Commissioning

I've been really neglecting this blog for the past few months, due to a combination of busyness, lazyness and unable-to-talk-about-classified-info-ness.

Yesterday was commissioning :D No doubt it was great, but it could have been better, for there were a couple of screw ups during the parade itself and it was far from our best performance. People were getting distracted and trying to spot chio-bus in the stands, and while I tried my best to avoid doing so, I'm still human after all.

The journey from one white bar to one black bar encompassed 9 months of training, 9 months of fun, 9 months of hell, and of course, 9 months of unforgettable memories. It was no easy feat, and I am really blessed to have my brothers-in-arms by my side to walk this journey with me, along with my loved ones whom I draw motivation from and keep myself going. I put my heart into everything I did and gave in my best (well maybe not all the time), but eventually missed out on the Sword of Merit by a mere one placing, causing one of my greatest regrets in my course in OCS.

So finally I am an officer, and I'll strive to be the best that I can be. The officer's creed shall be my guide, defending my country shall be my purpose, and I will be the leader whom my men salute from their heart, to my person, and not to my rank.

140112 Commissioning parade. The end of a beginning.

Life in ETI

Its been a long time since my last post, partly because I have been quite busy. For the last 3 weeks in Engineers Training Institute (ETI) I was appointed as the CWSM, or Cadet Wing Sergeant Major, which is like a discipline master of a school, and lots of time were spent doing training related admin stuff, leaving me with limited time to do anything else.

Nonetheless, these 3 weeks been a rather fruitful experience I must say. I'm a innately soft-spoken and nice guy, so I think I've been very nice to my wing. Too nice in fact, such at certain times I actually found that it was quite hard to control my peers because they don't take me seriously and think I will always condone their acts and let them go unpunished. I only started meting out punishments when it was around my last week of appointment. I don't think I did badly, but if I can redo these three weeks again, I won't adopt the same nice guy approach. I will turn the wing out on the first night, whack them, scold them, and show them that I mean business. The nice guy always loses.

Life in Engineers Training Institute has been quite enjoyable, especially since my platoon is full of great fun people who jokes around all the time. There's definitely less physical training compared to infantry, but a lot of mugging and outfield practical lessons which boggles your mind. There are like 2 tests a week, and for each failure (i.e. less than 75%) you will have to book in 2 hours early, and so far I have already failed 3 out of 5 tests T_T Its not that I didn't study, but some of the tests which are designed by the Enciks and SMEs have really horrible English and the questions are super ambiguous. Dammit. I really hope that I can perform well in OCS and attain at least a Sword of Merit, because I am contemplating signing on and I want to have a good scholarship to complement my career. I'll continue to do my best, and hopefully everything goes well.

On a side note, happy teacher's day! (:

back home

Revision to the previous post: SOCJOT stands for Support-arms Officer Cadets Jungle Orientation Training.

Anyway training in Brunei has been rather enriching and fruitful. The jungle terrain there is so different from Singapore and Tekong both in terms of vegetation and relief (especially the latter) and I've learnt a lot about navigation. Training there is tough and relax at the same time, because the 9-day trip only has basically 4 days of outfield training and the remaining 5 days are used for travelling, recreation or just stoning in bunk.

Day 0: Preparation
Caught a stupid flu that morning, and reported at Changi Terminal 2 at midnight with a red nose which I need to blow every 10 minutes T_T

Day 1: Travelling + Orientation
- 1.5 hours flight - 40min bus - 3 hours ferry - 20min bus -> arrive at SAF Jungle Training School
- unload luggage, go for an orientation around the camp and then just settle in.

Day 2: Introduction
- Pace course (to gauge our pacing for judging distances during navigation)
- midday Jungle Orientation Walk

The walk was actually quite tiring cos the relief is very steep and the weather is super hot. A lot of people fell out along the way cos they couldn't acclimatise to the heat. I also felt my heart pulsating at like twice my normal rate which I think is cos I'm exerting myself while I'm still sick with flu. After I finished the jungle walk, I was contemplating whether to go report sick or not but I hecked it in the end because I wanted to complete the training that was to come.

Day 3: Guided Navex
All the instructors there are really pro people with lots of badges and tabs. The chief commander and all the warrant officers there are commando rangers, and the captain which took my team for Guided Navex had a Recon and Sniper tab :O Anw as the name applies, we just did some navigation with the captain supervising and guiding us, giving us pointers along the way.

Day 4 [Outfield Begins]: Ex NOMAD (i.e. Unguided Navex)
We left camp at dawn, reached our start point at 0830, and found our first checkpoint at 1030hrs. Then, we gave up finding the second checkpoint, sat down for lunch at 1130 and made our way to the endpoint.

After we moved off from lunch, we continued in our general direction NNE while walking along the ridgeline. Somehow, i think we missed a right turn and the ridgeline veered west and then southwest. As none of us wanted to backtrack, we just kept going and in the end took a super long route to the end point. At the last part when we were near our checkpoint but couldn't find an accessible path, we had to bash straight down a ravine and climb again to reach the other side. It was a really crazy climb x_x The slope was like 80 degrees and we had to get down on all fours and use our hands to grab any vines or roots in our sight.

We reached our end point at 0430 and then harboured for the night. Later we found out that another team made it from our same checkpoint to the endpoint in only 1 hour using the correct route. We freaking took 6 hours -.- Sian.

Day 5: Ex Mountain Rat i.e. climb up Mount Biang
We were made to stay at the endpoint unti 1100hrs before we can move up as a time penalty for not completing the second checkpoint. After we were fetched to the start point for the climb, we started moving off at 1330hrs.

1330: move off from start point and into the jungle
1445: reached the river crossing point at around the foot of the mountain
1540: refilled our water, crossed the river and moved off
1630: after going up and down countless knolls, i felt my right knee starting to give way
1650: omg wtheck 88 degrees slope. why isn't this ending
1710: reached the summit. collapsed on the floor

Climbing up Mount Biang was the most shag experience I ever had since I enlisted into army. There were a million knolls along the way and scaling and descending them was so energy sapping. It shouldn't have been that bad, but our instructor was determined to return by the next day and we had to harbour by nightfall at 5pm and hence he just led us and chionged. We didn't rest much in between and I think my flu also made it worse, because in my usual condition, I wouldn't have gotten tired so easily. I was like Charlotte during Mount Ophir, puffing my nose every few minutes and keeping the tissue in a ziplock bag by my side x) I really felt like giving up at around 1630 when my knees started to give way, but everyone else kept going and so I kept up too.

Reaching the summit was like the awesomest feeling ever. And then dinner that night beside a fire with hot maggie mee and a heated up ration pack was like the most fantabulous dinner I had in my life. Seriously.

Day 6: Descent from Mount Biang
We descended in the opposite side of the mountain as our ascent. Descending was much easier because instead of spending effort to push yourself up to the next step, now you just need to drop yourself downwards using gravity. After we descended, we reached a river, took a boat to the other side, hopped on a bus, and went back to camp.

Day 7 and 8: Relax in bunk
I swore a bed never felt so good. After sleeping on hard ground for 2 nights and going through that hellish climb, when I first clambered onto my bed and relaxed my whole body, the feeling was just orgasmic.

Anyway for two days we did basically nothing but packed our luggage and slept in bunk. Our warrant officers also gave us frequent canteen breaks and I ate so many chips, burgers and more chocolate bars than I could count with both hands. I was really degrading into some fat sloth, until on Day 8 evening, our instructors told all of us to go do pullups and I only did 6, faring the worst among all the engineers T_T No one else did less than 10. I was so depressed that I sworn off junk foot and went on a diet for the remaining of the trip

Day 9: R&R
Rest and Recreation! We did a guided tour around Brunei, went to The Mall, watched Captain America for S$4, rested temporarily in another SAF Camp in Brunei, and then proceeded to the airport and flew back here :)

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On a side note, here's a list of my conquests of mountains. Hopefully next time as recreation I can go scale mountains during vactions and explore other beauties like Kinabalu, McKinley, Elbrus, Kilimanjaro and K2 :DDD

1. Mount Panti, Malaysia, 2002: 513m
2. Mount Ophir, Malaysia, 2009: 1276m
3. Mount Biang, Brunei, 2011: 473m (with FBO)

brunei 25/7 - 3/8

Jungle Orientation Course (SOCJOC) starts tmrw :) Yet another fun-filled action-packed 9 day tropical holiday :D

service term ends in 1 week (:

1. we'll get our senior rank (3 white bars) this coming week :D

2. i'm posted to Combat Engineers

3. i was appointed as the runner (i.e. the Platoon Commander's 'slave') for Ex Scorpion King, which is this defence mission where we had to dig trenches. Since the PC is permantly moving around overlooking the defence instead of staying at his defence spot, I dug his share and did approximately twice the amount of digging as compared to everyone else

4. Ex Scorpion King is kinda overated. Its not that bad actually. I actually got to sleep around 6 hours during the whole mission

5. a monkey stole my breakfast accessory pack on the 2nd day of Ex SK

6. the monkey opened the cereal packet and sprinkled the cereal all over the floor

7. my whole trench was swamped with ants within 5 minutes

8. !@^#%@* stupid monkey

9. my trench was filled with granite slabs, courtesy of the tango/sierra people who burried them inside. i unearthed at least 30 of them, smashing half of them in the process

10. my appetite has grown to a monstrous state since i entered NS.

11. I entered KFC alone the other day, checked out the menu, and settled for a buddy meal.

12. my rice bowl for lunch and dinner at home has now upsized to the bowl kopitiam uses for their fish soup and banmian

13. OCS bunks have no room number 13

14. there's social night this coming week, and then i'm going over to brunei the next week. life is good

15. i've charted my direction in life. I'm no longer going to pursue music at uni, I'm gonna go for engineering (:

halfway through service term

for those of you who don't know yet, days in OCS are split into 4 terms.
(i) 2 weeks Common Leadership Module (rank: 1 white bar)
(ii) a 12-week service term (2 white bars)
(iii) a 21-week professional term (3 white bars)
(iv) a 3-week joint term (still 3 white bars)
and then we get our sacred one black bar :D

So now we're halfway through service term and we just finished our first exercise called CENTIPEDE, which was a long 9 day field camp in Tekong

The field camp was actually better than the one in BMT, because we actually camp indoors for 5 out of the 9 days and there was showering facilities and safari beds. There also wasn't any unreasonable tekaning, cos the instructors always try and make us see reason in the things we do.

Still, there were moments where I really was pushed to my limits. The first one was the route march on Day 1 where I carried my FBO, SAR21 and Matador (~35kg total) and marched from Tekong Parade Square to Rocky Hill Stadium. Its a 4km route, but somehow our instructors psychoed us into thinking that its only 3km. Then during our Rest and Relax day, we were made to stay in pushup position for 30mins+ because we fell in late. I absolutely suck at pushups and my arms and legs were already shaking at the 3min mark, but I stayed positive and kept going.

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But the most memorable experience came at a time where I was comfortably sitting on a bench with my section, with just a bottle in my hand and no LBV and field pack on my back. We had just completed our day fighting patrol mission, in which our whole section missed the ambush team completely and was completely annihilated by them. As our section instructor debriefed us, he spoke with a quaver in his voice and couldn't look at anyone of us in the eye.

"I have never been so disappointed before. Even when I lost my girlfriend, I also didn't feel this sad. But now, I really don't know what to say."

Till that point in time, our section absolutely sucked at firefights. 7 men will enter the forest, but more than half will perish and only 1 or 2 will make it out alive. Every firefight is always a failure, or a success with heavy losses. It wasn't our instructor's fault, he taught us all that he could, but somehow we were always letting him down and we took everything for granted.

But that moment really changed all of us. Our instructor was a super nice guy, and he never ever punishes us. That moment where he almost broke down and teared make us realise how much we had let him down, how much he actually means to us, and how much we really want to perform from then on to make him proud.

And really, every mission from then on, we performed our best with the primary aim to make him proud of our section. The remaining 3 missions for patrol field camp were all resounding successes, and our section came in second in water polo during our rest and relax day. We also cleared the 3 missions in the summary circuit in just 4 tries. Each time before we embark on a mission, we will huddle together and chant our section's aim "For Lieutenant Wei Hao Sir!"

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I realised that for me, when I aim to excel at something, my motivation will never be personal, but rather I will have somebody else in mind. I am not innately self-centered, and I find great satisfaction in doing things for others. I mugged 15 hours a day during A-levels because I wanted to show my teachers that I can do it. I worked hard in NS and got into OCS because I want to make my parents proud. Every time when I am near my breaking point and contemplating falling out, I will think of a friend, my section, or LT Wei Hao, and then I will press on. And of course, chanting the title of this blog also helps to alleviate the pain I am going through and motivates me to continue.

OCS life has been really enriching thus far, and I am finally saying farewell to my blur-sotong self which I mentioned in my last post and advancing towards excellence and success. Each achievement makes me more confident and spurs me on to gun for more, and I hope that at the end of OCS, I will really emerge as a changed man.

:)

its been over a month since the last update. well, its not that i haven't been reflecting or writing about my life, but in ocs we're required to fill up this book which acts like a kind of diary so I don't really need a blog now. Besides, where got time!

life has been okay so far. there's been some ups and downs, with the latter being the majority, but I am coping well. i'll just ramble off whatever comes to mind right now:

1. I'm in Delta Wing. Everyone here is super zai T_T every night or two during the last parade there will be several names read out for them to go for PSC interviews the next day. There are already several OMS and SAFOS scholars.

2. Pushups here are done in sets of 50

3. I got gold for my first IPPT! :D Several personal bests, including 10 Chinups, 250 SBJ and 55 situps. Additional $200 woohoo

4. I did guard duty last saturday. The duty is split into shifts of 4 hours, so the cycle consists of 4 hours Guard house duty, 4 hours Ops room duty and 4 hour rest. Its quite slack but its really sian

5. Whoo i sat in an aircon rover while doing patrolling for guard duty. Its quite cool :D

6. My current appointment is platoon quartermaster, so once every 3 days i'm in charge of the stores and need to set them up and return them for all the day's events. Its quite a bit of saikang actually, but luckily I work once every 3 days only.

7. Route Marches here are in a totally different league from those done in BMT. Apart from the standard ILBV and field pack, we need to wear soft armour plates (argh hot), and carry hard armour plates (argh heavy) and each section needs to carry 2 weapons which weigh 9kg each (argh die)

8. I'm quite bored in camp so please sms me more. I promise to reply whenever possible (:

9. Training here is very much based on self learning. They throw you books and laptops and you just study whatever they want you to and pass the test later on. I don't really like it this way actually. Instructors > books > laptops

10. I became a bit of a blur-sotong after I entered OCS and I've made my commander quite pissed several times. I really need to wake up, I was never like this in BMT. Come on hongrui!

11. I really don't mind getting confined and doing extra duty on weekends I think. Civilian life is quite sian actually, most of the time I will just use the com and sleep the day away. Can there be more outings please?