NPCC weekend...

31 March 2006

The last day of March went off with a bang....literally. Took the cadets out for their classification shoot. Also tried my hand at it. Alas, I think my finger muscles have atrophied dramatically with the passage of time in the past year.(The last one I had was OBTC two years back.) It was a mammoth effort just to pull the trigger and the momentum inevitably takes my rounds skywards .... and of course I'm not going to report my score here...

The range at PA must have seen much better scores, and I'm sorry to have it suffer the ignominy of my score on its last day of operation.

I've always preferred archery though.. even if my first try at it was a greater misadventure than my encounter with guns. Can you imagine hitting the bull's eye, but at the target belonging to the one beside you? Of course when it happened, there was a complete hush enveloping the place, with everyone gawking at the phenomenon created by yours truly.... Anyway, I've since gotten the hang of it....but as the Friday lesson shows, any skill must be practised or it will perish...


1 April 2006

April Fool's Day...glad not to be in school as I still remember Jennifer's trick last year which got my hands all gooey.... This year, it was spent at sea with NPCC sea units of RGS and ACSI, really well-behaved kids who are focused on their work. Save for one who kept imitating his teacher's admonitions of students and supposedly insulting ways. His whiny impersonation and constant falsetto really grates on my nerves, but thanks to him, I was driven up to the upper deck. Part of the reason I love the sea to such great depths (no mean feat for a non-swimmer) is the solitude out at sea with only the wind, the ripples of white emerging from the blue and assimilating back into it again, and the occasional bird crossing the sea. Far from the madding crowd, there is none of the clamour associated with overpopulated Singapore (the government says we need more people, but whenever I stepped onto the MRT, I wonder if the government got it right). Only my breathing punctuates the droning of the propellers. Where others might find it monotonous, I think it's great to be by yourself, free of all the obligations of conforming to society ... Being in a crowd and yet alone....


The trip was also memorable for the nuggets of information dished out by Captain Vincent eg. the RSS Courageous crash at sea last year, the fact that ICA has its own fleet, whose personnel are armoured at all times ready to crash their boat onto ships fleeing from being caught for smuggling....All these make for a wonderful time at sea...

I must remember to upload the pictures... does anyone know how to do that? Just copy and paste? (done on 5 may.... finally!)