Saturday, 16 March 2013
So here I am again, spending yet another Saturday doing guard duty. I find my work-life balance lacking lately somewhat. How I wish I was spending the day with Kairos for DI_SCO. Anyway, I saw quite an awesome sight at night. There was this lightning storm that was happening far away. The night sky was illuminated with flashes of lightning at about 10s intervals without sound and it lasted perhaps half an hour?

Then something caught my eye when I was taking pictures of the lightning storm. Some bright object started to show up on my screen display and I was quite stunned as I have never seen anything quite like it. It began to descend rapidly to earth and as it started to disappear, there seemed to be trails of lightning behind it. Didn't take photos of it (why didn't I argh) as I was taking it all in through my eyes. What a spectacular sight! Perhaps it was a comet...or ball lighting...or perhaps an artillery shell (I saw some artillery vehicles driving around in the day).


Edit: Knowing SAF, exercises should be cut during a CAT 1, so that rules out the possibility of it being an artillery shell hm...
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Sunday, 10 March 2013
Post live-firing. Yesterday concludes the tank live firing and it was super tiring due to the fact that once it was over, we would do recovery till the wee hours of the morning. Ended up sleeping at 4:30am and booking out at 9:10am. Crashed in my bed as soon as I got home and the afternoon is gone.

The experience of being a gunner instead of the driver was quite interesting. Though I'd rather drive than shoot heh. Not sure why the live firing must be on a Saturday though. Generations of tankees have burnt their Saturdays for this. It's like the range can only open on Saturday.

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So, it seems like I have a knack for remembering stuff (sometimes accidentally). Some stuff though not really useful at times like when I remembered the values of Pi, square root of 2,3,5,7 (up to the decimal limit of the GC) and so on during my JC days. And more recently, I remember most of my bunkmates locker codes heh. Quite useful for when there is a need to stow away their stuff in their locker during area cleaning when they are away or should something important that needs to be used be inside their locker.

Recently, I started to memorise much more important stuff. Why not right? So I began to memorise birthdays and not rely on Facebook to do so. Started off with DI and right now I got down the birthdays for most of Kairos and some impactors. Quite cool to look at the photograph of Kairos and to be able to point out each person's birthday heh. Shall work on from there.

Monday, 4 March 2013
Finding myself recalling a lot of past memories. Which in itself can be a good thing for reflection and     cultivating an attitude of thankfulness.

In the year of 2012, I experienced three seperate incidents of what one would call déjà vu moments. Thought I would record them down lest I forget. Funny as this may sound but I actually felt certain that I experienced these events in my dreams before. 

First moment:
September 2012 during my stint in Darwin, Australia.  It was the last few days of the exercise where we would spend most of our time in the workshop area prepping for the next exercise in Queensland and massive cleaning up. The whole company was taking a break in the workshop tent, sitting on the crates scattered around in the tent and just chilling. I happened to be outside the tent (probably filling my canteen or something like that) and that's when it happened. Just looking at the company sitting around tent on the crates relaxing just seemed to jot something in my memory. What shocked me was the exact viewing angle and I was left amazed for awhile wondering how I got this déjà vu feeling.

Second, October 2012 in Queensland a week after Darwin. Was walking along the whole row of tents where we sleep and at some viewing angle I felt I've seen it before. Must be the number of times we keep walking back and forth from our tents to the cookhouse/toilets I guess?

Third, December 2012 when I was helping out in the CIA camp. (Be Bold and Believe!) When we were discussing about our skit in that corridor. Somehow felt familiar, as weird as it may sound.

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Anyway today I found myself again thankful for God's faithfulness and amazing creation.

Dropped tank keys in the tank today and for anyone who actually knows what it's like in the tank, it's one of the last places you want to lose something there. It's so dark and the keys could be anywhere in the spaces. Spent a good 30 minutes searching until I decided it could be somewhere that can't been seen. So instead of using my torch, I used my hands to feel around a certain spot where a voice in my mind tells me to look. Within the first few seconds feeling about I found them, right under the rotating platform. Praise God!

The sunrise  and the sunset today were breath catching (sadly couldn't take photo)  and also the shape of the clouds that were in the sky. They were arranged like longitudinal waves which I've seen before in PJ heh.

It's sad to leave Yew Tee. A place where I spent most of my life in and made so much memories there. On my last day spending time in Yew Tee, I actually went around to places in Yew Tee and took photos. Most places hold dear and significant memories heh.

Yew Tee park and Zhi's house! Many fond badminton and biking memories.

Sunday, 3 March 2013
So yesterday I found out from Cherie (new addition to the PJ family!) that my PW group's Oral Presentation was being used to teach PW. Whoa didn't really expect the school to continue doing so even after 2 years. Feel so honoured heh. But not so sure whether it's a good thing or not eh cause my group didn't get an A (biased grading system towards PJ from MOE for our batch).

Remembered how way after our OP is done then we were approached by Mr Sars (with a sir name like that, who wouldn't remember?), the then head of PW department (wonder if he still is) to film us doing our OP again for teaching purposes for the future generations of J1s.

Speaking of all this PW stuff, I began to reminisce the good o' PW times. I guess it's because I have such a workable and likeable team that I actually do find PW fun (especially OP) even though there were frustrating times such a trying to limit the word count for the written report and researching stuff. I still keep all the documents for PW (a whopping 3.6gb of data, most of it are the videos) in my laptop and I went to rewatch our funny PW videos. What a nice trip down memory lane.

Drawbacks of not posting in a really long while: I have a lot to write about that I want to remember years down the road. I blame my lack of discipline yet again to write heh. Was looking through my past posts and wow my schooling life was much more interesting than army life. Then I saw this on my post on 'You Could Even Say It Glows'

Will not forget the epic moments that happened like the enthusiasm Kairos showed when doing the 'forfeits' (our re-mixed version of Baby made another comeback!), the ridiculously oversized fishballs, the overused Skyrim 'I used to ____ then I took an arrow to the knee' jokes (which are still funny heh) and the epic unwrapping of Matthew's present!

Ironically, I DID forget some of the stuff mentioned (mainly the forfeits, the rest I could still remember). I blame my past self for thinking that my future self can remember argh.

16th February 2013
So, 16th of February was my debut date in Encounter Service Team! The experience was quite amazing; instead of being part of the congregation worshipping, I became part of the team that lead the worship. Instead of feeling the usual nervousness associated with performing for the first time with a few practices, there was a sense of peace and calmness. Kind of enjoyed serving along side the team and making music to the Lord. At one point, I kinda got carried away and was singing the lyrics to All to Us before realising I have to focus on my rhythm. (Still learning how to multi-task with the guitar). Was hoping for the encounter to be longer heh. It felt short to me for some reason. I guess it's the different perspective?

16th of February also happened to be the debut date for my new guitar which I bought sometime back in 16th November 2012. Whoa that's exactly 3 months after! Nicknamed her Koa cause the body of the guitar is made from Koa...and the name Koa does have a certain nice ring to it. I like the way the guitar sounds and the way it looks. It looks like a tree heh.

All to Us - Chris Tomlin

My solo song which I came to like very much. It's a new song to DI if I'm not wrong.