after a few days in s'pore, in a few hours i'll b off to shanghai! spending christmas there too... b back of 30. just in time for new year's celebrations wif family. for now, so long! wished i'd spent more of my bloc leave in dis wet n humid island full of good food!
alvin ong dozed and watched the sawdust trampled night @ 2:37 AM
yo i’m back from thailand. touched down on the C1 30 on the 19. after 1 mth away from home, it never felt better. well, i’m here cos i can’t sleep. thinking about crescendo, i can’t help but feel nostalgic.
overall, it was a very memorable trip. it was basically fine-tuning stuff n acquiring new knowledge. for the first time, i learnt how wars were fought. i've concluded that its usually a very messy operation n hopefully we won't live through one in our lifetime. though i’m far from being the perfect soldier i want to be, crescendo became a learning experience for me. it was not stress free to say the least, n i faced many situations when i had to take up responsibilities n make decisions. but i’m happy its all over.
one thing about overseas training. it was during the one mth dat u realli get to know ur platoon mates inside out. bathing, eating, shitting, sleeping n chionging wif them for one entire uninterrupted month have made us all closer. homesick, cut off from our families, girlfriends n loved ones, we became a bunch of closely-knit people, a band of brothers. we’ve known each other for 5 mths now, but we already share so many memories. now i truly understand the camaraderie concept. i respect n trust my fellow scout troopers with my life. its a feeling for a group of guys dat i’ve never felt before. n its something realli precious n priceless.
as a recce driver, my navex, together wif 7 other drivers were on vehicle, not foot. not surprisingly we completed all our checkpoints during the day, but night fell before we could drive back to camp. so we camped out in dis open patch near a village. me n irvin went to da pau a proper dinner from the next village for all the 9 (7 drivers plus 2 signallers) of us. we cdn't b bothered wif our combat rations. we had fried rice wif basil leaves n egg. after the very satisfying meal, we lay on our jeep bonnets n gazed into the night. never in my life had i seen so many stars in the night sky before. it was awe-inspiring. we talked cock for a few hrs, n recounted how our lives were before we enlisted. eventually dozed thru the night. dat night, some bond was forged between the recce drivers. its some experience i will never forget.
didn’t miss the food back home cos the food there was so good. n they appear if u look hard enough at the correct places, even outfield. outside training, we had our fun playing frisbee wif our commanders. n then there were the precious but frequent canteen breaks. where there was lan, n where they served the glorious wanton mee (the thai version had sugar) n ice cream.
never will i also forget our cme log point, a monastery. located at the foot of a few hills they called the ang him caves. from our camp site, u could climb up into the caves at the top. the caves were filled wif hundreds of buddhas n other wierd statues dat made ur hair stand. there was dis statue wif a cobra head n a human body in lotus position. wif a pair of monkey heads as hands. there was something about the place dat made us uneasy. somewhat not of this world. none of us dared ventured inside the caves.
our r & r was in khachanaburi town. went to their safari, a floating market n the river kwai bridge. the latter was built along the death railway. other than the food, there was nothing much to buy n see. but still, we found our own ways to haf fun together.
crescendo blessed us wif dry n cool weather. ispc was definitely physically n mentally more shiong, but crescendo stretched us in different ways. i will remember crescendo for the camaraderie, the experiences, n the memories. it was a rite of passage. a milestone in my ns life.
alvin ong dozed and watched the sawdust trampled night @ 5:13 AM
