Hello everyone! My name is Yen Thng, the surname is Paw, I started using Steemit since January this year, and I am still new to it, figuring out how it works and all.
I am a Singaporean who lives in Malaysia most of the time, as for the reason on why I'm there I will explain as I go along (I will explain on that part in my future post).
Back to where I stopped in my last post on Little Bit About Myself.... (Part 1)
I was mentioning about driving past the aftermath of a forest fire. The feel wasn't good when being in there. It feels like we are traveling through hell, it was destruction, heat, and death. We saw carcasses of snakes, and other small animals, it was an awful sight.
Nobody spoke about it or joked about the forest fire. All of us knew it wasn't funny at all.
We did our due diligence and drove out there carefully.
After we got out, I had a thought of how this fire relates to our life. It's like whenever we go through tough times and breakdowns, it is similar to going through a forest fire.
It just comes, and sometimes we feel so uncomfortable and stress that we react so differently, from drastic changes to struggling by pretending nothing is happening to stay comfortable.
Some went into suppression and some go into victim mode wishing someone could save them. The truth is, in a forest fire it does not necessarily mean there will be a rain from the sky to put out the fire. That does not always happen.
We just got to pull ourselves together and bite the bullet.
And what after the fire then? Some will be turned to ashes and become the fertilizer for a new growth, some will survive the fire, and developed stronger characters.
It's like going through the baptism of fire. No one will stay the same if they acknowledge the situation and allow themselves to grow, to feel, and to dream again. All these fire that we go through will make us stronger than before to take action.
After some dirt track driving, and drenched with dust on my uniform, we stopped for a rest.
And this is one of the places that I fell in love with. I just love the skies, the clean air and big terrains of Australia, it is just so mesmerizing that I never forget about it. (About 6 months later I get to go Australia again)
Our drive back to base camp under the hot blistering sun was constantly disrupted along the way as we have to watch out for 2 important things on the road!
The First is the Kangaroos!
We are here for training, not here to slaughter the poor kangaroos. We do not want any road kills either. We have to drive safely and be observant of the surroundings because driving on the dirt track, any sudden maneuvers can cause the vehicle to skid off track or flip. It's not a funny matter though.
The Second is the Tanks in action!
We can't do anything about them, they are too big sized compared to us.
As we went on further back to camp, we stopped at a site where it looked like a war zone. There are bullet holes and exploded cars all over the place. I took some time and have a quick selfie. ;)
The whole trip was an adventure and not long later we get to witness live firing from the Apache attack helicopters.
It was crazy and I bet it's gonna be damn scary to be standing in their line of fire after witnessing the live firing.
And not long after, I'm back to Singapore and ready to pack up to get my Pink Identification Card. ORD lo!
The definition of ORD stands for Operationally Ready and Deployable, in other words, it means if war comes, that's it, we gotta go.
So now comes the part where what do I want to do after I got out from the Army? It was a big question mark faced by me and my fellow teammates. Some of them proceeded to further studies, some went to their family business, some went straight into employment. It was farewell to everyone and my commanders. 2 years of my life went past like a time-lapse video.
As for me, I dared not secure any full-time employment with any company. Most of them have a minimum 3 months contract, and I do not wish to stick with the company should my application with the Airforce is successful.
In the end, I managed to secure a full-time job in a wine bar that gives me the flexibility, and I only work at night due to the timing of the operation. The next following few months, it was an interesting experience which I will share more in Little Bit About Myself... (Part 3) !
Thank you very much for reading this.
If there is anything you think I can improve on please let me know or feedback to me. I am still on a learning path, so please enlighten! Thanks a Million!
