Shall just state some of the highlights since my memory's not as perfect as someone in my platoon who commandeers a nice foreign accent. More on him later.

26th April (Mon) - Had our Advanced Trainfire Package over at Pasir Laba 100m Range, home of faulty target boards and emotionally unstable computer scoring systems. I managed to fail the night shoot as I had already passed overall after the day shoot and had contrived to miss two shots in quick succession in the very first stage of the night segment. Specs fogged up on a chilly Monday night. Can't differentiate anything from.. everything.

27th April (Tues) - Spec II trainees and most of the permstaff and commanders were at the range. SSM used Greg's rifle and got a miserable 5/36. It was all the more bizzare when that particular rifle was the one that Greg used to obtain a perfect score just one day prior. So is it the firer or the weapon? Hm.. Lots of complaints about the range, so we're weren't the only ones that aren't pleased about the ancient place.

28th April (Wed) - Route march was cancelled as the firers from the previous day returned to camp at 0300 hours and needed to rest.

29th April (Thurs) - IPPT. And I obtained a SILVER after some miraculous burst of energy at the chin up bar (my eighth one took me almost half a minute) and at the mat (took three tries to get a 225). So I earned my 100 bucks.. surprisingly. The only drawback was that I was unable to maintain my running pace at the tail-end of the circuit and dropped to a 10:25. Projected timing before my lungs failed me was in the region of 9:40. >.<

30th April (Fri) - Spent the whole day over at Stagmont Camp (near PJC) attending a one-day crash course on signals. I forgot how to set up the antenna over a tree already. Lol. Booked out in the evening in the rain. Saw Jinyao there as well.

3rd May (Mon) - No off-in-lieu, so there I was in camp again. 4km route march was manageable but I lost too much ions in the end after a pt session straight after. Gatorade helped so much that even the commanders were surprised. We were told that we need to pen a journal entry for every single day spent in camp starting from that night.

4th May (Tues) - ID Location and Topo practical over at Pasir Laba. Nothing eventful happened during the first part which was just pacing.. Then it rained when we were up the 'mosquito hill' behind SISPEC.. So there we were trying to shoot azimuths and measure distances in the rain. Cool.. Back to camp for lunch and that was it basically for the day. Lots of leftover bread from lunch stuck in our bunk.. About 40 buns?

5th May (Wed) - Had Ex Explorer over at Lor Asrama.. Mandai area. The actual ops went pretty alright. Glad that we only had to follow tracks and roads unlike others (cue, the SISPEC dudes) who have to bash through vegetation and get themselves all dirty and muddy. Navigation's quite fun actually.. and we made very good time in the end. It rained halfway through and I can testify that getting stuck in a tonner with 28 other dudes is not a very very comforting scenario to be in. It was a sauna in there, to put it nicely. Anyways we got to order deliveries into camp that very night. So we shared a pizza with our sec cmdr. Canadian Pizza abit not ex.. Should have gotten Pizza Hut instead.

6th May (Thurs) - Wartime Ops practical over at our field. Tried doing every single task while constructing the PW cage; managed to skip the traffic marshaling practical by hiding behind those who had completed, and lastly attempted moving sandbags to form a nice MG pit. (Those sandbags are not light alright.. each about 15 plus kg?) Had a stand-by Smart No. 4 by our CI Cpt Michael on the grounds that our discipline stinks (I so totally agree, really..) that same night. Passed the inspection with flying colours (:

7th May (Fri) - Lectures in the morning, followed by canteen break (we had a party in bunk with the buns and some food the rest brought in) and then drills. Drills are pretty fun but tough. Then we left at four in the afternoon. An incentive to make us happy before we die next week. Hell of a week coming right up.

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