N22...

so ex wallaby has come and gone. in it, ex dt1 and dt2 (die together twice man...) i must say it was a very enriching experience. eating all that sand has made me appreciate singapore air more. and since the training area is 4x the size of singapore, it wouldn't be uncommon to travel up to 100km a day. in a car it wouldn't be so much of a problem, but in my noisy tin can of a toy... it can give you a real headache, buttache, earache, or whatever ache some might have experienced =p

so our vehicles got beaten up and abused. road wheels flying off during movement, broken cables, mirrors and structures, screwed up petrol gauges, breaking down during movement... it all happened to our 3 vehicles. but luckily my vehicle didn't break down. so when the others did, somehow i had to keep waiting for them just so that they wouldn't get lost

so in the end topo-ing in wallaby didn't turn out to be as hard as i thought it would. gps and bms combined, no armour vehicle can ever get lost again hahaha

the weather there was kind of puzzling as well. apparently it hadn't rained there for more than 5 years, but somehow this time around it rained every 15 minutes! so for me standing up, it's like 5 mins rain followed by 15 mins of sun! just repeat the cycle for a couple of hours and you'd roughly know how screwed up it felt. got quite alot of pictures of the wallaby experience, but for my own safety i can't put up a large percentage of them. too much classified information i guess.

so back from 3 weeks of wallaby, i've now got 3 weeks of off and leave, before i go back to camp for a couple of days, and then run off again until january hahaha this is the soon-to-ord life that i need man. managed to borrow bang's ps2 today, and quite alot of games. intending to borrow josh's ds too hahaha a couple of good new rpgs out for psp too! alot of (rather unproductive) stuff to burn my time with hahaha ok lah they're more like... additional things to do.

today, or rather ytd since it's past midnight, marked my 2 years together with wendy. went to barnacles on sentosa for dinner. it was nice!!! nice and tender lamb, and the ambience was quite nice too! except that the sea breeze let us down for a bit, so i did sweat a little hahaha gave her the whole load of hearts i made for her, glad she liked them. got another video from her for this year again. didn't seem too long ago that i got my 1st video. time flies... many things we've experienced, many ways we've grown and changed for each other. but one thing that hasn't changed is the way we feel for each other... and that's the most important thing =)

we're all waiting for something... something to come our way

3 more days...

today while i was eating dinner, the thought of me booking in just crossed my mind. and then i realised that i'm on off tomorrow hahaha i think every sunday night for me now is just preparation to book in. so it just feels weird. it's like... after A levels when u're used to studying every single waking moment, that when you play AFTER your exams are over you feel guilty hahaha ok maybe not all of you felt that, but i sure did. thank goodness it didn't last more than a day =p

now thinking more about it, wallay SHOULD be an interesting experience, especially when i gotta topo to my deployment ground. there won't be anyone there who can help me man. just me, my compass, protractor and gps. just hope i can find my way...

these few days of off have been the most i've spent at home since BMT block leave. one whole week of sleeping at home in my own bed. good rest for wallaby i guess. but after wallaby it'll be even longer hahaha ahhh the wonders of clearing leave in december =) seriously can't wait for all of it to be over man. imagining how last time guys did 2.5 years of army just drives me crazy... instead of ord-ing in feb i would've ord-ed in september. really would've gone completely crazy man hahaha

josh and derek are almost done. all i can say is that they really deserve it. after all the shit they've been through. they deserve their ord the most

we're all waiting for something... something to come our way

B/O, wallaby, off and leave till 121207

that's what i wrote under the remarks for my book out book today before i left camp. so as of today i wouldn't see my bunk for 1.5 months hahaha half of that time will be spent in australia in the desert, and the other half will be spent slacking at home and hopefully going to phuket with my classmates =) before we unload the damned equipment from the containers, which i wouldn't be looking forward to, but oh well... last hurdle before i can finally start relaxing.

today handed over our kit bags, so won't see them again until i'm in australia. still got some stuff to bring over. my genius of a brigade wants us to bring 3 different jackets over. gortex jacket, brigade windbreaker and the army sweater that we've been issued with. stupid? well, we also have to bring along the brigade singlet, cap, shirt and identity badge. stupid? extremely overdone and unnecessary is all i can say. just takes up space in our bags which could be much better used for other stuff seriously

well the only problems i foresee overseas is the freezing cold temperature at night, and the uber expensive stuff there. but i guess the buying of stuff can be avoided, if not reduced, but the temperature at night could just kill me. i've never been good with the cold, and sleeping in a tentage with only flaps to keep us "warm" isn't going to help much. hope i don't freeze to death over there man hahaha

we're all waiting for something... something to come our way

ikea in my mum's car...

was supposed to go sentosa today for some beach volleyball, something which i haven't done for the longest time. BUT, someone up there didn't want me to go i guess, and it kind of rained the whole day, so just stayed at home and washed my SBO. it still had mud from tekong man... and one of the metal buckles is already cracked, but luckily it's still strong enough to hold the strap there hahaha had to tear apart the whole thing man. all 6 of it... such a hassle. and can only assemble it again when i'm in australia. bloody mafan.

in the evening went to ikea for dinner and a little shopping. janet bought billy (a rather tall bookshelf) and a metal cabinet. and we had a really fun time shoving it in my mum's car and trying to get sitting space for janet and wendy. my gear stick almost couldn't move, and i had to lean forward to see my left wing mirror hahaha basically 2/3 of my car became storage space, and janet squeezed into a small corner in the what was initially the boot, and wendy just sat behind my chair laughing at janet hahaha then of course we had the fun part of moving it up to janet's 8 floor flat. thank god for lifts is all i can say hahaha but it's one of the really rare interesting things that i've done with the car so far. luckily my mum's car is a hatchback.

we're all waiting for something... something to come our way

cohesiveness...

had a free day out of camp today since it was my platoon cohesion. in the morning went to jurong east swimming complex, to swim (duh...) and just waste time. went there early in the morning so that could stay out on thursday hahaha after that we went to suntec for kushin bo. you know on the advertisement it sounds like fishing bowl... so yeah... all of us left with a considerable bulge from under the shirt in the belly region hahaha basically we were all damn full =p

and something interesting that doesn't really happen quite often... while on the way to pick up my mum from her workplace about at hour ago, was driving down town and was experiencing a shit hell of a jam. as i slowly (very very slowly) got down the road, saw that there was a suzuki swift broken down on the right most lane. and it was pretty new, so my guess was that he modified his engine and it cocked up. after that, the jam didn't improve! so just kept slowly rolling down, and realised that there was a BMW broken down in the middle lane just after rendezvous hotel!!! don't see a broken down BMW everyday. and the road under his car was really wet, so all i could assume was that he blew his engine hahaha but yah it must've really sucked to have your car broken down in the middle of orchard road. damn paiseh for sure...

we're all waiting for something... something to come our way