Whoa, what an exciting day. 5 meals again, sorry not 6. Looks like the first day's "branch" was actually breakfast for those who hadn't eaten yet. Morning rise and shine was at 6.20, then all 70 of us split up into 4 Chinooks for a joy ride from Sembawang Airbase to Paya Lebar Airbase. A ride in a helicopter is always interesting especially on take off and landing since it's VTOL. It's also pretty awesome how much air the blades push. Standing at a safe distance of about 60m you feel a nice breeze already, and just before you enter, it's so strong that your hat will blow off. And this is all just at idle speed.
At Paya Lebar, we had a view of the flight simulators and control tower simulators. Not as impressive as I had hoped it'd be since there were no artificial Gs, but it still beats any home system anyway. More talks by the Chief of Air Force this time, and boy are they passionate about what they do. I really admire their drive to "serve the nation" while perservering to do what they like best. Besides the Chief, there were other officers there as well in pretty high positions like Leftenant Colonels and Colonels, who also shared their experiences and passions. Lunch was great, since there was the Chief there. (There was Peking Duck, Icecream, Laksa, and the usual stuff)
Changi Naval Base next. A bit of a logistics problem, due to unforeseen circumstances, the Chief of Navy touched down late in Singapore and so was late in arriving to talk to us. They decided that maybe one of the Colonels would do to fill in the wait, so we ended up having to listen to two long speeches about the Navy and a personal sharing by a Captain. The personal sharing was insightful, and he appeared to really enjoy himself through being posted to various roles in the ship, and sailing to many places. There were lots of pictures too! Unfortunately, us ACS people couldn't take it after he ended. We had already endured a long speech, a long sharing, and now was another longer speech. I can't really remember what happened during the last speech, but I heard some laughter, woke up, and saw one of the guys laughing at as. When I inquired he pointed to my left. That's when I realised that the whole row of us ACS people had dozed off for some time. What's new? haha.
We had a nice tea after all the talks, and that freshened us up a bit. Then they started giving out Navy caps. I was most impress by this one, because it was personalised. We had our names on our caps! Looks like I'll be wearing that most often from now on. We boarded the RSS Steadfast after tea. It's a stealthed frigate! Naturally, they turned of the stealth so we could see it to board, but it was pretty frightening to be standing almost floating above water while the stealth was on. Yup! We had a tour of the whole boat. A naval ship really looks like what's shown in the movies. Pipes running all over the place in the corridors, and the command room does have red lights. The vessal has quite a bit of armament, so I now have something to back my confidence in our country's defence. Back to land, even more impressive dinner than lunch! Had satay, laksa, and the usual buffet spread had better food than lunch.
After we reached back to base, we finalised our plans for Day 3, and had a final briefing as well. Now to get a good rest for tomorrow's battle!