09 June 2006

There and Back Again: An ICT Tale by Pandemonium

Heh heh... okay... There's nothing really much to talk about... What's in this post is just a collection of pretty much random thoughts about the past week. It's just a low-key, one-week ICT. In fact, there are only two "main" events (if they even qualify for the use of "main") in the ICT: IPPT and the Platoon Mission Exercise (PME).

With regards to the former, it was tad pity that I was only five seconds away from gold, from an additional $200. It was a 25 points (maxed) result with a 2.4 km timing of 9:49 min. Five seconds... firstly, I shouldn't have forgotten to start my stopwatch. If I had, I might've sped up in the final stretch for this 5 seconds. Secondly, I stopped for a quick while during the start, just after passing the electronic gantry, because I did not hear the beep and I could not find my tag-number on the electronic score board. But then again, 5 seconds in the 9 minutes range is rather hard to cut... In any case, I'm quite satisfied with my results. At least I ran sub-10 minutes! Whee!

As for the PME, it turned out to be much slacker than I imagined. No route marches, no jungle-bashing... hell, no camo needed! And initially being an overnight training, it was cut to just a day and night training, which was fortunate, because it rained the next morning. Some more, the night training was reduced from a deploy-and-practice mission to a everyone-sit-in-a-circle-around-a-picnic-lantern session, which we discussed in general who is assigned what appointment (appointment changes due to new guys and those who deferred) and who is doing what at various stages of a standard mission. I don't think I'm surprising anyone who's there if I say that I find that discussion more useful than the deployment mission during the day. During the mission we were to practice our voice procedure (the strange manner of talking over radio), which I thought was rather meaningless since we would've probably forgotten about it by the next ICT.

And speaking of the next ICT, it seems that it will be during December 2007. What's more, it's gonna be a high-key one, which means it should last for two weeks. And what's worse is that it seems that for the next consecutive ten years, I'll be having ICT in each. Sigh... to borrow a phrase from someone else... hard life lah... Heh heh...

Last thing, it was pretty nice to see those old guys once again. Most I've not seen since ORD, or even before that: Yujian (except on TV), Shung Yar, Xiang Kun, Gavin, Don, Darren... And in any case, I'm glad that I've dropped any grudges, since all of them turned out pretty great.

That's all I have for now. I'll probably have a few more things to say. Till then!

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