Bookout Post:

Restored Post

We did 3 sets of 6 pullups on Monday (I did 5 assisted ones in the first set and maybe 2 or 3 in the second, and was unable to continue) and my arms hurt till wednesday night and my shoulders started hurting on thursday. Gah.

A new lifeform has been spotted in camp. While marching, we saw a monkey running across the road. It's a zoo in there!

I've found another person in the platoon who doesn't shave. At the same time, I've also found out that one who apparently didn't, does, albeit rarely - 3 days after shaving, no stubble is visible. So that's 3 non-shavers and 1 occasional shaver.

I've a theory about why people don't tire of scolding the same old vulgarities - "fuck" and "chee bye" - over and over again. It's because those are the things they're always thinking about!

Now if we report sick outside camp, we must go to the A&E Departments of public hospitals. And contribute to the queue clogging them and reducing the hospitals' ability to cater to the needs of more seriously ill patients. And the MOs at Maju Medical Centre are very stingy (Steven got 1 day MC for a fever, barely enough to rest at home for a few hours). The life of a trainee is hard indeed.

I thought I'd seen Aravind around camp now and then and indeed I was right - I saw him at Cold Storage Holland V Tuesday night. Only his nametag said "Ganesh", so I wasn't sure it was him, so it was he who approached me. Apparently he's becoming a driver. Lucky guy!

2 consecutive days of night training really sapped me - on my Tuesday night off I was really drained. I hate night training! I'm going to hate field camp.

So many people are interested in going to the Guards to be medics. They must be masochistic. And they are disproportionately Malay (as other people have pointed out), I do wonder why. Maybe they like soldiery more!

I saw one fellow trainee with a Palm IIIxe. On further enquiry, I found that he had a license to use a palmtop in SAF camps, and he got it in OCS as an officer cadet (and not for official purposes too apparently). Maybe when OS5 models come out...

Ever since Khairuldin chided me for saying "Durong Senjata" (Eggplant Rifle. cf "Duron"), I've decided that I'm frustrated with drill commands being in Malay and one day I gave them in English. I've yet to figure out a nice sounding way to command "Halt".

From an angle, one of our female instructors looks a bit like someone Someone Else calls 'Boy Crazy'.

Yew Jin's a bit blur as an i/c - one day, he gave the halt command ('berhenti') when he meant attention. On 3 occasions throughout the day.

Most of the SCDF personnel look quite chubby. Maybe it's the uniform. Or the fact that they only ever go to the cookhouse, the canteen or stay in their room pretending to do work :)

Steven finds a way to link sex to everything. Seeing the BCS tentage, he remarked that you could have a gangbang in there. This is why I am sorely disappointed by the male gender.

Since I bounce so much when I march, they have dedicated part of a song to me - the Gummi Bears' chorus. Unfortunately they only know one part:

"Gummi Bears,
Bouncing here and there and everywhere"

Full lyrics available here.

I cannot say that I've seen this, but I have it on good authority (an eyewitness) that Khairul ate a few large green grasshoppers live. And his tongue was stained green after that. Yeech.

We had nothing to do one day and were waiting in the training shed, and the group I was with started talking about, first pornography and then prostitutes. Since it was the only conversation that was going on in English and I wasn't in the mood to take a catnap, I listened for a while. All of them seemed to be very into the two, why, especially the latter, I know not, most especially because of the lack of emotional gratification. But they seem to like it.

Seetoh observed that "All the bugs here are mutated". Indeed. We have giant ants with white stripes, giant spiders, centipedes that have the texture of Yuppi snacks, miniature scorpions with wings and many many more. Perhaps they have been mutated by something.

The ever efficient SAF outdid itself again by forgetting to indent dinner on Friday (as frequent visitors to this humble weblog will no doubt know), which brought joy to our hearts as we got a night off. However, it outdid itself by not indenting breakfast and lunch on Saturday, which made us trainees very happy again as we got to slumber for an additional 45mins in the morning, and non-guard duty personnel (ie not me) booked out that much earlier.

On Friday, while we were waiting for them to resolve our dinner problem, we were restless in the training shed, when I decided to go sit on a bench inside the "Trainees Mess". Now, SMM is such a wretched place that Officers and Warrant Officers have to share their mess with Specialists. So how could trainees have their own mess? Our little used mess it this small room by the side of Platoon 3's training shed. It's walls reach almost to the rood of the training shed, and there are no windows, making it rather stuffy. It is furnished with 2 benches (with lots of lizard shit on them), a small ceiling light and has plenty of rubbish strewn on the floor (there used to be more before I, in a fit of dilligence, cleaned the place a touch during area cleaning), and on the door is pasted a piece of paper with the words "Trainees Mess!" written on in black marker pen. Well, so I entered the "Mess", closed the door and sat down. After a while, I heard "Fall in" and so opened the door. Or tried to at any rate - a bench had been placed across it by my mischievous platoon mates. After they'd removed the bench, letting me come out, Sergeant Kan, our commando, went in to take a look, and they tried the same trick on him. Only, as Roe had just finished sliding the bench across the door, he came climbing down the wall, having used the bench to jump onto the top of the walls of the room.

The chicken backsides we are served at the cookhouse have become bigger nowadays. Though they are still chicken backsides. I do wonder where they get all these weird chicken parts (collectively brought under the label of 'chicken backsides') from. Probably the same place Monty's (RI canteen vendor company from 1996 to 1999) got them!

We got ice cream for the third time since our course started. Only the second, they'd run out (allegedly because some people took 2 or 3 servings). I wonder how much less SFI is paid for SMM food than BMT food (or indeed SISPEC).

Steven has one of the smallest cordless phones in the world. He brings it to camp and talks merrily away on it. It must also be very powerful, for I cannot see where the base station is. Of course, he gets very upset, for he believes that it is a mobile phone, but I believe he got cheated by the salesman :)

One of the Bruneians, Fazidah wears a rather strong perfume whenever she goes for training. On my enquiry on why she does so, she tried to stab me with her bayonet. "Perfume is half my life". Presumably she meant that she's been wearing perfume half her life.

They found a novel use for the orange tank top they got for Folie for his Miss SMM role on CMC night - they cut it into half and used it as an orange cloth for cleaning rifles. Mmm.

Camo Cream's now a credit item at E-mart, like jacknifes (however you spell it). Yeh. The jackknifes don't say "SAF" on them, so theoretically I could buy 40 a year with my credit and resell them! They're not bad quality too - the blade's very sharp.

We had a Light BCS mode practice, and I was detailed as a Combat Stress Reaction (CSR) casualty. It was fun yelping, screaming and running all over the place! And sort of fun being sat on, restrained and tied with toggle rope.


Guard duty:

I was actually supposed to be on the "Fire Piquet" detail - 4 people who book in on weekends to sleep. However, Nicholas claimed that his knee hurt, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and applied the logical extension of the Golden Rule - Do unto others what you would want others to do unto you - I still remember, during BMT when my feet hurt but Ah Seng refused to let me be a sentry. So he became one of the fire piquet personnel (though this later came back to haunt him - more later).

Our guard commander was very nice, and the 2i/c, 3i/c and Duty Officer are all very relaxed, and our Camp Orderly Specialist, who's 'wayangs' a bit sometimes was nowhere to be seen, so guard duty was quite peaceful. We didn't even have a turnout, even though the guard commander said we'd have one just for practice. Of course, that might be due to the fact that we plied the guardroom sergeants with Pizza! Yes, we ordered Pizza. 2 stuffed crust ones from Pizza Hut (with Garlic Bread and Pepsi, coming to ~$50) and 2 from Malay 2 for 1 (coming to ~$36). Conclusion? Malay 2 for 1 provides very good value! Even if it is a little smaller and less tasty. Of the 4 pizzas ordered, 2 had beef so I took only 2 slices, but Jeremy handed me another slice of Malay 2 for 1 Hawaiian (though they'd sprinkled crushed red pepper on it, which was very hot {I swear, it's is not just crushed red pepper, it's too hot to be just that}, so I tried to brush some of it away). So I sort of got my $8 worth. They actually ordered KFC chicken and yet more pizza, but I was full already.

This time I got to prowl with Daniel [Subagio].

While prowling I heard a hollow, sonorous sound. It turned out to be a squirrel. So now I know what they sound like!

All the cars with MID license plates are horrible looking, run down, dreary coloured station wagons. I wonder why anyone would want to drive one, even if it is probably cheap.

In some areas I am remarkably (even ridiculously) observant, seeing all sorts of trivial details, but in others I seem to be blind. Specifically those concerning observations of people, of their characters, actions and appraising them. People always notice things I don't. Maybe it's because I am less critical, and more tolerant of perceived faults. Or my skill's simply not there :)

When it came to dismounting time, we found to our horror that of the 13 guard and fire piquet personnel supposed to be taking over us, 5 had taken MCs outside and only 1 standby had arrived. So after some hand wringing, the 4 fire piquet personnel stayed back to fill out the numbers while the 9 of us guards went home. Though they did leave only 2 hours later than us (11+am, versus our 9+am, though we're actually supposed to get out of camp by 8am!). But the duty officer did promise them compensation - off passes from camp on Monday, stretching as long as after lunch to 10pm.

After 4 guard duties in SMM, I conclude that, especially in SMM, guard duty serves no purpose but providing a way to punish erring (whether in reality or the perception of superiors) trainees and permstaff.


Quotes:

"Sergeant, I want to become a lifeguard but I cannot swim"

"A very good afternoon, gentlemen. [Trainees: Good afternoon Master] It's 'Good Morning'. I wanted to see how blur you all are. Indeed you all are very blur."

"[On a rainy day, in the training shed] Okay, no questions? Then just sit here and enjoy the rain."

"I want to become a lifeguard, it's fucking lobo. First, it's eight to five. Second, you sit in the chair and sleep all day. Wait for the kids to come and swim. Thirdly, you get to play with the speedboat."

"A man should be obsessed by sex (with)"

"All the gifted people have some problem"

"[On me] You have a photogenic memory (photographic)

"[Me: What's so good about prostitutes?] I think you need to see a doctor."

"[On SMM] All the bugs here are mutated."

"[Sign] Do you know that Logisticians embrace the SAF Core Values in their work..."


When I took a taxi back on Friday, the taxi driver charged me only $8 instead of $8.40 because he felt bad about taking a longer route. Nice guy.

Yong Chin pointed out the difference between a "night off" and a "night out" - you get to stay home overnight for the former. Oh well.

My brother-in-law, Mr Intelligent, has done it again. He's entered (or tried to - he was cussing so I wasn't clear on the details) a cashcard-only carpark.