welcome to the rocking

yah, kelvin, stop complaining abt ur own company. My bmt sergeant says u get plenty(and it really is plenty) of canteen breaks, so u dun really get it as bad as us after all, correct?

esc, yah it really sucks to be u. i suspect sispec can't compare delta wing, so i give it to u.

and lz, i pity u, to screw up an interview becuz of a navigation exercise is damn f***ed up.

However, me , on the other hand, was extremely extremely high and happy on friday night. just ask gen and ellen and mayb the rest of the gang who met up on sat night, when my happiness hasn't exactly died down yet(it's dying now cuz of the thought of another fieldcamp coming up).

and when u're high, u can't exactly sleep, so i actually stayed up till 0130 hrs on sat morning to attempt to wait for lz's return frm the jungle wilderness. Alas, when the second last bus returned at approx 0115 hrs, i failed to spot lz's figure from the figures disembarking one by one from the bus. No, i didn't fail becuz of bad eyesight(granted i was looking from the fifth floor, but still...), nor was it becuz i was too sleepy. It was simply becuz lz was not among them. That just means he cldn't find his checkpoint(all checkpoints are ridiculously hard to find by the way) or cldn't make it out of the jungle. I didn't want to wait up anymore and went to sleep. lz apparently arrived later at 0230, according to his post below, so i was long aslp by then.

Well, i pity him. being stuck in the jungle, unable to find a small little signboard stuck to a tree(sometimes it might even have fallen off, and u find it on the ground lying somewhere), is not a very nice experience. heck, it's a very screwed up experience if ur team members think u're strong and they ask u to carry the team store items while navigating in the jungle. I personally had that experience during the first navigation exercise (the one on friday was our second one). This first one, i was being led by my instructor ad a fellow team member who tot he was gd at navigation. so i let them do it. Alas, my navigator was somewhat stupid after all, our instructor was new and knew little, and our wherethefuckarewe tribe spent the whole 8 hrs of the exercise stuck in the jungle, stuck in swamps, and combing tree after tree in search of checkpoints which we found only one. worse still was the fact that we had only 2 ippt gold award holders in our 11 man team, and it naturally became me and my friend who carried the team's food and signal set all the way. 6kg and 9 kg of weight respectively. 8 hrs. our shoulders died.

Navigation exercise 2. each detail(team) now only has 5 ppl. i was the only gold award in my detail, so i carried the signal set. 9kg. someone else carried the food but half the ppl meant half the food. 3kg. not so much of a problem. I didn't want an experience similar to my first exercise, so i told my detail i would be the chief navigator. and how my detail loves me now. for carrying the signal set throughout, for leading them nicely out of the wilderness. Unlike lz's tribe, we followed paths, even if it meant we had to take a longer way, and did minimal bashing. our compass and pacer were hardly used. For the night nav, we reached our checkpoint within 30 mins frm setting out, at 2000 hrs, reached back base at 2030 hrs and were sent back to camp, which we reached by 2205 hrs, long b4 lz found his wrong checkpoint. how happy i was, how happy my detail was, cannot be easily explained in words. especially cuz our detail was the only 4 man detail, having lost 1 man to a scorpion attack 40 mins frm the start of the exercise. how my detail thanked me for being the only person who knew how to use the signal set to comms back to control base to get the medic over to our location. in all, felt damn accomplished for this exercise.

so the ocs ppl, gd luck for nav ex and try not to screw up.

to chin ee, sorry that orion coy seems to have became even more xiong than when i was in there. hang in there and u'll come out fine. rmb to secure ur helmet, lbv and rifle during field camp(yes orion seems to be the only coy which stunts even ur helmet ad lbv). dun ever b late for anything(orion is confinement crazy), n clean ur rifle well(the rifles IA like siao one). take care!

and to lz, wish u luck for the next nav exercise, which is going to be a test. and wish me luck too, no matter how much i rock =P (kidding la, was actually qte lucky for nav ex 2, really)