Highlights of the week gone by: two exercises, namely Exercise Gypsy I and Exercise Gypsy II. In addition to that, I had my MATADOR and M203 live firing, after the relevant technical handling tests.
As such, as of now, I am capable of handling this arsenal of weapons:
Infantry Weapons
Cool. The MATADOR and M203 had quite a bit of recoil, and the MATADOR has a scary back blast. Firing one knocks the wind out of you a bit, but it's scarier crouching down beside a firer and feeling the heat from the back blast wash over you. Still, nothing beats the thrill of firing such powerful weapons and hearing the satisfying "BOOM" upon the successful detonation of the rounds.
The Exercises Gypsy were navigation exercises. Basically, they give you a designated spot on the map, specifically in Lower Mandai, a Nature Reserve, then they give you map grid references, and you're supposed to bash through the jungle and find the checkpoints, which can be something as difficult to find as the "north of a slope". Completely different from an urban hike, mind you. If you take a street directory (and I did) to check the area of operations, all you would see is a green coloured page.
Anyway, Gypsy I was somewhat a minor disaster. True, we did find several checkpoints by day, but when darkness fell and visibility decreased to less than a few metres, we got disorientated. Sergeant Li tried to lead us a bit, but we drifted further. Eventually we got stuck in super dense vegetation, most of which were trees full of thorns. Worse still, the area was a swamp. Even worse was that I was leading, and so I became the guinea pig for bashing through the vegetation and testing the swampy grounds. The result? Thorns stuck in the flesh, falling through a thigh deep hole in the ground, sinking into muddy swampy ground, and wading through thigh deep water. Eventually we blew our whistles and shouted a bit, and managed to draw the attention of another detail, who shone their torches to indicate the location of the track to us... which was across a wide swampy area. LLST (lan lan suck thumb), wade through thigh deep water to get across. Sze Wai freaked out when he saw a particular signboard when we were wading across. The signboard looked something like this:
Beware of Crocodiles
Nah, just kidding; it's a little different. But the sign did say "Beware of Crocodiles". However, there was nothing we could do, except to wade across. I mean, what did he expect us to do, wait there forever?
Oh, talking to Sergeant Li again on Friday... it seems there are other reasons for our horlan-ness (by the way, hor-lan means getting lost). Apparently, the south leads to the track, which was where Sergeant Li and I were trying to lead the group to, but the swamp is in the way. And yet, when we crossed the swamp, the magnetic south pointed somewhere else, blocked by swampy ground again. Compass damaged? Not sure, but Sergeant Li told us that he fell ill after the Exercise... and apparently Sze Wai fell ill too. Ooohh, spooky.
Had my NUS GMS interview earlier... I don't think I did very well >.>
The questions were tough, and they included having to discuss philosophical issues, why I did not apply to study for political science, why I liked biodiversity and the health sciences when the two were unrelated (what? you mean you have to like related topics for a certain subject?), etc.
|
kheng yong; 19th dec 88
[x] Ashley
My Rappelz Profiles
AquamarineBeryl Lvl 62 Soul Breeder
Fluorospar Lvl 50 Holy Warrior
AmberFlare Lvl 38 Kahuna
AzureLapis Lvl 27 Strider
DawnTopaz Lvl 44 Bow Fighter
AuroraTurquoise Lvl 21 Dark Magician
Seraphinite Lvl 29 Cleric
AsterSapphire Lvl 20 Sorcerer
All About Them Words VER 1.0
