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.....