Sunday, October 30, 2005 -

Finally!!! I am out of tekong for my mega-kick-ass 4 day holiday from monday till thursday!!! Goddamn ...The 3 past weeks have been SUPER-SIONG.....although I can't go into detail about the specifics of the training we do....cos must repect the SAF's code of silence....anyway Three weeks ago I had very high fever,last week I had a two day live range where I was confined on saturday and only allowed to book out and book back in camp on a sunday and this week my saturday was burned again and I could only book out on sunday evening after doing my standard obstacle course,grenade test,strength training and marching drills with my rifle.....BUT FINALLY I HAVE REACHED MY 4 DAY DEEPAVALI/HARI RAYA HOLIDAY!!......freaking hell....I have thought about nothing else but my holiday for this entire two weeks......I did'nt even care if they put us to pure hell for the past few weeks ...I just did whatever shit they wanted me to...as long as I could have my 4 day holidays......to be able to have this few days holidays is like the freaking most wonderful and amazing thing to happen to me in a long time....

I tell ya.....nowadays my entire mood revolves entirely around which day I get to book out.......its true man...its the only thing I think about and yearn for every week....just to get out of the island for a few hours.......if I heard that my precious saturdays were burned because of extra training....my morale straight away drops past freezing point and I'll be like super-sian for the entire week......if I heard that we can book out as per usual or if we have a super-long holiday like this.......I dun even care if they make me crawl on my belly across mud puddles, hide inside a goddamn swamp with grass stuffed all over my uniform and my face caked in camouflage cream, wear long sleeves unform,helmet and carry my 3kg rifle with a 2 kg SBO( imagine a male bra) strapped onto my waist under the hot sun EVERY day..like I did for the past two weeks...I'll just do it................but I'm not alone man....you can practically see the entire company morale go down when we hear that our weekends get burned.....and My saturdays HAVE been burned for two consecutive weeks already and it'll be three next week because my entire weekend will be burned cos my my field camp is next week......and I have a gut feeling I will be confined again if my 3 day leadersip SIT test in the jungle falls on the weekend......then it'll be 4 consecutive saturdays gone liao.......and I'll tell you..it SUCKS big time!!

Plus!!..........if the compulsory confinement is not enough....we can get confined and have our saturdays taken away on a regular basis over the smallest and most insignificant things.......it is so damn easy to have your weekend ripped from you because of a small mistake or wat.....like everytime we collect our rifle, we have to sign off on a piece of paper......the box size we are supposed to sign in is the size of a panadol pill(not the round ones the longer ones) and if we sign out of the box or touch the line of the box or if our signature looks different from our previous signature...POOF!!There goes your goddamn weekend......plus they want us to sign super-fast...like 50 people must sign and collect their fifle withing 1.30 mins or 2 mins...and then if our signature looks different we get into trouble.....also if you send your rifle without closing your dust cover( the side of the rifle where the bullet shells shoot out) or if you forget to sign the book-in or book-out book when you're on MC.....you'll also have to do 24 hour guard duty on a sunday or saturday and kiss your family or social time good bye.......every week at least a handful of 5-8 people get confined over all this kinda small things...its even worse when our company is in charge of guarding the island on the weekends...then we have to send like 18 people from our company to be guards and that's when our seargents and superiors get super particular about things and scrutinize every little thing to the finest detail in order to catch unwilling victims to do guard duty........every goddamn day I am so worried that I will sign out of the box or sign differently because everyday at 5.45 am in the morning I have to to collect my rifle and ever night at ard 8-9pm I have to send my rifle back...so theres like two chances a day for seven days to get confined for gaurd duty....woo-freaking-hoo

So anyway to recap the past few weeks.....three weeks ago like I said I kanna very high fever.....my temperature was 38.8 degrees....and 39-40 degrees is when you start getting fits or permanent brain-damage.........super sian.....my fever always hit its max temperature during the nights....and during the nights whenever you go medical centre...they die die dun want to let you get attend c status and go home and rest....they just chuck you in the sick bay till the next day and confine you in there until your temperature drops.......my verdict after visiting the medical centre? NEVER EVER get sick while in tekong.....you'll suffer...

The medical centre is open 24/7 but once after 5.30pm, which is the regular "closing time"............not only is the service super slow but they will never let you leave the island unless your fever is so high that it's potentially fatal.......I went there wtice, the first day my fever was like 38.2 degrees...so I went there...there were like 8 patients inside....and all 8 had already seen the medical officer....so I went in and the queue was at 56 on the electronic number board.....after filling up 3 different forms I got my queue number and it was 57.......and I thought this was gonna be a short wait.......little did I know that I needed to wait1 hr 15 mins for the board to jump one number from 56 to 57........and after the 5 min check up, I had to wait another 1 hr30mins for them to dispense my medicine and give me my medical status form.......but I was not the worst....a guy said he waited from 5.40pm to collect his medidcine and he got his medidcine at 9.40 pm!!...............wah lau....so I got 3 days of light duty and my medicine and went back.....the next night my fever shot up to 38.8 degrees...which as like pretty high fever....I though maybe this time can have chance to go home....no such luck.....they immediately sent me to the sick bay and put me on drips!!....

This is where it gets interesting.......for the drip ..the medics wanted to stuff a 5cm needle that was pretty damn thick into my my lower arm but he could'nt find my vein.....so he took a rubber glove and tied it onto my upper arm and asked me to squueze until my veins revealed themselves....so I did so and he inserted the 5 cm needed inside.....then after that I felt like my arm was under alot of pressure like It was gona explode.......my blood was flowing out instead of the glucose flowing in.....turned out that dumbass medic did'nt remove the rubber glove from my arm and he just turned,laughed and said"oops"..........wow....and after that he said that the drip was faulty.....so he had to remove the drip tube and connect a new one and he had to freaking re-tape the tube on my hand....I dunno what tape he used but it was super-sticky and when he pull it off chunks of my arm hair came off.....I had 4 pieces of tape on my arm...so you do the math...hhahaha.......and after he saw my face contorted in pain...he looked at me and said"free Brazillian wax man!"........goddamn......and the next day the medical officer came to take my temperature again to make sure my fever was going down......I had just checked my temp before he came in and it was till ard the 38.3-4 range but he was gonna confine me in the sick bayuntil my temp went below 38 degrees...and that day was my book-out day....so I had to get out of there ASAP.......so when he stuck his thermometer in my mouth....i allowed the temperature to go up to like 37.5 degrees and then i stuck the tip of my tongue on the tip of the thermometer to prevent the temp reading from being accurate and going up........and FINALLY he let me outta the place!!

The only upside about being sick that week was getting more time with my family.....cos i booked out on saturday afternoon n had to book back in on sunday at 7.00pm which means that every sunday.....I had to always get myself ready by 5.30pm and prepare to head back into the island but since I was still sick on sunday ....I went to see a private doctor and he gave me a 2 days MC inclusive of sunday...so I only had to book in on monday night........I was so sick but so damn happy that I did'nt have to go back in on sunday......I just layed on the sofa and watch ShangHai knights with my parents that sunday night without having to think about booking back into tekong that day............felt really good to get some extra time out....

Wenjun also fell sick around the same time and I was talking to her after I booked in on monday....ard tuesday or wednesday......hahha...and her voice was damn funny.....her laughter completely changed from her usual laughter into some weird raspy,stuttery laughter...hahhaha.......it was almost as bad as her "gollum" voice that she has whenever anyone call her in the morning and she just woke up .......but I think she was already getting better when I last spoke to her...well like I said its better to be sick before exams then be sick during the exam period itself......getting sick during exams is probably as bad as getting sick in tekong....hhahhah

The main event during the week I booked back into camp was my live range......two days of shooting real ammo with our m-16 rifle.....it is madatory for EVERYONE to pass live range if he wants to pass out from tekong......if you fail you life range, you have to redo your 9 weeks BMT all over again........and before we had our actual live range we had to do four days of practice shooting for IMT which started the saturday when I was sick, where we wore full uniform,SBO and helmet and shot computer targets in an air-con using computerised m-16s....so whenever we shoot, the way we grip our gun,the accuracy, the amount of centimetres we are off target,how close our shots are are all tabulated and processed by computers...........so we had to pass our computer test before they allowed us to even touch real ammo.....the first day I went for the IMT computerised shooting was horrible...like I said on saturday we were booking out at 12pm after we did our IMT from 7.00 am to 11.00am.....so I was just discharged from the medical centre and had to wear full uniform with helmet and everything and rush to the IMT centre even though I was like about to black out....I tell you....my shooting was so horrible that day that I was so afraid I would flunk the test......my head was super-hot,I was getting giddy from wearing helmet and my vision was completely blurry even without my specs......I really could'nt see the target in front of me and align my weapon at the centre of it by looking through this tiny ass pinhole on my rifle...........the target on the screen away from us was probably the size of a keyboard button from the distance we were away from it....I was so completely dazed that I could'nt see anything.....it was horrrible, I was sweating cold sweat,my eyes were blurry and tearing from the sweat dripping tinto my eyes and I was giddy as hell.......so chiar lat until the instructor had to remove my helmet and stroke my head.....when he removed my helmet and asked me to look at the target again......I could'nt see nuts,it was so blur....so i thought my specs dropped off when I removed my helmet...I was like telling the instructor:"Sir...I can't see anything...I think I lost my specs...can you help me to find it?!".........he looked at meand said:"But....You're wearing your specs."............diao......completely dazed man.......needless to say my first IMT was a disaster and for that weekend I was so worried that maybe I was really cock-eyed and a horrrible shot and might have to redo my 9 weeks BMT.....

LUCKILY....that happened to be a one-off incident and the next time I went for IMT.....I did pretty damn well......passed the computer test and went for my live range........which was a thousand times more stressful then IMT......

My live range last week fell on two days...friday and saturday....bad enough that my saturday was burned but .....but the live range was super tiring and stressful.......friday was the practice and saturday was the actual live range test.... for friday we had to wake up at 5 am in the morning instead of the usual 5.30am and be at the live range ground by 6.30am.......and the entire company finished the first day practice at the live range at 3 am on saturday......we went back slept for two hours and woke up at 5am for our actual live range test......so for the two days of live range(48 hrs) I managed to sleep for a grand total of 4 hrs .......that's not the worse part.......ok so the sleeping hours are practically non-existent,the microwavable meals we get at the live range are horrible, we had to sit and squueze on wooden benches in a zinc-roofed waiting area for more then 20 hrs a day to await our turn to shoot( everyone shot about 8-10 times)......and there coackroaches and insects and dirt all over the floor that we could sit or lie on....but those are small problems compared to the stress of live range.......

I'm serious...I never felt so stressed in my life as I am in army....in school,when I was studying....sure it was stressful to study for exams and try not to have to repeat any modules and stuff.....but the stress in NS is on a whole different level......what's the worst case scenario if we flunk an exam paper?.....worst case scenario is that we have to retake the module........but for things in the army like live range.....worst case scenario....you could be jailed in a military jail for 7 years or get your face blown off because of problems with your m-16 like a chamber explosion.......

let's take a look at some of the consequences for screwing up at live range.....for the small stuff: we have to sign on a piece of paper everytime we collect our gun magazine with the live ammo for shooting.....sign ot of the box and we get 20 pumping.....which is no problem.........if you misfire......you get 4 mths of jail time in a detention barrack (misfire don't mean shooting someone...misfire is more simple....just like for e.g: we have snapping targets which are targets which stay up for 4 seconds and you have to shoot them within 4 seconds otherwise they go down and you don't get any points.......if it happens that you fire a second after the target snaps down...that's a misfire...you get 4 mths in a military jail...if you so happen to unload two rounds on a same target by accident...that's misfiring...4 mths too), if you lose your rifle or if so happens that any ammunition or empty bullet shells are found on you you get 7 years jail time in the detention barrack and for the most stressful part: all our m-16s and our ammo magazines have been used by many,many,many batches of recruits so they have alot of problems at times........so sometimes when you shoot you get IA( which means either the bullet does not load properly,two bullets load at the same time, the bullet is stuck or something)......and an IA could sometimes(although rarely) result in a chamber explosion especially if the explosive tip of the bullet goes off........personally at the practice and actual test alone I kanna 6-7 times IA.....one time my freaking bullet was bent and my seargent had to remove it cos he said it might result in a chamber explosion....and since your face is very close to the chamber cos you need to take aim when you fire........heads are gonna literally roll if there is a chamber explosion........goddamn......the level of stress if really way high.....in school if you screw up,at the end of the day you can still go home....in the army,sometimes if you screw up.......you just might leave the island in a body bag............casualties are rare......but Definitely not non-existent...I try not to think about it......otherwise You just won't dare to do anything at all.....maybe 1 in 1000 kanna this kinda fatal accidents.....so the odds ain't that bad.....although misfiring is much more likely to happen.....a handful of people misfired at the live range and Our officer in charge told them to either choose between getting charged and doing jailtime for 4 mths or be prepared to burn their weekends all the way until they POP from tekong......I'm just thankful its over......although next up I got my freaking Live grenade test.....hahhahah.......

But overall I really enjoyed the shooting part...minus all the stress-related factors.......feeling the recoil of the gun hit your shoulders everytime you squeeze the trigger, the bullet striking the target, the smell of gunpowder, the huge bang.........my shooting was okay lar......13/16 bullets hit the target for my day shoot and for my night shoot where the visibility is super low and we only have these blur,flashing lights to shoot at....my average was like 11-12/16.........not bad....No marksman....but not bad....I'm just glad I din flunk the damn test...

So anyways let's talk about my Buddy in camp..........yup.Idiot.Numbskull.Doofus.Dumbass dun even begin to cover how chiar lat he is. He is the MOST hated guy in the platoon.Bar None.I've made my dislike for him pretty clear to all my friends but in camp I dun wanna bad mouth him at all,whatever it is,he's assigned to me as my buddy and so I don't wanna like talk bad about him, I just keep my comments to myself.........well I probably dun need to kepp my comments to myself since the entire platoon is coming to me and telling me what a complete dumbass he is. People are actually walking up to me and telling me how F*cked up he is and I'm gonna be in trouble in field camp.........imagine people in my platoon that I have not spoken more then 5 mins for are appraoching me to complain about him....I counted 14-15 people coming up to me this week not counting my entire section of 12 people who really dislike him to the core........everytime he opens his mouth people just wanna shut him up, people all over my platoon of 50 people shake their heads everytime they pass him, there are even people who insult him openly.......there's this guy who is standing beside my buddy when we collect or send our rifles...we have two rows,my row sign and then collect the rifle,his row collect the rifle before signing......so he stood like 10 cm away from my buddy only...he turned his head,saw my buddy and proclaimed loudly.."Wah Lau that C*** b** face is back ar?!"...............I really dunno what to say about him...

Remeber I said he looked like a neanthredal man? the missing link between ape and man?.....you thought I was joking?I din make a peep about how I thought he looked like in camp....but there are these two guys who came up to me and asked:"Do you wanna see fred flinstone?" and I said:"wth you're talking abt?"......they said:"You buddy lar....he look like a cave man!!"...........the martian manhunter forehead and brow, the jutting chin, the fact that his nose is touching his upper lip really sometimes make me wonder whether being vegetarian like him will make a normal human devole a few evolutionary cycles..........but to be honest I could'nt give a damn about his looks........it dun matter as long as he does what he must do and don't gimme so much problems......but unforetunately he is probably the most problematic guy in the platoon........he performed the worst in the entire platoon for his IPPT fitness test, he constantly screws up and gets guard duty, he is always moving slow and falling in late, he is constantly distracted, he freaking SLEEP and eat biscuits in front of my seargent while my seargent is explaining to ask how to use an m-16 rifle properly,he is super defensive and sensitive...........he is bringing down the whole platoon with his behavior and the platoon really hate him for it.............sometimes they are downright hostile man......it'll be slightly better if he was just slow and dumb and blur but willing to accept what others tell him....but he is super defensive and sensitive and he just can't take anybody telling him off and he is completely resistant to making any changes to improve himself......

The smallest things seem to be like such a big problem for him....case in pont:Peeing is a simple normal everyday routine you don't think twice about.....but for him its a big problem.......do you know he can wake up piss 4-5 times a night every night?He wakes up at 2-3 am and pees every night............and guess wat? since in my upcoming fieldcamp everytime you need to go to the toilet,you need to ask your buddy along.........he says he wants me to wake up everyday at 2-3am for 7 days and accompany him to the goddamn pee hole in the jungle to pee........I told him its impossible....field camp is one of the most goddamn tiring thing in BMT......everyday you'll be crawling in mud,sleeping with insects training like hell and he wants me to wake up every night at 2-3 am and expect me to wake up at 5.30 am after that? ...I told him as buddies we should indeed help each other but I was willing to compromise...I would follow him to the toilet at 2-3am for half of the duration field camp(or every alternate days)...and the other half he'll have to settle himself with a zip lock bag.....no way can even the fittest goddamn coomando sleep only 3-4 hrs every night and do jungle training everyday........I told him I will collapse one fine day during field camp if he wants me to follow him every nite for the 7 days......it is just beyond my physical capabilities to do so and still be able to tahan the training for 7 days.........So I was willing to compromise but he die die want me to follow him 7 days...so I told him take it or leave it....I told him that I needed to constantly look out for him because he always screws up and I would'nt be able to do so if I could'nt even take care of myself...........and he was so stressed that he could'nt pee 3-4 times a night during field camp.......my god...what is he a goddamn baby? he's like 21 years old and he still can't control his bladder?............... so he was stressed an entire day because of peeing.............if peeing can be a major problem and difficulty for him...I dunno what else he wun find difficult to do.........haiz

Seriously man.....I never met anyone like him.....sometimes I wonder why I always kanna teamed with this kinda people...why do I always have to do more then my alloted workload no matter whether I am in school or the army.....goddamit.....Maybe I was a freeloader in my previous life....hell maybe I was YS or Andre in my previous life and now I gotta pay the price...hhhaha..

Some more this week I have to keep providing free counselling for him.........have to have private talks with him about how to reach a compromise on his peeing situation and to console him cos the entire platoon hates him......wah lau he already broke down and cried three times this week....first time cos my section mates always just tell him off whenever he says anything cos he never says anything of value.....second time cos he said the whole platoon hates him( cos he is always slow at doin things,defensive,always doing things wrongly and differently from others,rude to one of our platoon's nicest seargents....the list goes on..) and third time cos he finally realized how badly he is doing......cos he got the worst results for Napfa in the entire platoon of 50 people....failed every station except sit up.......haiz and even though I'm fed up with him I still have to keep counselling him......goddamn lor during our live range firing, he did so many mistakes and was shouted and scolded so many times that he told me:" If I really can't take it anymore I am gonna put a bullet in my head!"...........damn man that was some scary shit...especially since that day we were using live ammunition all the way.....I'm afraid one of this days he is gonna just lose it and unload a few bullets into my ass.....goddamn lor even he he do funny things to himself..I will also get punished cos of the buddy system..........like for e.g if he goes mad...I will be interogated and punished cos his my buddy and I never detected or reported any signs of him going mad.....wah lau nowadays everyday he is complaining about how much he hates the platoon,how much the platoon hates him and how much he hates himself for being such a dumbo....everyday lor.......sian man......he is so defensive and infelxible that no matter what people tell him or advise him..he wun listen and he'll just stick to his own thinking and make no compromises at all.....How to help someone who won't help himself........I just freaking WISH i have a semi-normal person for a buddy.....I dun even ask for a normal person...just Semi-normal will do!!!........hahah.....

Anyways enough about that fool...I still have to go back and face him once my holidays is over......I'm SOOOOOOOO looking forward to that.....1 more mth and I'll be rid of him....1 more freaking mth......haiz I really think that I'm in a world of trouble for my field camp....

So I was saying this week was damn siong.......I racked up a list of injuries and a decent set of results for all my test....did well for my grenade practical test and my camoflage and concealment test(where we had to stuff grass all over our uniform,cover our face in camo cream and just hide and blend in this jungle/swamp area and my officer is pretty happy wbout my napfa test results.....as for the injuries let's take a look at what momentoes this week training left me with.....

1.) I have a blister wound on my hand the size of a one cent coin on my palm....we had to do this monkey bar station at the standard obstacle course area and this monkey bar is different from normal monkey bars cos the direction of the bars is different.....first quarter of the monkey bar is like a normal monkey bar and then midway through the direction of the bar is sideways then the 3/4 g is like a normal monkey bar again and finally the direction of the bar changes again......so anyways i had to do it three times for practice....which is no problem....but little did I know that after I did it the second tim...I kanna instant blister on my palm and when I did the bar for a third time a whole piece of my flesh came off....and a see this super raw hole in my palm with like liquid dripping out constantly......lucyk thing it healed before my napfa test or no way can I pass my pull-up...

2.) Both sides of my inner thighs near my groin are are swollen and i've been walking like a duck for two days....because this week we have to keep leopard crawling here and there (where we lie flat on our stomach and use our elbow and legs to crawl frontwards).....and the underwar keeps chaffing on my inner thighs.....so because f the friction both sides of my inner thinghs hurt like freaking hell.......its getting better now though..

3) I'm pooping blood.Nope I'm not joking.........I dun't have some crazy ass piles on my ass or anything but as I mentioned before I go to toilet once every 5 days or so......because goddamn it.....the toilet is always so goddamn packed with like 20 people waiting for their turn and the smell is just horrible...plus if you get a toilet where somebody just had diarhorrea...they leave some souvenirs that make my stomach turn.....so I just usually hold my poop in for days and go to the toilet when its not peak hours and I dun have to breathe in second-hand fart gas...........seriously I'm not particular about cleanliness...I can sleep on dusty floors with roaches and flies and whatever, I can wear a uniform for seven goddamn days until my uniform smells like ammonia, I can crawl in puddles of mud and lie down in a swamp full with ankle deep mud......but I just can't can't poop in a toilet filled with gallons of farts

So anyways one day I go to the toilet after abstaining from pooping for 5-6 days and It was so difficult to poop that I think I burst a blood vessel or I kanna some sort of wound in my ass cos I was like forcing so hard.......so that was when I found out that I was bleeding from my ass.....next few times it got worse...the worst one was when the amount of blood on the toilet paper was as much as the blood you'll shed if you scrapped your knee....just a huge bloodstain man.......so I got damn scared and decided to force myself to poop everyday.......so nowadays instead of using my platoon toilet I have to run to the first floor toilet(where there is very little people) or I run all the way to the next block and use the toilet for the seargents and officers..........luckily I think the wound has healed and all has been fine for many days...

Who knew that going into the army would give a man temporary PMS....hahhaha....PMS from the Ass.........but looks like Its gonna come one more time next week cos of my 7 day field camp......nope....I don't think I'll be pooping much for those 7 days.....if at all.......I'm gonna need a box of Whispers ultra dry or something by the time my field camp ends....ahhahaha

So anyways next week is my field camp...so I'll be cut off from civilization for an entire week and go through some of the most tiring training ever......finish only on the 12th of november....I dun even know how can a person tahan 24 hrs in a jungle......its sian enough to spend 24 hrs in the comfort of your own home....but 7 days in a jungle........wow.......gonna be tough times ahead......and with the kind of buddy I have....its gonna be Catastrophic times ahead...hahha

I think I'm just gonna enjoy my 4 day holidays to the max.......its just the calm before the storm.......alright gonna watch my Gladiator special edition vcd and my 1960 Batman tv movie.......I'm sure I'll be filled with some pretty memorable stories by the time my field camp ends.....hahaha....the girls' exams finish on the 8th of Nov...hope all of them do well.......hope all my friends anjoy their deepavali and Hari Raya and hope I survive my field camp in one piece...hahha.......

6:11 PM