Long Overdue Post

This post is long overdue and there were quite a few landmarks when it would have been appropriate to post, such as the end of the overseas component or the end of FC, or even the Tioman diving trip.

I think I shall just start from the overseas trip. My overseas component of FC was to Malaysia, Thailand and Phillipines. They all had their individual learning points, especially Malaysia and Philipines, but I honestly don't remember much of Thailand. It was over in a sleep-deprived blur. Thinking back, I don't think I drank all that much, but the late night games and activities definately took a toll on my mental state.

After coming back from the trip, I went off to Tioman to dive. It wasn't too bad a dive, saw all of 1 sea turtle among other things. There was 1 uber irritating dive at Labas which went from ultra leisure to ultra xiong. We entered the water and the current was pretty strong, so we descended and started to drift dive. Halfway through the dive, the DM spotted many triggerfish, so we about turned and swam against the current. That is definately not a fun prospect, though Hongyi gave a very good analogy and I roughly quote, "When I saw the clownfish having to struggle to stay in the anemone, I know die already". In any case, that dive satisfied my physical exertion for the week. We also had a couple of wreck dives at Tioman, however, the visibility was quite poor there, but the wrecks looked good.

After that diving trip was the yachting outing. Not much to say about that except that I met my former colleague at SAF yacht club and quite a few people got drunk on the yacht.

The next major activity after that was the weekend away in Bintan. That was a weekend of beach volleyball, card games and some alcohol. Had wanted to play tennis there but beach volleyball won out.

Finally there was the end of FC bash at Darius' place. There was plenty of booze and food, and I suppose the food was all finished, but we never finished the alcohol. Perhaps it was because we ended at two. But the time there was fun as we had a FC participant quiz. I suppose being around for most activities helped as my team won!! We made the losing teams drink and had quite a nice forfeit for them. Though I think if the photo was shown, someone would lose plenty of face.

On a more serious note, I had the opportunity to join both CNB and SPF for some attachments and they were real eye-openers. One real thing I learnt from the attachment is the difference between policy intent and actual implementation can be very significant...