28 August 2005
It had being a very, very long day. On the 27th August midnight, I left my home unwillingly and sleepily to Changi Airport. My flight to Thailand is at 0415 hours on the 28th August and I was expected to be at the airport by 0100. So early and nothing to do; most of the shops in the terminal were closed. Police were patrolling and checking on illegal travelers and forbidden items.
Traveling time from Singapore to Kamphangsaen took slightly more than 2 hours. There are not much things to see there except high grounds and vegetations. The camp I am staying is also the same. First thing after we checked into our bunks, we head straight to the parade field for a welcome and opening ceremony in a parade form.
Staying there is like a jail. The food is not very nice as they were cooked by the NSmen. The trays for the food are made of metal. Bunks are in low conditions. The metal cupboards are vandalized and there are no anchors for the shelves to sit on. The bed’s platform is a piece of metal sheet and it creates disturbing noise at night when I climb onto my foam mattress.
There are a lot of stores to be done; admin and outfield. We also have to do sentry and it is very tiring as we already do not have enough sleep during our flight time. Early morning at 0455, I have to be up for my sentry duty.
29 August 2005
Boring morning; 5km run around the camp, breakfast and shower. The most happening event of the day, I lost my camp past and it was only the second day in camp. I was asking around and no one saw or took it. Lastly, I decided to ask the logistic store men because my camp pass was last with me outside the logistic store when I was doing sentry in the morning. Who ask me to be so careless? Now I have to pay S$50 and serve confinement. But in the end, I am not paying because the pass was in-fact kept by CPT Jason when my pass was found by the logistic men. He returned me the pas that night and lectured me. I had to write a statement to my Head Gun, MAJ Julius. Now, my punishment will depend on whether he still remembers this matter when we get back to Singapore.
30 August 2005
My sentry duty is at 0100 at the Ops room. My camp pass is safely resting my wallet. Now, I am vigilant with the issued stores and pray nothing will ever happen again. Integrated training with other functional groups starts today. I learned how to use the GPS. A very good instrument but cannot totally rely on them. Forward Observers, FOs, should be best in map and compass navigation. That is our “rice bowl”.
Remembering yesterday’s incident that I lost my camp pass; I hope that MAJ Julius will forget my statement or misplaced it.
There will always be last minute stores to be settled. Miscommunication is also another factor. The whole night I was running here and there to get stuffs done. I called Dear before I slept for a short chat. She is graduating soon in a month time and me, still stuck in NS.
31 August 2005
Have to wake up early in the morning to get ready to leave camp for our Observation Post, OP, to help to set up the OP! There are so many stores to unload and bring up the hill. The whole day was spend on unloading and preparing the stores. Later in the evening, we were driven to a location about 6km, straight line distance from the OP. That is our start point of our insertion exercise, to topo to the OP. It was fun. We met a lot of unexpected situations. Dogs are very common when we are near or in the villages. Farmers carry rifle with live rounds was a shocking experience by one of the 3 insertion groups. But it was made clear to us that they were only out there to hunt for birds and not us. My group was the first to reach the OP but we took the stairs up instead of from the back of the hill.
01 September 2005
Wow, it is a new month again. 1 more month to commission. My shoulder was aching due to the uneven and heavy load I was carrying yesterday night during yesterday’s insertion exercise. I was woken up by sounds from the flight of the 155mm rounds flying overhead me. It was like a sound of the fighter plane. I wonder why will there be such sound when most of the time the round doesn’t create noise during flight.
The whole day we did calling for fire on our targets. The pace was slow due to the pace at the gun side’s computing and laying speed. After comparing mortar illum we fired with the RTA’s, Royal Thai Army, 155mm illum, it is such a big difference. 155mm illum burns longer and brighter. RTA also fires their rounds efficiently. When we fire the illum and no rounds from the 155mm guns, the RTA liaisons were laughing. It was an embarrassment. After the end of the live firing for the day, the impact zone was filled with lights. Villages carrying their flashlights were collecting the fragments of the exploded rounds. A spectacular sight indeed; t was like a Deepavali celebration. The Thai villages are so well equipped and informed on when live firing for the day ends. Not long later, we packed up and changed sets. Set 2, I was moved to Bravo Gun Battery as a Charge loader.
02 September 2005
Live firing for the morning, I was very excited. My first time going to experience the power of a Artillery Gun Howitzer. It was a marvelous experience.
Before lunch, we were displaced to another deployment ground which is further away from the impact zone. For that, we used charge 3, a higher charge than previous charge 2 used. The shock wave and the recoil were tremendous. It was louder, greater and even items on the ground jumped up or dropped from their positions. Even the Insulator foam box beside the gun was damaged by its side blast.
At around evening time, the weather started to rain heavily. Our morale turned low. We did not manage to do any night firing at all. The rain last till 2200.
03 September 2005
The day’s weather was perfectly fine. It was sunny and everything went smoothly. At last, the gun crews were given the chance to pull the trigger of the gun to fire. “If you did not fire any rounds, you are not a gunner and cannot commission as a Arty Officer” Nah… but the experience of pulling the trigger is enjoyable. How I wish I am able to fire a few more times. But too bad, only once. Only the later has the chance to fire most of the time. And also, after I fired, the last person to get the chance to fire in the battery, the flip rammer’s ramming base plate was damaged. Therefore, we had to have it changed. As we wait, we did manual loading the 45kg round into the barrel and manually rammed it. “If you never do manual ramming you are not considered as a gunner” Nah… Just kidding. I think it was a very rare opportunity to learn to experience and experience to learn.
The weather turned bad in the early afternoon. It brought our morale low again. Now, we were wetter than ever; plus my heat rashes, I am tremendously irritated by the extremely painful experience. But luckily, we were moving off to Kao Meng Camp for our tactical resting point. There, we can shower and get some rest. And I shitted. I feel so relieved after 3-4 days without releasing any solid matters. There are always so many things happen to our course. Another 3 were caught sleeping, one during office hours and another 2 during sentry. What more are we going to expect I really do not know.
04 September 2005
A slack day. We spend our day maintaining the stores and taking over the stores of our 3rd set appointment. This time I am in the BCP, Battery Command Post, as a Signaler. Daniel told me it would be a slack post. The only things which I need to do are to man the comms and follow the recce team out to look for alternate deployment ground.
In the late evening after the sun is down, we moved off from Kao Meng Camp to our new deployment ground. Night time is the most difficult and challenging time to action front anything. The BCP took us quite a lot of time to have it set up and we managed to finish it within 2 hours. By that time, it was almost 0200. Everyone was so shag out and sleepy. We managed to get only 2 hours of sleep excluding 1 hour of sentry duty. Sentry again… haiz…
05 September 2005
Set 3 live-firing starts today. Weather was good even though the sky looks as though it is going to rain. At first, I was completely lost and do not know which handset to talk through to get to the others. There are so many handsets, 4 of them to different nets, and a telejay to my gun. 4 handsets with 4 speakers, all talking through the comms at the same time, it was a chaos. But after a while, I got used to it.
In the evening, there was a ranging mission followed by a FFE, Fire for Effect, mission. ‘C’ Battery laid their gun wrongly and in the end, the round dropped short, which landed very near to the OP. In the end, the day’s live-firing stopped and investigation starts. My battery which had already loaded a round into the barrel had to be extracted. It took us hours. haiz… such a waste of time. Again, we are displacing to another deployment ground in the night.
06 September 2005
2 hours of sleep and 1 hour of sentry again. Enjoying the clear sky brighten up by the stars, as I glazed up the sky, at last I saw 2 shooting stars, since the last time I came to Thailand more than a year ago.
Pace is getting slower around here after yesterday’s accident. The first round is only shot out by ‘C’ Battery at 1134. We were supposed to have the first shot out at 0800 everyday. Very slow pace. My BCP crew and instructors even fell asleep while ‘C’ Battery is doing their mission. Hot, hot, hot! Today’s weather is so warm that even when I only sitting down and doing nothing, I was perspiring.
We do not need to displace to another deployment ground again. Yeah! That is very good news indeed. But then, in the late evening, the weather starts to change and it began to rain heavily. A drastic change in weather. Luckily, I am in the BCP, shelter for 24hours and with fans too. So I do not need to worry of anything! haa… but the gun side will have problems as all their stores are in the rain. They only have a 7 tonner to seek shelter. Haiz… I can understand how they felt because I had that experience during my 2nd set. Sad, live-firing for the night had being cancelled.
07 September 2005
Yes… the last day of live-firing had finally arrived. My body is stinky and sticky after 3 days without any shower. My battery almost fired a round on a wrong data given to us by the higher command. It should be a drop 200m but the person who did the keying in of the data did not put a minus sign in front resulting a Add 200 instead. Luckily the laying is out of the safety limit or else we will never know the mistake made.
Hello 00, this is 20, message from 25, Very Good Shooting, End of BattleKing, over.
Yahoo!! After we reached back Sai Yok Camp, it was about 5pm and most of us still did not have our lunch. Everyone was so tired and hungry. We still need to unload all the stores from our vehicles. I was short listed to stay back in camp to clean the guns with some other people. The rest of the others are going to help out in a community service. I heard from some of my friends that those who are staying in camp are those who did something wrong during the pass week in camp and exercise.. Did I do anything wrong> I only lost my camp pas but it was returned to me. Sentry again tomorrow morning.
08 September 2005
Haiz… March for 10 minutes just to get to the weapon garage around 800m away is not a joke. Marched to and fro for more than 2 times, that was shag. Cleaning the howitzer is no joke either especially after 7 days of live-firing under rain and shine. The whole gun was covered with soil and mud. We spend the whole day cleaning and could not finish the cleaning. I am also so sleepy and tired. Dinner sucks again as usual and at night, we were to do sentry, again. This time, for the uniforms we are returning.
09 September 2005
The uniforms stink. Really stinks with all the bags of ammonia stench. The whole day is quite slack again. After the morning life-run, it is all about area cleaning. One of the WC in the toilet is choked with shit. Gross. We spend quite a while to unclog it. Toilets here get choked easily as the diameters of the pipes are too small. We did a lot more sai kang in the afternoon. At around 1530, at last we have a chance to officially enter the canteen, free and easy. I bought a polo-t and a pouch for myself. Weijian and 1 tried to bargain for 2 bags but they won’t lower the price. In the end we gave up and left the shop in disappointment. Later, we had our End of Frame dinner. The dinner was so-so, but better than our Sai Yok Camp cookhouse food. There are also 3 female singers with 5 dancers to entertain us. Their voice and singing are quite ok. I felt that I am in a 7th month concert.
10 September 2005
Early in the morning board the bus and we headed off for our E-tour. First stop, floating market. The things there are not cheap. Taking the boat is an experience but I won’t take it next time, too expensive. We tried to bargain for the things we want to buy and they always give us the same facial expression and say… “Nooo… I lose money… give me more, give me more…” We also went to the Thai Handicraft Centre and their sale prices are too steep for most items. A soft toy warehouse is one of our destinations. I was tempted to jump into the waist height bags of fluffy toys. Last stop, River Kwai. We were lucky to meet the incoming train from the bridge; we were told that there are only 2 trips per day. Quite an experience walking down the track as the train was moving behind us.
11 September 2005
September 11, let us give a minute of silence to those who dies in the tragic terror attack to the WTC twin tower.
We woke up as usual, clear out of the bunk and did a bit of area cleaning before handing back the bunks back to Sai Yok Camp. Our first destination of the day is a Safari. We took a Safari bus into several enclosed areas to look at animals such as deers, giraffes, camels, antelopes, lions and tigers. Bananas were given to us to feed the “veggie eaters”. Then we head on to watch the elephant and crocodile show. The elephants seem to have being cruelly tortured. I hate it when they pulled their ears to get them moving.
Next, we went to a Wax museum which features famous monks, personnel and other tradition activities played by Thais, wax figures. They are very life like and expressive.
Big C Shopping Centre is the last destination of the 2 day E-tour. It is like another IMM with a big mega market. There are nothing much to shop too. Even the electrical section in the mega market has too few varieties. I wanted to buy a nice watch but could not find any suitable design.
Lastly, we went to Whales Hotel for our dinner. It is not a very modern hotel. Of course, what am I expecting? A highly modern hotel with posh marbles and carpets and chandeliers on the ceiling? haa… I must be happy to fine a decent enough hotel like Whales in Kanchanaburi already.
Well, it is time to head off to the airport! Yeah! At last, the time finally arrived. We took the plane to Bangkok for refueling and then back to Singapore. I was so sleepy that I did not realize that the plane had descended for landing. I only woke up when the plane touched down at about 0300 on the 12 September 2005. Took a cab home with Tian Hai. I wanted to sleep after I washed my dirty clothing but in the end, I used my computer until 6am in the morning.
12 September 2005
Went out to collect my No.1 and No.2 pants at 2 different places. Then brought moon cakes to my aunt’s and grandmother’s house. Nothing much I did today. Very tired. Most of the time I was typing out my diary into my blog on the past 2 weeks activities which I wrote in my black notebook when I am in Thailand.
tata…
Here goes… some of the photos I took with Foong on the Commissioning Ball dinner last Saturday. Before the dinner starts, we had a chance to take some glamour shots by the professional photographer we hired. My first time taking such shots in front of a piece of nicely patterned cloth, the feeling was weird. What’s more, others are queuing up to take the shots too and were looking at any person under the flashes of the camera.
Hi everyone. The day we had long waited for had finally arrived. Our Commissioning Ball Dinner! Who’s my partner for the night? She is none other than my long time lovely friend, Fiona/Kar Foong. She is very gorgeous last night!
