Hawkguar

First book-out!

The feeling when you step out of the fastcraft onto Singaporean soil is incredible. (The fastcraft is, for the record, the slowest ferry ever to have been constructed by man). Still, I have never felt better about stepping off a boat.

Am in Hawk Coy, the first company in the history of BMTC to have 5 platoons. We've topped up the existing 4 Hawk (PTP) platoons. Platoon 5 is also the only platoon in the history of BMTC to contain 5 sections instead of 4. So we're staying in Jaguar bunks.

Actually, we may as well be Jaguar Coy, since our PC, PS, and sergeants are all from Jaguar, so we get treated differently to Hawk 1-4. I actually have Arthur's old commanders.

Section mates are great - I'm bunking in the same section (1) as Nick Keong and Julian, so that was cool when we found out. Our section seems to be the "overseas" section - most of us have studied overseas or in international schools at some point or another. We're also generally the youngest, although there is this other Chinese guy from section 5 who was born in '88. He doesn't speak any English but he can number off, which is good enough I guess. :D

Physically it's not been that bad yet - got a silver for my cat. IPPT so that was encouraging. But my left knee is starting to swell up after all the footdrills/stomping and jumping, so I'm going to have to watch that. Also felt a shot of numbness down the left side of my right hand during training - hence nervous about my elbows as well. I guess we'll see how it goes.

Nonetheless army life is pretty hectic and takes some getting used to. I was hopelessly blur and very stressed out for the first few days, but it gets better once you adapt to the routine. I still seem to consistently mess up in front of the PC though, ahha. o_O

Note to self: Very annoyed at the guy who keeps shouting "Platoon 5 fall in" every time he walks by our section. I actually preferred it when he was in the Hokkien-singing phase.

So, booking in Sunday evening - in the meantime I'm going to enjoy what free time I have left. This includes sleep - lots of it. Cheers. :D

Enlistment Matters

Well, I'm going in tomorrow.

Played my last round of golf for 2 months yesterday. It ranks as my best at Seletar:

Hole 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Par 5 3 4 3 4 5 4 4 4 36
Score 7 4 5 3 6 7 4 4 5 45

So I'm quite happy with that. Julian had his nice farewell to golf, I've had mine. ^_^

I suppose it's time to say goodbye to my civilian lifestyle for the next two years. I keep thinking of the small luxuries of everyday life that I'll be missing - mostly the freedom of choice accorded to me from day to day, even in seemingly the most trivial of matters. But I'm starting to realize that this has been a privelege rather than a right, and maybe two years in the army will teach me to treasure what I have better.

I'm nervous, curious, excited, disoriented, and relieved all at the same time. I start a new chapter of my life tomorrow, and I'm not sure if I'm ready. Don't have much of a choice now though. ^_^ I committed myself to this and I'll see it through, with God as my guide.

Will check back in two weeks.

Cheers.

The Terry Fox Run

I realize I have been totally remiss in failing to post about the Terry Fox Run. I mean... I went through all that trouble and it took up a whole Sunday morning last month, so I may as well make a note of it for future reference.

The run was on Sept. 18th... it was raining pretty heavily when I woke up and by the time I actually got to Palawan Beach at Sentosa it had only barely let up. For some reason they cancelled the 8km run, so I had no choice but to run the 4km one twice. It ended up ok but it was really crowded... by the time I had looped back to the starting point there were still lots of people that hadn't started. Must have been almost 6,000 people there. It was a bit difficult to run through the crowds but I managed. ^_^

Actually I probably didn't run 8km since I finished in just over 30 minutes. That's more like 5-6km so I think they cheated on the distances. Hmph. So much for an intensive training exercise.

I got back home and had some dessert:

Pound cake and grapes drizzled with apple pie ice-cream. Mmmm.

That evening I went down to Josephine's place for her farewell party. Her Thai community is really hospitable and friendly... didn't really know who to thank after the party since everyone had been so nice. Anyway it was really hard to get home afterwards - took almost 2 hours. Spent forever trying to hail a cab (really ulu place ahha - hidden next to ECP) before hopping on a bus and then getting off to try and hail a cab somewhere else. Then dropped off at Farrer Road on the way to Yee Ling's place and got on a bus back home. Sigh.

Went to the army market at Beach Rd today to get some extra stuff. I get the feeling I'm over-preparing, but this is sort of what happens when you're stuck at home with nothing to do.

Fellowship and Chocolate

Thanks to Esther, Joel, Andrew and Eunice for last night. That was pleasantly surprising and very thoughtful. *sniffle* ^_^

I'm sorry to have to leave you guys with the burden of organizing youth camp. But I'm sure you'll all do great, even without my invaluable presence and help. :P

I ate far too much chocolate yesterday, and drank far too much water. It'll take awhile to work the former out of my system but it was absolutely worth it. Mmmmmm. :D

Oh, while I'm at it I may as well thank Armaan too for putting up with my incessant questioning. I'm sorry you had to waste 2 hours of your off-day. Mwahaha. Anyhow, I'll be joining you soon enough. And at least we got to see Mr. Tranter and Mr. Hill at that Intl. Wine/Beer Festival thing, despite the disturbing context, i.e. bright green vests, short shorts and slightly drunken behaviour.

Bintan, Again

For some strange reason, every year, no matter what grand plans I make, I always seem to find myself in Bintan. At least twice. It's getting really exasperating since I can probably now find my way around the resort blindfolded.

Still, this was the first time I had been on a golfing holiday to Bintan. That is to say, me playing a lot of golf in a very short space of time outside of Singapore. So now, in addition to being very familiar with the layout of Bintan Lagoon Resort, I can safely say I am also very familiar with the layout of the 36-hole golf course affiliated with Bintan Lagoon Resort. How sad.

Actually I only played 3 rounds of golf over 3 days, which isn't all that bad. My dad was still raring to go and would probably have played 4 rounds if I'd asked him to (which I didn't, thankfully enough). Anyway it was great fun and the course was pretty empty over the weekday period, so we could relax and play at our own pace.

The first day we played on the Jack Nicklaus course. It's called the "sea-view" course, which is a bit of a joke since you're only next to the sea for about two holes, and you can only actually see it from four. The clubhouse provides caddies, which is nice and saves you a lot of work and the trouble of reading putts by yourself. :) I shot a +26 off the white tee, which was my best so far. It's generally a very beginner-friendly course, if you can avoid the water.

The second day we started at about 8am playing the Baker-Finch course. This one is called the "woodlands" course - quite appropriately so, since Mr. Baker-Finch was obviously very lazy and failed to excavate more of the tall trees surrounding the area. It was like an oven. Nonetheless the holes were very short (a welcome relief after having to use 3-woods a lot of the time at Seletar par-4 holes). I did better than the previous day and shot a +25. This means, of course, that I have yet to actually reach my handicap of +24, but I am working towards it.

In the afternoon we went to the beach, since it would have been a waste of our money and time if we visited Bintan without going to the beach. It was nice, as usual, but no huge waves like there were in December. Then we had a buffet dinner at the hotel. The theme was Mexican and thus there was a lot of heavy food and copious amounts of cheese, along with a great assortment of desserts. I ate American cheesecake, strawberry and chocolate ice-cream, mixed fruit and cinnamon crumble, and this cold mango/watermelon thing. This made me feel very bad about myself - I'm still recovering now, I could barely eat anything yesterday.

Yesterday was the last day of our trip - we woke up early to play the Nicklaus course again, since some sea-view is better than no sea-view in any case. I was doing pretty well until about hole #13, after which my body just forgot how to make a golf swing and I bungled my way to about +36 (I lost count). My dad, on the other hand, was just getting into the swing of things and created tons of birdie chances for himself with magnificent approach shots. Hmph.

I forgot to mention that this time we were staying in the chalet opposite the one we had stayed at for the past, I dunno, 4 times we had been to Bintan. This means everything was reversed and I was really confused for awhile.

So yeah. That was a fun trip to take and I'm happy I did that before NS. Now I can concentrate on properly slogging it out for the next 2 years. o_O