(no subject)
back from wallaby to a drizzy humid singapore afternoon, the kind of gripey barely-uncomfortable weather you need to know you are well and truly home. didnt miss home too much, to be honest, if only because i've been so away from it this year i've sort of numbed myself from needing what used to be familiars. but am very glad to be home at any rate.
wallaby was fantastic because of the huge expanses of space, and you can't feel like you're fighting mounted unless you cruise down stretches of axes or through an open field with tanks charging in a line with you. you may not catch me saying this again but i felt like what i was doing all this time made sense, and maybe it was the eye-opener i needed for some time now. it may also seem retarded to say this but i got to see that the sky is huge. HUGE. and when you stand in an open field, or on a knoll, and you see clearly how the sky completely envelopes you, it is kind of humbling. and huge clouds are very cool.
and wildlife checklist: kangaroos/wallabies/emus littering the landscape (alright not that many, but wildlife-spotting stopped people from sleeping in the vehicles all the time), plus in-camp sightings of a possum and a huge toad which took refuge in the toilet bowl (which i discovered only after flushing, to my utmost horror)
its not "the finest training area in the world", not by a longshot: but it was a novel experience. and after all, the repetition of training, sai-kang and rushing for timings nonsense has largely become status quo so anything fun and interesting you get, you seize.
have also been recommended by cpt greg to be SOM (which i didn't get, but it's okay because i never competed for it), which is flattering in itself. i don't really need the sword to validate myself or my efforts, but that a course commander (whom i respect) sees something in me and that i have friends rooting for me does mean a lot. i've found that in this course i've made much more friends than in delta, people i find myself caring for. maybe its because there is a real fear of being out-of-coursed which made us help each other, or maybe its because delta just had too much bullshit going around with the whole scholar deal (no offense, you all know what i mean), but i'm feeling a bit down because we're going to be sent to different places after commissioning (and in particular, my closer friends are selected for the recce course but i almost definitely won't be).
have lost some steam in trying to remember what happened on the trip, but the r&r was really quite an anti-climax (get me to tell you about it in person, dinner calls and have quite a bit to gripe about it). would i go back? yes, and believe me i'm no fan of army stuff.
sample conversation:
"i saw two emus just now!"
"what emus, how do you know it wasn't just, like, a chicken"
"or like ten chickens on a tree"
"escaping predators"
(collective silence)
"c'mon, emus are so 1995. i saw an iMu"
wallaby was fantastic because of the huge expanses of space, and you can't feel like you're fighting mounted unless you cruise down stretches of axes or through an open field with tanks charging in a line with you. you may not catch me saying this again but i felt like what i was doing all this time made sense, and maybe it was the eye-opener i needed for some time now. it may also seem retarded to say this but i got to see that the sky is huge. HUGE. and when you stand in an open field, or on a knoll, and you see clearly how the sky completely envelopes you, it is kind of humbling. and huge clouds are very cool.
and wildlife checklist: kangaroos/wallabies/emus littering the landscape (alright not that many, but wildlife-spotting stopped people from sleeping in the vehicles all the time), plus in-camp sightings of a possum and a huge toad which took refuge in the toilet bowl (which i discovered only after flushing, to my utmost horror)
its not "the finest training area in the world", not by a longshot: but it was a novel experience. and after all, the repetition of training, sai-kang and rushing for timings nonsense has largely become status quo so anything fun and interesting you get, you seize.
have also been recommended by cpt greg to be SOM (which i didn't get, but it's okay because i never competed for it), which is flattering in itself. i don't really need the sword to validate myself or my efforts, but that a course commander (whom i respect) sees something in me and that i have friends rooting for me does mean a lot. i've found that in this course i've made much more friends than in delta, people i find myself caring for. maybe its because there is a real fear of being out-of-coursed which made us help each other, or maybe its because delta just had too much bullshit going around with the whole scholar deal (no offense, you all know what i mean), but i'm feeling a bit down because we're going to be sent to different places after commissioning (and in particular, my closer friends are selected for the recce course but i almost definitely won't be).
have lost some steam in trying to remember what happened on the trip, but the r&r was really quite an anti-climax (get me to tell you about it in person, dinner calls and have quite a bit to gripe about it). would i go back? yes, and believe me i'm no fan of army stuff.
sample conversation:
"i saw two emus just now!"
"what emus, how do you know it wasn't just, like, a chicken"
"or like ten chickens on a tree"
"escaping predators"
(collective silence)
"c'mon, emus are so 1995. i saw an iMu"