There are two kinds of tiredness:

One, the 'xian' kind of tiredness, where you feel like falling asleep all the time. Your eyelids are as heavy as lead, your head is filled with cotton wool, and you just can't seem to stay awake. This is best experienced when you have just broken into school at 6.30 after staying up past midnight to rush homework.

The next is the 'shat' kind of tiredness, where you legs are going to collapse, your breath comes out in gasps, your eyes are fixed-focused two inches in front of you, and the only thing keeping you going is the prospect of dinner. Found after hiking 10km through Ubin with a 20kg backpack, lost and delirious, searching in vain for the next campsite.

I'm glad I felt only the latter in OBS. An experience I will never forget.

Wading through two feet of sandy mud to get a kayak into water. Capsizing and losing my watch. Pulling the same kayak up onto the beach. Pitching the tent. Cooking burnt rice with boiling sausages, only to find out that there wasn't enough food. Enduring Seng Teck. Sleeping 5-men to a tent in a 4-man tent (because I didn't want to sleep with Seng Teck).

Waking up to bread with milo powder. Jumping into the sea from the jetty. Climbing 50 feet, only to slide back down again on a steel cable. Packing 0.02 tons into a backpack. Walking 5 km with it on your back, getting lost twice (only a compass and map, and weehow (instructor) pointing to the destination). Pitching tents again. Cooking more rice, but undercooking it. Scrubbing the pots with dirty sand later. Talking crap about girls in the tent later.

Waking up to see, through chain-link fence, the sun rising over the Malaysian coast. Building a raft of pipe and barrel and rope, then testing it (the RSN Kitchen) . Capsizing and having it disintegrate with you on it. Floating in a brilliang green quarry lake. Seeing RGS girls. Changing in front of them (where else was there?). Hiking again, with the 22 kg backpack, to 4 different points, before going to the OTHER OBS camp (Camp 1. Infinitely more hospitable). Singing army and NPCC songs of unfaithful girlfriends. Having a proper meal.

Climbing the tripod with The Ladder, in 15 minutes. Waiting 1 hour for Seng Teck to complete half of it, then give up ("Tighter! Tighter!"). Climbing up the rock wall. Laughing at the RGS girls, and their 'tents' (bashas, 1 tarp and 2 poles. Quote - "We wanted to sleep under the stars". Field day for mosquitoes and sandflies) Hiking back to camp 2, singing the same songs. Cooking good maggi mee. Talking more crap.

Waking up to the sunrise over the distant flats. Watching the supertanker cruise past. Washing. Trading for lost items. The Experiment (a lot of sick looks...). Homeward bound.

I loved every moment of it. And the people who did it with me. (COOK)

Seng Teck is a bloody bastard



Somebody said that at 7:33 PM

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