I'm back! Just a short 3 weeks training in brunei but felt like 've gain tonnes of experiences. Nv miss home like this before~ Have been counting e days til now. Wad a relieve!! Too bad i didn't get to take a pic of myself when i jux got back from JCC. I guess i'm slowly getting back to shape now. Need to do more exercise. Feeling weak~
Brunei definitely poses many challenges to anyone who trains there. From e terrain, to the weather! Only 1 word can describe the vegetation there... "THICK!" Extensive bashing is not an option if you want to complete ur mission on time.
First phase of my training in Brunei is the Infantry Training Phase. We did platoon and company missions incorporating river crossing and climbing of the infamous 7 hidden knolls. Learn many tactical lessons that is very important for myself when i pass out (if i do) in the future. Enemy will always pop out at unexpected places and no matter what, u'll have to find a way to overcome them. Teamwork definitely comes into play alot when doing e company mission. Going through e terrain (that includes the 7 hidden knolls), if you decides not to help e person besides u, everyone will suffer. Especially those ppl who is carrying heavy loads! Can you imagine ppl having to carry over 30kg of load and yet still climb many steep slopes that requires u to use both your hands n legs?! 1 wrong step and you r down to the bottom of the knoll. Many ppl suffered cramps and all throughout e whole movement to objective. I'm glad that everyone shows good fighting spirit and teamwork to push on despite e difficulties.
Next up... Jungle Confidence Course! The anxiety was tremendous...From the pre-exercise admin to the actual exercises. Don't really know what to expect. So much stories was heard... and all it does was to confuse our decision making process.
EX NOMAD was an uncontrolled navigation exercise where we will navigate in our team level. Mission? To find 4 checkpoints, 1 midpoint and 1 endpoint by 3 days. Different navigational skills was put to the test this time as compared to ROC as we couldn't do much map to ground comparision, intersection and resection there. Even lost our way trying to find our second checkpoint. Luckily my plotting skills still not tt bad. haha~ bhb.
EX CHILLHERMIT Test of survival skills, and endurance of hunger. The task was to build several equipment e.g. shelter, fishing rod, etc for survival purpose. Got to survive there for 5 days without food. To me its not much of a test actually. I don't really feel hungry except for e fact that all kinds of food that i wanted to eat flooded my mind for 5 days. Just felt weaker n weaker when e day goes by.
EX CHILLBONE After e survival phase, was pulled out from the survival site to a landing point where we did our transision for this exercise. Milo was given to us to give us some much needed energy that we lost from e previous 5 days. I drank like nobody business lar! haha~ 03 x combat rations, 04 x biscuits and 02 x energy bar was given to us to complete our last exercise. Task of this phase was to navigate ourselves through e terrain, up Mt Biang and down again to Sungei Batu Apoi within 4 days. Can't remember how many day light hours. My team, or shd i say my platoon's aim is to complete it by the third day! haha~ so that we can all go back to taste canteen food. All e hungry faces all shows out le. Anyway, was brought to our starting point by UH1H helicopter. First day was tough. At some part of time we spend 3 to 4 hrs to travel 2km! That is by far not up to standard. By day 2 we started early determine to push on as far as possible this time. We reach Sungei Biang and started to travel on e river. Its definitely faster as compare to travelling on land. But this means we'r all wet. Some parts of e streams have water depth up to chest level. It was as if we're some special forces trying to infiltrate into enemy territory! After walking on water we had to climb again up e hills n knolls. Fatigue level slowly sets in. Day 3 we started climbing Mt Biang...suddenly u can see how everyone was so determine to complete it that even hunger, spraining of ankle n all those external factors was pushed aside. But sad to say, i almost got heat exhaustion. Temp reaches 38 degress celsius n my team was delay. Mission failed.. we stay for e night up Mt Biang. And worse still, it rained heavily tt night too...It was as if e "person up there" is putting me into some kind of test. Both mental n physical endurance test.
Well... all in all... tis is wad i've got to show for all e experience i get from brunei....
I guess its not about the badge, but e life experiences and e maturity of e mind that i gain from this trip to brunei that is very important.
Will you be around when i needed you?
Sony Ericsson W800i 