whoo hoo! finally got the much coveted silver wing last night, after a total of 4 jumps! yup..3 day and 1 night. and yes, 184th bac is the first one to officially graduate successfully after 4 courses before us failed to do so due to insufficient jumps. nt only did we make the required 2 day and 1 night..we actually did one extra day one at sembawang airbase the previous week..heh.

well, it was really a proud moment for us all last night when we lined up in stick level and the commanding officer himself came up to shake our hands and pin the silver wings on our chests. the feeling was really awesome.

as for the jumps themselves.. i can only say tt jumping fr the c130 is really much more scarier than the chinook jumps last week..for one..the sound of the wind rushing in when the jump doors slide open was damn loud, nt to mention tt all of our nerves were ald damn jittery prior to emplaning..to me..the opening of the jump doors were akin to the gates of hell themselves opening..haha..abit exaggerated mayb..but nvm la.

and the moment when i jumped out...the force of the aircraft's slipstream was so strong, tt i just got lost in it, din even count to the canopy opening...only looked up when i felt the slight jerk. after tt, all was smooth as i've been through it twice before ald. altho this time rd i was in the air for a slightly longer time due to the canopy opening faster.

the day jump itself went very smoothly, coz the grass patch at plab was waterlogged, making for an extremely soft landing. but for the night jump, the moment i jumped out, i was smack on top of the runway. well, i tried to steer clear of it and onto the grass patch..but to no avail..thus i juz made ready and braced myself for a hard landing..all the while thinking ttz it for me. thankfully, due to the strong winds, i landed with a slight forward drift, which lessened the impact alot. altho it was still a hard landing, i managed to get up and slowly recover to the rv, limping abit fr the impact. but alright la, nth to it..at least im still walking. haha.

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yep, i finally jumped off from 1000 feet ytd..the first live parachute descent of my life. and from a chinook no less! fucking shiok..the feeling of flying above everything and looking down is indescribable..one muz really try it for himself to feel the sheer adrenaline rush..even if its juz less than a minute, its still really shiok.

but..altho jumping out was exciting, the landing is another thing altogether. its damn painful, even when i landed on the grass patch. totally unlike wad i experienced during my grd trg back in camp. for one..the feeling of the grd rushing upwards is really scary..and the impact was so hard tt i got my breath knocked out for a couple of seconds. and tt was on a grass patch, cant imagine wad it would feel like if i had landed on the tarmac.

ok. tt was for the first jump. for my second jump, i really did experience landing on the tarmac, and its really fucking painful. when i first jumped out, i saw below me one huge strip of tarmac, so i tried to steer towards the grass patch next to it. but just as i tot i was moving towards the grass patch and preparing to land, the wind changed direction and swept me back towards the tarmac..end up i landed half on the tarmac, and half on the grass patch. it was so painful i juz crumpled to the grd and couldn't even get up to recover the canopy. next thing i knew one of the instructors on the grd was there in the safety rover collecting my chute and getting me into the vehicle.

for this fucked up landing, i kenna injuries on my heel, elbow, and butt ,of all places. altho its nth serious, its still kan tia..i had to limp ard for the remaining of the day. and they made me go report sick when we got back to camp..together with some of the other jump casualties..after which, the mo sent 3 of us to cgh for xrays.. heng nth really serious, went away with 4 days of light duties and some medicine. but one other guy in my sortie damn suay, he actually got his ankle fractured and was warded with a big cast ard his leg..

ttz it for this week, i'll be jumping again next wed and mayb thurs too, if we able to get the air time. but first, i hope my slight injuries will be able to heal before i go for my next jump.

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i have removed the previous entry on my bac trg coz i realised tt i've put in too many details and im nt supposed to do tt online, else i might find myself getting a visit from msd.

for those out there who have ald read the entry, i would greatly appreciate it if u could keep it all to urself. pls. i dun wan no trouble.

thanks and regards.

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finally, im gg to airborne school, tt is, i'll be booking in at hendon's para trg wing tmr nite and starting my airborne trg monday onwards, and my first jump is gg to be in 2 weeks' time. whee!

honestly tho, i'm a little scared la...since i've always had a fear of high altitudes. but wad the heck, since i've ald made it all the way to airborne course, no sense in being scared or wad anymore, juz go in there and jump! haha.

anyway, the cross trg phase finally ended today, which marks the beginning of our next stage of trg, namely vocational and airborne. the leaders and weapon course ppl are staying over at prc for their vocational trg first, while the rest of us~signals and demolition, are gg over to hendon for our airborne course first. went to hendon ytd for a pre course briefing and also to shift in all our barang to the bunks there. and they are actually nt bad, but ttz probably coz they are newly renovated, thus comparable to our own at prc.

nuff abt tt, we started off this week with our 2 day navex at marsiling, lorong asrama area..and its a fucking nightmare, coz we got fucking lost during the second part of our day, when we did unguided topo in our teams; i led my team to holland.. ok, actually it means we went horlan la..and we had to backtrack alot of distance to finally get on the right track and find our checkpts. and it was raining the whole fucking day, making us all the more miserable than we ald were. nt to mention the full pack with the signal set added in was fucking heavy lor!

the night one was slightly better, since we manage to get back on the rite track after being lost for awhile only, and we got all our checkpts and back to the end pt way before the cut off time. hell, most of the teams, including ourselves, cheated by walking on the track and hiding into the vegetation the moment we heard a hint of any vehicle coming...haha. but still, wad they expect us to do? being noobs at this stuff and all..

well, everyone managed to come back on time with all checkpts found, except for one team~ tango 30, who went horlan sometime during the night and lost their map and signal set antenna in the process. they were finally found somewhere along the expressway outside of lorong asrama, and needless to say, got a hell of a scolding when they were found. they spent the rest of the 2nd day gg back again and again to their previous locations to look for the stuff, and only found the map, but nt the antenna..which is still missing till now..even when the whole company helped in the search after our second day's exercise concluded..haiz.

conclusion fr the exercise..topo really is HELL..think im really gg to die when we go to brunei at the end of the year..since the vegetation there is supposedly at least 10 times worse than here in singapore..hk liao..

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first week after bmt..veri boring, i'll say.

for the whole week, we would wake up at the std 0545, go for b/f, den area cleaning, den pt for an hr, which usually consists of a run of some sort, leaving some of us shagged out. but actually, its nt tt shag la, its the aftermath, when we start sitting down to lectures, tt everyone starts dozing off.

this two weeks has been termed the cross training phase, where we are supposed to learn all sorts of weapons and stuff, the main focus of this week being the weapons themselves. like i said, its damn boring la, morning would be solely lectures and pt, and afternn would be spent entirely on hands on practice and handling tests. after dinner would be almost certainly our free time, where we can do wadever we want, except book out, hah. well..we did have one nights out on wednesday, but it was utterly boring too, since time was short and there was really nowhere to go. i ended up at tampines mall for dinner and some walking ard, and everywhere i turned, i saw familiar botaks all over the place. wtf...

and ytd, we had navigation and topography lessons for the whole day...coz the whole company would be gg to marsiling for a 2 day navex the following week. needless to say, it was utterly boring,so many of us fell asleep tt the sgts conducting the lesson didnt even bother to make us do pt to wake us up. haha. until chicken little came in.

now, chicken little. real name lta loh sth or other.. he's famous throughout our coy as the ah beng officer. really like some chao beng, and seriously doesn't behave as someone educated enough and qualified to go thru ocs. many of us wonder how he got there... we gave him the name chicken little becoz he talks and moves like the little bugger on screen..really. must see him in action to believe. and his movement and speech are fucking kua zhang, tt we always want to laugh, but dare not when he's ard. so we took to calling him chicken little and imitating him, like we do to the many funny instructors ard.

anyway, back to the last bit, when he came in. he started off by juz sitting in one corner, almost invisibly, tt we didn't notice, until ppl started nudging each other, saying "eh..chicken little lei, wake up.." haha..afterwards, the company best trainee diam-ed the whole lot of us and greeted him properly, finally awakening the rest of us sleepyheads.

chicken little started terrorising us after lunch, saying tt if he caught us slping again, the lecture would be cancelled and we would all go onto the parade sq for some impromptu pt, and he would also turnout us during the nite. fucking suay tt he was the duty officer ytd and all the dua liap ones, including oc, 2ic and co were nt in camp; all were away doing their required jumps. so technically, chicken little was the biggest fuck ard the camp ytd, and he could definitely do anything he wanted. well, we tried our best to stay awake and pay attention..but den still got ppl die die CAN fall aslp..which nearly resulted in us doing pt on the parade sq. chicken little actually gave us a CHANCE when he caught the sleeper the first time rd!! so veri unlike of him.

the rest of the day continued in much the same way with him suddenly jumping in with comments and screaming at us when we posted stupid qns. all the way until after dinner, when we had our "free time" in the bunks..he was walking ard the whole time and terrorising us. think the leaders had it the worst, he was in their bunks most of the time, scaring the shit out of them and doing dunno what else. damn, i feel really sorry for the four guys on guard duty last nite..since they 100% kenna turnout one, becoz chicken little didn't turnout the rest of the company as promised. we actually had a peaceful nite. whew.

ok, enuf abt him, next week would probably be a repeat of this week, minus the 2 days outfield on navex, which im dreading.. and after next week, i'll be embarking onto my airborne course at hendon's para trg wing. hope it gets better there. haha.

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finally, after 9 weeks of cdo bmt, i've have passed out with my jungle hat along with the rest of alpha company! 9 long weeks, in which so much has happened.. happy times, sad times, and of course siong times. hah.

but it was truly worth it, esp the effort we put in to rehearse for our passing out parade in the last 2 days, everything was done perfectly. of course, everyone was on our highest level of alertness and best performance, as none of us wanted to look bad by screwing up in front of our family and frens. even more so for myself and the 4 other right markers from each platoon, coz all eyes were the 5 of us. any tiny cock up, and ttz it for us. but none of us did anything wrong and the whole parade was done sui sui. even the slackers in the platoon also bucked up for once. haha.

this whole week has been freaking long..even tho its still the same five days..but since there was no more training, we spent most of our time sitting ard in our bunks and doing sk here and there. events marking the whole week were probably the airborne selection at hendon and the iron soldier challenge on thursday morning. the rest of the time was spent rehearsing for the parade and preparing displays for today. heh, wad a long week, but definitely a very memorable one, since its the one that marks the end of 9 long weeks of training, fr a raw recruit to a trained soldier.

well, bmt IS over..much has been done, blood and tears have been shed..and its time to move on to the next phase of training. i'll be gg to airborne course first since i cleared the selection on the first try. after which i'll be moving to stagmont camp to train as a signaller. not my first choice, since i had wanted to be either a weaponman or demo/boatman. but due to the airborne selection, in which many did not clear..they had to put me signals as its one of the vocations which has to go for airborne course first. haiz. nvm..i'll work hard and still try my best to excel in the course.

For Honour and Glory! Commando!

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