we got to go to town for a few hours today, since the shops close later on thursdays. ( keep in mind it gets pitch dark at 5.30 in these 'ere parts )

the town is 7 klicks or so from the airport, so you have to call a cab ( from the town's grand fleet of 19 cabs ). the fare meter goes faster than the speedometer, i kid you not. when i get home, i shall take a cab everywhere i go, tip the cabbie 20% and still think it cheap. i have a video of the fare meter going - you won't believe it. thankfully we got one of the two maxicabs, so in the end each person only had to pay 2 bucks. imagine that. 25 dollars for a 10 minute ride.

from what we saw of the city...well it sure ain't hip central. we only had 2.5 hours, so we just hung around in one shopping mall ( not that there is more than one, actually ). about the size of, say, the heeren, but with only one floor. nothing much to see. beer is cheaper than water here. wine is so cheap i'm surprised the water coolers don't spout the stuff instead. a few of us bought a 4 litre pack to share for only 11 bucks. got some beer and junk food and instant soup.

we've got an extra day out this weekend on account of monday being the queen's birthday ( one of those wonderful remnants of colonism ) so we'll go check out peel street, their version of orchard road. then i shall check out that beachwear sale and empty them out ( paying optional ;-p ). if you really want clothes, yan, i suppose i can spare a few dollars...but i'm sure you realise what kind of clothes i'll buy for you... *eg*

i was scheduled to go up in the first wave today but it was cancelled because of an overcast sky. phooey. then just an hour later the weather was CAVOK - clouds and visibility OK. just my luck. well, 80 dollars added, then.

one fellow has already been axed on a TKO - he tapow-ed 3 times in a row. see, on your first sortie they pull some aeros ( aerobatics ) on you to see if you get airsick. if you do, they keep it up on subsequent sorties. so that guy, on his third sortie, got saddled with 2 loops, 4 barrel rolls and endless wingovers. poor sod - who wouldn't be airsick after that?

my instructor has been changed from wong c the beng to pat foo the evangelist - this christian zealot. he doesn't believe in sciene. at lunch one day, somehow the topic of earthquakes came up and it was mentioned that singapore was outside tectonic boundaries and so wouldn't get earthquakes. so pat foo asked how we knew that. someone replied that was what we were taught in school. pat foo goes, "and you believe that's true?". someone answers, "could be." then pat foo kept quiet but he looked too lan. whoopty doo. i'm not scheduled for tmr though, so i won't fly till tuesday, probably.

i hope i don't puke.

big brother uncut coming on soon - hopefully they'll show jo's tits or something at least, not bloody saxon and his pubic hair. jo is hot. mmm. ta.

{transitlink machine voice} eighty dollars, added. {/transitlink machine voice}

the housemaster, encik ravi, was telling us today about the costs involved in conducting airgrading here. each hour of flight costs $247.xx dollars. room and board if really cheap at $37 dollars, but he says they make up for it in other charges. the total cost of sending one student here for a month - stuff life flying time, board, air ticket, allowances, insurance etc - costs about $11000. average of 200 or so students a year.

hmm. i might have just spent your dad's money on beer. ;-p

hello. end of quarantine period so i can use the internet now ( via 3 pedal-powered computers in the main building, which we've not been allowed in to on account of our potentially-sars-laced-breath the past 10 days )

yeah. life is pretty good here. no actually life is beautiful here. only roberto benigni isn't in this one.

ok perhaps that was lame. indulge me. oh before i forget, i got your smses, yan, but i can't reply. didn't sign up for autoroam. haha. sorry.

so i was just lying in bed the other day and reflecting that life here is well good, especially when you remember that you're actually serving your ns liability ( you can forget that, almost ). mmm.

we're in the british aerospace ( BAe) flight training college in tamworth, which is in the tamworth city airport compound. so its a civilian place, albeit crawling with australian defence force ( adf ) types. no babes around though. maybe in town. hehehehe. mmph. the first ten days life was pretty much free-n-easy. a few hours of mass briefs in the morning, then you're free for the rest of the day. almost totally own time own target. there's tennis, basketball, gym and even a swimming pool for anyone foolish to try swimming in winter.

accomodation is exactly like a hotel room, only minus tv and phone. there's a tv in our lounge though. aussie tv....well....its ok. there's stuff like south park ( excellent! ), jerry springer ( trashy! ), friends etc. the aussie version of big brother is popular. they show an hour or two of live footage every bloody evening on channel10. there's an uncensored version, "big brother uncut" on wednesday nights, but last week's episode was crap, centering as it did on saxon agonising over whether to shave his pubes. he did, if you're interested. there's the odd bit of trashy porn on some late nights. oh yes. porn. hahaha. every course keeps the communal prOn mags hidden in the lounge's false ceiling. its an open secret though.

food is pretty good. like a buffet style, every meal. fairly good although breakfast is the same everyday. barely worth getting up for on weekdays and not worth it at all on weekends. then there're 3 pizza joints here for delivery. cheap - $8 or so for a large pizza. standard about the same as pizza hut or canadian 2for1 - nothing fantastic.

met my instructor today. he's a beng! imagine that. i'm honestly worried i won't be able to understand him up there. bad england, man. like today he was saying "...the dirt track south from the curlewis", where curlewis is a town. and, "you must pwevent yaw!". mmph. quite.

i probably won't be flying till next week though; there're too many of us. so the programme from today onwards is like this

you wake up any time you want, as long as you get to the rsaf classroom around 7.20. breakfast optional.
sit in the room and rot, unless you're flying that day. in which case you rot, fly, then go back to rotting. nothing to do in the room. there's a computer yuou can play solitaire on. there's a radio for listening in on the ATIS ( sth like weather info ) or tower ops. alas, you can't transmit on it.
(i.e. you: tamworth tower, harrier eight-niner, 2 POB, received ATIS alpha, ready for gate west.
tower: what? where are you, harrier eight-niner?
you: right there! on the runway! there man, right there!)

pity.

well there are lots of people waiting to use the comp. first time in 10 days, after all. maybe more some other day.