almost a marksman..

What a day it had been, finally got the opportunity to come back to the serenity and comforts of home. It is only not too long ago that i managed to get a decent scrub down and now feel totally revitalised. Yesterday, i had range at Pasir Laba Camp (Safti) and since morning, i had been kept busy the entire time till range ended. Up till then, i was still helping my superiors account for the rounds we had indented and stuff. Anyway, everything was pretty smooth sailing. I guess all the personnel in the ammo party; to which i belong, played our part responsibly in fulfilling the tasks assigned to us. Hence, there was not one screw-up reported. Well, there were some little hiccups along the way, but we still managed to resolve them to the best of our abilities and as efficiently as possible. In addition, the OC was rather pleased with our efficiency, even going to the extent of singing our praises.

Apart from helping my platoon sergeant with the ammunition, i was also required to engage myself with the life-firing. Hence, i had to juggle both activities. Since, there were tons of paper work to do, i could not let my performance at the range (shooting) affect my ability to stay focus on the paper work at hand. Initially, i pretty much screw-up the day shoot, thanks to the unfriendliness of my rifle, hmmmpf...somehow, it refused to work for me. What could i do? Worse still, a little mechanism in the rifle was damage, hence, i needed a change in rifle. Well, the change was to do me good.

Thankfully, with the necessary change done, my rifle worked much better. As to whether i performed better remained to be seen. Well, as time got by, i improved in bringing a greater number of targets down! My rifle handling tecniques were better, and i was in greater control of my weapon, hence, my performance reportedly got better. However, what seemed like a dismal showing in the day; my detail (group) thought we had failed, we just kept on improving into the evening. Incidentally, barely managing a pass for day shoot, we thought we already had a pretty decent bargain, however, better things were to come. Therefore, for the night shoot, i must say we had performed exceedingly beyond expectations; heck, a check with the scoring sheet revealed that my detail brought down the most number of targets that night compared with the other details. The average result for the day shoot was combined with the average result for the night shoot, hence, we got a very decent score. In fact, we came out from nowhere to come so close to getting a marksman...sigh!...we were just slightly more than a point away from achieving marksmanship status. Well, what more can i ask for, it had truly been a fruitful time at the range. I am saying this even though the paper work had sapped me of most of my energy. Still, am very glad that my detail and i could do so well eventually. It truly had been a twist of fate.

If only life had been this interesting, where the outcome is beyond expectations and things just happen by chance positively...well, i don't expect too much either...just living within my means and seeing where fate leads me. :)