Anaticulae

So S was complaining to me earlier on today. See, he had gone for his reservist ICT, and he had just gone through the combat shoot at the range, where he missed out on getting his $200 bonus by a single shot.

"One bullet!" he was saying. "That stupid duck!"

Yes, it is a little known fact that the SAF uses ducks for target practice. I mean, the pop-up targets are useful for practice and all, but for the real training, we need to use ducks to simulate the random movements that would usually happen during actual combat.

So what happens during the test is that there will be some guys down at the butt end of the range who will release like 6 ducks at a go, and each of the troopers have to pop one duck each. This is why Singapore still maintains a couple of duck farms in the LCK area. It's government funded for shooting practice. After the whole range is over, they'll go and collect the ducks that are still in large enough pieces, and eat them for dinner. The rest of the remains are left at the range to attract other small scavenger birds. This is to allow the NCOs, officers, and people who want to improve their shooting to engage smaller targets that are harder to hit.

So quite naturally, a common misconception during inter-national army training is when a Singaporean soldier screams "DUCK!!" at his section mates. He isn't telling them to hit the dirt and watch out for incoming fire; rather, he's telling them that he's spotted a live target and telling them to shoot it, as well as warning them of the possibility of more enemies in the immediate vicinity.

So anyway, S was complaining, because he's not eligible for the IPPT, so the only way, as he puts it, to get back his taxpayer's money, is to score in the range. But he missed it by a single shot. Poor S.



Went through VCF's FOC a couple of weeks back. Made some new friends, even though my group was kinda depleted cos there were seniors who were working, and there were freshmen who needed to do admin stuff. But generally, the camp was really well done, and I certainly did not feel there were any major hiccups, except maybe SP's rope during the tug-of-war that broke just about every time we played and which ended up a third shorter due to the number of knots that had to be used to conect it back. The other great thing is that once again, the committee felt that group cheers were unnecessary, which is definitely a major plus in my book. Co-leader D was really quite fun to be with. He gave us like Church History 101 in 45 mins.

The speaker was pretty good too. The theme of the camp was of our Foundation of Christ, and he also reminded us of our Unity in Christ, and encouraged us to be Foolish for Christ. I can't really remember everything, but think these 3 points are really easy to remember, and useful for application.

Other than that, nothing much else happened. Helped in some matric stuff, as well as IFG things, had ISO, and passed my advanced theory test. Oh and I managed to get my 3 history pre-allocated modules, so that's one less worry.

Yup, that's about it. Maybe update again soon, if I get inspiration.

Cheerio!

P.S. If you really believed that whole thing about the ducks, I've really got nothing to say.