The last few days of my stay got a bit hectic as everyone was sending in stores and trying to finish backlog while the entire camp itself was scheduled for tearing down. However, the actual tearing down of the telephone wires was actually much easier than expected; all our knots and joints were chosen with fuss-free dismantling in mind, so it's good to see all the skills we learned in SI pay off.
R&R was... OK, honestly, it wasn't all that good. There just simply isn't a whole lot to see or do in Rockhampton. It was a 2D1N affair: the first day was the day we left camp, and the second day was the day we went to the airport. Also, the arranged tourist attraction was a cave. 'Nuff said. Still, my ever-resourceful C4 OIC managed to find some stuff for us to do. We visited a diner that had bull-riding shows on Wednesdays and Fridays (luckily for us it was a Wednesday :D ) and watched in awe as 5-year-old boys rode boisterous little calves and grown men rode tanks with conveniently positioned horns bulls. After that, we went to a little place called Zodiac...
The off system during Wallaby was such that we had to return to camp by 6pm for dinner. As such, we couldn't visit any place after that time. For the most part that wasn't much of a problem since most shops in Australia were closed by 5pm anyway (it's an Australian thing), but one place in particular only opened from 8pm onward, and was the forbidden fruit that everyone talked about. That forbidden fruit was Zodiac, and in short it was a burlesque. And honestly speaking, I think if you ever get a chance to step in there you shouldn't keep your hopes up. The lighting is bad, the music thumps your brain, and lets just say that the women with the necessary muscle mass to twirl around a pole aren't exactly svelte figures...
After touching down in Singapore, I wasted no time in getting in touch with family and friends. Immediately after touching Singaporean soil, I went for a birthday dinner with my family. My birthday present was, of course, coming back to Singapore, but they also surprised me with a HTC smartphone :D You know, that same HTC phone with the trackball that every other NSF is using. Don't have a data plan yet though, so I'll be looking around. Next day we had a 09SH27 outing with 10 people, which is pretty good given previous turnouts. It was a kite-flying/potluck picnic at Marina Barrage, which does sound like a disaster on paper, but it actually turned out pretty well, except that our lunch consisted of biscuits, potato chips, snack buns and biscuits. Dinner was at Marina Square BK, and the rest went off to watch 23:59 while I went home to rest (I came back from Australia with, among other things, a cold). The next day I went to Plaza Singapura Carl's Junior for a belated birthday celebration with the 28 guys (after all, eating at PS Carl's Junior on my birthday has become a sort of tradition), followed by LAN (finally not last place in a game of DotA :D ) and watching the Istana change-of-guard parade, just because it happened to be on.
I've got a week of off till next week, so for now I'll just be chilling :)
