Hello guys...I know I haven't bee posting...been tired, lazy, busy.
Anyway, tomorrow is the big day...Jump Day...

For those blur ones, it means, tomorrow I'd be jumping from the plane for one of the required phases of training..

All I can say was, at first I was nervous bout jumpin out of the 34ft tower for training..now...it's a big 1000ft...

I pray all goes right, I land and I am able to walk back on my own two feet...

And I hope I don't squeal like a little girl when I get out of the plane....

I'll let you know how it goes nxt wk....

Posted on 5/29/2005 by <$The One$>

Brunei Pics are up...but it does contain some nudity..but it ain't me and I didn't take it...viewer discretion is advised....


Btw, I just posted the lower post..don't be fooled..It may state an earlier date, but I just posted it..heh heh


http://share.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=EeAMWjlw3cNWzyg

Posted on 5/07/2005 by <$The One$>

Hello world...I'm back from brunei...
It was a fun trip, or so to speak...I remember the airplane's captain's words the moment we touched down "Welcome to Brunei. Have a happy and productive training"...That was a kick in the gut....

Ah well, I'll skip on straight to the camp..
Temburong has such vast lands, and SAF had to build it's camp on a hill...literally...I mean like bloody hell, our bunk was at the top of the camp. Go for meals, it's a 100+m down hill, and then a 100+m uphill again. Upon coming back from missions, it's uphill again...Imagine, coming back from a exercise, hot, tired, smelly, stinky, carrying heavy loads and we gotta walk up a bloody hill to our bunk....They've got a nice canteen though. Nice in the way of us being food deprived in the field.
Sweet sour chicken/butter chicken/garlic chicken/black pepper chicken with fried rice, burgers, ice cream, teh chino, nescafe chino...yada yada...Oh..a full can of lychee or longans in ice for $2
Food.....

Well, training was fun too...in it's own sad way...Brunei can really be summarised. 3 words...Uphill, Downhill, Stream...I mean like bloody hell. The hills are never ending...it's either you get a really big one where your legs are like jelly when you reach the top or the smaller ones that stretch on forever...yeah yeah...some of you guys are going...easy what, hill only..Try carrying a full combat load and that damned SAR21..(NOTE TO DEFENSE TECH: YOUR SAR21 IS A STUPID WEAPON!!! IT'S OVERWEIGHT, TOO BIG AND THE BLOODY SCOPE HAS A MAGNIFICATION TOO SMALL TO SEE SQUAT!!! AND IS A COPY OF THE STEYR. YOU JUST ADDED A FEW THINGS AND CALLED IT "SINGAPORE ASSAULT RIFLE" THERE'S SINGAPOREAN DEFENCE INGENUITY FOR YOU!!) Then we got the streams and rivers..heh..those are the best part...

Ex. Nomad..I stepped in doo doo...literally... And I didn't even know until my friend yelled at me..I looked at my boots..damn..there was even some on my pants and the groundsheet...Boy was I in poop...pun intended...So I had to climb down the hill to get to a stream and wash out with my bare hands..gross!!! I tried to swiggle my boots about in the water first. So most of it came off and floated away....sick...But thank goodness that day was the day we changed our uniforms..so I just dumped it into the trashbag and got a new set..heh heh heh....

For our first solo mission...we got lost..literally everything in brunei looks the same...uphill, downhill, stream, trees, mud and the that bloody throny plant...that damn thing gets hooked everywhere...jungle hat, gloves, sleeve, pants and my chin...damn....Anyway, the first day we were lost...but thanks to Sgt Andy, our resident SRT shadow, he found us a harbour spot...next to a stream..it was the best harbour spot. Unlimited water supply...so we cooked lotsa stuff..and most of us just decided we stank too much, so we stripped down and jumped in. Cold water...but felt damn good...after that we just sat by the fire and dried off before wearing our clothes back. (Go view the pics....) The next day proved more productive. Basically because we gave up bashing and just followed the river..ok, we walked in the river for a few hours. Up to our hips..I left my notebook in my back pocket of my SBO...and the thing is gone..darn... So we managed to hit our objective....the next one, we had to leave the river...sad...but the harbour spot was fine..top of a knoll...hammocks and stuff came out...The walk back from our last objective was bad. We were all out of water and we had to walk like 3-4km back to the extraction location in the mid day sun, on the road without any shade. According to my medic, I got dehydrated. Body felt cold, little sweat. I nearly KO'ed but I just kept singing to myself. But all in all, surprisingly, for our heli dropped batch, we were the first to come back from the exercise one day early. Woo hoo!! Canteen break!! haha..

Our last exercise involved us climbing mount biang..Guess you might think going up would be harder than going down right? Wrong...That's the weird thing about biang..it took us like 1 1/2 hours to go up..but 3-4 to get down...basically with our load, 1/3 up we were huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf with an asthma attack... But up we went anyway...at the top (FINALLY) there was all these white tape tied to the trees with notes left by others up went before. Notes like "biang is nothing" "welcome to the top" so i decided to leave my own as well.. "Long way up, Longer way down. Suffer and Die" hey..bite me...it's true..the way down is hell..rocks, slippery routes that just plunge down. My butt met the ground so many times, I came up with an official greeting each time I went down "Butt meet ground, Ground meet butt" Basically, I was damn accident prone...Nearly killed my ankles multiple times, but somehow God managed to protect me from that...Then we crossed Batu Apoi...River crossing...Lucky I had my waterproof bag. Kept everything I remembered dry..my maggie mee got wet..damn.....Then came the next "best" thing.. The 7 Knolls...Or affectionately known as Snow white and the 7 dwarfs....Half way up the first knoll...we got "contacted" I was near the top, so I dashed up (dash here according to your speed would be a grandmother of 70+ years climbing the stairs, but to me..it was damn fast) . Then according to our OC who followed us...half of our platoon died. yeah yeah...So anyway, we continued climbing the remaining 6 knolls...but it seemed more than that. Then as 1800 drew near...we forced ourselves to climb another knoll...and we harboured on the ridge line..it was cold..the wind kept blowing..Lucky for me. I found a way to keep warm... heh heh heh...Had my own private sauna...The last day...what's a disney classic without the witch..yep..there she stood..the last obstacle...up and up she went..maybe half the height of biang or something..she never seemed to end. Just when you reached a small patch of level ground and you thought it was over..you looked up to see your platoon mates still climbing up..we were all wasted when we reached the top. But at the top we made it.. and soon we came to our attack position...the demo team..I was made demo. cmdr to my horror. tried to get ready...but one of our members..whom I shall nickname dumb mutt kept thinking his way was right and he just grumbled and sat there.. But yeah...was getting ready, helmet off and stuff, suddenly we contacted the enemy..I was just sitting there with everything all over the place... Sgt. Koh looked at me, mouthed a whole line of expletives and I got to grabbin everything and running...I still dunno how I managed that..hahahaha!!! But when the attack was over, Oc decided to declare casualties..so we had 6...we had to go all the way down hill to the chopper landing site, walk one round, back up the hill and round the parade square with these 6 casualties and set up our T.A.G. point...damn hell, it was tiring, but it was the last part of the mission before we ended.. When it was done, we cleared arms and BANG!! it was over!! The training phase of Ex. Greenwood was over!!! On to R&R.!!!!

R&R started off with an E-tour..to the water village, mosques, museum...it was all pretty boring...the tour guide told us we would be going to a shopping centre in the evening. Said something along the lines of "It's like orchard road there. People gather there in the evenings and weekends" so we gathered that there was gonna be a crowd..maybe chicks to scope.. right...
went in and...ok...this is errr...nice..there were very little people about. Even the shops were boring...Man....So somehow we managed to waste our 2hrs there and on to dinner and the amusment park...haha! The amusment park..there was this ride called the big drop..brought you up slow and dropped you down..I refused to sit it...My friends grabbed my hands and legs, but I just held on to the bench..Weird thing though..I sat the space shot thing in genting twice. That was scarier considering you couldn't see the top from the bottom and vice versa due to cloud cover and it shot you up super fast and down too.. But I did sit the 5G coaster twice..was like a damn fighter jet...you had to steady yourself after you got off before you walked. HA!! And we went on the bumper car rides..that was a joyful ride..haha. Then back to camp, slept for 2-3 hours and on the airport for the ride home!! The whole plane cheered when we touched down..

There is alot more to remember and talk about...but sigh..I'm feeling hungry..ask me in person..I'd be happy to tell you.

Posted on 5/02/2005 by <$The One$>