Solo Nights

hello hello... wow Asri that was some post! The memories that it jolted to life must now be recorded. For the uninitiated of course, solo night was preceded by the round Ubin kayaking expedition. Not a particularly big deal on the big scheme of things, well at least it was a squad level initiative and I was partnered by Boon so it meant getting away from the goons for a while. Despite his small frame and all, Boon was one excellent kayaker. He kept us both on track with his nifty use of the rudder and was able to give me all sorts of good advice and encouragement during the round Singapore expedition. Kudos to you Boon!

Anyway, if you bear with me, this was the highlight of the round Ubin kayak. We had finished the expedition and were all at the ramp leading to OBS waiting to get our kayaks on shore. Boon and I were getting a little impatient so we decided to make a dash for the ramp in our kayak despite a boat coming past and so we paddled quickly to the ramp, taking one last check, we felt that we had enough time between getting the kayak up the ramp before the inevitable backwash from the boat. Unfortunately for us though, the backwash won the race and it hit the kayak, the kayak hit me and I went over the ramp wall (which was underwater) and went head first into the water, I felt a bit of pain on my right shin but thinking it wasn't a big deal, I managed to get to the surface and proceeded to be run down by Mark and Asri's kayak. Once again struggling to the surface I managed to get back onto the ramp and hauled the kayak up the ramp with Boon and then I felt more pain in my right shin. Lo and behold! A small 1cm by 1cm chunk in my right shin was missing! I cut myself on a barnacle. I told Boon, "Check this out man, I gotta go to the sick bay!" The nurse was hardly brimming with sympathy and told me I didn't need stitches, patched it up and unceremoniously booted me out the door.

The dressing had to stay on for a few days and I had to keep it clean. So it meant skipping the running that day. I was a little worried for it during solo night. And so it came, I decided to smuggle my handphone out with me despite being single at the time. I thought it'd be good to catch up with home whilst I was out in the woods. So we were all given our rations and equipment for solo night, the groundsheets for the basha, comms cord, food, solid fuel and we had to pack our stuff into zip lock bags. Anyway, during the issuing process I decided to zip off to the toilet and I told Aziz, "Get one set of whatever is issued for me, need to go to the toilet!" I returned and the process was complete. The instructors warned us not to mix around as it was solo and we needed to reflect on our time at OBS and were given a letter to write to ourselves. Then off we went!

The instructors dropped us off at different points in the woods and I was dropped off at a clear and relatively flat spot overlooking an altar of some sort (I never went to check out the altar and had no intentions of offending the local spirits). I looked around and saw that around my spot was surrounded by high ground on three sides and I had a feeling I would be in trouble if it rained.

I decided to set up my basha quickly just in case and lo and behold, there was no comms cord to tie the basha! I sat down for a few minutes thinking about what I was going to do to Aziz when we got back, uh actually if... but then I decided to bin the no contact with others rule and ran up to the next site and found Vincent there. Thank goodness he had spare comms cord and was willing to share with me. So I set up my basha and lay down to rest. Then it happened, the rain pissed down for hours and my basha was flooded from the water gushing down the high ground which had become a waterfall. My clothes were sodden, my food bag was getting wet and the solid fuel was also wet, I managed to save a block but the rest were gone. After the rain stopped, I looked at the damage, I had to survive on a loaf of bread, some kaya and some biscuits plus I had one chance of a hot meal - instant noodles.

Going by the good old survival maxim of eat the hot food while you can, I set up my semi-dry solid fuel block to start and fire. There wasn't much of a flame and I decided to help things along by tossing the envelope and the paper for the letter into the fire. But the fuel was too wet and I only managed to get a fire for long enough to partially cook my noodles. I ate it, and it was disgusting. 

My first night was relatively unexciting compared to Asri's experience and I managed to sleep through somehow. I awoke the next morning and realised that my dressing from the wound had come off, deciding not to hang around, I decided to head back to OBS to get some attention. Of course, I was unceremoniously booted out by the nurse and was given one hell of a talking to for breaking the rules by one of the instructors. Rather pertinently or so I thought I remarked "That's fine with the rules and all but what about the dressing for my wound?" They remarked that they'd patch it up later. Round about 4pm to be exact!

The only other event of note was how I managed to scare the living crap out of myself by venturing out of the basha to relieve myself late at night. I had tried to avoid it for the longest time, but summoning up the guts I ventured to what I thought was my designated pissing tree and I noticed dark black shape at my feet, I jumped about 4 feet into the air and shining my L torch at it, it was my rubbish bag! Damn it! Wrong tree, this was the tree where I had placed my rubbish bag!

The next day, the sorry exercise was over and we trooped back for the debrief, they asked me, "Daryl where's your letter?", I had one of those Arnie moments and I told them "I burnt it" and I walked off. 

Mark-guyver

The 21-day OBS Course is supposed to teach us to live on just basic necessities, without the luxury of electronic conveniences/distractions and that everyone is given an equal share of survival materials/food.

So during the first few hours of arriving, the instructors asked us to voluntarily give up our handphones, pagers, chocolate bars, tidbits, snacks and any other "contraband" before they do a check. And if you were caught with any contraband, a suitable punishment or fine would be meted out to the person or the whole team.

Well most of us gave up some things and hid others. There were a few exceptional souls who said they gave up every contraband they had, but I didn't. I hid the nylon cord, swiss-army knife, a few chocolate bars and surrendered the other half of my chocolate bars and all my potato chips. I took it that if the SAS trainees can hide rolled notes/money up their a**es, smuggled chocolate bars and even an FM radio to overcome the Brecon Beacons, I would keep some stuff too which would help keep me sane from the boredom and discomfort to come. Of course OBS is nothing compared to SAS training, but to rationalise, we were trained to be a thinking soldier and the number one rule I learnt in BMT was "You can do anything you want, as long as you don't get caught". You can add any other caveat or exceptions you want to that as per your moral or ethical reasonings, but that was the basic rule.

Mark smuggled in his handphone and playing cards. On arriving at the bunk, Mark immediately tried to make a call back home. But as coverage on the island is pretty bad, his Sony Ericsson, which at that time was one of the latest model, can only manage a faltering one or two bars out of 5, even when he risks falling out the window by leaning out so far. Those days most handphones had an extendable antenna, or the newer ones only had a short antenna stub, which the latter was what Mark's phone had. He tried to make a call but I think the call quality was pretty bad and he got also got disconnected. And I guess the saying is really true that "Necessity is the mother of all inventions" and that "Distance makes the heart grow fonder, and I sure as hell want to hear my girlfriend's voice while the battery lasts cos I'll be stuck with 36 males for the next 3 bloody weeks". Techie Mark might have planned it all along, cos he brought a few clothes hangers, but not the normal plastic ones. He got the flexible metal wire hangers.

What he did next was either a stroke of genius or just dumb luck. He unscrewed the short 1 inch antenna stub from his phone, untwirled the metal hanger, so that it was just a long piece of wire, but which still retained its triangular shape, stripped off some of the plastic sleeving on one end of the wire, and stuck that end into the phone's antenna recess. And lo and behold, if he held the new "antenna" just right he can now get three to four bars out of 5!

Thats like 60-80% signal strength and just enough to maintain a decent quality call. From far someone might think you have a clothes hanger impaled into your skull, but who cares about looks when you can croon sweet words with your girlfriend to soothe your sagging morale.

That was just one of the innovations that Mark devised during the 21-days. The next innovation was during the solo night and it involves a humble stick. To cut the long story short, solo night for us was actually foursome night around the campfire at Mark's campsite, cos he had stashed a large pile of dry leaves under his tarpaulin. So after a long rainy day, we made our way to Mark's camp after dark and when we knew the intructors would not be back for their inspection round for the next few hours. What greeted us was a nice cosy fire, Mark sitting beside it and he was drying his wet underwear and socks over the fire by putting them at the end of a sitck. He had found a nice foot long stick with a forked end, so it was great to spread the socks and underwear a bit for it to dry faster over the fire.

So, soon we were feeling hungry and we opened up a can of sardine and hot dogs. Some of us poked a stick through the bread to toast it over the fire before putting the meaty stuff in it. Mark using his useful stick took a piece of bread put it flat on the forked end of the stick and toasted it over the fire. It was the very same stick which just a few seconds ago had a piece of soggy sock hanging over it. Well we were too hungry to lose our appetite and continued eating, but still I'm sure a few stomachs turned after seeing how useful Mark's stick was. Bleargh.....