Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Snippets from ROTU saga (Part 2)

While I'd love to blog about my family, what I did in the past also matters. One of the most memorable is ROTU. For those who are not familiar with it, it stands for "Reserved Officers Training Unit" a program by Kementerian Pertahanan Malaysia, to train volunteers from universiy students with some knowledge in military. It is a 3-year program, and at the end of it they will be commisioned to Second Leutenants. I have some photos of us doing the Merempuh Halangan, think I'd like to blog it first.

It was a competition among the 3 groups (or peringkat as we had Peringkat 1, 2 and 3). We were in Peringkat 2 during the competition. We had to pass through a few 'halangan' including 26 km run, the 6 and 12 foot wall, the monkey bars, crawling under barbeb wire etc and ended with shooting where the final marks were obtained. The group with the shortest time to finish was declared the winner.

There were 12 of us in a group, and 2 of them must be girls. I was chosen as one of them. I was not really a sporty type, but as I was also a shooter, I could be an advantage to get the final scores.

I was ok with the other 'halangan' but was almost flat when I reached the barbed wire.
crawling to victory
A crawl towards victory!
You see, there is no one behind me as the other groups are left far behind and all my friends are all way ahead of me. That is Capt. Azmi looks on me. He is the most good-looking officers, we were lucky to get him (ahem). If not because of me, we might come out with a better record, anyway it was still the best, according to our trainers. By the way, all these "Merempuh Halangan" were done with us carrying a 14kg backpack and a M16 (as you can see it in the photo) .

Me shooting
The final leg of the competition, shooting. I scored full marks for this, that compensated the delay that I'd caused earlier. Note that the cement floor was wet as most of us were all drenched as we also had to walk through some swamps and in my case, I fall off the monkey bars and down into the shallow pool under them.

Celebrating the victory
And yes, we WON! Here's a photo to commemorate the victory together with all the other trainers in our group. The other groups had not finished, so that's why you can't see the trophy there. Can see me or not? Look for someone who resembles Whoopi Goldberg (spelling?)...that's what my brother called me after each training session!
At my age now, I'm wondering where did I get all those energy to get involved in such activities! Anyway, I treasure every moment in ROTU and think I had made use of most of my time in the university in gaining not only a degree, but also a 'watikah' from the Agung.

6 Comments:

Blogger Yoong Family said...

kind of reminds me of those PALAPES guys in uni!

3:53 PM  
Blogger mama23beas said...

Ya PALAPES...that's what ROTU in Malay, forgot about that already. Thx Simon for dropping a line here!

4:06 PM  
Blogger 5xmom.com said...

Hahaha, tak jumpa Whoopie Goldberg pun. Tapi, I wonder how your legs can lay so flat on the ground, macam those leap from the 20th floor punya posing, the legs terkeluar macam tu. Thanks for all these sharing! Sometimes, we so busy with being mothers, we forget we were an individual/woman/girl/child once.

12:11 AM  
Blogger mama23beas said...

Haha 5xmom...that's my most comfortable position la. Everyone got their own style...I also need to get the small hole (to target) as close to my eyes as possible...so always ended up going to classes with blue black right cheek! So gila that time...

5:30 PM  
Blogger ibuVouge said...

wah.... remind me my rotu zaman.. u might be my senior..
tabik hormat Puan..heheeheh

enjoy the world of ROTU...it teach me so many thing... the thing I hate about Rotu..have to wore 'full u' on friday...so shy...because I got my FIS subject(islamic financial) also on that day.and always jadi mangsa perli ustaz..huuuhuuu

4:17 PM  
Blogger mama23beas said...

Welcome ibuvouge...which U were you from? Anyway, blog la about your rotu days, we can share notes!

5:18 PM  

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