been a fairly interesting week - albeit a long one. had 3 live firings - i just got back from the last one barely 8 hours ago; at 2am sunday morning ( yes, yet another weekend farked up! ).

yesterday was muddy. came back completely plastered in mud. damn the monsoon season. so first thing i did when i got home at 6+ today was to wash and hang my clothes out - i shall make an excellent husband to some lucky chick one day. :-p

on friday we had demolition live firing. blowing things up! pretty cool, and scary in a way. i mean, the sheer power of the stuff - just a couple of small blocks, total volume about that of 2 novels, say - when it blows, the ground shakes, the trees sway, you can feel the shock wave reverberating through your body - even from hundreds of metres away. then we've also been taught how to make improvised explosives - kinda like, "whoa, are they sure they should be teaching us this?". so don't piss me off, lest you find a molotov cocktail ( note to yan: not the kind they serve in bars ) thrown through your window. muahaha.

tnt looks like cornflakes. or the almond flakes in post's honey bunches of oats cereal. it is supposedly edible. or at least, people have tried eating it before and have yet to die. or explode. another type of explosive we use looks exactly like plasticine. even smells like it. i think it would be col to blow something up with explosives moulded into a naughty shape. or maybe it would just be childish. but either way it would be fun!

this past sunday we had support weapon live firing - a.ka. firing big guns. the 84 - a bazooka, in layman terms - was especially cool. one helluva backblast and a big boom.

this all wouldn't be so bad if only they could do it on weekdays. damn it.

oh. and "Most D-oh! Injury Award" goes to me! for walking headfirst into the sharp underside of a flight of stairs during a combat swim test on wednesday! see, space was pretty tight around the edge of the pool where we were queuing for our turn, so i turned around to head to another lane and walked straight into the steps on the tower / diving platform at the edge of the pool. it was a pretty uh-oh moment at first - i put my hand up to my head and it comes down covered in blood, then blood started running down my face. but it turned out that it wasn't all that serious - although the medic still insisted on wrapping a bandage around my whole head - really kua zhang.

oh yes. then i set a new personal best for my 2.4k - 9:40. running really is all mental. i just decided i'd run faster and hey, i did! but it also might have had something to do with the bapok at the changi village bus stop, who shouted across the road at us, "nice ass! nick c***! nice b***s! nice botak!". yeah. and nice c*** on you too, sister.

all in all not too bad a week. if only my weekend wasn't burnt...