I parted ways with my parents, handed over my pink ic and went up the steps on 9th Jan 2008. 368 days later (calculated by kiat), I drive into camp, shake hands, and collect my pink ic. In between, there was trainee life, and life as a permstaff at Stagmont camp. I must say I feel blessed to have been posted there, as EP branch is a truly awesome place with awesome people. The things you can do with a switch, LAN cables, and multiple computer terminals… haha. Besides the incredible amount of time ‘load-testing’ in between exercises, every exercise was a memorable experience.
Stingray- Crimped and cloned alot. Ben E. King’s Stand By Me was horribly butchered at the back of an ASD, causing Harmeet to wake up and me to cry from laughter.
Tsunami- Discovered Tracks mess and chicken cutlet at Gedong canteen. OC gave us daily pep talks on succeeding in life. Ralph is one up against everyone else in the branch.
Switchblade- Activated at 4pm on a Sat afternoon with Wee Qiang while playing football in Telok. The only thing we did that night was check an e-mail. First signs of Ethan’s imba aura where nothing bad happens during my shift.
High Noon- Ah Sa Mu nai cha. Pokemon Platinum. Minesweeper. Wilson. Electric Flyswatter. Chicken cutlet. Crap living conditions. Wilson. Mosquitoes. Epic rover rides. Hor Lan. Wilson. Yep, I saw alot of Wilson in Taiwan. Haha.
Diamond Achilles- Ethan’s aura works again. Luke Vijay the SA of doom. Whenever he visits you, you know there’s a problem (but it’s always on his side). Whenever he emails you, that means the link is up and you have to do connectivity checks every hour (argh!). Warrant Soh takes Jason’s camp pass, and hides it. I hide it in a different place. When Jason finds it, we both deny hiding it. Warrant Soh blames me and calls me ‘black-hearted’. The nickname ‘blackheart’ is born. Some NZ folks took a wrong turn and saw us ‘in action’ during tear down. Legendary.
Homerun- Poor Chun Hin had to listen to Ryan talk to me every night. During exercise my rover was fortunate enough to go back every day. Thai liaisons rock- they can kill, skin, and roast chickens! Yes two hammocks can fit in a rover. And finally, all spare time was spent reading, completing FF, and in the well-equipped Sai Yok canteen. OCS ‘C’ wing ftw.
