and the loyal soldier is set free after 20 days. yes it has to be 20 days when every other wing in ocs booked out on friday evening, cause we were terribly special to have live range on saturday. and of which it got postponed due to power failure but we still couldnt book out cause sunday's breakfast has already been indented for us. oh well. this also means another saturday is gonna be burnt for range.

and yeah i suppose the past 20 days hasnt really been the most comfortable or relaxing. we had our pts on top of the 1000 word autobioography, daily journal entry which has to consist of at least one learning point, reflections to write, and tests to study. yes really study. probably ran ard over 30km the past 3 weeks, had turnouts, change parades, everything in-and-out mental torture, all these on top of the training schedule already planned out for us. okay some events were actually fun, like waking up at 5am to go for a cool dip into the freezing pool then jumping down 5m into the pool, then changing and running up the ocs tower which is ard 265 steps high while screaming your lungs out. we had some chemical defence package too where you literally see grown boys cry, foam and salivate.

oh and i had a couple of times where God literally saved me yet again. on the first sat we had this navigation exercise where we were thrown into this jungle to navigate through, armed with only a compass(yes, while you all were enjoying the aircon of nexus). after the day exercise i was totally drenched from head to toe in sweat as it was so freaking humid, and the terrain was really quite bad. then we had the night exercise. i needed to get to my last checkpoint to be able to complete the night exercise. so i was really lazy and instead of navigating ard this impossible hill i decided to just climb it and bash through(which almost caused me two popped knees). so i made it up and up, then finally came down the other side. by the time i reached my checkpoint i was really so exhausted and all, and i reached into my LBV(load-bearing vest) only to realise i left the pocket zip totally down and my check list was no where in sight. gosh i swear i could have killed myself right there. cause it was totally pitch dark u couldnt even see your own hands at times. all there was was the two 0.5cm glowing compass tips. so i had to turn ard and walk back up that hill, in no particular direction caused i didnt follow a track nor did i know how to get up. i seriously had no idea how i was gonna find my checklist in the middle of nowhere. sort of like looking for a needle in a haystack with your eyes closed. i prayed as sincerely as i know how asking God to 'be a lamp to my feet' and walked ard aimlessly. then like some 80m up the hill, i saw from the corner of my eye a little to the left, my ziplock bag with my checklist! ah oh man. that's one for the record.

of course there's really embarrassing moments too, like when i fell asleep waiting for the other half to finish their weapon lessons, after i watched a walk to remember on my ipod. i kinda got up really disorientated and ran down after putting on my footwear. then when i was at the end of the stairs, in full view of everyone in the training shed, i bumped into one of the officers. he asked me what's wrong with me thrice. at first i thought i held my rifle wrongly, then i thought cause i left my left boot lace outta my gutters. then i finally realised i had worn my combat boots on my left feet and my white pt shoe on my right feet. totally embarrassing esp when everyone was looking. yeah go ahead and laugh.

on the second sunday it was parents visitation day, whereby we get to meet our loved ones. it was really refreshing, to see my parents and my sis(bro didnt go though). really missed them, my family. ah missed my sis quite abit. haha and she talked to me on msn two nights ago in camp(yeah we get to use the com in camp) and asked which version of msn was i using, so she could send me a wink lol. but that day was also probably the day where the gates of hell were opened as we promoted into service term.

i suppose ocs really takes pride in what it does. lots of lectures and lesson plans about finding out about ourselves and leading others. some of which are really insightful and comprehensive. made me think quite abit, about who i am and who i wanna be. i remember a phrase which went "follow your own star; be an original." kinda made alot of sense to me with the word an added in. yeah leadership really is more encompassing than i thought it was.

don't shape it back. i believe in clean breaks, i keep the old troubles away.