Jul 23, 2005

Its been a hell week!

What can i say, Monday i went to pulau tekong to do watermanship training which is basically crossing through a river, i did that a total of 6 times, wasnt allowed to change my clothes till tuesday morning which meant i was super duper cold, man oh man, it sure felt a little like hell. Then from tuesday to thursday, we had Castaway which was basically prep training for our upcoming Brunei trip. We had to learn jungle survival with no food at all and no place to live. We had to build A-frame shelters, fireplace, traps, weapons and smoke tepees to keep our food fresh, we also had to source for our own food if possible like edible fruits or plants. My group found coconuts and rambutans which helped me alot as it gave me that little bit more strength to go on and on. It was really interesting to live like this though you may feel like a ancient caveman, it was quite a challenge to see whether we humans could really survive in a scenario like this. On thursday, we had an assessment which sadly, i failed the fireplace and smoke teepee which mean i have till next wednesday to do it again and the worst part is, next wednesday was supposed to be the start of my week long holiday but the whole wing has confine because we didnt set up the dypo, a communications setup which was kinda stupid because that only needs to be set up if we cannot establish comms with the current comms set we had, i really hope the confinement would be cancelled as the platoon are planning a outing to the club and having some good clean fun. I then walked 32km from 9pm to 7am in the morning from thursday to friday which was a killer because the terrain is tough. i really wanted to give up at the 4km to 24km mark, sometimes the 4km for rest seemed so super long that i felt i walked more than 4km but luckily, my platoon mates pushed me on and on, namely Weithian, Kassim, Terry, Yoke Fatt, Jonathan, Bryan, Hongxu and Farid, they really never gave up on me and i thank God for them, thanks alot guys! I also thank God for giving the strength to fight on till the end and in the process, earing my Combat Skills Badge, my second badge after the IPPT gold badge, hurrah hurrah!