Turn Out Turn Out!

What a week of adventure this week. A week full of up and down and entering to another phrase of my training phrase.

Tuesday
IPPT test. Results as follows:
Sit-ups: 50
Standing Broad Jump: 234
Pull up: 12
Shuttle Run: 9.98sec
2.4km: 9:04mins
Overall Award: GOLD + Badge + $$$

Wednesday
Prep for Ex-VHF (Very High Frequency). Fixed up the antenna and radio sets to the rover. During the night when we were doing the planning for Ex-VHF, I was appointed the detachment IC for Rebro (Rebroadcast) station. Urgh, two appointments in a week (CCSM + Detachment IC).

Thursday
Dammed. I was not really prepared for the presentation and I sent my rest of my group to fixed up the antennas onto the vehicle. Everything was in a messed. I briefed the driver on the Mandai route (The driver knew the route beforehand.). Before we moved off to our location from HQ, one of the radio sets failed and we were forced to change the radio set and was delayed for half and hour.

At last, we managed to set off to Mandai. As vehicle commander, I am supposed to guide the driver but I think my map reading skills still sucks as I don’t really know which flyover I had passed thru. But nevertheless, we managed to reached the location on time. During the route to the .68 knoll, our vehicle stalled halfway and the vehicle couldn’t start for a moment. Luckily, the driver managed to start the engine and get it going again.

We manned the communication for the whole of afternoon and setup rebro for all the station from Jurong, Pasir Ris, Bedok etc. But most of the time we spent our time talking, slacking and sleeping since there was no officer around with us. By 5pm, the exercise was cut and we were back in our camp. We encountered a lot of problems with the radio sets due to the power supplied from the vehicle which might also be the caused for the stalling of the vehicle. Rest and Relax for the whole evening.

Friday
3:20am: Turn out! Turn out! The officers were banging on the door shouting and their faces were camouflaged. We were made to rush down to the parade square and rushed back up to change to our uniform. After the changing of uniform, we were made to do all sort of punishments and warm out exercises for the second part of the turn out. The worst thing was to soak the fieldpack to a rubbish container filled with water, can u imagined the stench on ur fieldpack; it was disgusting.

Next we went to our bunk for inspection. It was quite a fun part as our officer made us swapped places with our bunkmates and he started asking questions like who is sister, girlfriend blah blah… We were also made to do push up with our hands held together and shouting each other name.
After all the inspection, we were transported by tonners to a location nearby where we will march back to the camp to earned our blue beret. This turn out signified another milestone in our training phrase. It also shows our transition from infantry based training to Signal based training.

Now, instead of marching in jockey cap, we were be wearing the blue beret whenever we go. What a great feeling.

In the evening, it was the cadet mess opening. The mess was painted in bright colours and decorated with a retro theme. High-ranking officers and our seniors were invited for the event. The programmes are shown as follows:

1) Slide show of our past 2 months in Stagmont Camp
2) “Tong Hua” song performed by platoon 2
3) “That thing u do” hand gesture performance.
4) Beer drinking race competition among the commanders and cadets.
5) Band performance by platoon 1. Song performed: Howie Day – Collide, Vertical Horizon – You’re A god, OCS song
6) Musical Chair (Beer version): Beers will be passed around and when the music stops, the person holding onto the beer will drink it. I was one of the suay ones.
7) Guest performance by LTA Galen on his skills on the electric guitar.
8) A Stagmont life song performed by Tay.
9) 2nd round of musical chair.
10) A game where everybody had to go underneath a pole without falling backwards with a glass of beer in hand.
11) Tekan session by the seniors. All the beer will contain 2 eggs as a “GIFT” by the seniors.

It was a very enjoyable night and quite a lot of them were quite drunk indeed and we slept overnight in the bunk. What a week to be remembered of.

Cheers