wow. time flies! Its March.

So many things have happened at such a fast pace and it feels like several mths since i last came here.

1SIR is definitely much more happening as compared to where i used to belong as a trainee. There's something new everyday.

I remember on the first day of their recruits 8d7n field camp, i was still in camp with one of my recruits, recruit R. He was scheduled to attend a hearing in court for offences he had committed before he entered the army. And then my OC had me to accompany him there.

Although i've seen the exterior like 89714931 times on TV, its the first time i've been there. inside, the dull colours made it looked bland and old, and now and then there're people in black western suits walking around - lawyers i presume.

The courtroom(?) i was in resembled a lecture theatre very much, less the upward sloping seats for students, whilst the judge's seat was high up.

The lawyers spoke so fast. Before i knew it, it was over and my recruit was sentenced to 3 weeks remand in jail. I had to report that to several superiors, clarify certain things with the lawyer because i didn't hear what the judge said when he sentenced my recruit before heading back to camp.

what a weird experience that was.

Towards the end of the field camp most of the commanders had sore throat. I think its pretty instinctive to shout at recruits whenever they fire at their own buddies, or cross their section mates' line of fire, although its blanks that they're using. Its really an eye opener to see how much common sense has been lacking these days.

For one, they'd like to prone like 20cm away to the side of huge tree trunks that can provide cover from enemy fire repeatly after being told more than 5 times, and i believe by then its really, no matter how hard i try, quite impossible to hold myself back any longer.

Of course there were several other issues with the recruits' performance but i guess its not worth to throw up blood while trying to recall all of them.

When it was shellscrape digging time, one of my favorite recruits complained of feeling ill. But i insisted that he dig finish the shellscrape, because he was potentially the company best, and i didn't want him to miss anything. After he was done, i totally forgot about him being ill. As he complained again, i went to feel his forehead - and...omg.

I ran to fetch the medic. He was down with fever at 40.smth degrees. He was rushed to the medical centre, and i sat down and thought about it, and i really regretted making him dig the shellscrape. How am i to answer if something happened to him.

Days later, his fever never went down, and i was told to accompany him to CGH via a harbourlaunch and ambulance from Tekong.

Whilst on the boat, i was looking at the bag of IV drip connected to his bloodstream. I was surprised to see it, drip by drip - it became empty. I looked at the medic, looked at the IV drip bag, and looked at him again.

As the IV solution depleted, the blood began to backflow towards the IV drip bag. What a sight. Im not brave in the face of blood. It felt gross. My recruit kept glancing at the tube - the blood was dark, and increasingly the length of the tube was filled with it.

I was sitting opposite him, and then i stood up, and sat beside him, wondering what should i say.

"That's your blood. You scared of blood?"

He nodded.

"Dun worry la. Abit only. If not enough, later i donate to you."

Later when the medic replaced the bag of IV drip bag, he had to cut the tube and he failed to catch it. All the blood spilled on the floor as the tube hit the ground. EEWW.

Yet another weird experience.

Back in camp, we were quite shag out by the field camp and we sat at the office, talking about what right we had to ill treat and punish and scold recruits. Afterall most of us - the junior comdrs - used to be JC students, but here the recruits see some of us as devils and madmen.

That really ignites many many thought processes but i try not to think so much sometimes.

What is my approach? Should I care about their discipline so much? Im just an NSF, not a regular...do i have to bother about so many things? What is the appropriate punishment if he did this? Why did i get so angry?

Thinking too much really slows us down. And we've kept going on since then. I believe in doing my job well and everything else dats required of me. When i was a trainee i wondered why do our superiors have to do this and that to us but now, all my questions have been answered.

Its for their own good.

Now all this while we've got recruits who awol-ed via the FENCE, which is really damn pwr - i never thought it was possible when i look at the fence. Its really high and has a V-shaped barbed wire above it. That recruit was found with many cuts over his body when he was caught.

Then on one of the more peaceful days there was a recruit who suddenly ran towards the gate and banged onto it.

Insubordination is pretty common nowadays. Recruits getting charged. What was uncommon was that there was a spec in Alpha who looked like he'll never get angry that kind, getting charged for hitting a recruit. Usually such things get covered up but he was just unlucky that our CO and RSM was around when it happened.

Then there's this terrorist who escaped? This place has no lack of sabo-kias. Because of one guy, so many people can get activated. Probably even more powerful than my Div comdr. Now, even 3SGs do guard duty with recruits. Its like an overkill. Its like getting CSM to be guard comdrs, RSM to be BOS, and generals to be CDSO.

When there's news that the pwrful one could be in the mandai area, my camp parade square was filled with special ops vehicles, tonners, police cars and vans and scdf vehicles in hours.

We were discussing about why 1SIR wasn't activated to go outside of the camp to search for him, and we agreed that if we did, we would be spending more time searching for recruits who took the chance to AWOL or who horlanded(lost their way).

Eventful days. I consider myself lucky to be at home. For awhile.