Like the previous week, this week was a short one, but it was one that tested my mental resilliance, as well as the degree of faith that I put in God. The week was not particularly physically strenuous (the entire week was spent handling our rifles), but it was one that drained me nevertheless. I suppose any righteous Christian would speedily state that it is in our moments of trails that God reveals His grace - and I do agree, its just that sometimes, I genuinely wonder why it requires so much agony for God to be seen. But I'll get back to that a little later.

27.02.12 Starting the day with buttery Marks and Spencer chocolate cookies was undeniably one way to ease the book-in blues that I had experienced the night before. Quoting myself, I described those blues as being both "painful and depressing", but perhaps I was exaggerating. Incidentally, in my diary, that was juxtaposed against my description of my chocolate cookies as being "little pleasures in life. wonderful buttery and chocolatey bliss". On a related note, I have realized that food has become quite a form of respite for me - even the soggy onion rings and burger that I had packed in for dinner proved itself to be delicious; never would I have thought that I would be reduced to such a state. But I digress. I suspect such moments of feeling down would continue to make itself felt every time I return back into camp. The entire day was spent practicing something called Urban Operations, which in essence is military operations in an urban setting, as opposed to jungle warfare. We were promised that the day would be fun by our commanders, or rather, they hinted/suggested (perhaps subtly, I cannot quite remember) that it would be so. We were driven to this set of shophouses that was built in the middle of what would appear to look like a palm plantation - I'm sure this makes it quite apparent who the SAF considers a potential threat to Singapore's safety. Personally, I wouldn't quite consider shoddy shophouses an urban environment, but then again, building high-rises solely for such practices wouldn't make much economic sense either. Firing blanks in such a setting proved a novelty, at least for a while, and like all novelties, it wore off for me at least. I suppose the handling of a firearm isn't exactly my biggest interest, but for quite a lot of my other platoon/section mates, the day's activity proved to be particularly fun, especially towards the end when it became quite like a game of Counterstrike or (insert first-person shooter game here). All of our meals were out-rationed; not to be one who whines or complains too much but the consequence of that is the trouble of washing my metal cutlery - I should have brought disposable ones like what one of my section mates did. That aside, 2 rather nice points made the day: we had fish and chips for dinner (it wasn't excellent but nevertheless, it was fish and chips in the army) and second, I got a chance to shower (albeit rushed) without having to jostle in a queue.

28.02.12 - 29.02.12 Marksman - that was the standard that the company set for us for our live shooting exercise, otherwise known as PTP (to be honest I am completely clueless what the acronym stands for). At the start of my diary entry for the 28^th of February, I wrote that the day would be "less intense" than the day before, that there would be "a lot of waiting in-between" - basically, I thought that I would have quite a fair bit of time to rest and relax. In retrospect, not only were those thoughts off, they were completely wrong. I publicly declare on this blog that I am terrible at shooting, and I would like to add that the adage that practice makes perfect does not seem to apply for me in this case. The company sets targets (which in my opinion are generally reasonable) when it comes to shooting - on average it is no more than 2 misses per set of shots; anyone who fails to meet that minimum standard has to reshoot. Basically, I spent the whole of the 28^th shooting, and reshooting, and reshooting, and reshooting (you get my drift), in a bid to attain that minimum standard. For most, one reshoot was more than enough, but even after 3 reshoots for each set, I believe that I still failed to meet the Marksman standard. It was especially terrible for the night shoot - I estimate that I missed at least 50%, if not more of the targets. IMT - Individual Marksman Training, a computer simulated shoot, had lied to me about my prospects of attaining the Marksman achievement. It was especially demoralizing to see how everyone else was succeeding, and yourself failing miserably, that being on top of the physical toll that reshooting repeatedly took on your body. I was extremely tired and drained by the end of the day (can you believe that it started at 8am and ended at 1am), and I won't deny that I was feeling frustrated at the perceived lack of help from God. Unsurprisingly, results that bad (though honestly, I believe my end score was somewhat close to the minimum standard required to be considered a Marksman) led to me being drafted for a second day of shooting - the small pool of fellas like myself were deemed 'bobo shooters' - I suppose bobo is Malay for zero. The second day was especially painful because apart from the 16 bobos that included myself, everyone else had cleared that particular hurdle. Reshooting yielded results that were no better than the first day, on the contrary, I believe I fared even worse, at least for the day shoot, than before. Like the first day, there was quite a fair bit of waiting and failing - that was when I really started to question why God wasn't helping me. I felt frustrated, angry and weary - evidently the lack of sleep was taking its toll. All I can say about the day was that in the end, I still failed to attain my Marksman, but I did realize a few things: That God was there all the while, albeit in ways unexpected - the nice officer from my platoon that constantly encouraged me, the generally helpful SMEs that guided me along, and most significantly, the part about not having to reshoot for a third time. Truly, it was only by His grace that I survived the two days without breaking down.

01.03.12 Relative to the other days, the day was incredibly relaxed: waking up at 7.30am, enjoying my cookies, rifle cleaning, and perhaps rather oddly (for me at least to say this) the rather refreshing group run - the last bit was probably because of the lack of proper physical exercise in the entire week. It was also my first time in the week eating at the cookhouse for both lunch and dinner - dare I say, I had missed doing that; eating out of paper boxes was getting rather vexing. I suppose the only thing that I could complain about the day was the immense difficulty of getting a rifle spotless - carbon residue really does stick on really well to the rifle's metal. But all in all, I felt really good on the 1^st of March, perhaps from the (subconscious) knowledge that God had guided me through the past week. I know that I need to trust God for the upcoming field camp, of which is something that I am dreading.

Psalm 56:3-4 - "Whenever I am afraid, I will trust in You. In God (I will praise His word), In God I have put my trust; I will not fear. What can flesh do to me?"