Life is like a roller coaster. Just hold on tight when it's going down.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

27 Jan 2013 - CPL ONN ^^

PROMOTION

So.... I am not allowed to talk about my work, (Yes I know, they most probably wouldnt care, but I aint gonna risk it.) which causes me, to just go straight to the more significant events.

We took our IPPT and most of us passed it, which meant promotion! But we had no idea when it was going to happen. Oh, but we did watch Ah Boys To Men Part I on the day itself. After our IPPT and bathing of course.

Then, we had a Christmas day Celebration, which was held at SAFRA. We had a mini bowling competition and for some stupid reason, I was in one of the teams. And I SUCKED at it. A lot of gutters, 2 or 3 lucky strikes cancelled that out. All in all, pretty much seemed like a pretty normal day. Until Stephen came up to me.....

"Eh, we getting promoted later. Got some mini-parade."

I was like, "HERE?! Are you kidding me??" Well, it was good news still so I cracked a smile and went on with our stuff first.

"Ladies and Gentleman, we are going to give out the prizes and some special things now."

It wasnt much of a parade, more like a going up to shake hand with the CO, get the rank and walk away kind of thing. I wasnt going to complain though, because PAY RISE was coming ^^

After collecting our ranks, we were released and once again, I decided not to go home so early.

I called up Wei Xian and asked him out to shop with me. My basketball shoes were seriously, worn out. And that gave me an excuse to go shopping and spend some of my future pay rise money. HAHA. Called up a few more people and we went to the AMK's huge SportsLink Branch. They were having a promotion and that further attracted me and suckered me into buying a pair of basketball shoes.

Well, having many bad experiences with Nike and their neverlasting soles, I went straight into the Adidas section. And I fell in love with the lightweight yet ankle-protecting AdiZero. The rest was history (:

We chit-chatted at Coffee Bean (We didnt buy anything from there. HAHAHA.) for a while and caught up with each other's lives before calling it a day.

Simple day. Simple pleasures.

-Signing Off-

I'm still breathing;
9:25 PM

27 Jan 2013 - CHALET

CHALET

And so begin our long block leave, before we began our next phase called OJT phase.

Well, seeing that we had leaves all together, and not many other bases and camps are going to get leaves, we decided to use it together, in the form of a chalet.

Nobody was willing to spend too much so our budget was pretty tight, yet we still ended up booking a chalet in Sentosa, which absolutely blows my mind, but I was just going with the crowd. Haha.

We all met at Vivo City before heading to Sentosa together. Everyone was pretty ready for it... okay not everyone, everyone except Kelvin. I am not sure if I am right but no one wears an army shirt and army FBTs to Vivo right?

Okay, so moving on, we reached the beach.... and we found out that we had no idea where our chalet was. To make things worse, it felt like the Sun was out in full force. I mean FULL FORCE. So basically, we were... lost and burnt. HAHA. We did make our way to it in the end, but using the longest route available and after using the shuttle bus, where we didnt even alight at the right stop. Lesson learnt: Plan before doing. (Oh... how proud my sqn should be, of me.... Just saying. HAHA.) Oh, we did plan one thing though, not to sleep.

Upon reaching, nobody bothered about anything else except getting their shirts off (no, not trying to show off our bodies, but really, the weather was just unbearable). We took a quick shower and jumped straight into the pool, which happens to be available at the chalet.

And the feeling of being in the cold water, swimming and playing around for a couple of hours, was ECSTATIC. It's like scratching a itch in your back that has been driving you crazy for hours.

Afterwhich, our BBQ order came and we had to start preparing. Well, the food wasn't very good, but no one really bothered. When you have 10 guys, with alcohol, not a lot of people are going to bother about how the food taste quite honestly. Although something disturbing and funny did crop up during the BBQ. So it began when we started cooking mussels. Before someone actually tried to put it in their mouths, a loud shout of "WHAT THE F-?!" was heard. There were like mini crabs in the mussels. Well, it made everyone lost their appeitite to be honest, and everyone headed back into the room.

Well, the room was VERY crammed and there was nothing much in it, except a TV and a fridge. And a toilet of course. We took turns to shower and started 'chill-ing' in the room. Apparently, one of us brought his PS3 and everyone took their turns at Tekken. HAHA.

As it got later and later, you saw the bodies started dropping and eyelids started closing. The more energetic ones decided to take a walk around the beach, though I was quite awake, I decided to pass. Mostly because I was hooked onto my 仙剑奇侠专3. So I just went on a marathon and rushed like 10 plus episodes, until the group came back.

"What the.... Everyone sleep alr?" To my absolute horror, I turned around and saw everyone sound asleep. Yeah, so once again following the crowd, I decided to sleep too. So much for not sleeping huh? HAHA.

The place was very crammed so, I had to make do with the floor and to say I didnt get a good night sleep was an understatement. Most of us woke up pretty early around 7.30am, though mostly due to hunger. HAHA. So we went to the seats by the pool and just laze around there, complaining about how hungry we were. Since most of them were lazy to walk to McDonalds, nothing was really done. When some of the shops closer started opening, we rushed there and had our breakfast, which by that time, everyone was awake.

There was pretty much nothing to eat so we ate a quick breakfast and head out for beach volleyball. And it was an embarassment. We couldnt even keep the ball up for more than 3 hits. There was a lot of fail serves, passes and set-ups. Pathetic to be honest. To add insult to injury, there were some activities and one of which involved them watching us play and pretend to cheer for us. UGH! Just the thought of it was..... D:

So..... the day passed quickly and being a 2D1N thing, it was home time.

I wasn't one to go home early, so I called up Kenneth for lunch. Ate lunch, walked around Vivo and that pretty much sums up the only meaningful thing I did during my block leave.

Sad. I know.

-Signing Off-

I'm still breathing;
9:12 PM

27 Jan 2013 - PRE-OJT

PRE-OJT

So I arrived in SBAB, unsure of what to expect, having heard very different stories. Funnily, despite being scared, I arrived late, due to the inaccurate estimation of the time needed to travel.

When we arrived, a stern looking SSG Kam came out to pick us up. (Turns out, he was a pretty nice guy, though smokes a little too much.) Suprisingly, the first thing that he said was, "You all want anything from the canteen truck? Go ahead." Well, being the greedy me, I wasn't going to say no to food. HAHA.

So begins the initiation phase, with all the ground rules setting and briefings on what we can and cannot do. Honestly, the rules are basically the same in every camp, except, since it's an airbase, it's going to be much more stringent, being operational and all... So yeah, armed with a non-cam Blackberry phone, nothing much concerns me. Except the claiming of taxi fees being a pain in the... Nevermind.

The initiation phase was over pretty soon and soon SSG Cheong took over 'babysitting' us. At least according to him. Well, time during this period was just ._. I swear every single day, we book in, to have classes. It's like AFTC, but you sleep in your own bed at the end of the day and it's a lot closer to home. Oh, but with a little worse superiors. But still, life was pretty, simple.

Studying. Break. Studying. Lunch. Studying. Break. Studying. Home. WHATTT?!

Then, we were told that we had to take a test. And whether we pass the test or not will affect whether we get to go on to the next phase of our time here AND whether we get our block leave. (That's a lot of whethers.) So yeah, with leaves on the line, you know everyone is going to be mugging.

Well, no suprise, everyone passed. And very easily I might say. Considering we had help and we DID study, so.... it wasn't suprising.

And to block leave we went.

-Signing Off-

I'm still breathing;
8:37 PM

Sunday, January 13, 2013

13 Jan 2013 - AFTC

AFTC

After BMT, we had a 5-day block leave. If you dont know how it feels like, let me try and explain it to you. Imagine you were charged with some crime you didn't commit and you were sentenced to 9 weeks in jail. Then imagine, on the day after your last day inside, how it would feel like. Yeah.

I did my best to make full use of it, by going out with friends and family. I played basketball, went to the movies and even went for a KTV session.

Then, on the last day, we were supposed to find out our postings after BMT. Basically, it means you are going to know, what you are going to be doing for the rest of our NS life. So the faithful day arrived and I was just crossing my fingers so damn hard for anything not too crazy. My clerk friend sms-ed me in the morning, "eh, you air force." He had a way to access my info but I wanted the confirmation. So I loaded the page and to my amazement, it read: Air Force Technician. I didn't exactly jumped for joy, but I was kind of happy all the same. HAHA.

AFTC, was my new home.

The days in AFTC passed fast and it involves mainly becoming a student again. And trust me, to a NSF, that's like HEAVEN. Slowly, we learned more about what we were supposed to do. Sounded pretty simple. And I was glad.

Well, but all wasn't perfect. Oh, not the vocation, just for me. I just came from a tough BMT and I had a principle, "If you are going to do something, give everything you have. If not, don't do it at all." So, I was what the people in army called, "SIAO ON". And to make things slightly worse, my surname was Onn. So yeah, you get it. Basically, being the more siao on guy, I was automatically nominated for most of the things. I was the I/C for class 3 for the first 2 weeks. Being the transition period, a lot of admin work and crap has to be done, so I did a lot. Our mentor didn't help either. He contacted me for everything even when I wasn't the I/C, so yeah.

And to make matters slightly worse, there were people that knew I was a dancer. Coincidentally, there was an upcoming event, which my mentor volunteered me to take part in. It was a talent competition. So I was paired with a dancer and 4 people that were forced into it, who didn't learn a single dance move in their lives. Basically, I was supposed to choreograph something that wasn't too hard for them and that was not too shabby that would cause us not to win. Perhaps I was being too competitive but, well, that's me. So I spent a lot of my time trying to choreograph and plan a full performance with two additional people beatboxing and singing respectively. And the songs were Maroon 5's Payphone and Justin Bieber's Eenie Meenie.

Teaching dance wasn't easy and getting people to practice it was even harder. In the 9 weeks I spent there, I spend half of it just practicing. Usually, people enjoy in AFTC. But for me, I had to choreo, teach and perfect my own part on the dance( I added solos). I am not saying I dont enjoy dancing, I am saying I don't enjoy performing and choreographing. Choreography is really a pain in the ass, trust me. When the competition commenced, to say we breezed through it was an understatement. We were like the undisputed winner. Apparently, the judges(who were high-ranking officers) never saw dance performances for the annual competition before, so to them, it was a fresh and new thing. We got the first prize and I just did my own first choreo-ed dance on stage. And trust me, after that, AFTC was a breeze.

Oh no, it wasn't a breeze. There was still this course we went through: BBCDT. Basically, it's a Chemical Defense Course. And there was a compulsory thing, whereby you have to enter the gas chamber filled with tear gas, take off your gas mask and attempt to say your name and nric number. To those who don't know how a tear gas feels like, let me once again, try and relate it to you. Yes, you do tear but it's not that simple. To add on to the 'crying', your face will feel like someone applied chilli padi on your face. Felt TERRIBLE. Add this along with my BMT field camp, to the list of things-I-am-glad-to-have-went-through-but-never-wanting-to-go-through-again.

After that, our graduation parade came up. Our last day at AFTC. For the parade, they needed an emcee. Guess whose name came up -___- Yeah, I became the emcee. The parade was a pretty weird one. Held in an air-con room. So we collected our badges and certs. That's all

Not everything is as easy as it looks. Different things require different type of skill and effort. So when you are going to judge anything/anyone, stop and think.

-Signing Off-

I'm still breathing;
9:14 PM

13 Jan 2013 - BMT

BMT

So I have crazily decided to revive this dead blog and I have no idea why. Perhaps, I fear that one day, my memory would fail me and I would forget some of the more significant events in my life. Maybe that's why I have decided to revive this blog, to keep a diary. So that one day, I might come back and read this, and laugh at myself. I didnt want to forget the significant people or events that have made an impact on my life. Perhaps, this might serve as an inspiration to others. Who knows? HAHA.

Just to make up for the long stretch that I have not been blogging, I am going to make it up and talk about the past significant events.

So I enlisted into NS on the faithful day of 9 May 2012. Cleanly shaven( MY HAIR T.T) and with pretty bad feelings. I have heard a lot of stories of BMT and I have also heard the rumours that I was going to be enlisting into 5th Company, which was the toughest that existed in my batch. I still remembered the awkward feeling of looking at everyone around me, mostly shaven, looking just as down as I was. So when we walked towards this empty space with everyone, the sergeants there started to set the tone.

"OI, TUCK IN YOUR SHIRT!" To that, I just rolled my eyes and did as I was told. Before everything went on, they suddenly announced that one of us might be entering into 6th Company. My hopes went up only to have it go down when I saw my own registration slip. "Company: 5th" With that, I just resigned to fate.

Having been a NCC cadet once before, most of the things that were taught to us initially were pretty no-kick in a sense. However, when I was in NCC, I had worked myself up to the rank of a 1st SGT and an attach spec. Now, I was a recruit once again and I have to work myself back up again. The feeling of restarting felt like crap at that point of time.

Also, all the strangers around me that I had to work with for the next 8-9 weeks, and I hated talking to strangers. But I made my mind up before enlisting, I am going to try to be extrovert, just for this 1 year 10 months. Luckily, I already known 2 of my bunkmates(Shi Min, Jervin) before hand and I know a few more of my platoonmates. Icebreakers started everything off and self-intros were done. Sadly, I made a mistake by saying I was a dancer and as you know it, I was forced to half-perform and half-battle.

To make things slightly worse, I had a physically weak buddy. I was praying hard for someone better than me that I could rely on, but things don't always go your way huh? More times than not, I had to push my buddy along through a lot of tough times. (But yeah, he did help me in a few tight spots.) He improved tremendously, (all his own effort, no credit taken here like honestly) and went from the worst in IPPT to a silver. To that, I am proud of him (':

Everything was just pretty much the same everyday: learning discipline, army stuff and pushing our limits. It was during the tough trainings, that I found out about a knee issue that I have chose to ignore before I enlisted. And during BMT, it was giving me hell every single day. It got so bad that at one point, I couldnt even straighten my leg while doing sprints.

Thankfully, NS provides free medical services for NSFs, so I decided to gave it a check. Only to realise that I had 'runner's knee' or otherwise known as, Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome. The latter sounds much more serious though. I did an MRI scan at KTP hospital and the doctor explained my problem to me. According to him, I have been using my muscle groups of my leg, especially my left one, wrongly and it led to an uneven balance of muscles. This caused my kneecap to misalign to balance the muscle groups, resulting in pain. In short, muscular problem leading to skeletal problem. This caused me to fail my FFI, forfeiting my chance to enter command school. ( I only known that towards the end)

I went back to the MO and they gave me some lame status - "Excuse High Kneel and Squatting" ( which wasnt that bad) Then, I went for the craziest part of BMT.

As I am not allowed to post too much about army, I am only going to just summarise it with a little bit of thought.

If you didnt know, in field camp, that's when your BMT sergeants would go CRAZY and start tekan-ing you. I did so much crazy shit and punishment. Throughout all that, I kept asking myself, "I was a civillian a few months ago, WHY THE HECK am I going through this crap?" Then, it went from missing my bunk to missing my home to missing my friends and family. Honestly, I teared a little. It sucked basically, but hey, I am alive and typing this right now, so yeah. What doesn't kill you, will make you stronger. When field camp was finally over, I went back home with a sense of pride. Something that I have not felt in awhile. Perhaps it was the fact that I hated insects and becoming dirty. I was too much of a hygenic freak. Perhaps it was because I thought I couldnt survive it, but I did and I felt a great sense of accomplishment. And to that, I say "phew"

Oh, and I did my first dance performance on stage! Wasn't much, just a take-turn-to-solo kind of performance, so yeah... But nerve wrecking nonetheless. This was one of the rare parts of BMT that was relaxing.

Then came the 24km route march, which was a lot more than that. And I am not saying because it felt like it. IT WAS. We had a warm up 2km and a 'cool down' few km march. With a heavy field pack, ILBV and rifle. Walking with Joshua ( A super funny and crazy guy, who played ball) was the only comfort I could take away from it. We chit-chatted about basketball and our own lives in our respective schools. I learned a few stuff of basketball myself from him during the march, suprisingly. Like how to keep calm during competition.

When it finally ended, we were all set for our POP. The parade was just excruciating for someone who couldnt wait to pass out of this hellhole. When the emcee went, "ladies and gentlemen", I literally felt like my heart was going to stop. As our jockey caps flew into the sky, I felt all the stress and burden on my shoulders lifted.

On a sidenote, I didn't get confined over weekends throughout the entire BMT. (Almost did, but didnt happen.) *achievement unlocked* :D

To my Platoon 1 mates, we went through all the craziest shit that I don't think anyone else would get to. Perhaps we weren't the most bonded group that might exist, but I know one thing, this is something that no one can take away from us. Going through all the "SIBEI FIERCE" crap. To my section 2 mates, thank you for tolerating my never-ending rants and helping out throughout the entire BMT phase.

Rajat. Lewis. Gucci. Orson. Suphasak. Arvin. Kok Shin(my buddy). Shi Min. Jervin. Shayne. Joshua. Rui Jie. Nicholas. Ariff. Kian Hao. I wouldnt have done it with anyone else.

It was a crazy 9 weeks, and I am not going to say I want to go through it again. But it did many things for me: it made me grow up and it made me learn to appreciate the little little things that I didnt use to appreciate.

So if anything, appreciate what you have around you, before it's taken away from you. Life is not going to give you too many chances.

-Signing off-

I'm still breathing;
8:14 PM