..:: 328. The One With First Day at SOCE ::..

that wed was a screwed-up day. firstly, i thought i would go for a laundry service ard 3pm and then head for SOCE at nee soon camp. unfortunately, i realised i have depleted my allowance cos i used my card for my friend's 90+ bucks worth of ice wine. desperately, i rushed home to use the washing machine. suay suay, my G2000 long sleeve white shirt and the collars of my ocs white admin shirt all had turned light green.

dashed out of my hse after packing my stuff and it was close to 5pm and i had to be there by 6pm. while waiting to cross, i saw my bus just drove past me. frantically, i had to source for my friends whom i could hitch a ride. i got on the next bus, sensing something amiss... i think my card has no value liao... and i was spot on. feeling paiseh, i dug into my coin section and found i only had around seven cents plus. lucky the uncle did not make a big fuss. i sunk into my seat, feeling stunned.

in the end, i shared a cab with my gd friend. when we were reaching the gate, a super big bridging vehicle had to go into nee soon camp too... what gd timing. we had to wait for like 5 mins when we were already running late. running and pulling the duffel bag made me damn shack.

lucky us. we made it just on time. but my shirt was totally drenched.

oh btw the seniors were very nice, they showed us how to do a 7-min stand-by field pack. everyone fall in the parade square and once the IC shouted, everyone made a mad dash up to their bunk to get their stuff and came down to arrange.

more crazy stuff at SOCE though... like 5-min stand-by bed. Rationale very simple, we have to be operationally ready and your bunk should always be in stand-by condition so 5 mins touch up would be enough.

think i touch on stand-by bed before, i find it really useless to standardise things in the cupboard just for the sake of stand-by bed. when i become platoon comd, i definitely ask my men to arrange their stuff they would be using neatly. Putting a toothbrush and toothpaste for display is useless... people definitely would use shower foam, facial wash.

first few days in SOCE were kinda scary. We spent lots of time with the OC. No one dared to sleep in his lectures. firstly, no one would want extras. secondly, his lectures were so impt that you could not afford to sleep. His style was to have a simple test after each lecture he taught which was good in a way as the stuff really got drilled into your head.

He also spoke with lots of negativity. At least my wing comd in foxtrot gave more encouraging words like 'if you show me you have positive attitude in learning, i would pass you'. For my current OC, he loved to emphasise the number of cadets he failed... 'if you let me see or have a slight feeling that you are not confident in leading, i would not hesitate to fail you.' one of our course mate had a same name as the senior, he said, 'we also have a gabriel, but you know where is he? He is now a sergeant' meaning, that cadet out of course liao.

arghz... i didnt make it for the EOD selection. I felt so stupid, but then again my frenz told me the behaviour survey was part of it too... guess i'm not very engineer kind of person, or rather i'm more counsellor than architect. so now my hope lies in bridging... cos i dun wanna stay in field engineer and get tekan in SOCE...

we had an orientation where we were warned by the seniors to keep singing and keep in steps if not it would become a tekan session. In the end, we still did more 100 push-ups cos they were part of physical training.

today fri was kinda slack cos we were told we came in one day early. -_- i desperately needed the day to rest lo...

today was fun cos we got to take our basic driving theory test. i hope i can get a license thru the army. that would be cool. seeing so many signs, the test seemed difficult. had to re-do a few times to get a 90 mark pass. some did like more than 10 times still couldnt clear.

before we booked out, we had a 2 hr long test to see how much we have learnt the past 2 days. had to bring back precis and study... yawnz...

pretty happy i got to enjoy a 5-day work week. booking out on fri was nice even though its 2330. but i dun think i would get to enjoy much fri book outs. schedule gonna get more packed and tue we would know where we would be split into for the next 7 weeks.

pay day coming... hee...

desperately wants to club. any takers?