~JcZw

Am back having survived a rather hellish week.

Platoon field camp is The Field Camp of Field Camps haha... at least, until Brunei... But given that our platoon was not at the top of our game, and it contrived to rain on us until our "good digging site", so called good because the ground was open and loose, became absolutely water-logged. For a person of my size and weight, it was impossible to climb carrying my LAW unless i grabbed branches and stuff along the way cos the darn hill was so slippery.

The mud was really everywhere. When we dug, we had to scrape the stuff off our blades with every blow we made into the ground. Our uniforms were so muddy that the camouflage pattern just disappeared - They were brown, our LBVs were brown, my helmet was brown, my SAR-21 and my LAW were both brown... We weren't so much people as walking piles of mud haha...

And of course, there was the... ahem... human factors which kept pushing us to dig faster, otherwise we'd have to cover up n go dig AGAIN somewhere else... Which pushed us to dig faster, which caused some people to start ignoring safety precautions, which caused us to get scolded, which caused us to be delayed, which caused us to be demoralised

Therein, you have the vicious cycle which made most of the field camp, as I mentioned, rather hellish...

Still, we did get our laughs, like when I slipped and fell into Eric's trench while collecting equipment...

Like when I got hit in the face by a lashing piece of barbed wire... Thank God I deflected most of the force with my hand, though now I have marks on my hand to show for it -_-"'

Well, I guess at the end of the day our platoon was not wanting in terms of effort... Just teamwork... I believe everyone did what they thought they had to do... Pushing ourselves through the expected sleep deprivation, the cold and the wet, the abrasions, cuts, scrapes (some of which also got infected)... Sigh, if a field camp's like this, war must really be a nasty business...

Well, nevertheless, it was an HONOUR to share the experience with Platoon 2 haha... Thanks especially to Kenny who was digging my trench with me, and who helped maintain our trench n equipment while I was running up and down doing other stuff...

Long weekend as expected =) Till tuesday 1200 hours yayness... Have been spending a lot of time sleeping and will never take a bath for granted again haha...

Today was the first time I returned to youth group also in a whole month... Been missing a lot for things like GPMG live fire n stuff =/ But today was a really good session on 1 Samuel 8! As mentioned, I wish I had read the passage 1 year ago while preparing for A-Division...

My own takeaway was that God was the ultimate leader in everything we did... Especially reassuring since I had often agonized (even until now), that VJ fencing never seemed to have a localized leader, like a teacher or something, who took an interest in our proceedings, unlike other schools, even the other sports groups in VJ, even the newer ones... That most of the bonding, motivation and esprit de corps fell to the captain, which for better or worst, was myself... Thing is that, worrying bout bus timetables, attendance of supporters and stuff is never something one would have wanted to do just before crucial competitions. Espcially not the captain who's job was to keep everyone, and his own, mind on the impending comp.

Yet, I realised that subconsicously, God had been my teacher-in-charge, motivator and coach all rolled into one that day. Probably it was the messages which some of my classmates sent me before the comp reminding me to focus on God. My last conscious thought during semi-final, before I went into my fencing-bout mental state was "Dear God I'm darn tired from fencing Daniel please keep me in one piece and do my best"

Of course, given one thing or another, everyone knows how the comp panned out... Well, now its a reminder that I shall try to remember whenever I go back n watch VJ's fencing in the future haha....

Anyway shall stop here for now... Probably update again soon =) Cheers n regards