Well, Dad got me internet connection in my grandmother’s house, so now I’m typing and posting this blog entry from home. (Yay!) So now my social life will drop like crazy due to the fact that I’ll have very little reason to go out now. Hahaha

 

Anyway, you’re probably wondering why am I typing out my blog on a Monday. Well, we had an artillery exercise (Exercise Milo, don’t ask) this week, which took place on Friday to Sunday morning. So as our weekends are being burnt, we are compensated with a Sunday to Tuesday book out (^-^). We spent these days calling for artillery fire and adjusting it so that it would land on the target. Sounds fun, but it’s very annoying when the bombs refuse to land on the target no matter how much you call back to correct it. And the night missions! You hear the explosions, but you can’t see where it landed because you can’t see a freaking thing! *sigh* At least I didn’t fail (too badly) and it’s over now.

 

Other than Milo, I had two exams this week. A general knowledge test (which I failed by 1 point! Argh!) and a calculation exam, but I don’t know my results yet (don’t fail! don’t fail! don’t fail! don’t fail!). if I wanna be a GPO, I need to pass this exam!

 

Ending this blog entry, a few weeks ago, this hilarious conversation took place:

 

Friend: “So your name is Amos, right? A-M-O-S?”

Me: “Yeah, but it’s spelt with a Z”

Friend: “A-Z-M-O-S?”

Me: 0_o “…..”

I watched as a guy ran over to this girl in front of me and hugged her. He whispered a few things into her ear, which made her giggle. After which, he offered to carry her handbag and shopping bags. She smiled and they both walked away arm in arm.

Amoz, you need a life... I thought to myself as I sighed and shook my head. 

Anyway, I’m typing this blog post on the laptop that Dad brought over for me from Melbourne. I’d been complaining about how I needed a computer to do some army projects and stuff, so yeah. Now we're trying to get broadband at my grandmother's place, so i wouldn't have to constantly travel to my aunt's place (which is where i am now) to use the internet.

So, how was life as a cadet battery commander? Well, I have to say that I now understand how tough and challenging it is to be a leader, especially when people sometimes don’t listen to what you say. But I’m glad to say that I’ve done my best during the time of my appointment. I’ll most likely be stepping down to be a regular cadet again (yay!), and I must say that it has been a very interesting experience for me.

This week, we learnt about recce and survey. Before the artillery guns can move off and deploy, they must first have a place to go. So that’s basically what this week was all about, learning how to recce for a good deployment ground, set up the director (a device that tells you the direction/reading of objects) and mark out where the guns are to be deployed.

Yeah… not much of a week, huh? Well, this week wasn’t that interesting for me because I don’t wanna be a recce officer anyway. Oh yeah, I never wrote about how the artillery is divided. Well, basically, we can branch off to be either Forward Observers (FO), Field Artillery (FA) and FATA (I don’t know what it stands for, but it’s about radar stuff).

Ok, from what I know, FOs are the ones who go out into the battlefield and call for arty fire on enemy targets, so basically, they are the "eyes" of the artillery. FATAs are responsible for getting weather information and also the location of enemy artillery by tracing back from where the enemy bombards. FAs branch off further to either recce and survey (RnS) or gun positioning (GP), which is what I want to be: a Gun Positioning Officer (GPO). He is the one that coordinates the orders of the FO with the whole battery. He would calculate the elevation and direction that each of the individual guns should be and give the orders to fire and how fast to fire. Basically, he just sits in front of a computer calculating stuff and talking on the phone, which sounds very much like me. (hehehe)

*Whew!* Was this week a tough week or what? I was quite stressed out on sunday before i booked in. So much so that i started having painful headaches and i felt very weak and dizzy because of it... thankfully it started to settle down after tuesday.

 

Anyway, why was this week tough? Because we had two full days of maths lessons! The feeling of being back at school came rushing back to all of us. With our scientific calculators in hand, we had to learn how to calculate angles and direction our guns have to face in order to hit our targets. Keeping in mind that we have to also calculate the factors of wind, temperature change, air density, difference in altitude, and all the crazy stuff that can affect where your rounds land (and you thought math class was tough?!). Anyway, after our lessons, our brains were practically fried as we tried to remember all the stuff that was taught to us. Well, now i just have to keep the information in my head for 2 more weeks, where my exam will test me on this. After which, i can chuck most of it out the window! Because we are gonna use the programs developed by Singaporean software engineers instead of manually calculating every single detail on paper. So we just basically needed to know how the calculations work and so forth before we can learn the program.

 

Starting next week, i'll be holding the appointment of Cadet Battery Commander (CBC) for a few days (1 or 2 weeks?). To be honest, it's the first IC appointment that i'll be holding in my whole soldier life. Never during bmt or ocs (being learning ic doesn't count), so i wonder just what kinda leader will i be? having seen all the good (and bad) CBCs before me... I pray that God will give me the wisdom and the strength to lead my fellow cadets during these few days...