Sex Game

Do you guys recall my post about the Massive Multi-player Online Sex Game? Well it has become a reality. A game called "Naughty America" is due to be released in the U.S. But I'm pretty sure that this is just the tip of the iceberg. A whole of online sex gaming will eventually open up. Read about it here

In-camp Training (a.k.a holiday camp)

Just finished my first ever ICT which started on 3rd April and ended on the 11th April, 11 days, but effectively 2 weeks being away from work and in camp. When I first got the call-up, I was like, "How come they remembered me?!" Being the outcast from the Battalion, I thought I would never have to see the old guys again, and that I would hopefully never get called up. This was the fifth time the Unit got called up, and apparently they forgot about me the previous 4 times. In any case, I thought to myself, "no matter how tough, its only 11 days, so let's get it over and done with". The training programme was split in the 2 weeks, with Sunday being the rest day.

Week 1

The bloody camp was in Tanjong Gul. That was a place in the westernmost and darkest place in Singapore. And I had to reach there at 7.30am. That was literally impossible by public transport, given that the first bus would probably arrive at my place at 6am. So I took a cab at 6.30, and even the taxi driver didn't know how to get there, so took the cab to Boon Lay and took bus 257. Even with cab I was late. I was quite worried about the consequences of being late, but my fears were unfounded. I met a couple of familiar faces, and was commenting, "Hey, even after 8 still got people strolling in sia...", and he replied "This is reservist man..." That statement pretty much set the tone for the rest of the ICT.

I got myself posted back to my old S3 branch, and got to talking with the guys again. Almost everyone was familiar, but all of them were familiar with each other, since they working together for the previous 4 in-camps. Being back with the familiar faces, I thought to myself, "this won't be too bad". After the morning march, then unpacking, then to the cookhouse for lunch. We had fried chicken with whipped potato, which was great! Apparently, they serve that as the first meal for every unit, to get morale up I suppose. After lunch, was really slacking time. Having nothing to do, I went to sleep. I was interuppted late afternoon to attend a briefing cum ice-breaker session, then after that sleep again. Woke up for dinner. After dinner, nothing to do. Sleep. Woke up at 9 to find out the programme for the next day. Chatted with room-mates. Slept again. OMG, in that one day I must have slept enough to last me several days. And that was only day 1.

Day 2: IPPT test. Was quite worried because I hadn't exercised recently. Managed to scrape through the running for silver with 5 seconds to go... so pocketed another $200 from SAF. After that, showered and you guessed it... sleep. After lunch, had lessons on Law Of Armed Combat. It was interesting because the instructor used a lot of movie clips from Hollywood movies. Issues discussed were how to interrogate POWs, the rights of POWs, abuse of authority and dealing with the media. One interesting issue that came up, an also featured in the movie, "Rules of Engagement", was the shooting of innocent civilians. In the movie, Samuel L. Jackson ordered his troops to fire into a crowd of rioting people, killing many women and children. And he was correct in doing that, because some of the people were armed and firing at them. So accordingly, as soldiers, if a crowd gets hostile and shoot or use weapons at us, we can open fire at them. Interesting. Evening was spent preparing the maps for planning - at least I had something better to do than sleep.

Day 3: The SAF punishes soldiers that skip meals. In the past, we could take turns to skip - get somebody to sign on your behalf. But now, they have a machine to scan NRICs, and somebody is always checking. So no choice, had to wake up early for breakfast. But instead of going for lesson after that, the bunch of us decided to go BAS (Bunk And Sleep). We couldn't skip the afternoon session though, as it would be too obvious. The afternoon was a outdoors roleplay of what we had learnt the previous day, with one side playing civilians and the other side playing the soldiers. Not as useless as I thought it would be. But I sprained my back slightly while doing 'Fire and Movement'. Getting old man...

Day 4: Eat. Surf net. Read newspapers. Eat. Sleep. Planning. Eat. Planning. Go canteen. Sleep.

Day 5: Almost a full day of work at least. Had to spend a lot of time in the planning room. But there were times where we had quite a bit of time to chit-chat too. I guess this is the most fun part about the ICT. Catching up with old friends. And what's interesting for me is also the fact that in NS, you see people from all walks of life. A number of them are from relatively poorer families, so their childhood days were pretty different also. One spent his primary and secondary school days getting into gangfights, and another spent his time peeping at girls (and getting caught!) and screwing girls. The same guy's younger brother, was part of a gang that killed somebody. But he didn't go to jail because he was only 12 years old at that time. Its times like this you find out that you have been living a really sheltered life.

Day 6: Book out day! We had to go outfield in the morning for training, but if we did well, we could get to leave early. And we did! I managed to leave the camp at about 4pm, while the unfortunate souls in company line were still outfield.

Week 2

Day 8: Booked in on Sunday night. Book-in time was 2300hrs, but came in at 0100hrs. Nobody gave a damn. But I should have come in on Mon instead. As it was, I woke up to find out that there was absolutely nothing to do for HQ company. I went about the routine... but realized I slept until I couldn't sleep anymore! I spent the late morning and afternoon reading "Catch me if you can", the story about Frank W. Abagnale, the con-artist whose life was made into a movie of the same name. It was an amazing tale of Frank's life of cheque forgery, bank fraud, posing as a pilot, doctor and lawyer and escaping from police capture not once but 3 times. I was kinda inspired by his story. I do think that I have a bit of a criminal streak in me - sometimes I just like to break the rules for the fun of it. So there I was, "trapped" in camp with nothing to do. I decided to sneak out. I managed to do so (but I shall not mention how here), and went out to Suntec City from afternoon until nighttime. I must say I had a close shave - I came back just before the company lines came back from exercise.

Day 9: The start of exercise. And 1 day closer to outprocessing day. So it was back to S.B.O, helmet and rifle and out to the field. Back to the familiar Lim Chu Kang Road, and back to the familiar (and not so pleasant) smell of Duck Farm. And I finally remembered why I hated army so much. Its not really about the tough training, running up hills,digging trenches or getting dirty. That is acceptable to me to a certain extent. Its the waiting. The brain-numbing waiting. In the rain, getting muddy, getting bitten by mosquitoes, and just there waiting to be told what to do. We reach the field at 7am, set up everything nicely, just to sit there and wait for several hours. And we can't sleep because we might be needed somehow, and also for 'wayang' purposes. Being in HQ at least gives me the luxury of knowing what is going on, and the reasons for the delay. But still every moment out there, and even every day in army, I feel my brain cells being under utilized.

We also had to eat combat rations again. At least this time the rations were palatable. I remember my days in BMT of white rice and curry chicken. We would open the green packet of so-called white rice and feed it to the stray dogs, and even they wouldn't eat it! Now the rations come in 3 course meals - starters: glutinous rice, main course: chicken pasta, dessert: green bean with barley. Not too bad at all!

Day 10: After the previous day's rain, today was blistering hot. But I endured it with the knowledge that we would go back in the late afternoon. Before this ICT, I didn't bring my O2 mini along, because it was a camera phone and they were supposedly banned from army camps. Turns out that nobody gave a damn. In fact, some of us, in the free time that we had, were posing to take photos. That really summed up the whole ICT - despite the 2 days of getting dirty, it was like a holiday camp.

Day 11: Finally outpro day! There was the usual army style delays, that kept us waiting a couple of hours more that we had to, but finally it was the goodbyes and back to civilian life! Even though it was quite a good break from work, the life of uniform, regimentation and stupid time-wasting is something that I can safely say,"Thanks, but no thanks!".

BottleTree Village

I'm really running out of material for the blog, so I'm going just post some pictures of the group outings. I'll also blog about my first In-camp Training experience, which will happen tommorrow!! I was hoping that ICT would never happen for me, but wishing thinking I guess. Anyways, yesterday's outing was pretty big, with a couple of new faces - namely Yuihui (Barry's gf) and Daphne, Denise's sister. The outing was organized to send Ben off, who will be posted to Shanghai for work.

Ben suggested BottleTree Village, an interesting restaurant by the Sembawang coast. He's the foodie (not difficult to tell !!) so we normally agree to his choices. Basically its very difficult to get there without a car, so thankfully we could mobilize 3 cars for the day. I was amazed that the restaurant was fully booked, given the extreme location. But I guess the concept is unique. Apparently the story is that the restaurant owner went to Australia, liked the funnily shaped trees so much, that he decided to import them back for $30,000 each.


Well, the restaurant served seafood, and we ordered quite a huge selection of dishes. We had fish soup, foo yong omlette, chilli crab, hot-plate venison, an interesting goreng pisang dish, prawn balls, veggies, roasted chicken and hot-plate tofu. The only good dishes for me were the goreng pisang and the vension. Chilli crab was a bit disappointing. The other thing that I didn't like was that they served everything almost all at once, so we had to pile up food on our dishes to clear more space for the incoming dishes.

TM in one of his more serious poses

Biggest turn-out in a while
On the whole, the setting is quite nice, although I feel that they could have done more on the Australian theme. So basically, its just a restaurant by the sea, with some funny looking shaped trees. Given its location and quality of food, I guess BottleTree Village is like one of those tourist attractions - go there once to say you've been there, and probably not go back there again.