I am back from Reservist! I am married and other rants....

Oh yeah!
I am married officially (in documents) to Jean.

The sad thing is that my gramps joined the Choir Invisible in Feb 2006.
What can I say?
The guy's a stubborn man.
When I tried to send him to a doc.

He would delcared: "It's nothing! I am feeling better! I am taking a walk!"
My ass. 6 mths later, I sent him to the hospital and the doc asked me: " Is he a smoker?"
"Yes! He smokes when he was a teenager and quitted when I was kid."
"That explains the 5 cm tumour in his lung."
"I am not suprised, doc. I know I know, he's gonna be no more."

"Bingo on that." say the doc.
"1 week and he will go." He said.
"That's fast."
" What? You want him to suffer another 6 mths?"

"Not really."
"Got any will?"
"Nope. He's not well off."
" Well, he comes in with nothing and goes with nothing. Swell." The Doc said.

Anyway, he lasped in a coma and joined the Heavenly Host after that.
I am not really sad for him not since I lost my old man.
After all, no one lives forever........

I was grateful for him playing my surrogate dad for my teenage years.
He told me that he also lost his dad (great grand pa) when he was a baby.
Life was hard in the 1930s Singapore. It's a bit better now, I think.
He had join secret society (chinese gang) in his youth.
Singapore back then was a rough place to grow up.
1 in 3 children never lived to see adulthood due to BADDD sanitary conditions.

Just then he has seen all it, WW2 came and 3 yrs 8 mouths of Japanese occupation follows.
2 of my grand uncles were "Sayonaraed" by the Operation Sook Ching.
And he became the sole survivor.

After the war, he became a "pirate cab" (Unlicensed taxi) owner, operate a book store and got to know my grand ma.
He told me about then the concept of free love was alien in the 1950s Singapore. Most couples are match made. He did just that (free love) that is to look for life mate actively.

Grandma is illiterate. Gals back than don't go to school (mostly) on ground that they just grow and marry off. So to most really traditional (Backwards in today's terms) Chinese familes, boys are educated and gals......don't get that.
But Grandma's streetwise plus Grandpa's rough upbringing in the streets made it an ideal match.

One of Grandpa ideas in making money in 1950s was selling of Porn!
Yes! Porn existed back then. But it was not titilating as today's.
He sold Porno mags from Europe to the Brits community.

Enough of him;
I married Jean after 3 yrs of courtship.
Now I am arranging for the wedding dinner to held in a hotel.

Reservist!
365 days, 14 days a year.
That sums up reservists duties in my country.

This time, it was army evaluation time.
The brass put up a 2 weeks training regime of costal crossing via boat, marches inland and digging in for defense.

I wasn't exactly the fittest guy around.
But this time, I drew a lot of strength from my mental will and dicovered things I don't normally do.
For a start, the coastal landing was boring but there're guys who puked in the rocky waters.
Then the long march inland..........Helmet, rifle plus a 10kg radio set with 8 mags of ammo is Heavy when one marches kilometers to reach a military objective.
Normally I would kneel over after 1 hrs of marching. But this time, I went on and on. Then it rained at 3 am. Great! A company of men huddled under a shelter to avoid the rain.
"This is soooo Brokeback Mountain." One guys remarked.

After the rain, the march resumed until daylight.
At daylight, it was breaktime. I got everything off and took a long sleep until late afternoon.

The 2nd mission, another march to a grassy knoll in the jungle.
This time it was a wild adventure.
I and an another guy was scouting for "enemies" when we took a wrong turn ran into a mob of "enemies"; with jeeps and trucks.
We fired wildly at them and ran back to our outfit.

They followed naturally. But our outfit was waiting for them........plus we had artillery support in our hands.
What happened was a barrage of gunfire (blanks shots) with a dose of rocket fire left and right.
The witnessing officer screamed: "Enough! Enough! You win! They lost! Ok?"

"Ok. Guys, you can go back to camp. You are all "killed" "He told the enemies' In charge.

My Outfit's officer asked: " Can we take break now? "
"Sure."

We took a break until 5 am & resumed the march to the knoll.
At 7 am, we reached the knoll and waited for rest of the unit to arrive.

The final mission, my unit was to dig in and hold the position.
We have 3 battalions of hostiles laying siege to our position.
My CO came up with a daring plan; he will lead our 3 companies to harass them.
1 company will hold the position.
I was left behind to monitor radio comms;
The fighting was intense. 30min in the fight, there was chaos in the radio net.
Then this guy was injured (simulated) and that guy was dead (simulated) or which squad was wipe out.

Our reserve company was being readied to move in when the brass declared:
"OK, Exercise cut!"

Yes, finally the whole thing had ended.
After that, it is back to camp and go home time.