Reservist Week 1

Generally a pretty slack week I would admit.

Mon - Lugged all my barang barang (Fullpack, SBO, Helmet) and went to take 985 which brought me to Teck Whye Avenue before walking into Stagmont Camp. Reached early at about 7am though the reporting time was 7.30am and found out that we could stay out, which was nice to hear cos I expected to have to stay in.

I was assigned to be in this CCIS (Command & Control Information Systems) platoon, which was a small group (11 of us) and almost all of us were new to this (no prior training during our NS time cos CCIS is fairly new) so it was good that there were no cliques in our platoon. We have people who are, if I didn't hear or remember wrongly, working with NOL, Sembawang Shipyard, ST Electronics, a teacher in Rulang Primary, a boss of a cleaning company, a worker in a cryogenics company, amongst others.

Anyway, it was mainly a whole day of waiting (typical SAF) and boring briefings about ICT - including safety, NS Pay matters, objective setting, etc.

Tue - CCIS Training from 8am to 3.30pm and one thing I really like about CCIS Training is that we're always in the computer labs so we don't need to wear helmet / SBO, which the other signal platoons need to do when they go to the training shacks for training. Anyway, the trainers in Signal Institute could really do with some lessons from NIE cos they can't really teach. They may know their stuff but they normally just rattle on and there are a lot of terms/acronyms we never heard before and they think we know. Then when showing how to use some of the programs they also often go too fast and I can't follow cos I'm searching for the program/link which greatly irritated me cos I'll be lost after a while and too many computer terms really made it hard for me to catch up. It really makes you appreciate the difference between a good and bad teacher!

Had our 4km cohesion route march in the afternoon with FBO and we had to draw arms, something I really dislike. Anyway, apparently this route march is going to be held for every single high-key ICT with the objective of changing the mindset of the reservists from civilian life to a military life.

Wed - CCIS Training from 8am to 5pm and it was seriously v. slack. I think we spent more time on canteen break, lunch, and other stuff rather than the actual lessons themselves which were generally quite short and simple. Then our trainer also likes to talk a lot of stuff (which the others said he was bullshitting a lot of the time) like the economy and his future business plans cos he's going to ORD in 7 months.

Saw an ex-student (Andrew from 06S401) who was going to Taiwan the next day and apparently he's having a v. enjoyable life in Stagmont Camp (read his tag haha). =P

Thu - IPPT in the morning and I think I managed to get Incentive award (which would be great to help me offset the treat I owe my colleagues) though the 2.4km run always drains me out. A bit more regular training and I can get Silver, I'm pretty sure of that. CCIS Training from 11am to 5pm, nothing special but learning how to draw stuff on the maps and graphics system which will be part of the test for next Mon's test.

The canteen uncle showed us some sleight of the hand tricks with rubber bands and coins to entertain us (and the rest were joking I could bring back to school to entertain the kids though I've not tried them out myself) and there were interesting conversations as the boss of the cleaner company shared some juicy insights of what goes on in the movie theatres and something he encountered in the showflat of where "The Wedding Game" was filmed. Not convenient to talk about it here so I shall decline to go into the details... =)

Saw another ex-MJC student (Kenneth Lim from IGC) who is in 8SIB and ORD-ing soon (in March). =)

Fri - NE Package Trip which was quite interesting actually and the best part was we start late, end early and can wear civilian clothes. Met at Clementi MRT and had breakfast before we boarded the bus and the tour operators (from Singapore History Consultants) talked us through the places we were going to visit (Mount Faber, Labrador Park, and Bukit Chandu Museum) and we started with a nice early morning stroll up to Faber Point where it was v. breezy and you could have a pretty good view of the surroundings there.

Next stop was Labrador Park where we could explore the casemate (a protective area for the guns) for free (entry price for adults supposed to be $8.60) and it was air-conditioned. Quite an interesting place cos they had real tunnels and rubble and a lot of old artifacts. We also learnt about some of the myths such as our guns not pointing in the right direction when the Japs attacked. The person said actually they managed to turn the guns but due to the trajectory of the guns and the type of ammo (which were not suitable for shooting people, but more for taking down ships), they were not effective.

They then drove past Alexandra Hospital (my birthplace!) where apparently there was a massacre that took place there, sad to say, when the Japs defied the Geneva Convention and attached the hospital and killed practically everyone there.

Final stop was the Bukit Chandu Museum where we learnt about the Last Stand and how the Malay Regiment fought bravely against the Japanese to their death despite being outnumbered heavily. They never surrendered and even the officers captured chose death before dishonour as they refused to take off their uniforms or even their ranks and were thus executed.

We finished at about 1.40pm after which the bus took some of us to Vivocity which I thought would be interesting cos I was pretty sure our MMM would involve students having to travel there and I was hoping to see some familiar faces and surprise them by visiting them. True enough, shortly after getting off the bus I saw Alvin (an ex-student) who was sitting outside one of the entrances and found out the location of the other groups so I started to walk around in search of them. Disappointingly enough, I didn't see anyone from my classes as the station masters though there were a few familiar faces such as Selena (another ex-student and who kept saying that I was slack cos I was out at Vivocity haha) and Wen Eng.

Had a quick lunch at Superdog before jalaning a bit around the area since I rarely go there. Chanced upon a big group of people just outside a Vivocity entrance and apparently it was cos an OG was trying to get bonus points out of some of the teachers there. Saw some ex-student councillors (Jasmine from 06S101 and Iris from 06S403, my ex-H1 student) there as well and one of the OGLs was asking for help with the surnames of 2 of the teachers there. I managed to help with 1 but the other 1 I didn't realise she was addressed differently cos she was married so I got the surname wrongly (based on the edumail name) haha.

So all in all a pretty relaxing week in camp but next week will be quite xian cos there's a navigation exercise and deployment ex (overnight) so cannot be so relaxed already. Ah well, it's been a good and restful week so I'm thankful for that. Time to get some work done over the weekend cos otherwise I'll drown when I go back to school on 16th! Will post tomorrow morning!