An empty street
An empty house

Booked in on Sunday evening.. As usual I guess. The previous week had been particularly agonising for me.. and felt much much longer than usual. Well, the upcoming week was to prove equally mundane and intolerable.. Especially just now before we booked out.

A hole inside my heart
I'm all alone and the rooms are getting smaller

Every night seems bland and distasteful, doing the same old stuff preparing for the next day's activities. Phone calls are now kept short and sweet, usually a minute or two at most. I might just finally get a normal bill - the first time in three months. Yet I'm not exactly smiling like I used to when I had an inflated bill.. With three digits before the decimal place somemore.

I wonder how, I wonder why
I wonder where they are

It's rather obvious isn't it that times have indeed changed, from the tone of my posts in recent days. I'm now more subdued in bunk.. preferring to just stone alone on my bed either reading or indulging in the wonders of a music player instead of joining in the banter about rather useless stuff and occasionally poking fun at our section i/c. Maybe this' what 15 weeks in the same bloody offshore island gives you.. Hm.

Actually had thoughts of shutting this blog down for a myriad of reasons. Then after thinking for a while I decided against it.. mainly because I'm someone who craves for continuity (and, to a lesser extent, I do not want to waste additional time doing up templates and thinking of blog URLs).

So I say a little prayer
And hope my dreams will take me there

Started my week off with an AGR in platoon level and ST with SOC in the afternoon. Did SOC 5 instead of 8 (and the 600m rundown) as I had missed three in a row last week. Got into a little spot of bother with the low rope but otherwise from then on it was quite easy..

Where the skies are blue
To see you once again, my love

The 'highlight' of the week, otherwise known as RM 15, or the 16km route march for Sch 1 was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. Yet another AGR in the morning, a 'conditioning' run to warm us up for the marquee event.

Supervising was D coy OC, and he seems to have an affinity with not-so-nice weather, considering what happened to his company during field camp and sit test. Yes, it rained super heavily late morning/noon, and we were bemoaning the curse of the OC. In the past our ex-OC (the super hiong one) will seemingly cause the sun to shine damn nicely during route marches in the wet season. So he's the complete opposite 'god' I guess.

Overseas from coast to coast
To find the place I love the most

Thankfully the rain cleared up and the whole battalion of 4 companies started marching from parade square on time, with our coy the leading the match. The first 4km was managable with the help of pre-prepared 1 litre of sports water from the vending machine inside the bottle. The next stretch about 3km plus to somewhere after Dogra Bridge was completed under slightly windy conditions. There, admist muddy paths and all, our PC distributed the pre-collected isotonic cans as well as donated 1x 1.5 litre H2O bottle to us.

Where the fields are green
To see you once again, my love

4 more kilometers and we reached our sit test site just when the sun was beginning to set. The view of twilight from the shore's pretty amazing as well. One can visualise a whole spectrum of colours in the fast darkening sky. After a 1 hour plus siesta for dinner and rest we started on our 5km rush back to the starting point. The upslope after Rocky Hill almost killed us - yet we kept pushing each other on and on with song after song after song (our resident singers never run out songs.. never ending karaoke session while on the march). All the random songs, from Lady Gaga to Westlife, Coldplay, nursery rhymes, chinese songs, malay songs (because they were pissed that we kept singing in chinese at one point that they started a song war) etc. were great morale boosters especially when you have are carrying a shitload of stuff on your back along with your suffocating LBV and rifle.

I try to read
I go to work
I'm laughing with my friends
But I can't stop to keep myself from thinking

'A coy slept at 2300 hrs that night, D coy finished their briefing at 2350 hrs' - something the the OC reminded us on Thurs night. He had rushed us back from the parade square to turn us in early but had spied on people making instant noodles after lightsout.

Wednesday dawned and I dragged myself down despite not sleeping well due to my super irritating abrasions . AGR in the morning (a 'very light one to release all the lactic acid' -.-) and BCCT in the afternoon/evening with targets. We were told to act as extras for some promotional clip during our run. Probably young people in primary and secondary schools will see our faces and get conned into thinking BMT is fun.

That same night we were told our platoon was chosen to represent the company in the drill competition.. in FIVE days (including the coming weekend) - all because we had the least status. Was supposed to be Plt 1's business but then again half their platoon are crocked. So.. no choice lor. 3 days to put on a decent enough show not to get last. 'Third is good enough' according to Platoon Sgt JQ, since he's does not want to perform during POP.

Speed training on Thursday as an alternative to 3 days of AGR is not very welcoming at all. A tekan session from the FIs followed before we had drills, BCCT with rifle with an instructor who's intent on destroying us with jumping jacks before every single technique - just before SOC -.-

Then it rained super heavily
And SOC was cancelled.

I wonder how, I wonder why
I wonder where they are

IPPT in the morning for interested people while I slept in til about 8 plus? Had the whole morning to ourselves in bunk. The aforementioned IPPT was a rather sordid sham though.. Lol, for reasons I will not disclose here.

Drills, lunch, drills (AGR was cancelled, and we were told to pack the black duffel bags and banish it from Tekong). CSM threatened to make us stay until 8 in the event our whole sequence was not up to scratch. In the final rundown we screwed up rather horribly as Cougar occupied the court and we were forced to do the sequence with the squad facing the opposite direction. So we gave the other companies a good night's rest knowing we were quite shambolic.. Not that theirs are that much better.. Lol.

The days we had, the songs we sang together

And thus ended the 15th week as we stepped onto the mainland once more at about 1910 hrs. Back to the place we first began. Two more book-ins and we'll be through with the whole island.

Another week, and hopefully closer to reconciliation

So I say a little prayer
And hope my dreams will take me there

Yet we all know things will never be the same again.
The one and only chance.. gone due to indecisiveness and fear
Bet Josie will know at first glance what the song title is/sounds like



Huge huge clue there . This was the song I recognised during the route marches but did not know the title to. I only knew it on Tuesday after asking around >.<

cuiiiiiii!

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Photo credit - ronan keating on Flickr

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