Monday, April 20, 2009

My Army

I used to be in the army. On some days, I thought it was pretty cool. I liked firing M16. I wish we had more opportunities firing the other weapons like the M203, GPMG, SAW etc.. I had the opportunity to fire the massive 155mm howitzer gun once. Boy that was scary. The gun blast was so powerful that it lifted all the dust from the ground.

I hated the bitchiness of the instructors. They treated us like shit sometimes - they'd probably be the first people we would shoot in the event of a war. The ones who were good were like fathers to us though.

It really pissed me off that some of my Uncles who were from Malaysia and therefore didn't have to do military service - would laugh at me for not being able to do simple things, ie. like going to the bank to get my ATM card on a Saturday morning or weekday. Once my ATM card was chewed up by the machine and I had to live on $20 for the whole month. All my close relations were overseas at the time and I was living alone. And no one would help me. I lived in fear of falling asleep on the bus back home and missing my stop as I didn't have enough cash to catch another bus.

Live firing was scary. Running and shooting live ammo with a bunch of other blokes who may be short sighted or color blind is no laughing matter. I dreaded night live firing exercises - fortunately I missed that. Running in full combat gear was no joke.

In the morning, we would go for 10km runs. I would fall asleep when I was running and still keep on running. The physical training exercises were so intense that it was sometimes frightening, esp. when you've only about 4 hours of sleep. Most of the time, I thought it sucked. I did however lose 20kg and manage to do my 2.4km in about 8 minutes and achieve 13 military chin-ups. I achieved a level of fitness that couldn't have been done otherwise. Sometimes I was just so tired and exhausted I felt I could just run through a wall than climb over it. I walked straight into a massive spider web with a friggen huge black widow looking spider in the middle. It was like "shit massive spider" - then "compass says go straight" - "Spider?" "go straight"

My friends were nice enough to get the spider off my back. But I was so tired I didn't care. I just wanted to finish that night march.

Having gone thru that physical ordeal. I can handle most physical training. Except I'd still be complaining a lot.

:)

Fun times.


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