5 Kiwi Cans Later

That's the number of kiwi cans I have used up, out of the 3 issued from BMT, 1 from E-mart and an extra large tin from Thailand given by my parents, since enlistment day. I guess they have accurately calculated that each can would last about up to 3 months. After all, each can lasted for a course of about 9 weeks long each: BMT and BSLC (Actually its called foundation term, but what the hell I prefer the old terms like SISPEC rather than SCS, and ASLC rather than Pro Term) All the kiwi was used up mainly by myself, with some used by buddies or fellow section mates on some occasion.

I've also found out that one large soap bottle of Lifebuoy can last me a year, from the way I bathe.

Info titbits aside, for all those not in the loop as to what I'm doing to serve the country, I'm now in ASLC, relegated to being an infanteer (Wails of despair ensues, hurhur) and training to be an infantry sergeant.

Army life aside, can't say much has been going on. At around August last year I bought SC2, pre-ordered (Bad mistake). Took some time to relish the campaign, haven't got into competitive play, reason being too humji (LOL, scared to ruin W:L ration on Bnet profile.. Lame but yeah I gotta step out of this shell and just whack, unfortunately I'm not doing that still) Heh, guess you guys would know which race I'd pick to play.

A brief history in terms of serial numbers:

W4302, W191. Through Basics, We Excel!

M2214. MR60. With Pride, We Lead!

G2306, GR49. With Pride, We Lead! (Again, Lol.. Wished it were Advance & Overcome)

5SIR. Silent, Deadly, Swift. (Apparently the motto was ripped off from some US military unit lol)

In 5SIR I didn't get any permanent weapons assigned to me so meh..

On a sidenote: Since JC I've degraded in morals.. No urge for punctuality, no fear. Nothing..

041011

Its been a good 3 months since the last blogpost and I guess for now things seem to look better for me. I managed to get my driving license on the first try, and my IELTs results came out 8 out of 9, though I bet I could have gotten a 9 if not for the writing and speaking component. Not one for creative speaking or writing. That kinda sums up the whole of August, these 2 landmark events. A freak accident occurred during that month that countered the increase on my personal happiness scale but I'll bring that up on another day perhaps.

For the month of September I spent the first half of the month in Kranji Camp, for my Company Marksman Course (CMC), basically a dissected Sniper course that made us half-fucked snipers. It was quite an eye-opening course, the 2nd course ever in my NS stint. It was a short 2 week course that involved basic technical handling and just pure shooting. No tactics involved or any sort of other military procedures or manoeuvres. Just pure shooting. I estimate shooting about up to nearly s$800 worth of 7.62MM LAPUA match grade rounds, one being around s$2 or 1 euro, according to the trainers there. The course was rather carefree, reveille at 0530 and leaving for the range at 0630 to shoot till about 1500 to 1600 and then having dinner. That was the rough timeline for each day of the course. We had nights out after that, usually and I would go home if time permitted. All in all time spent there was great, bonded with my guys somewhat and we got to learn a new weapon. Met some new and interesting people too; People from 1GDS, 1SIR, 2SIR, 4SIR and ADF.

Me Now, 270711

As of late I've been experiencing heavy bouts of army blues. I guess I'd better properly define what "army blues" is to me before carrying on. It strikes me as a total lack of motivation to do anything after transitting to civilian life upon booking out. Apart from that it also afflicts oneself with a very overpowering sense of loss. I mainly attribute it to the lack of time or too much time out in the civilian world. As a result the person affected doesn't know what to do with his time or doesn't feel like doing anything with the time in his hands.

It has affected me in a sense that I have lost the fire to even play games. I'm just trawling the web for nuggets of interesting information that would pique my curiosity: say an upcoming game or interesting new technology, entertainment that would bring a smile to my face or finding the name of a song that eludes me.

All the extra work and duties has piled upon me, making me seem if I am busy when I'm actually not (I don't do much during the week, except for the duties which consume my weekends and ranges. Only take my men for meals and do menial tasks). I haven't the time to meet anyone at all, save for those online. Even those online I don't address, except for one or two playing games.

Looking back now, its been nearly 3 months since I saw anyone apart from my circle of army friends. Nor have I done anything of note within this timespan. I feel so useless at this point of writing, seeing that people have ambitions and ideals to fuel their lives on. I only have 2 short term goals at the moment: IELTS results and the TP.

PS. I find my previous blogposts summarising my army experience thus far horrible, disjointed walls of text with very little connective and transitionary vocaulary. Sigh

PariLima

As of this post, I realise that I've been doing my time in 5SIR for nearly 7 months. 7 months since graduating from SCS on the 17th of December 2010. Wow, it sure does feel short. This span of 7 months can be broken down into 3 phases: UIP, PTP and BMT. Now I'm going through AIT, of which I'll summarise in the near future. Whew, what a load of acronyms just to represent 7 months of passage.

UIP stands for Unit Induction Programme. I must admit, ours was quite special compared to other units. Upon graduating from SCS and receiving the rank, we had no idea how we would be valued, treated and employed as junior commanders, or rather commanders at the lowest level who have the most interaction with the men. It was then made out to us that for all the work we have earned, it had placed us into a rut, were we placed into any other unit apart from 5SIR. Apparently, other unit's SOP for their UIP was to show the incoming specialists who was boss, what the unit expects from them and what they should do. They did it in ways like making the new specs knock it down in front of the men, throwing them into a field camp immediately upon reporting to the new unit and overall just treating them like shit. (Mostly hearsay from 1SIR and various comments from other people)

I felt that for our UIP, it was rather structured. The command team explained what their expectations and thing they would do to reach these expectations and how we would work with them to achieve these objectives. Then we had a month of lull time whereby we just woke up to do some PT and clear up the battalion. (The previous intake had left the entire camp in shambles for us, the new guys, to clear up. imagine a group of about 100 odd commanders, without any men under them to clean up the situation left behind and to start anew)

We had a field camp following this, that was supposed to last a week but only took about four or five odd days at Tekong (Went back there like twice already, wow! The first instance of course being this UIP) in which the command team used to evaluate our standards and to shape it into a standardised battalion model. We then had a section-level challenge to bond together, called the V-Trail (V being the numeral for 5, the number of our battalion) where we did numerous skills-at-arms challenges. If I remember it consisted of doing a 6km run within 36 minutes at the SanYongKong SITEST site. This was followed by changing from PT to FBO and making a 4km march to BMTC School 4, where we had 5 challenges: Combined SOC, Section-level PT Challenge (150 pullups, 500 situps, 500 pushups), a 50 MCQ paper based on the IBOS (Infantry Book of Standards), Weapons Technical Handling and a Claymore/Dipole setup station. Upon completion of the 5 stations we had to march back 4km back to the SITEST site where the fastest section wins. The field camp ended with a bang: McChickens and Canadian Pizza, prize presentation to the winners of the V-Trail (I think $200 dollars "BlackHawk!" branded backpacks from US each to the members of the winning section) and a formal presentation welcoming us to the 5SIR family, where we received the 5SIR belt and the 3rd Div formation patch. That was how they introduced the battalion's work ethic: Fast In and Fast Out (FIFO), work hard and play hard. This explains all the unexpected and lavish rewards like the food and prizes.

After which we had a mini block leave period and then we came back to receive our "Posting Order" to our companies. I think it was around the middle to end of January 2011. I found out that I was posted to Alpha Company, which kinda disappointed me (I wanted to be in Battalion HQ, out of this chiongsua business as my peers by this time of army life seemed to have mellowed out while for me no outlet was in sight...) What uplifted me was that I was given a temporary appointment of Marksmen 2IC in the company, of which I heard I would learn to use 2 sniper rifles which gladdened me by a bit. However on the same day which we received our posting, I was informed that I, along with 2 others from Alpha would be attached out immediately to Support Company. These 2 sudden changes made things quite surreal, and I was quite upset as I felt I was getting accustomed to being in Alpha, due to the nature of our UIP, where the people around me were mostly Alpha-bound and I felt slightly bonded to them. So I was ripped away, a vestige of Alpha, implanted into Delta (Support Company renamed). I did feel a sense of being unwanted from Alpha, because of my disposition (As usual I was a quiet observer who smiled and went along with things. Perhaps I was deemed to not have command potential. Which was good, since I was rather an unwilling commander and they seemed to have picked it up, I felt.)

And so, the first few weeks of February were spent cleaning up Delta Company. It was quite a shock, as I came to realise that all 4 companies in the battalion (A to D) were sorting out their own. It felt funny that previously when we were united in UIP, we were split up to perform different duties in our respective companies. From cleaning up and moving Alpha's accomodations, we were now moving Delta's (Felt used at this point). While doing all this we were reminded that our men would be coming in roughly a month's time. Time soon flew and before we knew it, it was 3 days to the arrival of our men. It was exciting to realise that we would have people under our command, yet trepidation lay ahead in what we were to do. We suddenly realised that, Hey, just how the heck do I control them? Would they be all gangsterly and disobedient? Our training in the institute totally did not prepare us in any way as how to deal with them.

Somehow we dealt with this and managed to normalise it into our daily routine. 2 months passed and PTP ended. We realised that the men were obedient, save a few bad eggs. They would be friendly and maybe talk a little, push the system and try to climb over our heads but that was it. A little punishment doled out (Sadly, not by me. I am considered quite slack hurhur) sorted things out. There were some people who were compulsive liars, some firestarters, crazy mental people and druggies even. By PTP's end we had weeded some and posted them out. Then we had BMT which by now we were used to. More or less the same as PTP except the training tempo was higher with more lessons. the 2 months for BMT passed moderately quick, and soon enough I was back in Alpha, experiencing a transitional culture shock from the shift in management in Delta to Alpha.

In hindsight, I felt my time in Delta was quite a good one. I enjoyed the management there. I didn't really gel with my men, as I didn't see the need to and I found them quite screwed up. Admittedly, I went through motions taking them men, just to gain progress. As long as the standards were met and my skin wasn't in hot soup, all was fine. I enjoyed the time in Delta due to the presence of my fellow peers. The community there was great and people there were cooperative. To summarise, we were all like-minded commanders somehow placed together to bring the men through PTP and BMT. I felt sad upon leaving and my time there is a definite indelible mark in my NS life.

This sorts of summarises the time period form January 2011 to June 2011. I'll continue on to AIT after I have completed it.

Turning Straight White to Bent Black

I shall continue where i left off, being posted from BSLC to ASLC, or rather Foundation term to Infantry Professional term. This was one of the lowest points of serving NS, as I did not want to be an infantryman. I had preferred something more cushier (Who wouldn't?) like Signals or Artillery. Especially knowing that from this point on the remaining time in army would be either really crap (Going to a unit and chionging all the way), or monotonous (Sent to Tekong to do 5 batches of BMT). As I said in the post prior, I felt I got floored, then got curb stomped in the head when I found out a group of 50 other SCTs made it to become combat engineers and a portion would end up being 35 SCE specialists.

Dejected, I dragged my stuff from our old company line to our newer one. The feeling was weird as for the first time, I was moving from one point in camp to another to stay in. One would normally move out of the camp to another to live in, after all. On the bright side, the cookhouse was much nearer to us, compared to being the furthest company line away from the cookhouse. This was the 3rd time I've been through such a change. Having everything in your life completely change, in terms of changing in command and the people around you, still gets to me. I was introduced to our new PC and PWO (PS but they made it snazzy in SCS). The once bustling PLC was now like a ghost town, as only ASLC people occupied the place. Out of the 12 company lines, only 3 were staffed for ASLC. The 3 companies from A to M would rotate to do their own ASLC stint. From Mike, I ended up at Golf.

ASLC to me was rather turbulent at the beginning. As you know, I don't adapt to change very well. I can still remember the feeling of moving into the 'new' bunk, and seeing 5 unfamiliar G Coy BSLC turned ASLC SCTs who previously slept in this bunk in their foundation term. I didn't really talk to them for the first 2 weeks. I remember sticking to the other 7 Mike guys. In the first place they didn't really say hi anyway, IIRC. We also had this 5km run which eventually progressed to 10km near the end of the course. Finally there was the requirement of passing the old SOC, getting below 10mins (A requirement for first-year soldiers). The SOC requirement caused me to have Remedial Training, further sinking my morale. In the end after 3 RT sessions I made it, getting 9mins 37 seconds. Not too bad, not the best and I had to work hard as 9mins 30secs was what a 2nd year soldier had to get to pass SOC. Thankfully, for better or worse, they changed the SOC to the IOC. Its also tiring but I don't know, haven't done the proper full run. Apart from that, we had the usual BSLC style of going out into the field everyday and coming back at night. We also had a 5 day 4 night field camp out, except it was mission based. We transited from urban to conventional warfare I think. Besides that we also had range for GPMG and basic explosives. In ASLC, the LSM and LPS had a heavier role which I didn't relish the thought of doing. I ended up LPS once, thankfully on a low key week. My PC was known to have a terrible moodswing and temper, especially so if Liverpool lost. I can remember the few occasions where he will give a pretty loud outburst and everyone in the coyline would stop what they are doing, and stare at the unfortunate person at the receiving end of his tirade. You could hear a pin drop lest for his shouting.

The final highlight of ASLC was the overseas exercise in Taiwan. It seemed distant at the start of the course, frighteningly scary at the end of the course as we neared the day we would fly to Taiwan and unnervingly surreal over there. I found it crazy that I would be standing on foreign soil, holding a weapon and executing manouevres like plastic toy soldiers. Of the 18 days there, 10 were spent on outfield (10 days in a row, don't know how I did it), 3 for navigation, 3 for R&R and 2 in camp (Wtf right?). Near the end of the exercise there, I had an ND and was given 14 days SOL, which I served miserably in Combined Arms Term. Basically I didn't get to go home after my Taiwan trip. So it felt like 5 weeks away from home.

CAT was quite fun in a sense, not counting the SOL punishment. Met my BSLC peers again and also had a fun time just fooling around. We practiced for our Graduation Parade and then after the real GP was done, everyone went home while I said goodbye to my parents and waited for posting. I received my posting and to my dismay, it was 5SIR. Previously, it was made known to us that 1SIR was one of the places we could get sent to. They chose the top 30% of our cohort of infantry specialists, so I was quite relieved. I felt that I was in the clear, and could get sent to Tekong, which was the best place I could ever be in, other than chionging in a unit. For the 3rd time in my army life, I was devastated yet again... The only comfort I had was the new rank and pay, though it still wasn't much.

This closes the training phase of my army life. I'll go on to talk about unit life in future posts.

Passing the Halfway Mark

It has been some time since being in the army and lo and behold! I've just passed my first year. I shall try to summarize what happenedin that timespan meanwhile.

BMT was a entirely fresh, new experience for me. Upon receiving my enlistment letter I was pretty hyped up to say the least. For some reason, I didn't dread going into the service at all. Perhaps because of the 2 month delay that I was so enthusiastic about picking up my bag and going. Of course, I wasn't THAT on the ball or crazy enough to push for OCS. I just wanted to do my time and return to some sort of level of equal footing so that I could be on par with my family and friends who had enlisted earlier than me. I went in with almost no expectations, really. Gotta thank everyone around me, especially my brother, I&G and Joseph for not "spoiling" anything about the army and making everything a real first experience with no prior background information to help me with.

I breezed through the 2 weeks adjustment period with relatively higher morale compared to others. My mentality then was "Yeah, I'm gonna benefit from this training physically. Hope to leave looking more buff than before." I could remember the first few days of in processing being very weird, on a totally foreign level. Just not used to all the new guys and the procedures to be done. Uniformed group sort of prepared me for this mentally, and I also found reprieve in the comforts of my bunk. When they started PT, I was struggling a little. Can remember how doing the first lesson, on warming up, could leave me with body aches! That was how weak we were I suppose. Always wondered if the gym sessions I had back in JC with the other guys helped me in any way in the army. I was lucky to be posted to Whiskey Coy, with Joel. The time there was quite great, the staff there facilitating our BMT didn't make it too harsh nor too easy. Although some outsiders would say otherwise, I don't know. All the tekan sessions and field camp, along with SITEST was mentally straining. Can remember countless times holding positions and breathing raggedly, waiting for the inevitable end to occur. When I left BMT though, I didn't really feel like a soldier. I didn't really know how our army would fight the enemy but I just knew things on the individual level. Apart from that, I managed to survive the other PT sessions which made me, to a certain degree, fitter. Heck my BMT version of me would probably own my ass right now. On parting, being in an enhanced leadership batch, we were forced to choose yes to being a commander. Little did I know how much this decision would bring me.. Someone opposite my shellscrape in field camp, an Air Force sign-on, passed a comment while we were digging our shellscrapes that I looked like a sergeant.

To my horror, I found out I was posted to SCS. I was quite shocked that I re-entered my details to have a look at the posting again. I felt that I didn't make the cut as a specialist. I was quiet in BMT and didn't show much initiative. Some of my friends then said that somehow, I just did things right and made it. Sort of a built-in sense of responsibility that made sure I did things right, which killed me. I had wanted to join my brother at 35 SCE but this was not to be. This posting also meant I had to go from east to west, to Pasir Laba Camp. In resignation I accepted this and made my way to my new camp on posting day. I was filled with curiosity, yet trepidation over what was to come. At this point, the reality of SAF's "inverse meritocracy" theory began to dawn on me. PLC was a very open, spacious camp. That was my first impression, as I entered. I saw many other newly promoted privates, looking as blur as me walk in to be processed into our companies. Joel also made it to SCS and we shared a cab there. I expected him to be separated at the admin point, where they will announce our companies but to my joy and surprise we were sent to Mike Coy together. W to M, a total 180 degress shift figuratively and literally in turning the alphabet. There, I found out that the entire company was composed of Whiskey Coy people and some minority from Eagle. Our training then began in the first week, a stark contrast to the first 4 days of in-processing in Tekong. Our senior cadets, told us calmly, welcome to SCS, you're one of us now and don't worry, its an okay place to be. Upon restrospect, I realised that yes, SCS wasn't that bad a place to be. Although we went outfield almost every day in the middle of the course, and had range that burnt sonme weekends, we were better off. No 3 week adjustment period like OCS. Everything ended by dinner, rarely any night training. The bunk was better than Tekong, we had more pay and wore a rank, something which gave me a semblance of pride, if only a shred of it. Only downside was that food sucked. We learnt a lot there, some new weapons and how to perform infantry manoeuvres. The only thign that I hated there was well, the leadership sytem. There were 3 appointments: LSM, LPS and LSC. Sergeant Major, Platoon Sergeant and Section Commander respectively. Going by nominal roll, people were given these appointments and had to perform their various scopes. I was LSC twice, I believe. It wasn't fun because of the stress placed on you. I preferred going into man-mode. I suppose I was averse to such a thing because I was chosen to become a commander rather unwillingly. I didn't really like my section in BSLC compared to BMT. There wasn't a sense of unity. We just did things for the sake of doing them so as to not get fucked. That was what I felt. The only person I enjoyed his company with was my buddy. Probably the best buddy in my army life in fact. The buddy back in BMT, liked to stick to his own clique who luckily for him, managed to be intact somehow. My BSLC one was a nice guy, who knew my old buddy. I remember my virgin guard duty experience occurring in BSLC, along with my first ever informal punishment of 1 extra which was due to a stupid mistake of forgetting to lock my locker. We also had a 28 km route march near the end of the course which was a killer. I hated that route march and felt that it was crazy to throw us such a big one after 8 weeks of not doing route marches. Apart from that, at the end of the course I found out I was posted to ASLC. I was crushed by this posting, and further devastated when I found out that some of my fellow cadets were headed off to ETI and will be joining 35 SCE as specialists too. It was at this point that I hated my army life and felt like crap.

Wow, what a giant wall of text. I'll leave it as this for now and come back to ASLC another time.

281010

Today marks my status as a 6 month soldier. Alot has happened, would definitely post about what went on.