T H E___B E A U T I F U L___G A M E

Sunday, February 24, 2008

this week post gonna be from last week till now coz i only completed the cope tiger diary last week and did not post about the previous week...

so lets begin from valentine's day... valentine's day night was spent at the changi airport terminal 3... i was there together with the usual ICT gang to send one of us off... AK going over to australia to further his studies... and of all days to choose to fly he choose to fly on v-day... well, take care over in australia man... we will certainly miss you... lets hope our plans to meet up in taiwan materialises...

sat was SMIT Annual Dinner and Dance... most prob gonna be my last year attending... the event was at Meritus Mandrain... got to meet up with most of the peeps... the event was very well done and the turnout was great... a big clap on the back to the committee for a job well done... best ADD i've been to... after the ADD, went to catch the man utd arsenal FA cup game... after which went to eat before proceeding home...

my left wrist have been giving me alot of problems... apparently the injury has not healed completely which means im unable to do pullups... now that is bad as my second window has already open and i have yet to clear it... but how to clear with my wrist like tat... haiz... i've still been training for the ippt though but i just cant hang on the bar as the wrist simply hurts too much... and because of this, there is some issues that i cant say out here... all i can say is that, i hope my superiors will be more understanding of this instead of forcing me...

the next 2 weeks gonna be quite a hectic period... there's mockup for ADPT... dont ask me what it stands for as i got no idea as well... only thing i know is that its a accessment of our ops capabilites... the real ADPT will start on 3rd march all the way to 5th... and we are guessing that our ORA recall date is this sat 1st march... making it a damn busy 2 weeks... add to that, i still got my PKE exams to study... fail either means 2 extras or minus 2 days off... talk about busy... A5, our understudies are coming on the 1st of april... finally, out ray of light is here... once they are here, its a step closer to the magical 3 letters ORD!!! and my countdown timer shows less than 200 days more to ORD!!! woohoo...

time for pictures...

I Love This Game.// 3:09 PM

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Exercise Cope Tiger 08 diary

Flight
as i mentioned, we took a RSAF C-130 transport plane to thailand... ever seen banglahs squeeze into a lorry??? well, that can be said the same for us as we squeezed into a C-130... the flight was pretty uncomfortable due to the cramp space inside the cabin... there was hardly any space to move about at all... tried to sleep but it was hard really... it is really those experience that you experience one time and thats it you dont wanna experience it again...

Chandy Range
the flight to thailand took about 3 1/2 hours... reached there, had a lunch and boarded the bus for a 1 hour bus ride to Chandy Range... PC was there to greet us when we reached... went to our tentage and deployed our beds and settled in with our stuffs... after which, its to the container to unpack our stores and do our system checks...

Nights Out
we had our first nights out to town on the second day we were there... the town we went to was called Lopburi... went to a super market called Big C there... its the equivalent of our Carrefour as it really has whatever you want inside... had our dinner at MK restaurants which will in fact turn into our favourite restaurant as the food is cheap and good... the nights out was only for a while so nothing much to do really...

First Deployment
went out to deploy on the 3rd and 4th day for a mockup sortie... had our first outfield thai outfield experience... the night was damn freaking cold... had trouble sleeping...

R&R
5th and 6th day was our R&R in town!!! checked into Lopburi Inn in the morning after which was free and easy all the way... walked from the second circle to the 3rd circle and back... nothing much really and also we dunno how to walk and its hard to communicate with the people there... after which, we made plans to go to the night market... but before that, it was a trip to Monkey Mall... that place has everything as well... bought some clothes and some souvenirs there for my friends... and i got a few piece of adidas apparels from thailand again... then it was a trip to the night market... the night market was buzzling with plenty of things to buy... too bad we only had one night... it definitely wasn't enough to explore finish the entire night market... bought some stuffs there as well...

the next day was pretty relax... only went big c to shop around and then went back to hotel to wait to go back... we were going back early as after we reached base camp, we would change mood and straight away go outfield to deploy...

Outfield
well, nothing much to say for outfield... pretty the same things everyday... wake up do system check and wait for aircrafts to come... but the flying profiles were definitely something new... you get to see aircrafts flying those sort of ridiculous profiles here in singapore and using countermeasures like flares and chaffs...

Beer Call
beer call was an event where servicemen from all 3 nations, the states, sg and thailand get to mingle and interact with one another... did not attend though coz i stayed back at the FU to do equipment guard... well, since no one wanna volunteer, i had to do it...

Off-in-Lieu
after 4 days of outfield, there was a off in lieu on one day... went to town again... but this time round, it was pretty boring there as we had already been to almost everywhere that we can go there...

Outfield again
after the off, it was back to business outfield again... our results were not bad and CO was pretty happy about it when he came to visit us together with ADG commander...

Packing Up
finally get to ceased everything on the 14th day... went back base camp, packed everything into the containers and pushed in the PSUs... PC took us out to town for a last good dinner as we will be flying back to Singapore the next day...

Home Sweet Home
our ride back was in CAF's vip fokker f-50... it was something like a passenger plane so i had no complains... the ride back was around 4 hours... and it feels great to be back in singapore again!!!

tats my bunk!

my bed!

friends are forever there

sardines in a C-130

Chandy Range

Base Camp

Tentage we sleep in when we are not outfield

canteen!

thats a real scorpion on a A4 paper

our FU

close-up

our daily visitors

gateway

ba gwa on outfield thanks to S4

my toy - the tracker

Exercise Cope Tiger Crew

the thai equivalent of our Carrefour

Lopburi Inn

Lopburi is also known as the monkey city

monkey!

spot the monkeys

the buzzling night market

our ride home

bye thailand

tekong! BMTC!

Hello Singapore!!!

I Love This Game.// 4:59 PM

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

am finally back safe and sound from thailand... touched down singapore yesterday afternoon on a fokker f-50... it such a nice feeling to be back home... not that thailand is bad or what but the feeling of home is so much different... that finally concludes exercise cope tiger 08... it was a enriching experience over there... very much different from what we experience during K3... i enjoyed the experience over there and i will definitely treasure it... will go into details of the trip later in another post...

have to go back camp tonight as we have to attend the squadron's CNY celebration held tomorrow... will be lugging plenty of stuffs back...

I Love This Game.// 4:20 PM