(I wrote this halfway one day after I came back, but never found the energy to complete it until now.)
I'm home! After 23 days in a foreign country.
Before all, happy (belated) birthday to my blog!
Sun, sand, sand, sand, alot of sand, rain, mud, sweat, shivers, shooting stars, kangaroos, cows, horses, 18 wheelers, beer, wine, chlorinated water (really aqueous chlorine), bathing with 6 men together in one room; been there, done all that!
I breathed sand, ate sand, drank sand, wore sand, bathed sand; I touched more sand in 23 days than in my last 19 years. In fact some of us joked we would die from excessive sand intake soon.
It was my first time I work in my unit, and now I have a clearer view of my job scope, what to do, what not to do. I have also better understood the personalities and characters of the people around me, just how @#$%! some people can get, so I now know who to look up to, who to ignore, whose tails I should not step on.
Then again who knows? Maybe to the others I am @#$%!, and should be ignored.
It was during outfield that I realised handling long entangled cables really sucked. Especially when I was trying to untangle them and someone hollered into my ear to hurry up. We really should go wireless asap.
We used to think camouflaging ourselves was horrible, until we had to camouflage our vehicles.
Right now I (may) have at least three extras waiting for me, because of a mistake I made. Hopefully it was only a threat my name was not sent in.
Two things I regretted not bringing to Wallaby: Camera and gloves.
We were told then that if we brought cameras we would have to surrender them, only getting them during our R & R. It turned out instead to be free-for-all photo taking, although a warning was given during one of our ROs to take note what photos we took.
On some days the weather there got really cold, so while my uniform and jacket some warmth, my hands were freezing away. Terrible feeling.
The afternoons there were very hot. So hot that sometimes I just could not stand under the sun for one more second. After the sun set the weather got drastically cold, really balls shiver. The sun started rising at 4am, by 6am the sun was high up in the sky shining brightly at us, yet the air was still so cold then we had to wear our windbreakers just to walk from our tentages to the toilets.
I saw the biggest night sky I ever seen in my life. In the outfields of Australia it was total darkness at night and on some nights where I was deployed on a huge open ground, the night sky I saw could not be contained in my vision, and the number of stars I saw was simply uncountable. That was also when we spotted shooting stars. Especially the last night of exercise where four of us laid a groundsheet on the ground, and slept under the stars.
I only spotted kangaroos near the end of the the exercise, when a family of four hopped past us. Some of them followed them all the way down the hill, where they saw an entire pack of about ten of them. I could only regret not following. There was a cow farm and several pony farms along the route from camp to town, thus I saw more cows and horses than kangaroos.
No luck with koala bears though.
Rockhampton was a little similar to the Singapore heartlands. I guess its sort of a transit town between large cities, because of the large number of motels there. I guess they valued family more than we do in Singapore; most of their shops closed after 5pm, with late night shopping till 9pm on Thursdays, and were totally closed on Sundays.
During R & R we went on a trip to the Capricorn Caves. Nothing much to see actually, its simply caves. Or maybe its just me who don't know how to apprectiate those flowstones and such.
I drank a grand total of three cans of beer, from brigade, company and platoon happy hours, plus several more mouthfuls from losing at some dumb games, and a couple of cups of wine. I still don't like beer. At all.
After spending almost a month there, most of us agreed that we have actually gotten quite used to life there. Living conditions was much better than we expected, except that place lacked entertainment, and we somehow got that extra bit of freedom compared to Singapore. In fact we wouldn't have mind staying there for a longer time. Great experience!
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After coming back home I had a two hour sleep (actually three because I overslept by an hour), then met up with my friend to go back to Anglican High for its open house. Nothing much has changed; it felt more like CCA orientation day when I was back in Sec 1. Alot of new and unfamiliar teachers now, though a few ones from my time were still there. Didn't get a chance to see them unfortunately.
