THE WORST 2 DAYS OF MY LIFE

Behold people! This is SIT test. The mother of all phobia for 3 days 2 nights.

THE WONDERFUL JOURNEY

You start with walking 12km to the camp site. With the hot sun above you. Without forgetting the really highly arched bridge we walked through. Once done, you immdiately pitch your litthe tent and continue field camp as usual. What we actually got back from the 12km walk is the super abrasion around the groin area. Walking like clumsy bears, we paitently waited for free time to powder our very reddish groin area. No words from the thickest dictionary in the world can explain the feeling of the prickly heat powder landing on the sore areas.

THE DAY I BECAME A LAWMAN

LAW is actually called Light Anti-tank Weapon. You have seen those heros. In Red Alert, Generals, Tiberian Sun. They effortlessly carried those countless amounts of rockets, running around and trash those tank to scrap metal.

I had only one round inside it's only launcher, plus they are all just dummies. And i thought it was the end of the world.

Weighing 6.3kg, i carried this dead weight with my other LAW buddy. (Wait. We both share that 1 bloody thing only.) We went about with our various missions. It was actually quite alright. Until when we started running for cover when enemy artlliery or sniper strike us. worse is when someone is shot. The officers never fails to choose the heaviest ones. This is where i swear that the 6.3kg weight becomes a mega ton.

And it is also where i embarresed myself by feeling giddy and nearly collasped due to heat stroke. This is serious. Please do not ever leave your water bottle half-full just because it's lighter. You never know when you need to seriously drink down to the last drop of it.

And comes the long awaited end of SIT test.


IT SOON BECAME 16KM

From the lesson above, i decided to drink up more. Really much more. However, as thr officers felt that the sun is too hot, they decided to delay the route march to the later part of the afternoon. By then, i had already drank up more than 1 and a half bottles of water. When we set of. It was far from hot. It was in fact windy and very cooling.

Extra water had to be coming out of the body in one way or another. If there's no heat to sweat it out, It has to come out out of the penis. And this is where i had a problem. While everyone is complaining of the up-hill slope. I was complaining of the absent of a mobile toilet. i had no choice but to hold on. While everybody is tired, i was very well, energtitic. When we reach our rest point, everyone was shagged out. Except me and a few others. We ran up the toilet area and happily pee ever after.

I thought i had learned my lesson. But i was far from wrong. At the 12km rest point, i felt too hungry. So i drank up two whole bottles of water while having my packed dinner. Same thing. i was cursing when the company slowed down their march as it was getting really dark.

Finally, i can hold no longer. I asked the sergent at the far end (he is the rear scout) for permission and pee at the road side double quick time. The sergent and a fellow recuit accopmanying him was shock to see so much pee coming out of me after learning that i had pee just before setting off from the 12km rest point.

That was it. We had march 16 km. Our legs is now filled with blister and we needed rest badly. But my day is still far from ended. As i had to report to CMPB for a test the next day at 9am, i was given permission to book out that night. This is actually a nighmare. i was suppose to catch the 10pm ferry when it was already 9:15pm. To make matter worse, i was appointed by the officer to inform the rest who needs to book out that night. Sure enough, i and two others missed the 10pm ferry by a few minutes and need to wait for the next ferry at 11pm.

Next day 9am came and the test i did was the same thing as the "Do this survey and pass down to 10 other people" kind of thing you will see in your friendster send message function.

I DUNNCH TINK IT'S MY DAY

My grenede throwing is a flop.

This can be explained by over excitement. Or rather, the breaking of virgins.

It took me a bloody long time to twist the safety ring out. When finally done, threw out my grenede from the throwing bay. Only to land really off the target, closest to the throwing bay.

Not much need to be explained what happen soon after.

THIS IS GUARD DUTY

Everybody is very eager to do it. But once the virginty is broken, they try all ways to avoid it. Welcome to guard duty.

Some will be conscripted into it. While some will need to perform mistake to earn it.

I was dead shag one day during field camp. I sat down on the floor with my rifile on my leg with the barrel facing the sky. It was also loaded with blanks. One ass-hole switch my rifile to auto, and by the curse of all mankind, i dared him to squezze the trigger. And he did just that. Two sergents began staring at us.

And we found ourself doing our part as a singaporean taking part in the nation's 41st birthday guarding an otherwise very well known island called Tekong.

The day began with a very early dinner, followed by the participting of the flag lowering session. After which, we march to the guard room to have our briefing. Once done, we will start guarding our well loved island.

My shift soon came. And i set out with my guard buddy. He was invited to guard duty as he dropped his magazine. And an officer was kind enough to pick it up for him. This also happened at field camp.

As we were not yet trained to fire live rounds yet, we were armed with a set of baton and riot shield.

We were allocated to be prowels. All we do is to walk all over the edges of BMTC 1 & 2.

It is here we were taught the hard way of how low a recuit life is. I saw a friend of mine, exchanged greetings and was screwed by his sergent.

Sergent: GUARDS!!!! GUARDSSSSS!!!! WHAT'S THE @%#!&%# TACTICAL DISTANCE???

We ignored him but my buddy and i started to distanced ourselves. Tactical distance is useful and important in case we were ambushed by enemies. In Tekong, it is the danger of the wild boars. Haha.

As we walked along the coastal areas of Tekong (it is were the O, T, W coy is) we heard fire works from the fire works vestival. Unfortuely, view was block by an zinc blockade to prevent recuits wandering into freshly reclaimed area. Only the sentries and those off duty get to watched them.

And soon, we grew bored with shoulders aching. To get over this, my buddy and i decided to hide somewhere to scare the other prowels walking the other direction. But we failed our mission.

The worst thing about guard duty is the bunk. When you are off duty, you rest in a stuffy bunk, filled with joss smoke smell coming fron the prayer room next door. Bed are so dirty, you will decide to sit on the chair and fall asleep on the table. To set your mind at peace, this is a list of things you may want to bring.

1. MP3 player for off duty uses.
2. Wet tissues for your oil filled face.
3. Toilet paper if you think you need to shit during guard duty.
4. Coins, you will need them if you are posted to do prowling.

Soon, guard duty ended on 6am, 9th August. But because the B coy who will take over us came late, we left the guard room for our F coy barracks only at 8:30am.

Without forgeting that our ferry is due to leave at 8:45am. With the fact that the guard room is beside the tekong ferry terminal and the F coy barracks is really really deep inside BMTC, marching is not an option. We had to run. And i really mean run. Put down our SBO, get our field packs, run to the ferry.

By some magical mystries, we made it on time. Only to come back on the very same day at 7pm.

When we arrived Tekong, we were greeted by the fire works display as we were alighting from the ferry. Many of us recuits stayed at the jetty to enjoy the small little romantic display of our country birthday by our country.

Happy 41st birthday, Singapore.

SO YOU THINK YOU HAVE SEEN EVERYTHING IN THIS WORLD

If this is what you think, you haven't been to field camp. 7 days, 6 nights on three different camp-sites, you will discover about yourself that you didn't know of.


PACKING YOUR BAGS

During stays overs at chalets, you are ususlly capaple of rolling up your clothes and squezzing them into your sling bags.

Here in field camp, you do the same. But with a set of thicker uniforms, a set of grey shirts and pants, underwears, sandles, and all your field camp equiment, and of course food, lots of food.

A great majority of us have problems squezzing into what could be seen as a small field bag. For me, my pants pockets will contain the lighter maggie mees while my bag will carry the heavier field rations. For my SBO (the thingy used to carry ammo) The smaller grenede pouch will contain my energy bar and the larger smoke grenede pouch will have my canned coffee given by the army. 2 of my magazine pouches became biscuit pouches. Thus, my field bag looks neat and tidy.

Only for a while. Back in the tent, i force compact everything into that darn bag. Crushing all the maggie mee and the biscuits.


ARE PIGS REALLY CUTE AFTER ALL

In almost all toy stores and love-birds gift shops, pigs are protrayed as a really cute loveable creatures, just look at little pigglet from Winnie the Pooh. To the great extend that almost all girls love them.

Welcome to field camp. You will see one for real as a wild boar. These creatures simply walk through the con-wire (these are long spirling wires with probally thousands of small sharp blade all over it). They than go straight to your bag, smell it, walk away to other tents, snatch away some poor recuits food, and walk away arrogantly. They starting moving around faster only after the sergents trew thunder-flashes at them. These creatures attack our camp site almost through out the first night. So much so that i slept soundly in my tent while those ugly hairy creatures were half-way into their rampage.


THE NEW MEANING OF PUBLIC TOILET

You know it. You shit in a whole during field camp. All you do is to do it once and you are put off for life. i shit only 3 times during the field camp where 2 times i did it at non-designated places. The first time i did was with one of my bunk mates and some from other platoons. Those from the other platoons did it at one random plot of empty non-grassy land. my bunk mate and i decided to go further as it look like a total mass-open-shiting-orgy.

So the two of us went across a bridge to the other side of the canal. Sastified with the location, we started digging our own hole where i stumbled across a pile of old decomposed dried shit. i nearly puked, but decided to continue anyway as i can hold no longer.

As the radom plot of poen non-grassy land i was talking about just now, it actually turned out to be our training area for that camp site.

The second time i did it was on the last night of that camp site. I went with 2 other friends. Since it was too dark so we went to the training area to do it. we digged and we did it. My torch was spoilt, so i used solid fuel that was provided for cooking of the maggie mee. The glowing of the fire light made the place a rather romantic atmosphere. Since the sky was clear, i saw defintiely the most beautiful star filled sky that lay above me.

That is until a sergent came by. They can be spotted from afar by their white LED torches. And we put out our little fire and went into stealth mode.


DIG DIG DIG

At the second last day, there is a personal trench you need to dig. it is about the size of you, look like a grave hole with another hole within that hole to put your bag into. Some were lucky. They got a second hand hole. Holes that has been dug up before and covered back. Others like me and a few of my poor fellow bunk mates had to dig a fresh ground near a tree. The soil stood firm, grass firmly rooted to the ground and while we dig, the roots of the nearby tree stood our way. All we can do is to suck our thumb as we chop those bloody roots away with our really, really down chunko stick called the ET blade.

Really, all the Blanga workers out there are really under paid and under appreciated. And here we are, making fun of them.