Saturday, February 19, 2005
6 more weeks left. that's less than 2 months. to be accurate, 4 weeks or less of training left before we start our parade rehearsals.
just came back from brunei not long ago. in fact, before chinese new year. i think my wing had the best deal. our lancer training was planned at the right period of time where there was no rain, and there was chinese new year to look forward to. all hail wing comd. haha.
anyway, about lancer training.. it was definitely an experience. not only did we learn more about ourselves, we also saw the true colours of the rest. we started off our lancer trip early in the day.. flying off around 2 in the morning.. reaching brunei at around 4, taking a boat trip all the way to temburong and we hit lakiun camp at around 9. the first person we saw was warren goh. he was the frame warren for our wing. after working with him in brunei, we could tell he was a man of experience. in fact, all the lakiun instructors were.. it was really a pleasure working with them.
we started our lancer training with the admin.. going into the long house where one entire wing slept in and bonded as one entity. other activities that occured before the highlight of our trip was the practice for river crossing as well as the guided navex that we had. the guided navex actually gave us the impression that brunei was an easy place to navigate. however, we were proved wrong..
before going onto that, we also had our infantry training phase. bertayan and chindeep. was the ps for bertayan.. din have much to do except to push everyone up.. hehe. chindeep was a confidence builder for us as we were the only wing in
FBO attire to clear the 7 knolls as well as crossing the Apoi before we dropped our field pack off at our FUP. normal people dropped off their field pack after the water crossing. we took it with us all the way across the 7 knolls.
somehow, for that, we were very confident that the load was no problem for us for our jungle confidence course especially for ex. chillbone. so after the infantry training phase, it was time to start our JCC package.
we started it with ex nomad, which was a 3d2n navex. on the first day, we thought we were progessing quite well.. however, when it came to the second day, we realised where we were when we hit our start point. it was quite a setback but we picked up and managed to clear the navex within the given time period..
going back to camp and stuffing ourselves for one day at least, we were prepared to move onto ex chillhermit and chillbone. it would be around 10 days before we would head back to camp when we left that morning. i told myself i could do it and i had to do it within 8 days but the short term goal was to do as much as i could for hermit. to make it short, i managed to complete all my tasks but they were not very good but satisfactory enough. zhenghan called me the duracell rabbit as throughout the five days, i was moving nonstop collecting materials. haha. anyway.. those 5 days were really enriching for me. it taught me that i could actually overcome hunger and still move myself to do as much as i could. it was really a tough time but i managed to pull through. it also brought 6 of us around the area together as we would gather every night to push each other on as well as talk about food. haha.
on the 6th day, we were pulled out from our sites and gathered at the landing pad west of temburong. we were given a resupply of our items and there some rest as well as some food. it was also the place where we were going to find out which start point we were going to for chillbone. somehow, looking at our group, we kinda expected to start from the furthest and indeed we started from lp 250, right at the bottom of the map. the end point was the same for all teams, so we knew we were behind the rest from the start. however, we never gave up and we fought on. we kept pushing and although we only moved less than 2km on the map on the first day, we never gave up. we pushed on north the next day and we managed to actually catch up with the other teams. on the third day, we managed to be the second up mt biang, the highest point of temburong. on the top, we knew that the moment we got down, we just had to cross the river and we would be heading back to camp. so we pushed on and indeed, we made it in time to cross the river that evening. although we were third to cross the river, we actually clocked the fast time for chillbone in the wing because we were the last to fly off in the helicopter with at least 2 hours behind the first to fly off. 29 hours and 5 mins was the time we took to complete and we actually had the toughest route. knowing that, we were very proud of our achievement as well as our team.
getting back to camp, we were smiling all the way as we did manage to finish it within the 3rd day. not many 250 teams were able to finish it within the 3rd day.
with that, it concluded our training in lancer. the rest of the days in lakiun camp were so slack that all we did was to eat and sleep and play. haha. the life of an officer. it was kinda sad to leave the camp as it was really an experience but at the same time, we wanted to get back home coz the trip actually taught me to appreciate my family and loved ones more...
now that i am back.. with the badge and the memories of lancer, i feel different from before the time i left. i dunno how different but there seems to be a change. but it was indeed a life-changing moment especially the 8 days we spent together as the 250 team in the jungles of temburong...
this is lester at 7:15 pm.
