Monday, August 30, 2004
Officer Cadet's Mess is surprisingly classier than i expected. There's a room where internet access is available, hence the blogging on a monday night. (Say hello to more frequent entries!)
Am honoured that there are those who've read my blog and are "inspired"
Its a huge ego boost! -grin- Yes yes yes please do leave more tags/comments like this and you'll make lionel a very happy man.
Always glad to please, your happy blogger. :)
he rocked the party at 6:19 AM |
Saturday, August 21, 2004
I survived my first jump. And i shall never laugh at life again. For four agonizing hours before the jump, i wasnt sure if i'd ever run, eat, laugh, or dance again. Seriously! When you dont know what to expect, fear of the unknown envelops you, and the anxiety while waiting is enough to kill you. (ok, so now i know that its pretty safe, but at the time i was nervous as heck)
Did our pre-jump ground training come thursday morning, followed by our aircraft orientation of the Fokker 50 at Changi Air Base. That's when the fear kicked in. Doing the drill in the actual aircraft made everything seem so real, and its real easy to imagine what its like 1000ft in the air. Pure torture. Plus it took constant psycho-ing each other prevent my frazzelled nerves from being even more, well, frazzelled.
Once roll call at Paya Lebar Air Base ended, Sortie 1 proceeded to para fit. Then we were led in 2 rows to the aircraft about 200m away. Now it isnt exactly very comfortable standing after you've fitted up, let alone walking. Plus my stomach was making funny turns. I had this brief flash of sheep being led to the slaughterhouse, but i shoved that imagery right out of my mind immediately. Stress. When the aircraft taxi-ed to the runway, Jin Rong and i exchanged half-stressed, half laughing glances. That's it.. no turning back now. Only way back to the ground is out the jump door.
About 10 seconds after takeoff we reached 500 feet. Sheesh! It was freakin fast! Jumpmaster told us to unfasten our safety belt and prepare for action. Now wait wait wait wait, arent we supposed to cruise around a little bit more first? Stress. Now, i was in the 2nd pass, meaning that i sat on the starboard side, which offered me an excellent view of the jump door. Ooo what an honour. The jumpmaster unhatched the jump door, swung it open, and locked it. I've never seen anything more terrifying in my life. Through the gaping mouth of the door, air rushed into the cabin, and it sounded as if the mouth was roaring at me, waiting to eat me up. I could see the whole of Sengkang below us, far far away. Drifters stood up, hooked up, and jumped off. Sheesh they didnt fall downwards, they were swept off sideways, towards the rear of the aircraft. Each one disappeared with a "shooop" sound. Jumpmasters then pulled back the static lines with the deployment bags back into the cabin. I found myself wondering, Now where were the bodies? 1st pass stood up, did the drill, and jumped off as well. It was incredibly fast. Shoop. Shoop. Shoop. Shoop. Shoop. Shoop.. in intervals of 1 second. They were gone!
Our turn now.. "2nd pass stand up!" We stood up.
"Hook up!" We hooked up. My hands shaking as i inserted the safety pin. Please please please let there be nothing wrong with the static line.
"Check static line!" One, Two. Felt good jerking the line and feeling how solid it was.
"Check equipment!" Helmet, capewell, life jacket.. at least something to distract my mind for the moment.
"Sound off for equipment check!" I slapped Jin Rong's shoulder and i yelled "2 OK!" in an attempt to steel myself up.
"Move forward!" Right left, right left.
"Move forward!" Right left, right left.
And then we had to stand there and wait for about an agonizing 2 or 3 minutes, cause of high flying birds. Irritating. Lost balance a couple of times due to a combination of the plane turning and jelly legs.
"5 seconds, Stand in the door!" Omigosh, omigosh.. here it comes. Right left, right left.
"Green horn.. GO!!" Shoop. Jin Rong was out. Right left. The wind was rushing into my face, Singapore stretched far below me.. i threw all reason to the wind. There was no time to think.
"GO!" I sticked out my right leg, and the wind swept me away!!
The 3 seconds felt like forever. Wind rushing all around me, i had a vague impression that i was upside down, and all the time i was falling, falling, falling.. life flashed by before me, as i counted "two thousand, three thousand.." (i forgot one thousand)
And suddenly, fwoomp. Everything was quiet. The world stopped spinning, and heck, everything seemed to have stopped moving. I heard a bird fly past. Caw, caw, caw.. Tilt my head up, "check!!"
I have never, i mean NEVER, seen anything more beautiful in my life. The canopy spread up high above me, it was perfect, except for two twists. Okay, twist. Mind working again, proceeded to remedy. Kick, kick, para grip. Twist remedied. "Toggles! Front! Over right! Over left! Under left! Under right! In between! Good para position!" Whoohoo!! I was flying! Then i remembered i should be looking for a place to land, and where was the friggin smoke so i could tell where the wind was coming from? Frantically looked around, saw it, and got into position. Check downwards, oops: ground seems to be rushing up towards me! "Feet knees locked tight, feet knees locked tight, dont reach for the ground. 90% of injuries occur during landing. Feet knees locked tight, feet knees locked tight..."
Bam. Hit the ground, body and legs totally collapsed. Bumped my head on the grass. Blur for about two seconds, before finding myself being dragged by the wind on the ground. Released one capewell, and got to my feet. My feet! I could stand! Whoohoo! Ran to collapse the canopy. I can run, i can run, i can run.. i couldnt help it. I was grinning like an idiot the whole time while doing recovery. Hooray, i did it, i did it i did it..
So there. My first jump. Were supposed to do one day and one night jump the next day, but the task was cancelled right after the jump door was opened, due to strong winds. Crap. Which is why i havent gotten my wings and my red beret yet. Until the next jump, that is. But, no matter, no one could take away the pride of facing my worst fear, and overcoming it. And i guess that's what its really all about.
he rocked the party at 7:15 PM |
I hate goodbyes. I was never really good at them. Sheesh. Aragh, im sorry i was such an ass at the airport, didnt even get to hug you, though i really wanted to. But you were late, and your friends were there, and that was the last call, and everyone was crying... and all i could mumble was a lousy "see you in two years" Geez.
I suck at goodbyes!
But ah.. what's done is done. At least you've got my letter (hey..you havent thrown it away now have you? -warning glare-)
I hope you're fitting in nicely there..Are there lotsa pretty girls and hunky Californian hunks? -grin- It felt weird seeing you walk away from behind the glass.. and it doesnt help that you're small. Hee. We were all discussing whether you'd get lost or something.. Haha! But it was weird la, a part of me wanted to rush in and carry your bags for you or something, or to insult you just to get one more squeaky "heeey".. haha! Felt strangely lonely walking back to the MRT after that.
Oh man, that sounds so melodramatic. Okay, its less drama than it sounds..
But i miss you already. Do email me soon ok?
he rocked the party at 7:15 PM |
Okay, so i got selected for OCS. The three days after Taiwan involved an FFI, Basic Airborne Course selection test, interview with Chief Commando Officer and his panel, and bam, here i am, almost at the end of the 16th OCS BAC, and about to do my jump on Thursday.
Will be crossing over on tueday, if not tomorrow. Am a little apprehensive. There are high expectataions to be met, flags to uphold, pull-ups to be pulled, ops orders to be given, quails to be killed, white shirts to be bought.. not to mention conquering my worst fear of jumping from 1000 ft. How how how?
Sometimes i wonder why i try to Carpe Diem even when i say i dont want to.
he rocked the party at 7:15 PM |
Sunday, August 08, 2004
Fellow bloggers will agree with me: Y'know how its always funny how you find yourself composing blog entries in your head while you're doing something exciting/interesting/scandalous? And its at those times when the entries sound the most interesting, then you return to your computer with a chock full of these prepared interesting thought-of entries and find that there's just too many of them to remember. I should really get a journal thingie to write on to capture truly blog-worthy entries as they come, ala Tom Cruise in Last Samurai. (which, coincidentally, is the movie we watched after our End of Frame Dinner in Mei Ling Camp)
Speaking of Mei Ling Camp, let me tell you about Taiwan! (wow, notice how i smartly linked the subject of blogging to my taiwan trip? So cool right?)
Well, okay. *deep breath* where shall we start?
We did three exercises there: Exercise Red Beret, which was a navex exercise, as well as Exercise Theodore 2A and 2B, a graded section and platoon exercise respectively. Well okay. Remember when i said training in Tekong was the most shagged experience one could ever have? Well, screw all that. Taiwan takes the cake, no questions asked, money back guarantee, callers under 18 must seek parental consent. You dont need tough training to kill you, the terrain and the weather does it quite nicely.
Well, they werent kidding when they said the mountains were high. Contour lines on the map appeared in intervals of 20, and there were a LOT of lines. Then again, the map is almost always an underestimation of the real thing. Imagine bashing your way through thick vegetation up a slope so steep you need to use your hands to crawl up. Branches slapping your face and snagging your field pack, thighs aching, butt squeezed tight. You see a break in the vegetation. Yes! Its the top! Gasping for breath, you clamber up onto the grass patch and take a look at the beautiful view. Its no wonder you're tired: you're above cloud level! Its really very nice if you've got time to enjoy it, you get to see for miles in every direction. (though its mainly mountains, mountains and more mountains) Going down the slope mainly involves different degrees of sliding down on your butt. Different degrees because sometimes you're sliding, sometimes you're actually falling, grabbing branches and roots to slow your decent. Shagged right? Now imagine having to cross FOUR mountains en route to your next checkpoint for navex, or another three to our FRV during our missions, lugging our section SOPs, GPMGs, SAWs, LAWs, etc etc. Suddenly the view doesnt seem quite as beautiful as it should be.
The terrain's pretty bad.. sometimes we'd hit a cliff or a steep drop with absolutely no way of getting up or down. Or if backtracking wasnt an option, we'd use our toggle ropes to pull ourselves up, ala Indiania Jones! haha! Pretty thrilling actually, especially the experience of walking on a narrow ridge line with dead drop ravines on either side in the dead of the night. Our section was lucky in the sense that no one was seriously injured that we had to fall out. Others werent so lucky: i heard of some of my coursemates who fell, became unconcious, had nerves tugged, became physically exhausted, had to be casevac-ed down the mountain, etc. Stress stress.
The weather's extreme too. The sun rises real early, around 4.30am. Maybe cause its summer. The weather's nicely bright but cool all the way from 4.30 to 8am. Then the heat comes very suddenly, and rises frighteningly fast. The hottest part of the day is from 11 to 3, when temperatures rise to 39 degrees. No kidding! You can feel the heat emitting from your body even when you're resting in the shade. The night's are cold... really cold. Even sleeping on nice tarmac ground freezes you to death. The first night, i slept without a goretex, ended up shivering at 3am, and ended up clambering to my friends for bodily warmth. -grin-
Okay, so we didnt see a ninja van. But we saw the new and improved version: the (ta-daah) ninja scooter! This (ta-daaah) ninja scooter, knowing all our checkpoints, would scoot around with a box filled with sinfully yummy deep fried ji-pah (chicken cutlet), pao pao cha (bubble tea), and all forms of burgers. This (ta-daah) ninja scooter even does deliveries to stranded groups of soldiers. We bumped into one delivering a whole carton of 8 pao pao chas and 6 ji pahs to another group. And because i dont know if any of my commanders are reading this, there has been no evidence whatsoever that my group patronized this (ta-daah) ninja scooter. Ahem.
K i shant bore you fellas about our training there. Its just been carrying out missions, missions and more missions anyway. Shagged, boring, and sleepy.
Let's talk about R&R! I have found hip-hop heaven in the form of Shi Ling Ye Shi, as well as Hsimenting in Taipei. Shi Ling Ye Shi's a night market, where the human traffic increases dramatically at around 10pm. Its the first time i've seen a place where the amount of guy's clothes rival those for girls. Plus, there're all a steal if you know how to bargain. And i have never spent so much on clothes before. The mysteries of why girls get such a kick out of shopping have finally been revealed to me. (yes! i finally understand you deb! hahaha) Which was a pity, since i hardly had any cash left when i visited Hsimenting on the last day. Sheesh, i wouldnt have minded going AWOL to live there. An area about the size of Orchard road, with Hip hop music blasting from every shop, baggy shirts, track pants, accessories, CDs, toys, all going for rock-bottom prices. Stages set up at various corners to showcase street dancers and emerging artistes, and people dressed in the weirdest fashions (sometimes weirder than japan). And yes, the girls are pretty.
Mental note: stop blogging these super long entries because you have no idea how to end them. Sheesh.
Another side thought: Yours truly may probably not even be here to blog, because he had a near fatal experience with a bai bu she (hundred steps snake). I know some of you will be real disappointed that the snake didnt kill me on the spot, but oh well, just too bad. Apparantly, once you get bitten by this snake, you'd die before you can take a hundred steps. My section was having an AAR in the vegetation, when a passing farmer alerted us, causing us to jump up in time to see a 2m long brown snake slither past our backsides.. stress stress. Would have been a lousy way to die, bitten in the backside. Sheesh.
he rocked the party at 10:20 AM |
