Guardsman!!

YES!! GCC is finally over!!! And I'm a converted Guardsman! Whee!! Just damn happy that I manage to go through the course and finish most of the things, except for first day when I fell out of the Ex Welcome, if not I went through all of the stuffs. Though with much pain and thoughts of giving up, I still went through them all... =)

This week was quite hectic, gotta complete all the veto factor events to pass the course. First up was live heli rapelling on Tuesday.. Damn fun. We rapelled down from a helicopter! Whoo... Quite an experience. And you'll never have a bigger fan than that of a heli. Haha.. The weather was quite hot but whenever the heli ascended to a height, it was like a ceiling fan, and my sweat will slowly dry up while we were waiting for our turns to rapel on the ground. Hehe.. It was fun, probably once in a lifetime kind of event..

Next up, and probably the most shiong one, was a 12km fast march. Had to do it under 108 min.. Walking with a buddy really made things easier. Pushed each other on and maintained the discipline of speeding up whenever we reached a certain landmark. Might not have done it if not for buddy-ing up. And it would have sucked to have to re-do it all over again. But luckily, I passed it on first try and in a timing of 101mins. Not too bad at all..

Had the final veto in coastal swim yesterday.. Coastal swim itself was nothing much, cos I swam with a life jacket half-inflated. Hehe.. But still drank abit of sea water cos the waves just came splashing in at times. But it was the first time I was swimming out at sea, so it was pretty fun too. However, right after the swim, we truncated into the next programme, which is also the last on GCC, called the Guards Assualt Course, in short GAC.

Let's see, first we had to carry rubber boat with 2 full jerry cans (2 jerry cans = 38 litres of water) in team level.. First destination was back to camp from East Coast Park, which was maybe close to 2km. Then walked one full round around the camp compound, which was a further 1.7km, before putting the boat down and embarking on the super shag mission. It's called "7 hills". Basically, it's climbing up and down the staircase of my Battalion block, 5 storeys high each time, totalling 7 ascends and 7 descends. It's killer because we had to do it in FBO (Full Battle Order) and it's no joke. Nearly died of shortness of breath. Thanks to KP, he asked for toilet break midway through it and we managed to catch a breather.. If not, really up the lorry man..

After getting done with 7 hills, we picked up the boats again and headed for the SOC ground to clear the SOC in reverse order, with the boats of course.. Before we headed to the Guards Tower to do rapelling from the tower. It was another point where we could catch our breath cos we had to do the sit sling. Lucky man, really damn shag by that time. After rapelling, we went back to the parade square where the last challenge awaited us, in "psycho stride".. It's really quite psychotic if you play the full version. But with the boats, we basically just had to walk a certain distance la.. Can explain to you all in person if you are interested to find out. And, after psycho stride, it all finally ended!! We've finished the course!! And it's worth noting that my team started the latest cos we had a very weak swimmer who came in very late during coastal swim, but we ended up being first to complete the whole GAC. Good work, syndicate 3!!

Words really can't describe the feeling of finally earning the Guards tab and Khaki beret.. I really earn it, with gallons of sweat, streams of blood, S$50 in medical bills for my feet infections and other intangible contributions. Sweet reward. No less..