday guard duty made it worse. lucky me was selected by the sergeant as fire piquet. main job was checking for the various contraband items brought into n outta camp by military personnels.. heh... for example, camera phone, camera, all forms of ROMs, pirated CDs, pornography etc... i was pretty relaxed in my searching though. i dun wanna touch n smell those stinky socks n clothes either. if it were a female personnel, then it would make things even worse. we juz let them go basically.. haha.. coz imagine if i had dug around n forked out a soiled bra? or worse still a dildo? hahahaha... that'll surely be the laughing stock of the guard room...

   I also had to do the flag lowering n flag raising. mind you, this is serious business.. once the flag touch the ground, 7 years Detention Barracks(DB) as punishment. An upside-down flag raised up is also 7 years DB. wrong flag on wrong pole is also 7 years DB. pressure cooker right? however the sergeant seemed more stressed up than me.. haha.. we did it fine though... ok after the 20 hours of guard duty was endured, i booked out in smart 4 and went to apple house. we had breakfast in her neighbourhood area. i had prata n she wantan mee.. then i went home surfed, check email, friendster, throw my clothes into the washing machine, played gba, chitchat on msn n icq, timed a nap and finally blogged.

   Haiz... forever so rushed. booking in soon liao.. so little time. i still dread army life.. haiz... LL lah... must look forward to better stuff like batallion long weekend, company long weekend, good friday long long weekend and maybe wishful hoping of a platoon long weekend and a section long weekend.. haha... ok,... here's looking forward to emart visiting next week n the unsuccessful sign on attempt by daniel. Ciaoz!
Blabbered bean @ 18:58 //

Sunday, March 21, 2004

   No time to write. hmm... went over to jm's after watching the movie, The Eye 2. Not scary la.. we guys could predict the parts where we are about to be shocked. But quite alright lor.. maybe next time i should bring apple to a cinema nearby where it's really less crowded... or maybe coz it was a sunday? hmmm... maybe next sunday... next sat i'll be doing guard duty so i can only come out on sunday. sad eh? LL suck thumb ah... :P

   The past week has been nothing much actually. but as usual lotsa push ups and lotsa abs training ah... lotsa pull up training too... i dread the caterpillar push up coz it realli is veri unhygenic. i hate it.. prasad is back n lotsa ppl are avoiding my bunk now.. haha.. he sure is not highly thought of.. haha.. slacker.. noisy to boot. oh ya, i juz finish my week as platoon IC too.. i didn't think much of it. seems pretty easy lor.. a bit more responsibility placed on me seemed better for me anyway. giving commands was easy too..

   platoon sergeant say he wants a new bike rebro guy to replace prasad who failed his course. the able ppl remains as me, eeping, choon yi.. the rest claim that they dunno how to ride bike even. however, i've stated that i dun want a bike license. i dun wanna drive a bike.. apple thinks it's dangerous n i ain't wanna do something considered dangerous by her... at least limit it to very seldom lah...

   i'm worried about the coming week's ippt test. we've done too little running of late. i'm afraid i won't be able to run below 9 min 44 seconds. my SBJ still sucks. super inconsistent. my personal best being 239cm. but that was way back before i was enlisted. since then i've been hitting 234 max in one guards. my chinups should hv improved. but i'm not sonfident of that either. the extra pumping had allowed me to do 10 chinups during 1 of the chinup regimes of the week. i did it oni once. could i repeat my feat? haha.. hopefully... i wanna get gold. i want it so much... my preeeciioooooussss..... *kekekekeke :D
Blabbered bean @ 19:57 //

Sunday, March 14, 2004

   Saturday is supposed to be the day of sun sun sun & more sun!! but what i saw when i stepped out of the mrt station at habour front was cloudy grey skies with a cooling breezy wind threathening a storm. This, after i had taken the trouble to wake up early in the morning at 0530h when i had slept at around 0200h, was NOT exactly what i had in mind.. nonetheless, as i've planned, i had my breakfast at around 0730h at the hawker center. had prata. the curry ain't good. Casuarina Road still rulez... haha..

   So after a loooong bout of waiting for the late-comers, which include sergeant allen, woo weiming, bingcheng and also frankie who went to the toilet to shit... arrgghh.. i hate to wait for late comers... to think i slept for onli 3 hours to get there on time... been let down again... i was so shagged from little sleep that i couldn't realli bring myself to read my new book, The Runaway Jury, on the bus. i juz wanna slack down there staring into thin air resting my body.. haha..

   Once i Sentosa, we took the one of those orangey buses to Siloso beach where we booked the beach volleyball court for 2 hours at steep prices of $10.50 an hour. we started off by playing beach volleyball in front of Rasa Sentosa. it was fun n i was one of the better players being a sporty person by nature even though i was playing volleyball or beach volleyball for the first time... heh... it sure was fun diving here n there willfully... haha.. so carefree n it feels real good to give up all worries n fling urself this way n then that way like that. haha

   Next we played caterpillar walk.. where our legs are tied to one another. we had 2 teams. team A n team B.. i was in team A. & my team won.. haha.. we were a bit lucky ah... coz we had started off slow.. much slower but we caught the momentum n overtook them. then one of the white tape securing my team mate's legs came loose. that wasted our time n we were overtaken again. luckily for us, team B also encountered the same fate when they were quite near the finishing line n we managed to edged them to win the game.

   Next game was wheel barrow. 2 person in the same group pair up. wheel barrow over a distance blind-folded n switch places at the end point back to the starting line before the next pair in the group continues. it was actually a draw game between the 2 teams. so sudden death. each team sent out a best pair out. eeping n ps vincent were our representatives. haha.. they beat timothy n choonyi. haha..

   Up next was Dog & Bone blind-folded. numbered 1 to 7. ps will call out a number. the number of each team will blind fold. then the rest of the group members will feed the guy with as much info as to how to go retrieve the volleyball placed by ps after they had blindfolded themselves. the way they keep tumbling over n failing to get the ball when they were so damn near to the ball is hilarious. we shouted our lungs out to give directions of coz... out of ten bouts, my team won the game 9-1.

   so after all these games, they "tekan" us by making us do leopard crawl, push-ups and situps on the beach. we were forced to enter the water too!! to think i didn't bring an extra underwear!!! haha... reluctantly i went in too... sergeant allen was buried alive by us. we even "made" his figure more voluptuous too!! haha!! :D and woo weiming was holding on to a sand-made dick motioning an obscenity. er hum.. guys, u noe what lah eh? haha... prize presentation for the winning team was next. prize money of 70 bucks for the team of 7. it was later split. ten bucks each.

   After a quick shower, we had a doubly quick sandwich lunch then "booked out".. haha.. i met apple for at plaza singapura. she was late but i'm rather used to that. gals late nvm. guys late kena punished.. haha.. it's like this one lah.. gotta get used to it.. anyway, it's not as though i mind. she's worth my wait i feel.. haha.. wanted to catch a movie actually but gave up the idea after we saw the queue. ended up wandering around the place shopping. n i got myself a sling bag. cheap ah... 15 bucks oni...

   went to my uncle's place around 6+ after sending her home.. watch half a match then sleep liao. oops.. running outta time!!!.. i'm running late for booking in... bye folks.. sunday stuff was mainly a gathering n soccer session with kp. jonas, jm n dn. nothin much.. cyaz next week..
Blabbered bean @ 20:46 //

Saturday, March 13, 2004

   Yay!! i'm out !! i'm out!! it's oni friday n i'm out of camp! it's been quite a week... monday was slack. i managed to finish reading my book(hide & Seek) which i started reading only on sunday morning in my travelling time to yew tee.. yes, i finished on monday. i amazed myself. and so u can imagine how much free time i had on monday...

   tuesday we had a 6km run with the obese batch of alpha coy. i sprinted with ps vincent n sgt allen from the start. we probably started too fast to catch our breaths.. it's been quite sometime since we last ran also. i was feeling the effects of the slack days last week. ps gave up running halfway thru.. i ran on. as i pushed myself harder for a sprint on the last 200m, the stitch i was having punctured me. the acute pain in my side was so painful i took about 5 minutes to recover.. in the end i ended up 5th. stupid me... shouldn't hv pushed myself that hard. i look back n think that it's oni but 200-300 metres left. y did i try something so foolish like dat? haiz. well,... i would do better next time...

   wednesday we started on our daily 100 pushups, 100 crunches & 1-hour run routine before breakfast. the guys are complaining that their bodies can't function without food in their bodies. but we struggled n endured thru the tough n strenuous supposed "Light" Body Fitness Training(LBFT). SMG of around 130+ pushups in the afternoon was more torture. haha..

   thursday wasn't a day or let off either. we were put thru the 100 pushups n 100 situps again. but the run they restrict to 2 km run together as a platoon. i escaped the running part coz i went to shit.. haha.. but i as PT IC was made to give timing to doing pushups. i was struggling hard myself. how to give proper timing? so sorry to the whole platoon for making them wait for me. part of the reason being i dun realli noe how to do a half f*** push up. anyway, another day endured. we had our deserved nights off of the week after completing painting of our walls. i went home as usual.

   friday is book out day. long weekend! but the usual 100 pushups n 100 crunches at my timing ensued. the run was 2 km n i clocked 8min 30seconds. fastest again. but i thought i should do better considering i have another 400 metres if this is compared to my 2.4km run timing. we did rifle cleaning n lotsa area cleaning. no soc for us. last min cancelled for us. lucky ah... 1.5km swimming at 1600h. due to time limitations, i oni did 1.4km.. no e-mart visit but we got to know about the mobile e-mart that visits one guards regularly every fortnight. ate lil' of the out ration dinner n rushed out for book out!

   got my book from apple. yeah, intend to finish reading The Runaway Jury before catching the movie. hope i can do it. oh yeah, next week i'm gonna be platoon ic. i volunteered coz there ain't much strength to report during this period of time where all the rebro ppl ain't around. saturday we're having an outing at sentosa n i'm still not asleep yet. i better go sleep now... shall update on happenings tomolo on sunday i think...
Blabbered bean @ 01:15 //

Sunday, March 07, 2004

   Just when I thought I had gotten used to life in One Guards, the schedule became very slack! haha.. It has been a really slack week for me. Reason being most of ppl from other platoons are all out on course. the company strength has dropped to about 2.5 platoon size. Full strength would be 5 platoons. And next week Scout platoon would go on course too!! They've been wearing FBO for a 2 km route march before every single meal.. must be really sickening. :P lucky me!! =)

   When so many important appointment holders like the company 2IC, OC, Scout PC, ATGM PC, Moltar PC, Pioneer PC are all out on course and our very own BSO just back from course, it seems we couldn't get a safety officer or safety rover to supervise the major events of a regular week.. haha.. thus, no SOC and IPPT test for the past week. Lotsa afternoon naps too!! haha... on a particular day, as i could remember, Eeping managed to sleep approximately 4 hours of the day away.. haha.. me? i didn't realli sleep much. i was busy reading "A Time To Kill". it's a veri nice book. i've never read so fast before. my progress was stunning myself!! i finished reading half the book in the past week in camp when i took a much longer time to read the first part of the book. heh...

   Yes!!i've completed painting my cupboard. it's black n white now!! newcastle colors rulez once again!! the new coat of paint on my dull cupboard certainly help me in bringing up my spirits.. yay!! and the satisfaction sure weighs in too course i did it all by myself. heh.. imagine the joy n excitement of a child who've just filled a blank page of his coloring book.. i wish i could somehow smuggle my digital camera in to snap some pix. JunYi's pink cupboard with flowers would be documented i'm sure!! yurks!! so girly for a man like him.. urgh.. utter disgrace...

   Saturday was peaceful with apple. had lunch out at a nearby coffeeshop. their western meal sux big time! dun bank on me buying from them again. then we did simple things at home. i made coffee. watched a vcd. surfed net together and chit-chatted. she played nintendo by herself too! haha... and yeah, i missed drinking coffee in camp coz the cookhouse doesn't make coffee in the morning for us. i made 2 cups for each of us. though it was a simple day, i thoroughly enjoyed my time with her.. sent her home around 6pm and made my way to uncle john's place.

   sunday morning started for me early. real early. i awoke at 0630h to shut my alarm on my handphone off. then i lazily went back to sleep. i was awoken abruptly by a call from kp. it was 0700h. i told him i was awake but i realized i couldn't possibly meet him on time at 0715h. awkwardly as i tried to think of something to say to delay the meeting time, i was happy to hear from him that he thinks we should meet around 0725h. hurriedly i brushed up and browsed through the newpaper. i didn't touched the pc ok? haha...i had to restrict myself a lil' though. n i din touch the sunday times either. i went out knowing i'll still be late for the 0725h meeting. Ooops... that's a trademark of mine. always late. i'm trying i'm trying ok?

   half packing my bagpack of a change of clothes, my discman, my new book "Hide And Seek", and sandals while walking to the bus stop proved too difficult and i surrendered by stopping a stairway away from the bus stop to re-organize my stuff. it had to happen!! it just had to happen!! Bus 159 came n left. i couldn't do anything but watched helplessly and thinking of the "if only"s .... Wrong decision again...

   Amazingly i managed to be so engrossed in my new book at the bus stop n on the next bus that came along that i missed my stop!!! it juz couldn't be my day.... even more amazingly i reached amk mrt station before kp. haha... feathers of the same flock together... kekkekekeke...

   after soccer at YewTee, we met darren's gf.. got a free ride from them to woodlands mrt. this is the first time i've seen dn's gf in face. she's decent, nice and friendly. lucky dude... heh... well, dn's constant telling us that she's quite small size n thin proved true.. haha.. oh yeah, n darren's driving need some brushing up n a tad more confidence. he's a snail on the expressway. constantly driving at 60-70 range speed. haha.. we had a good laugh at him.. but who knows? i could fare worse eh? haha... i ain't even got a license. :P

   kp n i alighted at causeway point. we shopped around n i had my lunch at BK. kp is considering getting GameBoy Advance SP too... that after Eeping got his on friday night during our nights off time. there i told u so... one guards is so slack that Eeping has to resort to buying Gameboy to play during our huge amount of time slacking in bunk... haha... 185 for the set n 70 for the game. total 255. nope not for me. i still have the feeling that gameboy is for kids... haha.. i'll rather get another book.

   yeah, that's all i'm gonna write. i missed playing cm. i'll try to play cm now... i heard this coming week is realli an even slacker week!! haha.. more joy... 3-4 nights off i heard.. haha.. hope it's true... now now... i wanna make a new cuppa coffee before starting on cm... heh.. good byee pals..
Blabbered bean @ 17:08 //