Bookout Post:

After a day, I'm back home again.

Restored Post

Reviewing everyone's posting again today, many of us have come to the conclusion that posting is haphazard. Or maybe, in fact, done to spite us. People are posted far from their homes, when other people are posted near their houses. And PES A people who can clear their SOCs and IPPTs get Airbase jobs while PES B people who can't go to 2SIR and Armour Regiments.

42SAR only picked us up at about 2pm, when few of us were left. After a long ride, we ended up in the middle of nowhere - Sungei Gedong camp. Of the camps in the area, it is the most remote and the most far in. It's about 50 minutes at most from Chua Chu Kang MRT on the 175 (!), which means a safe timing from my home to there is 1 hour 40 minutes. I think I can forget about going home during nights off already, and can become a Lot 1 kid like Andrew Tan. The place is somewhat new and beats SMM. But then almost everywhere does, so.

Again, our so-called leave is being burnt - half a day tomorrow and 1 day on Tuesday, and some more after the National Day Parade because, just arriving, we have no "off" days to use up. So much for 14 days' annual leave.

I tend to be depressed the first few days of my posting to a new unit. BMT, SMM, and now 42SAR. I hope it passes. Since I'll probably be there for the next 103 weeks (thereabouts).

The requirements for my unit: IPPT Silver and SOC timing of 10 minutes (for those who've been there for 1 year or less) and Marksman at range. Remedial training (RT), here I come! Or some form of injury, which is likely. I just hope I don't get scheduled for weekend RTs. On the other hand, the requirements are IPPT Gold and SOC <9:30 at Andrew Tan's 41SAR, so.

To make things worse, most of us will probably become platoon medics, which we are told means that we will be armoured infantrymen, running, or at least walking, alongside the tanks. Oh well. And apparently my senior Edmund's wrong - platoon medics aren't attached to the medical centre when not on exercise.

There seem to be no Malays in camp. Ah, it's been long since I had pork in an SAF camp!

Being a regiment, the place is supposedly quite regimental, so it's easy to sign extra duties. Oh well. At least we don't need to salute officers. And we are supposed to get a long weekend a month.

Interestingly, the bunk of the medics attached to the HQ have numerous printouts of Japanese-looking Asian women in bikinis. No Caucasians. Interesting - both the choice of pinups and the printing out - usually people choose Caucasians and put up posters as opposed to computer printouts.

I saw some book reviews on the table. Apparently the CO asked them to do a book review each recently. Eheh.

One of the medic has a Palm M10x, though he has no license. Ahh.

One of the medics who helped orient us took the train back with me. He was from JJC, and he says about 20% of the people there are A level students. It seems the rest are the mono intake. I wonder if I'll mix well. And apparently a BMI of 32 can get one downgraded! Ooh.


Bryan Ang has just sold his soul to the Army till he reaches the age of 38. It's been nice knowing you :)

Due to NDP, I probably won't be able to go for KMUN (Raffles Model United Nations Conference). Argh.