gah. The internal body clock rings.
I jump up, tugging my pillow by one of it's corners, I realize that
my pillow will soon have to part methere's less than 24 hours to goI'm bald and they still wanna shave me (soon I think)this book in and out thing is going to repeat over and over again for at least one more monthI can't find a phone that is j2me-enabled, can play mp3s, has good browser and internet connection, runs on external memory, has infra red and bluetooth but has no cameraLife inside is bearable. Yet somehow you feel like a walking zombie. Everyone's dressed the same. Every building looks the same. Everyone eats the same things. Everyday is more or less the same minus two or three major activities. I think I'm somewhat okay with it because I like to stone and not think. And that's exactly what you do there. Other than your body moving. Physically, it's occasionally tiring but that effect doesn't get across to your head. Personally, whatever happens inside, be it doing some stupid things, getting
tekan-ed or running around, I feel rather emotionless and neutral about this whole thing.
Field camp was surprisingly okay to me. Alot of people lost weight. Complained it's damn shag. Things along that line. But I didn't lose any weight or things inventorially. Which makes me wonder if I should opt for command school since I'm fine with living life in the outfield. I already opted out for the first one. Two more chances to put a 'yes'. It does sound good when
patrol forces outside have to salute you when they card you. Also, I like medieval things. I would love a sword. Then again it's too much work for all these things. And everyone knows I'm lazy. So what I would do is to, I guess, drive around the next time instead of walking around by foot and probably go buy one longsword from caesar store.
Yeah. Sounds good. Saves lots of troubles. =D
Day one - 29/4(sat)1201
Marched for about 8km with a hugeass load. Resting now. Ate biscuit. Eating teriyaki chicken pasta now. Without fork and spoon. Squeezing and sucking the food out of the pack. Taste OK. Weird that they are all mashed up.
1206
I take back my word. It sucks. If you look inside it's seriously all mashed up. And it's starting to taste awful for some weird reason.
1222
Umm. Seriously biscuits taste much much better. Hmmm. I've seen clothes-piercing mozzies, 30cm long, red, plated centipedes as of now.
1233
Hmm. There are lots of interesting sackets inside the pack like pocari sweat, lipton, coffeemix etc, but there isn't any hot water and we aren't allowed to boil them as and when we like. There's also malties sweets in every pack. Everyone's sitting around holding their rifles. Eavesdropping, I hear them talking about other companys booking out. It also seems that most people lose track of time when in they are in the army. Everyday feels the same. Doesn't matter if it's a sunday or monday. I'm going to move to the shade.
1504
We've pitched out tents. Made to camou on and off. It's really hard to camou when you are sweating. Exactly what JH said. Finally a break now, due to lightning detected. We are all made to rest inside our tents now. I hope there will be lightning storms I'm lazy everyday. I don't mind idling around like this. Haha.
Day two - 30/4(sun)0507
Woke up by myself every hour through the night. Slightly cold. Right now I'm putting my boots on. Going to the 'toilet' with my buddy.
0812
Digging drainage system for our tents. Quite draining, pun intended. The stars were spectacular but somehow it didn't get me wow-ing away. I think I prefer digital art. We had 5bx in the dark. And often you get pricked by thorny bushes, your hands or ass when you are in pushup or crunches position. Brushed teeth. Powder bath(last night). My specs are fogging up already. Resting now.
0826
Anyway people say this is the most shag place. I'm ok with it though. It's just that there are lots of bugs(mozzies especially. Every step one takes there will be 10 emerging from the dead leaves and they give chase wherever you move to. They are so desperate that they attempt to bite through clothes.) and centipedes(Really big ones. Red and about 30cmX2cm).
0909
Lecture now. hmm. Nothing physically demanding yet. The only difference is we have lecture on the grass/mud patches in the jungle instead of the LT. And that we have to have our rifle, helmet and S.B.O at all times - on us. And yes. Camouflage on always.
1543
Interaction with our section commander.
1703
Till now, we are still talking.
1831
Cooking. I really am in love with the sky. What I did was to lie down on the grass. And in front of you there's this field. So wide it's about the distance from woodlands to marsiling mrt station. No trees, just grass and the sky. Watching the clouds roll by. A massive hemisphere of visual sensation. I've always loved the sky and clouds. And this makes me even more in love with it. Lying down, I shoot up my legs and hands, pointing them to the sky. I can visualize myself walking on clouds. Aaaaaah. This is the most wonderful wonderful thing.
2020
Powder bath. Attacked by sandflies in swarms. Everyone. About 3 to 5 bites per second. Everyone's whacking each other on the back, jumping around like hell.
XXXX
Swap sleeping buddies. Talking to my collegue who became my section mate. Quite funny that we both have the same habits. Sucking on sackets when dozing off.
0544
Writing in the dark. Place is rather foggy.
Day three - 1/5(mon)1217
Marched to -unnamed-(second) campsite. Damn sandy. I think I would like it better if I wasn't drenched in sweat. Sand gets inside your pants and shirt. And when you run around they keep rubbing against you. And you can't get them out.
1246
Lunch. I got a pack of food from a mate.
1736
Settled down. We are supposed to do a 2hr shift sentry duty. And take tests. But ir's raining quite heavily now. Lightning thunderstorm. Now we are taking shelter in abandoned shophouses which have been vandalized.
1755
Restocked water. Now I realized it's not that silly to fill up your S.B.O with biscuits. When it rains hard and you can't get to your field pack, you have to make do with those you carry with you.
1758
Holy crap. I have lots of blueberry and apple energy bars. Damn. As good as not having any rations. Quite lucky that the first one I opened and ate wasn't blueberry. It was 'date' flavoured. Doesn't taste good, but what the hell man, I'm hungry. I mistook 'date' as the expiry date by the way. They print in this format.
. And so the one I opened reads something like. Date 01012007. I thought it meant expiry date. Lucky me.
1914
Still raining. The lightning is spectacular. Very. It's red and goes across horizontally in a zig zac arc.
2040
Raining. Floor wet. Eating dinner in the dark. I think my pants are going to be wet..... And there's lightning still. There's still the sentry thing. Sigh.
2103
Eating double rations. Too hungry and cold
2119
My shift is at 2300. I wonder what I should do now. Sleep?
Day four - 2/5(tue)
0034
Sentry is really boring. Half an hour to go. Though there's minmal rain, there are still streaks of lightnings.
0041
Haha. We are bored people. Another sentry and I are flashing light at each other though we don't even know each other. My shift would be over soon. Battery is dying.
0048
Shift is almost over. Low battery, lazy to change. The other guy across is still flashing his torch. Haha.
0103
Shift over. Time to sleep. My throat is burning and there's no water. Again.
0428
Woke early. It's getting colder. More stars. And I think I saw a shooting star.
0432
Not even 5 minutes and this irritating person kept asking for time. So impatient eh. Anyway, I think I prefer the place and stars here because 1)we have no tent 2)less mozzies 3)it's sloped 4)cooling
0729
Breakfast was a sad energy bar. My tongue cracked. Been 'eating' straight from drink sackets too much.
0928
Someone cocked weapon and refused to own up when check. Now everyone's held back and we can't do anything.
0956
Waiting in line for test. Hmm. I wonder if I should get a 9-5 vocation still; I don't feel the need to book out. This is the second week since the last book out and I'm feeling okay still.
1301
Fresh rations today. Taogay, fish, chicken, curry, rice. Rather small serving but still, one has to be thankful. There's going to be a shower later and I wonder what it's going to be like. Well at least it's half day off today. I hope it doesn't rain/drizzle today.;
1654
We had shower but was made to sit around for quite some time. zzz. Anyway shower was 12/13 boys squatting around 6 taps naked/with underwear and soaping ourselves with cake of soap under a makeshift tent.
2043
I think the ground sheet is damn dirty. I lied on it for about a minute with a t-shirt and I'm itching all over. Btw, my ground sheet is 15 years old.
2238
Got 'whacked' until damn jialat. Fumbled in the dark for equipment. Pushups and crunches. Leopard crawl as well. All to be done with zero noise. Sweating like mad. Specs fogging so much that I can't see.
Day five - 3/5(wed)
0250
Sentry duties finally. Now as I lay down and look at the sky, I finally can say I'm amazed by the night sky, for once. It seems that I can see the entire constellation in the sky. My first thought was - the sky got holes in it! I think it's going to rain soon. There are streaks of lightning every now and then.
0300
It's seriously cold. I can feel the warmth of my torch when I cup the torch as I write so as to comply to what we call, light discipline. Oh yeah. I find it sad that my mate lost our camera. So there are no pictures for us to keep and show others. Sigh.
0646
All packed and ready to march to the next campsite. I forgot to 'return' the extra stuff, to send them back to bunk and so I'm carrying extra load.
0753
Everyone's assembled and ready to move off.
1016
Done marching. Final campsite in this camp.
1033
Settled down. I got a spot overlooking the place. Hilly place. Rather okay except that it's not shady.
1329
Damn irritating. Wasps and flies flying all around.
1414
Loading blanks.
1633
Doing some 'drills'
1722
Everyone's done firing. The barrel is really hot.
2009
We made a birthday 'cake' for our platoon serg.
2219
Nightwalk is gay. I can see damn well and I'm falling asleep. So what I did to simulate a more realistic nightwalk was to close my eyes, rest, and hold on to the S.B.O of the guy in front. Ah. I saw fireflies for the first time in my life.
2301
Got whacked again. Specs too fogged up.
Day six - 4/5(thur)
0426
I feel so happy. Tomorrow we'll be gonig back to our bunks! Phones, proper shower and food. Finally. I'm actually crying for joy right now in the dark. All that happened, things we did, and now that I look back, feels damn amazing. (The place is rather fogged up right now.) Little things like what we've gone through make people proud of themselves. This really makes me wonder if I should choose hard way out instead of what I would usually do.
0536
This is weird. People are still sleeping now. My buddy says that we should go back to sleep since everyone's asleep.
1437
My god. Still digging shellscrape. It's hell really. Even with engineered gloves, blisters have already formed on the thumb and ring fingers. I tried using my left hand to swing my tool and almost lost my ear. Also, the boots are really durable. I missed, hit my left foot and thankfully I felt nothing. The boots cracked though. Still digging. More like shattering rocks rather than digging. argh.
1452
Got plasters from medic. Wild boar sightning.
1635
Done with trench and sandbags finally. Damn warm weather.
1714
One more huge ass trench to dig. My turn tor est now though. Anyway it was quite funny earlier on. I've not shat at alll in this entire camp and one officer was trying to psycho me into shitting. He kept telling me, 'You are going to shit..'
1935
Still digging with candlelight. Shit man. There's lightning flashing like mad.
2221
One more day. Feeling slightly sick.
2227
Sleeping in trench. Reminds me of this play, 'the coffin is too big for the hole'. Because I'm big in size, I had to dig extra. Extra wide and extra long. zzzzzzz.
Day seven - 5/5(fri)
0424
It's quite funny. You can see silhouettes. Everyone's like some undead. Disappearing into the ground. Rising from the ground. Anyway I can't sleep. Perhaps it's because it's the last day of the camp. I'm looking forward to going back to the bunk. Get a shower and rest on bed. Proper food too. And also, looking forward to going home tomorrow after 2 weeks of AFH(away from home). Anyway I'm like seated upright in a grave, using a tiny speck of red light and writing away in the dark. Being random here. I'm kinda about the loss of our camera. We look funny after removing camou - People tend to leave traces around the eyes, and hence it seems as though we used eyeliners. Rather gayish looking I would say. It's also quite starnge that the lightning has been flashing for the entire night and yet there's no rain. Anyway, before I slept last night, I was visualizing what it would be like for me to be ina coffin. Skip the part about the insects - I think I've seen enough here. I wonder if there will be anyone at my funeral. Will there be alot of people, or few? Ooh creepy. I see another guy behind seated upright in his 'grave'. Haha.
0505
I'm done packing.
XXXX
Done with an unnamed course. Where we were made to crawl front and back and having safe(?) explosive triggered around us and machineguns firing away above us.
1222
Reached ground floor of bunk.
1323
Showered. Unpacking.
