nelchaenen.
[it means the thirtieth and that's the name of our batch]

hey ho! the escape trainee on the run from horror instructors is currently in a safe house. her own home. haiz. [actually the instructors are quite nice lah. once you get used to their scolding, it'sreally nothing... but of course, it's not meant to be nothing lah, i mean, you understand what they are getting at...]

so much to say, so little time to type it all out, and such limited capacity of voacubulary to tell you everything that i can think of.

am back from YLTC, a day earlier than everyone. going back to school tomorrow morning. miss the people there so much, so sian. it's land expedition day and i just sat at home... coz of that stupid lock. and worse still, i didn't get any homework done. i just can't. you see? fatigue and missing YL is not really a very good combi. i don't want to miss it... don't want to miss a single thing. at least let me be there... but no... sea ex was like this. now land ex too... haiz... really like YLTC so much.

[day 1]
reported in school at six thirty, organised some stuff, then reported to the instructors LATE. by two and a half minutes, one count per second. so first thing in the morning we owed one hundred and fifty counts [nelchaenen] to the instructors. then a nelcahenen identity was found. that means another fifty counts. and all the slowness in doing things and what not, we owed a total of five hundred and six counts by the first dorm check. and jianda actually brought tigger to school... he was surrendered... poor tigger. haiz. kaoz. never expected it man. but then, better to be surrendered than confiscated.

first dorm check

well, first, there was the surrender of illegal items. then there was the frisking of bags for illegal items not surrendered. wow. so we poured out the contents of our bags in twenty counts. the first time we did that, we were so slow, must slowly take out, cannot pour. and we actually asked for a time extension. now to think back on that, that was so slow. so we were made to put everything back in the bags again, and this time we were so selfish, only put back your own stuff, when you're done, never see if the others are done or help them. so you can put yours all back in. very clever. so selfish. haha, quite shocking. i mean, very shocking. never expected this at all. i think all of the girls were taken by schok. then we were given twenty counts to pour them all out again and this time, the instructors went through our items thoroughly, and searched out every single illegal item there was. this is communal living. wow. it was a very good experience. i don't mean it sarcastically, i mean, wow. when do you ever get to do this? i think this really changed my mindset. well. then after the frisking, we were made to stuff everything back in the bags again. this time, we were cleverer, we just stuffed everything we saw, but i think we were not as seasoned as now, haha, coz everybody still started with stuffing their own things in first. and of course we were still selfish. and you know what? though i felt self-righteous anger then, i can really see what it means now. actually, everyone is selfish, i wouldn't say that i'm not, it's just that some people can suppress it better. i won't call myself one of them. hm... then after trying to stuff everything in, the unzipped bags were confiscated. well, both mine were. so my stuff was all gone. we were all quite shocked at that. the stuff we had left was slightly more than one third of all the girls' belongings. we couldn't imagine how we could have managed. then that was the end of the first dorm check. ended up owing so many counts becaue of illegal items and what not...

PnO session

this was fun. we were supposed to build this climbing structure. and none of us could figure out how it was supposed to be at first glance. fack. not even second, third or fourth glance. only shiwei, sebastian and jianda managed to understand the diagram. and after the counting of hemps and spars and stuff, we started out ong the structure. the directing people were generally shiwei, sebastian and jianda. wow, the power of scouts and NPCC people. really really pei fu them. jianda was like, in high demand, everything was "oi, jianda can come over for a while?" haha. so i was all the while tying square and diagonal lashings. tie and tie and tie until i got minor rope burns on my hands. but still very fun. haha, i think that was one of the only chances i could get a tan... haha, but i didn't get much of one up til now lah. haiz. coz no sea ex... then a lot of people got cockpit burns, but i'll save that for later. then very nice, seeing the structure slowly taking shape. just before lunch, we managed to erect the structure. haven't secured it yet. i never knew how it worked or how it looked like in the end. had to go off for the theory paper immediately after lunch. and i can tell you, i didn't even prepare for the exam. it's funny how YLTC can take your mind off everything.

theory

and if you think i'm going to digress from YLTC, this is still not it. hm. i'll try not to. want to remember every single thing that happened. i don't want to forget...

the paper was fairly easy this year. and i think i was the first one out of the entire batch of candidates to walk out of the examination area. haha. mummy was with me. and when i told her my clothes and items all got confiscated, she got me a new set of track pants and sweater. and two new sets of undergarments. and i got the triangular bandage for wuhui for shawnees. and i smuggled my group diary back.

returned back to school just in time for second dorm check...

second half of first dorm check

there was a report of all the illegal items searched out in the first frisking and of course, it was repay counts session. our dorm was still unclean and dusty. not only the female i's felt disgusted. i feel disgusted too. but at least i know that there wasn't much we could have done about it. or so i think lah, i wasn't there the whole afternoon. first, there was a frisking of the bags. and more illegal items were searched out. so, more counts. and then we had repay. they did pumping. i was made to fall out. haiz. and i did zha ma and twinkles. for your information, i did zha ma and twinkles for everything, even PT. when i didn't fall out volutarily, my name was called out to make me fall out. and during PT's later, i wasn't even allowed to do zha ma, but for repay, jizheng wasn't there. so at least i don't feel so handicapped. felt very pissed, coz one, i could do pumping totally well; two, pumping is easier than zha ma; three, zha ma makes me feel so handicapped, like i'm not lugging my own weight... everyone else was doing pumping, and there i was, doing zha ma in the corner. haiz. then it was dinner.

sea ex packing

sea ex packng was pushed forward coz it was raining and we couldn't do night orienteering at the botanical gardens. so during sea ex packing, the first half, the girls were quite shit lah. coz we couldn't get the items in time. what happened was that we stood in a circle with our pile of clothes in the middle [what's left and a portion of what was confiscated]. then we'd each grab a plastic bag, and grab an item at a time in twenty counts. at first the speed was so slow we ended up getting a hell lot of scolding. haiz. then fianlly the stuff was packed. wah. damn heng i forgot i wasn't going and packed a pair of sandals in. else i'd have to walk the beach in track shoes. then for packing, they threw our sandals and wet shoes all over our clothes. which made things worse. imagine, sandals and shoes all over your undergarments. and that was truly the case. but we learnt to manage. i wasn't that bothered in the first place, so i didn't care. then we went to the boys' dorm to pack rations. quite sad for them lah, wiped the floor in the afternoon with their shirts, then everyone comes pacing in with dirty feet... i don't know how they managed to owe the male i's four thousand over counts in one afternoon, but they paid back two thousand counts by wiping the floor clean in ten minutes after the male i's poured three buckets of water on the floor. apparently it was easier on them le, the 29th batch had to wipe up four buckets. so that was sea ex packing.

night orienteering

this was done in school in a treasure hunt style. quite fun. the apaches and the navajos [strength: three and four respectively] were the only two teams to complete the course. and we were the smallest teams at that. yeah man, you rock, navajos. justin couldn't participate. and we were playing guess the instructors' thoughts. haha. shiwei was damn damn lame. and we were all damn lame. haha. i ran around quite a bit, so got a scolding from instructor hui hui the next day. and from instructor jizheng and instructor huifen as well... haiz. and i'm what treated like i'm really weak. navajos, why you never take care of angela? haiz.

supper and cleaning

we had supper, which was PM as well. the nava people very quiet... then the girls tried to finish up quickly, so as to clean the dorm. the people were quite sluggish. i mean, libin, me, meishi, shiying were trying to mobilise the people into cleaning the floor and what not, but there were the few who just wanted to sleep on the floor. couldn't be bothered with them le, so we just wet the cloth and started wiping. they naturally got up and we managed to clean the floor. haha. then went to sleep for fifteen minutes before getting up to do sentry duty. well, sentry duty was chatting session. we basically just talked crap and gossiped about people. haha. thankfully, my name didn't come up, wu hui was the boot of all the intra-nava gossip...

oh, before sleep, we had a massive powder bath... apparently we weren't going to bathe this whole six days. nor brush.

[day 2]
our days stopped going by mondays, tuesdays and wednesdays. it was all day one, day two, day three... in the morning, we reported late... by about seven minutes... quite shit. then the shawnees misreported their strength. i think the instructors were quite pissed. then we had PT.

PT

i managed to sneak into PT. no one asked me to fall out, so i did it with them, all except the pumping, coz i thought i'd better not breach the instructors' trust. bah. haha. then i did everything else. that was the first and last PT session for which i did PT. after PT was breakfast, after which i booked out of school. and i can tell you i think i stank up the entire bus. it wasn't the simple case of not bathing for a day. it was a case of bathing in sweat for the whole day and not bathing after that.

went home, bathed, brushed, slept and went out again.

class lunch

class lunch was at this pasta shoppe. then the food there was very nice tho' there was a mix up of main courses. then i went walk walk with zhi hua, zhiyi, chia yee and eunice. lost zhihua and zhiyi halfway, then eunice left. and in the end, at four thirty, me and chia yee parted. then i just seh in raffles city and city hall mrt until six, then i met jang and we went down to east coast to join the rest.

dinner/tent pitching

haha, quite interesting to see everyone again. and i was thankful for my sandals... haha, but i brought another set of clothes above the extra set i brought the previous day, the extra sweater [tigger-coloured, apparently *sweatdrop*] i brought jianda and the extra track pants i brought meishi... they were quite tanned... haha, jianda got the much feared cockpit burn... nothing much to say about this, but it was really nice. tent pitching was quite frustrating, coz the peg refused to stay in the ground. the ground was too soft... then kept collapsing... the apa girls and the nava girls shared a tent "cave". wah. two groups worth of girls. that makes a total of four people. haha. if it had been shawnees and commanches sharing, it'd be like... ten? eleven? haha. this time, i didn't trip on any tent ropes like i did during OH... dinner was fun. quite interesting. the sharing of utensils and stuff. i think one of our lines now just within the girls is "we even share undergarments now, who cares about sharing bottles." *guffaws* quite silly.

miss YLTC competition

haha, this was GOOD. i think our batch was really gross... even the instructors agreed. haha. and i created another monster. presenting... shiwei!!! with balloons for boobs, pong pong fruits for butt, a nice rolled up semi tanktop fashioned out of the HJC shirt, FBT shorts out of the HJC shorts, a nice vertical ponytail and a plume that didn't go right. haha. miss apaches was alvin, miss cherokees was wei leong, miss commanches was wee an, miss navajos was shiwei, miss pawnee was aloysius, i think, and miss shawnee was sebastian. haha, i think aloysius was very poor thing. yong kang was his spokesperson and i think he kept eating tofu. slap him on the chest and on the butt so many times... haha. wei leong got miss YLTC. wah... damn gay... and damn funny also. haha. then for sebastian, they actually dragged libin up and they had to do all kinds of embarrassing things... which, in the end, shiwei popped up, out of nowhere to save the day... damn gross that guy. somehow, i'm glad jianda didn't go up. he almost did... *shudder*

[day 3]
stuck down tents, had breakfast, then combed the areas for rubbish... combed as in literally... stand one line and walk... haha, then after everything, we took the bus back to school. sang the whole way... haha. hm, then we went back to the rooms, sorted out all of our clothes then assembled for lunch.

combined skills session

our group was in charge of the commando crawl rope... very fun. haha, i was holding tension the whole time... when we first tied the rope to the first tree i climbed the tree... haha, super fun. haven't climbed a tree since the black.heaven photoshoot at kranji last year... wah... very fun... then it rained halfway, so we had to continue the crawl rope after the rain. when we did, we mobilised five groups to help pull and hold tension. wah... love our rope. ao taut and what not. then we helped shawnees erect their tarzan swing... haha. the commanches did a crawl rope as well... but ours was still better. haha. then it started raining, so combined skills was done totally indoors... and they took down our crawl without anyone having even been on it... *sobz*

combined skills ah, very difficult to describe, it was like stations, then at every station we had to cope with a scenario. very fun. haha. then everytime, instructor weiyang had to pretend to be injured, then we have to handle the injury. interesting. i couldn't help laughing, but apparently, we weren't supposed to. sorry... then we had to build a number different things, like rafts, shelters and bridges. i think at the end of it all, we'd all become experts at knots and everything...

the most memorable part of combined skills was the mock first aid exercise. me, qian jun and ailin had to sit it all out. haha, when we went to the "site" first, the instructors pretending to be casualties all started screaming and yelling, thinking that the first aiders were there... haha. when they found out we weren't, it was quite amusing to see them all get back to their original positions on the ground... haha. then the first aiders came and the exercise started. there were casualties with eyes popping out, then there were burns and unconcious patients. broken legs and stuff... quite a number of mistakes were made and the instructors were quite pissed off... like someone pulled the broken bone out of the leg, another forgot to retrieve the eyeball of a person. instructor ze min was so heavy none could carry him, and quite apparently, they voiced their opinions, so he was quite pissed, because one shouldn't deny help to a casualty because he was too heavy. how would he think? hm... very accurate, i think. then quite a lot of mistakes were made... and the people were made to memorise things in pumping position. the real casulaties, [ie. me, kailing, ailin, qian jun, cheryl] memorised them in zha ma position.

recreation

we had a war game. haha, our team was the rojak team. we had the apaches, the navajos, ailin, shiying. that was, seven people... still smaller than some groups. and i think we got it real bad. coz everyone gang bang us. in the end, our pail kept shifting positions. and we were protecting it with our legs. for people like jianda, that didn't matter. got into a slight brawl with him. he like, just stuck his hands right through our legs to get to the pail. kaoz. then i think we were quite violent also. i aimed for many people's heads with the waterboms. and many of them hit. joel's glasses were knocked off i know... so paiseh... and our water bombs were solid. just drop in the sink and they burst. high water pressure. haha. and we were quite violent. bombs went for heads and pistols were aimed at the eyes... haha. sorry to anyone i hit real bad. and meishi, i wasn't aiming for your head... sorry.

second dorm check

this was bad. we thought we had the dorm clean. instructor ninghan checked the back of the lamp ledge over the whiteboard and instructor huifen cheked inside the cabinets... er, we never thought to clean those places. so got a scolding... but it's like, we always get scoldings, so that staement was quite redundant. then we realised we owed not seven hundred over, but 1155 counts. then we owed 45 more. then 20 more... we paid back 221 counts in the form of crunchers and leg thrusts... 201 counts in crunchers. that was real bad, for the crunching people and the zha ma people. because the instructors think some people were slacking [and i think so too, i mean, one can tell...] and the people had to keep repeating counts. the zha ma people in the meantime, got zero breaks. jang did until she collapse. cheryl's leg was trembling visibly. mine was trembling a little too, so we ended up supporting each other... there were nine people who had to sit out the crunchers at the end of it. haiz. then they did leg thrusts, twenty of them. and then we went over to the boys' dorm to watch them pay counts. quite chiat lat. they were doing the IFAH... and they had hung for three minutes when we entered. then they had to hang for another four more... the girls ended up sitting or kneeling behind the guys to support their backs... some of them totally leant in. i was supporting joel. he got it quite bad. but i guess i kept yelling at him. the last minute, i demanded that he pull himslef, and i sat further out, so i reduced the help. well, they all pulled thru. so i have nothing much to sya. they paid back 750 counts thru 60 pumps, 100 crunchers and 7 mins of IFAH. i think instructor ze min said they only did five over minutes. but thayt's still very li hai already. i think i'll collapse at the second minute, at the very very most. haiz. quite siao, kenna tekkan like shit. but then, that happens everyday. and i think the instructors quite nice to us already, coz it's after sea ex... haha.

i think i'll stop here for now... today's day five. i'll cover the last three dyas the next time round.

wah, the difference between the male i's and the female i's... the male i's scold during the repay is quite encouraging... but the female i's scolding is very demoralising at times... and they are very ngiao, and sometimes even make personal attacks... but i think it's a different matter totally. i mean, the girls are doing something less taxing on the physique, so i guess it's a mental game for the girls. coz a lot of them ended up crying... i wouldn't know, i was always doing zha ma... i still bear a grudge against the instructors for that, no matter how nice they can be to me. at east coast, instructor hui hui was like, "angela, i catch you running one more time and i'm going to make you sit down." and everything else that i do, i'd have someone monitoring me. like, the war games, instructor shiqi was under instructor jizheng's direct orders watch me. "i catch you running, and you sit out of the game." fine, doesn't mean i can't do damage walking. haiz. but i seriously think the instructors all have schizophrenia. one moment they can be monsters and the next they can be so nice... scary.

oh, some terms, in case you haven't figured out, our batch is the 30th batch, batch name: nelchaenen [which is 30th in the elven tongue]. there are six groups, that's apaches, cherokees, commanches, navajos, pawnees and shawnees. and i'm in navajos. and my teammates are wuhui, shiwei and justin. wah. super peifu wuhui. she's the only one who can make it for every single thing. like precamps. shiwei had to miss half of today and yesterday. and justin is worse off than me. he can't even walk now... haiz. and our instructores are shiqi and hui hui; rovers are jizheng and huifen. apparently, huifen says that grand senior junhao was a worse monster than her... wah scary.

think i'll become a monster if i end up in OAC?







"we are family, for eternity. we care for each other, for now and forever. nelchaenen!"