Keeping up! A successful week of accomplishments.
Timed run - Secured
(Helped to pace martin on his first 6k and ian clarence but i paced them without a watch and made them fail by a quarter of a minute. Crap!)
Sea Circuit - 17'16
(Which i finally passed, with 44 seconds in time, one more time to pass and im secured and i don't wanna do anymore!)
We didn't do sea swim this week cause... we had more high-key evolutions to clear this week, which was the endurance run and the endless boat paddling.
Pretty happy this week that i finally cleared sea circuit which i constantly failed in the past 4 weeks, out of which 2 times i failed badly cause i couldn't climb the rope.
Ah yes... i was trying to find a picture of the sea circuit,
here it is,
A brief introduction about this sea circuit... the passing timing for this evolution is 18minutes. Starting point of it is at the bottom right of the picture, actually further down a little. From there, we turtleback with fins on ,in details of 6 towards the ropes and attempt to climb up the ropes until we can get our asses on the pavement.
(It looks pretty easy over here cause it's super high tide, and you haven't experienced the taste of the shag feeling in your thighs!)
After which, we take off our fins, and cross the balancing pavements and run straight to the tower demarcated by yellow and red. Usually when it's high tide, we'll jump from the yellow, if not, we'll jump from the first level. We'll show that we're okay after we leap off the tower and start to turtleback towards the shore which is not shown over in the picture, a rough estimation of the distance covered is around 250m to 400m.
(I know the agaration is pretty bad here, don't mind me.)
after which, a short 100m sprint back to the starting point where we starat to turtle back again towards the rope. That's ONE round.
The feeling after you complete it, after that final sprint for your life towards the instructor holding the timing device, is unbearable. You feel as if gravity got stronger and it starts pulling your upper body down, you start salivating uncontrollaby and drips out from your mouth, heavy pants and eyelids closing. Fail it, who knows, you might go again, get hammered or get remedial training, which has not yet happened to us. Phew.
Tuesday morning was an easy day for those who have secured their 6km timed run, but all of us decided to volunteeer themselves to pace those who have not passed, yet. However... the afternoon's evolution was endless boat paddling. I used a totally wrong method to paddle by using only my arms, the blood was not flowing properly and i was feeling very faint with my upper limbs left numb as if they were on anaesthetics. We were constantly second until integrity issues came in, hmmmm..., and then we came in last. But well, the last few boats had sportsmanship to come in last together with us. And thanks to the first boat that followed the instructor's sea boat constantly, the gooning sessions were cancelled. And while we rested on our IBS (Inflatable Boat Small), we heard a funny conversation from Instructor BK over the phone...
SAF day was on 1st July, Wednesday. A good day that required us to be in our 'Smart No.4' and Navy berets. After the parade, we were told to muster on the basketball court. That command, always spelled a bad omen for us, which usually meant we did something wrong, and we'll get punished. And that omen proved right, all 'Attend Bs' fell out from the group. Touch the fence, push ups began like a routine. After Warrant Tan came, things got worse. We touched the fence as if all of us were in a tally match, pushs ups that went above our limits, flutter kicks and leg raise came like a swamp of hornets, now don't mention about dive bomber that we have to moan as if we were having our orgasm.
(Now the commandos in leader's course who met us at Pasir Lebar IMT know why we're so bloody afraid of our PC, Warrant Tan.
I remember we met them at the IMT briefing training shed and while most of us are resting, we were giving excuses to head to the toilet where we met up with our commando friends to talk. After some chats, a familiar figure walked past silently, that skinny figure, initiated a whole lot of diver trainees' faces changed to a mouth, mouthing out a silent, 'SHIT!'. And yes, all of us ran for our lives back to the benches. Hilarious moment.)
Finally the whole thing ended with some of us falling out and some on the brink of collapsing. We were then told to go back to our cabins and change to a new set of PT Rig and head back to the basketball court in 15minutes, and if timing was not met, it's a 'GG NO RE' thing already ...
If we did not commit that mistake... the whole day was a day without push ups, but only lessons in the auditorium which was filled with slightly cold air by the faulty air-conditioning.
And we went back to the cabin to dread our next day, a really endless boat paddling the whole day.
We started the paddling around 8 in the morning, towards the east side along the shores, and Boat 8 team members were a group rather good with rhythm, else me, probably, were constantly first until 2LT Bernard told us to be last on the next checkpoint. Pays to be the winner ended the first half of the day with us being first, which earned us ... a gigantic prize of... two 500ml bottles of Pokka Green Tea. We ended up at Punggol Beach, where most of us were having high tide within our bodies and hurriedly went into the water to make the tide low. And due to the fact that we did not do it that discreetly as it was in public place, all of us had to stand side by side in the just dirtied waters and lie down with legs up, body fully submerged, else head. After lunch, we took some pictures, and then 'Muah Chee-ed', where we were told to get wet and sandy from head to toe. Soon, we were off back in the direction of NDU again. Suddenly, the clouds above our heads didn't look really happy, winds and currents came charging at us, the waters felt harder than usual to paddle, the rain came splashing in no time. Sean said that this resembled some movie scene. Like , the 'Perfect Storm', and then we war cried and sprinted towards the sea boats. Finally we were told to dock at some unused island where we flipped our boats in a 45 degree rest position using our oars so we can seek shelter under it. Most of the instructors came to join us in our shelter and their conversations were hilarious. Some talked about getting Attend C status for 5 days after the rain, so they went out of the shelter and came back in like 5 seconds because the lightning and thunder struck hard soon after they left the shelter. The best thing is that... instructors got give us food to eat! After around an hour, the rain and clouds subsided and we were back on our way to NDU. Last part was another 'Pays to be a Winner' race, where top 3 boats would get liberty. We managed to clinch a second position due to sudden uneven-ness in strength between the both sides which caused our boats to keep turning in different directions, affecting the glide.
We came back from liberty only to know that... the next day's morning evolution was... a endurance 10km run. No that's not the worse fact, the completing sentence statement was , ' led by Warrant Tan'.
I went back to cabin to rest straightaway after water parade.
10km run, lucky i survived easily. Even Angus kept up with the pace throughout the whole thing. He the man. But i realised we ran more than 10km definitely with all the small rounds we jogged moderately while waiting for the people lagging behind to catch up. After that, we gave our fiercest 'Hakka' with really angry expressions that satisfied our instructors. We were even given ice cold water from the Coleman to drink to cool ourselves down. Soon, we were back to lessons and finally ... book out!
It was a fun and rather fast week, let's hope that the subsequent 3 weeks will be that too, especially that 20th July week.
A slight warning to people anyway!
Please do not be tricked by this small western fast food restaurant at Bugis named. 'ZenZen'.
Please do not be tricked by the promotions or vouchers and please be convinced by the small amount, or none of the people patronizing the shop. First, i was disgusted by their pasta, which tasted like combat rations, or even worse! Secondly, i got cheated of my packet of meatballs and wedges which they even tell me.
Bad service plus bad food = Nononono even if you give me for free.
Met Shane, Linghan and Jiojin at Paradiz playing and finally Ricardo with his girl at Bugis on Saturday, well, the world is really small anyway. I was playing pool with Menghan, Darren and Nevin and soon Derrick joined us. Webster joined us for dinner that he luckily did not eat, and aiya, the day was kinda screwed with nothing to do. Oh yeah, Zhihao, Kanta and Jeremy joined us too.
Sunday, went to play soccer at Webster's house and there were some losers there again playing like crap but talk a lot. Wow imagine i gained the possession of the ball, he used his arm pushed my shoulder away and stepped on my foot to get the ball back. And we still lost to them, what the hell. Went off early to eat Dim Sum buffet with my mum and finally ... here i am blogging with only an hour plus till i leave for NDU again to suffer another week, oh wait... theres hell day this week.
Starting the countdown to Heaven!
This week with Hell Day, an 24hours day of continuous training, which was said to be tougher than a day of Hell Week.
Next week, probably an admin week with pizza parade to prepare and garner our strength and courage to take on the Hell Week.
Finally, the last week of madness, chow runs, pasar malam, pace to be a winner, endless boat paddling, ice water treatment, sleep deprivated mind, overly-tired bodies, sea circuits, sea swims, timed runs, whistle drill, and of course bear crawls, knuckle squats and duck walk probably. Whatever they can think of, and please give us more survival swim !
Let's hope Alexander passes out from Hellweek unscathed, okay wait, uninjured!
Hooya!
31st Batch
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