Bersama Lima 2011
Friday, November 4, 2011
I had some shots in mind to take already for this last trip, and one of them was of the anchor shackles located at the forecastle of the ship. Here I wanted to go for a selective focus. I realised I had to deal with rapid condensation quite often, since moving from the air conditioned confines of the ship to the humid weather outside often adversely affected the camera. I checked up a solution online and found all I had to do was keep it inside a plastic bag and wait for acclimatisation.
The next shot of the MISTRAL, or SAM launcher was one that suprisingly needed little retouching. The light was nicely dramatic, and all I wanted of the silhouette was granted naturally. The launcher, located on both sides of the ship, are meant to defend the ship against aerial attack should our escort ships fail to screen attack aircraft successfully.
My workplace is among those areas most classified on ship, and so I hesitated to put it up on facebook, even when only my Navy acquaintances can view the photos. Here's the console I work on when I close up. I had to bring up the ISO to 1000 for most all the indoor shots.
Helo ops was scheduled after some days, when we had to embark some important personnel on board. This Chinook came all the way from Singapore, I had no idea just how far a helicopter's range could extend to. Being quite senior, I had the privilege of not being the Helo Ops party, hence I was free to take this shot.
It was either later in the afternoon, or the day after, when another helicopter was expected, this time an Australian Sea Sprite. Pictured is my ship's Buffer and a flight deck officer before the Helo Ops commenced.
I was egged by the ME2 to venture beyond the safety of the flight deck shutters, and was really grateful for the chance to get photos from a much better angle. If not for the fact that my ship has quite a few people interested in taking photographs, including the ME2 himself, I might not have had the chance to go further with my camera.
The most heavily edited photo in the collection. The Sea Sprite struck an odd impression of something between oddly shaped and yet definitely deadly.
Here the flight controller motions for the Helo Ops crew to return to the hanger once the helicopter has been untethered to the flight deck.
We fast forward a few days to our few Replenishment at Sea operations, where we shifted to the West side of Tioman to refuel a number of RSN vessels in the span of a few days. Some took place in the day, others in the night and early morning. Large imposing fenders had to be lowered from our flight deck to the side of the ship in preparation, and on one occasion, we suffered an incident due to poor sea state.
The Major in the photo has posted out since this sailing, a few months shy of ORDing. His farewell warranted quite a celebration, and there was quite a lot of booze that went around. That was also in part due to one of our ship crew striking the lottery and winning cash in the zone of five figures.
Dauntless arrives for her fuel as rain clouds start to gather over the sky. Ever single time we refuelled her, it rained. Many said it was due to the large number of female sailors she had on board.
Yellow helmets and red Cherry fenders in preparation for the A/S.
The sky cleared up after the rain, and I was lucky to get a shot of the parting rain clouds. They almost seem to move aside for the protruding upper mast of the MCV.
This is perhaps my favourite shot of the sailing, with the depth clearly accentuated here. I realised all of my outdoor shots were just a slight bit too blue, so I had them tweaked.
I fast forward many more days now, in part because there wasn't much else to our role there but those operations for the next few days. Many realised that I had been logging on nearly everyday for updates on BF3 online, and indeed in the days running up to the game's release, I couldn't stop thinking about it. After some point in time though, time seemed to speed up considerably, and the sailing was over pretty soon.
The pictures here were taken on our first and only shore leave, lasting for about 5 hours on Tioman Island, a place that seemed to have taken East Coast Park and Pulau Ubin, and meshed them into a much bigger island. Leaving the ship on a fast beaching craft was truly something that I had been yearning for for a long time, and on the 29th, I had that curious wish fulfilled.
That day, we had to pick up other RSN personnel from various ships all anchored in our vicinity, for it was the end of the exercise and they were enjoying their shore leave too. Like a bus on it's daily route, we powered our way to different ships, five in total, picking up passengers along the way before heading for the beach. Sadly, we didn't beach on the island, but simply went alongside the small jetty where Australian shore leave personnel were already awaiting their return.
Men, ready weapons! Quite a few of us gamely posed for our D-Day stances as we came even nearer to the beach. You can see the speed of the craft accentuated by the motion blur of the surrounding water.
"Pillbox! There on the hillcrest! We take that objective, men!"
"Mm... I don't like the sound of that mission, sergeant..."
"Sustaining heavy fire! Push forward, men! Drive them back to Berlin!
Anyway, here's what the island more or less looked like. There were quite a few lodges for tourists, and apparently almost the whole population works in the tourist industry.
The whole island is a duty-free shopping area, so beers were as cheap as canned drinks, and the first thing we did was to get ourselves some Hoegaarden to drink while walking around. A nice one, I must say. I kept both bottle caps. We also drank some more at the eatery we stopped at, which was more or less all we had time for. Tiger cans littered the whole of our table, as you can see.
Stefan, the CBA (Chinese Born American) was glued to Fruit Ninja for most of the trip. He was quite upset when, during a previous sailing, the Buffer I mentioned earlier beat his high score in one try, scoring about 1300.
Nothing special about this photo, except that the sign board invites you to eat at a 'Shady Bakery'. Heh, not my cup of tea.
Here my camera was hijacked by the CBA dude, who showed me a light motion technique that produces pretty interesting results. Pictured is my Weapons specialist PO.
The reluctant Corporal made it up the hillcrest to take the pillbox that day. He's actually a regular, though. Weapons.
Here we chance upon a stall selling Ramlee burgers. It took some time, and apparently other shore leave personnel had to cook their own burgers because the islanders simply idled too long when cooking the burgers, and invited them to be the cook. Ours was fine, they apparently have Supermarket-packaged Ramlee burger patties ready to cook there.
The last shot of the sailing, taken in the ship's briefing room. The distortion here is accentuated by the lens and angle. The two in the photo are part of the Flotilla's 20th Anniversary team that I'm in, and we got some things done during the slow-paced sailing.
In the far corner is the Resolution Lighthouse, something I came up with and constructed for the ship. It was perhaps the most arduous effort I put in for the ship. It did get me an artfriend membership though I guess. And one duty off.
Until the next update, then.
posted by joseph at 4:09 PM
Sunday, September 18, 2011
This thing is, the government isn't wasting our time. It sure did take two years away, but how we spend that time is all up to us. We're the only ones capable of wasting our own time here, by keng-ing. By not recognising what we can do with our time in camp, and not just out of camp. By generally resigning oneself to a deadbeat routine of doing nothing.
posted by joseph at 10:26 PM
A new Navy advertisement was created recently, one which was filmed in part on our ship. I might have told you about how the film crew came on board during one of our short sailings, making us do extra work and close up extra operations. I might also have mentioned how it peeved me that two fat ang mohs were running the show, and I'm not sure till now if it was some bias I had in me, but they seemed quite arrogant and more instructive than necessary to their Singaporean crew. It didn't help that one or two of them clearly seemed to behave more 'subordinate' than necessary.
But I digress. I guess you should watch the video unmolested before continuing with the post. If you haven't already. Aren't we a connected generation.
The advertisement is made more personal by the fact that the main actor is an officer onboard our ship, one who's quite chummy with the ratings and generally fun to be around with. We all knew he was singled out for some filming, but didn't actually realise he was going to have so much airtime. The girl at 0:07 is a batch-mate, but I must say, she's pretty darn 'chor-lor'. And what you see at 0:13 is three to four hours of Ops condensed into a few seconds. Heh,I'd like to note I'm actually in that scene... covered, of course, by a metal exterior, sitting down in the hot and humid welldock of the mothership, waiting for the darn craft to come back once the film crew is satisfied. Haha...
To add, 0:41 has a shot with a bunch of my ship mates, of whom second from left is my direct superior, whom I address as 'L', for leading. Not quite a petty officer, not yet quite a Chief. A nice guy, I'd say. They only wanted regulars for that shot, and had to reject some NSFs who fit the bill of being handsome enough initially to be considered. Haha, I wasn't one of them shortlisted.
As a token dirt-dishing piece, the guy on the bottom right, almost hidden by the shadows in that scene is a full-time chao-keng regular. Just so you know. Hahaha...
Lastly, that whole journey-embarking bit from 0:47 was a funny moment. We were doing our regular life run in the morning when they were preparing to take shots for that scene. As we ran by, we were wondering how come there were so many civilians waiting at the wharf when our sister ship was clearly not scheduled for any overseas deployments. As we ran back the other way some time later, we then saw those guys lined up there on the flight deck in Senang Diri. The comical moment, knowing the film crew was re-enacting something of pretty big significance on such an ordinary day was quite funny. And yes, my officer hugged a random woman in that scene.
posted by joseph at 6:00 AM
Friday, September 16, 2011
This was my initial entry. I saw one other entry that had waves and an anchor, and looked quite like the IMOS (The training institute we used to stay at) logo. Didn't get to see the other one, but I was just happy when mine was selected. I got a day off for this, which was unprecedented given how stingy my Coxn was with offs when I did things for him in the past. He said something along the lines of, 'good eh? One day of off for five minutes of work.' I nodded and laughed heartily (my heart wasn't really there though) and walked off before he could change his mind.
Truth is, I didn't put in 5mins of work in that. I put quite a lot of effort into thinking something up, much more than it took to execute it. I believe logos are difficult things to design, trying to make something simple and yet having to represent so much. Furthermore, anything with the Navy has been done to death with anchors, ship bows and wave crests. I thought about it for some time, even asking for a deadline extension.
On the other hand, my junior who studied at Lasalle with graphic design, was totally lackadaisical about the task he had been assigned with. I was told prior to this that his designs were of the whacky sort, which brought to mind those oddly drawn animals kind of designs I can't appreciate. When I told him he had been arrowed for the job, his first response was, "Oh, eh ask you ah, when you do this sort of thing for ship, would you get paid?" To which I laughed heartily (really, this time) and educated him to the sad job that was carrying out an arrow. Obviously, he responded by saying there's no point in putting effort into it if you're not going to get paid.
Anyway, after I got my off 'handed' to me that day, (I had actually been waiting for the verdict for some time as to the verdict that awaited the three designs) I went back and did a re-look at the design, like I told myself I'd do if my design got selected. This is because I didn't put in my all to the design, having been bogged down by other commitments. Here's the second draft, to which my Coxswain also felt was better than the previous one.
Regarding the other design I had done for the 20th Anniversary, it was also an arrowed job from my Chief, (WO equivalent) who had seen some of my previous efforts. He was put in charge of publicity for the event, and roped me in despite knowing the event's scheduled date was three days after my ORD. It has now been revised to a whole month after my ORD, on the 5th of June.
20 years in the making made me opt for a nostalgic, old school approach. Yet what was intended was for both old and new to be encapsulated, and I had to change tact and go for this. More posters are to come, but that'll be for the future.
posted by joseph at 9:39 PM
Friday, September 9, 2011
The briefing was done at the beach itself. It resembles a small lagoon, with a drawbridge in the middle. The place actually did look quite good, and the sand closer to the shore's edge was the soft, nice kind of sand. This person here is our Comms Officer, posted over recently from my RSS Brave, where Liang De is.
The fishing-rod-banana-dangling-eating game station, where two participants are blindfolded. One has to feed the other a banana tied to a fishing rod line. It was quite hilarious, seeing how some people could gobble the banana with ease, and how some others just engaged in prolonged foreplay. The person tying the blindfold is the Commanding Officer, an LTC. The fisherman is our Navigating Officer.
Here's another station, where one guy has to don a Swimmer-On-The-Watch (SoW) gear, get waist deep in the lagoon and pick out balloons with the right letter on them. The first team quickly thought to make subsequent teams suffer by throwing the balloons further out into the lagoon.
A pipe with many small holes was the subject of the next station, where the teams had to devise a way to keep the water in the tube such that one could pick a ping pong ball from its top. Some wrapped it with a trash bag provided, and some others buried the pipe partially into the sand.
I had to squat really low for this shot, recomposing a few times, but I think it was quite worth it.
Another element of the whole game involved the kidnapping of one teammate from each team. They were chained and locked up, and once all the stations were completed, a team could guess from a series of boxes which one contained their key.
So what would they do once they got their teammate back? They now had to bury him in his own shellscrape. No kidnappee was spared the creative sculpting of sand to shape obscene body parts.
Some teams still hadn't finished, though. This station required teams to coordinate quickly to form a group pose, with each pose requiring more and more people to participate. As usual, some of the poses were ridiculously funny.
The banana eating game once more, with Comms Justin using his iPad 2 to capture each 'feeding time'.
Our Chief Engineer, whose body shape resembled a stereotypical engineer build, enjoyed frolicking in the lagoon that day. Here he poses nicely for a shot.
The mayhem begins from here, with the games almost over and people starting to yearn for some havoc. A Comms Petty Officer struggles helplessly as he is brought to his grave by the shore. A few minutes later, with the shellscrape not deep enough, he was ironically digging with the rest of his team his own grave.
Some didn't give in without a fight...
... And most who were targeted succumbed to their fate in the end.
I was really scared then that someone might come up to me, take my camera away and get others to dunk me, given I was staying close by the shore the whole time photographing the fun. Didn't happen though.
posted by joseph at 6:09 PM
navynews
Saturday, July 16, 2011
I only recently brought it up to the relevant people again because I was tired of waiting around for a break from ship that I really wanted. Man, I can't believe something they can grant so easily, something they just have to agree to, is so difficult to get. I got quite ticked that time I heard Jake talking about how efforts for going beyond one's job scope is often rewarded in the Air Force. Maybe the Navy just has a dire lack of manpower, off is so hard to come by. By the way, we're about 5000 strong.
This poster chronicles the hardware aspect of the ship's history. From the county class LST that was leased to us at US$1 for ships that saw action in WW2, to the new Endurance class LST's (or LPD's) that were all built around 1997. One of the black and white pictures show the old Resolution receiving visitors on Open House day. We apparently garnered a public strength of 300 000 coming to see our ship!
Below, we see Dr Tony Tan announcing the construction of new LST's. The photo next to him is a fisheye of the ship in Benoi Yard, being built by ST Marine.
Lastly, I just did this design, meant to be A4 sized, for the Minister to sign when he visits the ship in a few weeks' time. I like the name of the exercise. I was thinking of a design for this one, and recalled this photo, for which I couldn't find anything else more apt for the purpose. The sky is actually part of another picture, because the original photo of the ship didn't have enough of it.
I read before in Digital SLR that there are photographers who dedicate themselves to magazine photography. That is, they take photographs with concepts of where to put text boxes and how to position them in mind. Sounds quite interesting. We've all seen that before, but never really put much thought into it.
posted by joseph at 4:18 PM
Friday, November 4, 2011
If everything goes as planned, the two-week sailing that I just came back from will be the last time I join my ship out to sea. There are quite a few small sailings coming up from Exercise Northstar, but I have been able to clear leave on all those days, effectively giving me an eight day work month, give or take a day. I'm about to ORD, and I'm still mixed over whether to celebrate or feel slightly disappointed.
This post is more about the sailing, though. My last opportunity to enjoy the Navy experience, if you will. Also my last chance to take any photos that I want on and off the ship in the Navy, and here they are.
It nearing the monsoon season, there were only a handful of days at the beginning where the light was good and weather dry. We got there in around twelve hours (Tioman Island is located to the central east of Malaysia) and promptly dropped anchor East of Tioman. This would be where we'd fulfill our role as an overwatch for diving operations, and activate fast craft to rescue divers in danger should the need ever arise. We had the company of Malaysian, Australian and New Zealander divers on our way there, but once we reached Tioman, they left for the beach.
The seaboats that we had to launch from the very stern of our stern ramp got us soaked to the waist with incoming seawater that poured in rhythmically, and it made an impression on me how strong a force the waves could be. The rougher sea states had yet to come, though.
Our role the first few days was pretty insignificant, and we didn't do much each day but to laze around, completing watches on the bridge and finding things to do the next. This first shot I took was during Dogwatch, from 1630-1730, where people are free to exercise should they have a permitting schedule. Running around the flight deck is a staple for some, despite the small route and repetitious cycles. It offers good views but often harsh sunlight. See the small black ball next to the upper mast? It indicates that our ship is at anchor, and on which side the anchor has been dropped.
I had some shots in mind to take already for this last trip, and one of them was of the anchor shackles located at the forecastle of the ship. Here I wanted to go for a selective focus. I realised I had to deal with rapid condensation quite often, since moving from the air conditioned confines of the ship to the humid weather outside often adversely affected the camera. I checked up a solution online and found all I had to do was keep it inside a plastic bag and wait for acclimatisation.
The next shot of the MISTRAL, or SAM launcher was one that suprisingly needed little retouching. The light was nicely dramatic, and all I wanted of the silhouette was granted naturally. The launcher, located on both sides of the ship, are meant to defend the ship against aerial attack should our escort ships fail to screen attack aircraft successfully.
My workplace is among those areas most classified on ship, and so I hesitated to put it up on facebook, even when only my Navy acquaintances can view the photos. Here's the console I work on when I close up. I had to bring up the ISO to 1000 for most all the indoor shots.
Helo ops was scheduled after some days, when we had to embark some important personnel on board. This Chinook came all the way from Singapore, I had no idea just how far a helicopter's range could extend to. Being quite senior, I had the privilege of not being the Helo Ops party, hence I was free to take this shot.
It was either later in the afternoon, or the day after, when another helicopter was expected, this time an Australian Sea Sprite. Pictured is my ship's Buffer and a flight deck officer before the Helo Ops commenced.
I was egged by the ME2 to venture beyond the safety of the flight deck shutters, and was really grateful for the chance to get photos from a much better angle. If not for the fact that my ship has quite a few people interested in taking photographs, including the ME2 himself, I might not have had the chance to go further with my camera.
The most heavily edited photo in the collection. The Sea Sprite struck an odd impression of something between oddly shaped and yet definitely deadly.
Here the flight controller motions for the Helo Ops crew to return to the hanger once the helicopter has been untethered to the flight deck.
We fast forward a few days to our few Replenishment at Sea operations, where we shifted to the West side of Tioman to refuel a number of RSN vessels in the span of a few days. Some took place in the day, others in the night and early morning. Large imposing fenders had to be lowered from our flight deck to the side of the ship in preparation, and on one occasion, we suffered an incident due to poor sea state.
The Major in the photo has posted out since this sailing, a few months shy of ORDing. His farewell warranted quite a celebration, and there was quite a lot of booze that went around. That was also in part due to one of our ship crew striking the lottery and winning cash in the zone of five figures.
Dauntless arrives for her fuel as rain clouds start to gather over the sky. Ever single time we refuelled her, it rained. Many said it was due to the large number of female sailors she had on board.
Yellow helmets and red Cherry fenders in preparation for the A/S.
The sky cleared up after the rain, and I was lucky to get a shot of the parting rain clouds. They almost seem to move aside for the protruding upper mast of the MCV.
This is perhaps my favourite shot of the sailing, with the depth clearly accentuated here. I realised all of my outdoor shots were just a slight bit too blue, so I had them tweaked.
I fast forward many more days now, in part because there wasn't much else to our role there but those operations for the next few days. Many realised that I had been logging on nearly everyday for updates on BF3 online, and indeed in the days running up to the game's release, I couldn't stop thinking about it. After some point in time though, time seemed to speed up considerably, and the sailing was over pretty soon.
The pictures here were taken on our first and only shore leave, lasting for about 5 hours on Tioman Island, a place that seemed to have taken East Coast Park and Pulau Ubin, and meshed them into a much bigger island. Leaving the ship on a fast beaching craft was truly something that I had been yearning for for a long time, and on the 29th, I had that curious wish fulfilled.
That day, we had to pick up other RSN personnel from various ships all anchored in our vicinity, for it was the end of the exercise and they were enjoying their shore leave too. Like a bus on it's daily route, we powered our way to different ships, five in total, picking up passengers along the way before heading for the beach. Sadly, we didn't beach on the island, but simply went alongside the small jetty where Australian shore leave personnel were already awaiting their return.
Men, ready weapons! Quite a few of us gamely posed for our D-Day stances as we came even nearer to the beach. You can see the speed of the craft accentuated by the motion blur of the surrounding water.
"Pillbox! There on the hillcrest! We take that objective, men!"
"Mm... I don't like the sound of that mission, sergeant..."
"Sustaining heavy fire! Push forward, men! Drive them back to Berlin!
Anyway, here's what the island more or less looked like. There were quite a few lodges for tourists, and apparently almost the whole population works in the tourist industry.
The whole island is a duty-free shopping area, so beers were as cheap as canned drinks, and the first thing we did was to get ourselves some Hoegaarden to drink while walking around. A nice one, I must say. I kept both bottle caps. We also drank some more at the eatery we stopped at, which was more or less all we had time for. Tiger cans littered the whole of our table, as you can see.
Stefan, the CBA (Chinese Born American) was glued to Fruit Ninja for most of the trip. He was quite upset when, during a previous sailing, the Buffer I mentioned earlier beat his high score in one try, scoring about 1300.
Nothing special about this photo, except that the sign board invites you to eat at a 'Shady Bakery'. Heh, not my cup of tea.
Here my camera was hijacked by the CBA dude, who showed me a light motion technique that produces pretty interesting results. Pictured is my Weapons specialist PO.
The reluctant Corporal made it up the hillcrest to take the pillbox that day. He's actually a regular, though. Weapons.
Here we chance upon a stall selling Ramlee burgers. It took some time, and apparently other shore leave personnel had to cook their own burgers because the islanders simply idled too long when cooking the burgers, and invited them to be the cook. Ours was fine, they apparently have Supermarket-packaged Ramlee burger patties ready to cook there.
The last shot of the sailing, taken in the ship's briefing room. The distortion here is accentuated by the lens and angle. The two in the photo are part of the Flotilla's 20th Anniversary team that I'm in, and we got some things done during the slow-paced sailing.
In the far corner is the Resolution Lighthouse, something I came up with and constructed for the ship. It was perhaps the most arduous effort I put in for the ship. It did get me an artfriend membership though I guess. And one duty off.
Until the next update, then.
Labels: interesting, jolly pirates, navy, photography, thoughts
posted by joseph at 4:09 PM
Sunday, September 18, 2011
I've been thinking about my ORD date for some time, thinking of what I've done and how I've spent my one year and ten months serving in the SAF.
I remember looking back early this year, suddenly realising that one year had passed by in a flash. It must have been helped by my transition to the Navy, such that the monotony that many may feel being stuck in the Army the whole time isn't applicable here. The phases had been clean cut. Passing out from Tekong, then doing a long five month stint in the Institute of Maritime Operations and Systems (IMOS) and finally coming to ship.
One thing that was similar to all of them though, was that I tried my hand at designing things in every phase. I submitted a tee design for Whiskey platoon.(that was ultimately rejected in favor of one that had an exploded diagram of a SAR-21. I did feel it had nothing to do with the platoon's identity though) In IMOS, I designed a Racial Harmony Day poster for a small competition, and did up a poster for the Bedok House Cohesion, which was coordinated by another trainee in a more interesting way than most NSF cohesions are. Finally, I've done quite a few pieces for ship so far.
My point is that I've tried to make use of what NS has given me, like in this case an opportunity to practice my design work. I've been feeling of late that many don't give two hoots about trying to do so. They lament how the government is wasting two years of their lives, how it disadvantages them to foreigners and such.
This thing is, the government isn't wasting our time. It sure did take two years away, but how we spend that time is all up to us. We're the only ones capable of wasting our own time here, by keng-ing. By not recognising what we can do with our time in camp, and not just out of camp. By generally resigning oneself to a deadbeat routine of doing nothing.
I'm not talking about studying while in NS, either, or getting that driver's license. That's good, but it's only making use of 'time' in NS. It's also about how you use the organisation to further yourself. (Properly, of course) The way I see it, there are two main ways to 'succeed' in life in terms of work. Either one makes it high up in a big firm, or one is the boss of his own firm, and I feel the former is more plausible than the latter.
What two years of NS gives you is the opportunity to see how a big organisation functions. Like how red tape is found in many places, and how it might be possible to overcome or sidestep it. It gives you, from being a sai gang warrior to chiongsua footman to chummy officer's clerk, an opportunity to hone your skills. It could be designing things, organising outside events, people relations, playing instruments, photography, sports, writing that you could be tasked to do or volunteer for, that could let you go further in the future.
Yet many don't. They slack away their time and wait for the weekend, not bothering to do their job well, much less do more.
The worst are those who don't do much, who do less than they should, and put down others who are doing more. Like many youth who vote for the opposition, they might find it disdainful to adhere to the system, to carry out your NS obligations properly. It's a childish thing, I know, but I hope they don't get anywhere in life.
I've been contemplating whether or not to bring this whole topic up if I'm asked to speak a few words when I'm handed my ORD plaque in front of the ship's company. I'm not sure if I'll just be wasting my breath, but I feel that many juniors on ship aren't pulling any weight, they're bringing down the culture of the ship and it just sucks to know that.
Labels: navy, NS, opinion, rant, thoughts
posted by joseph at 10:26 PM
A new Navy advertisement was created recently, one which was filmed in part on our ship. I might have told you about how the film crew came on board during one of our short sailings, making us do extra work and close up extra operations. I might also have mentioned how it peeved me that two fat ang mohs were running the show, and I'm not sure till now if it was some bias I had in me, but they seemed quite arrogant and more instructive than necessary to their Singaporean crew. It didn't help that one or two of them clearly seemed to behave more 'subordinate' than necessary.
But I digress. I guess you should watch the video unmolested before continuing with the post. If you haven't already. Aren't we a connected generation.
The advertisement is made more personal by the fact that the main actor is an officer onboard our ship, one who's quite chummy with the ratings and generally fun to be around with. We all knew he was singled out for some filming, but didn't actually realise he was going to have so much airtime. The girl at 0:07 is a batch-mate, but I must say, she's pretty darn 'chor-lor'. And what you see at 0:13 is three to four hours of Ops condensed into a few seconds. Heh,I'd like to note I'm actually in that scene... covered, of course, by a metal exterior, sitting down in the hot and humid welldock of the mothership, waiting for the darn craft to come back once the film crew is satisfied. Haha...
To add, 0:41 has a shot with a bunch of my ship mates, of whom second from left is my direct superior, whom I address as 'L', for leading. Not quite a petty officer, not yet quite a Chief. A nice guy, I'd say. They only wanted regulars for that shot, and had to reject some NSFs who fit the bill of being handsome enough initially to be considered. Haha, I wasn't one of them shortlisted.
As a token dirt-dishing piece, the guy on the bottom right, almost hidden by the shadows in that scene is a full-time chao-keng regular. Just so you know. Hahaha...
Lastly, that whole journey-embarking bit from 0:47 was a funny moment. We were doing our regular life run in the morning when they were preparing to take shots for that scene. As we ran by, we were wondering how come there were so many civilians waiting at the wharf when our sister ship was clearly not scheduled for any overseas deployments. As we ran back the other way some time later, we then saw those guys lined up there on the flight deck in Senang Diri. The comical moment, knowing the film crew was re-enacting something of pretty big significance on such an ordinary day was quite funny. And yes, my officer hugged a random woman in that scene.
Labels: interesting, military, navy, thoughts, weblinks
posted by joseph at 6:00 AM
Friday, September 16, 2011
I've just finished doing more design work for two new projects that I was tasked with by the ship. One is a small job, designing an emblem for the Best Sailor award given by our Squadron. The other is for a 20th anniversary event for the Flotilla. But first, the award.
This award is something new introduced by the Squadron, and it follows closely behind what our ship also introduced at the start of the year. As to whose idea it was, I have no clue.
Every season, or every three months, about five ratings (as in ME1, whose equivalent would be 3SG - 2SG in the old scheme, as well as NSFs) would be singled out from the Ship's Company by the Officers and Chiefs of Departments. What they'd look out for, I imagine, are qualities such as being hardworking, reliable, and simply doing above and beyond others. Subsequently, they'd be subjected to a mass vote by the rest of the ship's company, open to everyone, on a sheet of paper pasted in a passageway. The Best Sailor gets a nice plaque, a not-so-nice certificate, and a yet-to-be-finalised one day off.
So far, there've only been two seasons worth of sailors nominated. I kid you not, I was on the list for the very first season. And I was the only NSF on that list. I got kicked off that list when my iPod incident came to light. That, and my 14 extras.
But I digress. This squadron's one aimed to have an emblem to boot, and it goes that they had delegated the job to some clerk to design something. I was told the design was an anchor with an 'S' overlaid on it. Suffice to say, they felt it wouldn't do. Our Coxswain, or CSM equivalent, happened to be chummy with the Squadron Coxswain, and said he'd get his crew to do it. Two other guys and I were arrowed, of which verdict was left to the Sqn Coxn to decide whose to pick.
Truth is, I didn't put in 5mins of work in that. I put quite a lot of effort into thinking something up, much more than it took to execute it. I believe logos are difficult things to design, trying to make something simple and yet having to represent so much. Furthermore, anything with the Navy has been done to death with anchors, ship bows and wave crests. I thought about it for some time, even asking for a deadline extension.
On the other hand, my junior who studied at Lasalle with graphic design, was totally lackadaisical about the task he had been assigned with. I was told prior to this that his designs were of the whacky sort, which brought to mind those oddly drawn animals kind of designs I can't appreciate. When I told him he had been arrowed for the job, his first response was, "Oh, eh ask you ah, when you do this sort of thing for ship, would you get paid?" To which I laughed heartily (really, this time) and educated him to the sad job that was carrying out an arrow. Obviously, he responded by saying there's no point in putting effort into it if you're not going to get paid.
Anyway, after I got my off 'handed' to me that day, (I had actually been waiting for the verdict for some time as to the verdict that awaited the three designs) I went back and did a re-look at the design, like I told myself I'd do if my design got selected. This is because I didn't put in my all to the design, having been bogged down by other commitments. Here's the second draft, to which my Coxswain also felt was better than the previous one.
The Helms is actually the same model I had traced out earlier, backed by another copy and edited here and there to give it a slight three dimensional feel. The crocodile is not all the same; I spliced another photograph of a croc with it's mouth open. I also deviated from the source picture to make both the creature and object have a more intertwined feeling. The banner was redone as I felt the previous one looked too detached.
***
Regarding the other design I had done for the 20th Anniversary, it was also an arrowed job from my Chief, (WO equivalent) who had seen some of my previous efforts. He was put in charge of publicity for the event, and roped me in despite knowing the event's scheduled date was three days after my ORD. It has now been revised to a whole month after my ORD, on the 5th of June.
20 years in the making made me opt for a nostalgic, old school approach. Yet what was intended was for both old and new to be encapsulated, and I had to change tact and go for this. More posters are to come, but that'll be for the future.
Labels: design, drawing, jolly pirates, navy, NS, thoughts
posted by joseph at 9:39 PM
Friday, September 9, 2011
The welfare committee for my ship recently organised another cohesion activity, scrapping the paintball idea for a day at the beach. I must say, I think the time we spent there would have beat a day with paintball anytime.
For the past few weeks, we had been staying back later to finish up our preparation for Engineering Inspection, a ship-wide inspection by the fleet to assess our hardware, in terms of safety and efficiency. The efforts put in were slowly giving rise to a sentiment of a much deserved break, and the cohesion that was to come thus had some big boots to fill.
During the planning stages, I was initially slated to be a station IC for station games, but volunteered to be the photographer for the event for a few reasons. For one, I hadn't tried a photo op at the beach before, so it would be something new.
We were to arrive at Palawan Beach, Sentosa, by 8:45, and it turns out that nobody really goes there that early on a weekday, for the beach was mostly ours for the whole duration. The crowd only started trickling in as we left at 11 that day. Here are the photos that I've whittled down.
The briefing was done at the beach itself. It resembles a small lagoon, with a drawbridge in the middle. The place actually did look quite good, and the sand closer to the shore's edge was the soft, nice kind of sand. This person here is our Comms Officer, posted over recently from my RSS Brave, where Liang De is.
The fishing-rod-banana-dangling-eating game station, where two participants are blindfolded. One has to feed the other a banana tied to a fishing rod line. It was quite hilarious, seeing how some people could gobble the banana with ease, and how some others just engaged in prolonged foreplay. The person tying the blindfold is the Commanding Officer, an LTC. The fisherman is our Navigating Officer.
Here's another station, where one guy has to don a Swimmer-On-The-Watch (SoW) gear, get waist deep in the lagoon and pick out balloons with the right letter on them. The first team quickly thought to make subsequent teams suffer by throwing the balloons further out into the lagoon.
A pipe with many small holes was the subject of the next station, where the teams had to devise a way to keep the water in the tube such that one could pick a ping pong ball from its top. Some wrapped it with a trash bag provided, and some others buried the pipe partially into the sand.
I had to squat really low for this shot, recomposing a few times, but I think it was quite worth it.
Another element of the whole game involved the kidnapping of one teammate from each team. They were chained and locked up, and once all the stations were completed, a team could guess from a series of boxes which one contained their key.
So what would they do once they got their teammate back? They now had to bury him in his own shellscrape. No kidnappee was spared the creative sculpting of sand to shape obscene body parts.
Some teams still hadn't finished, though. This station required teams to coordinate quickly to form a group pose, with each pose requiring more and more people to participate. As usual, some of the poses were ridiculously funny.
The banana eating game once more, with Comms Justin using his iPad 2 to capture each 'feeding time'.
Our Chief Engineer, whose body shape resembled a stereotypical engineer build, enjoyed frolicking in the lagoon that day. Here he poses nicely for a shot.
A beach get-together is not really complete with liberal numbers of dunkings. Four people chipped in to dunk this guy, who ORDed that day wearing really colourful clothing, with bling and flashy sunglasses to match. In the background, our Executive Officer looks on encouragingly.
Water bombs were also provided that day, and though there weren't a lot to go around, there were enough of them for many to get soaked. When I saw someone about to launch a water bomb or pail of water, I'd hold down the shutter to ensure I got a good frame-by-frame capture. Here, the organizer gets one to the butt from the Leading Electrical Control Specialist.
Some didn't give in without a fight...
... And most who were targeted succumbed to their fate in the end.
I was really scared then that someone might come up to me, take my camera away and get others to dunk me, given I was staying close by the shore the whole time photographing the fun. Didn't happen though.
The summary shot with more tags in one picture than I've ever seen. I think a lot of us enjoyed the day, and I'm really happy the pictures were nicely received by the crew on facebook. There are still some more uploaded there, go have a look if you have the time!
Labels: navy, photography, thoughts
posted by joseph at 6:09 PM
navynews
Saturday, July 16, 2011
I've been doing more designs for ship, this time for the heritage board that's being revamped. Both posters below are meant to be A1 size. I enjoy doing them, it forces me to think of new ideas on how to package a design and the information. However, they do take up my weekends, with me burning hours sitting in front of the computer. So I was quite disappointed when, months after I had done them, I didn't get any word on a reward for my efforts. I got 'thank you's" and "nicely done", but that was it.
I only recently brought it up to the relevant people again because I was tired of waiting around for a break from ship that I really wanted. Man, I can't believe something they can grant so easily, something they just have to agree to, is so difficult to get. I got quite ticked that time I heard Jake talking about how efforts for going beyond one's job scope is often rewarded in the Air Force. Maybe the Navy just has a dire lack of manpower, off is so hard to come by. By the way, we're about 5000 strong.
This poster chronicles the hardware aspect of the ship's history. From the county class LST that was leased to us at US$1 for ships that saw action in WW2, to the new Endurance class LST's (or LPD's) that were all built around 1997. One of the black and white pictures show the old Resolution receiving visitors on Open House day. We apparently garnered a public strength of 300 000 coming to see our ship!
Below, we see Dr Tony Tan announcing the construction of new LST's. The photo next to him is a fisheye of the ship in Benoi Yard, being built by ST Marine.
On the other hand, this poster is a mash-up of photographs from start to beginning, but not in order. Some show our assets, others to where we've been overseas, and so on. The original poster had them all in colour, but an officer advised me that there were too many colours to focus on, so I made them all black and white, with a slight sepia tinge. It's amazing how the slight tinge makes the photo so much better than a flat black and white.
As for the background picture, it was with a blue sky in the original white balance. I turned it around to make it look more aged and graceful. I particularly like the Singapore flag. It's called the Sea Ensign, flown when we're out at sea. The black ball on the left hand side of the mast indicates the ship is anchored, and on which side we've let go the anchor. It's important because even when the ship is anchored, the direction of tide can swing the whole ship around, pivoted about the anchor chain. This arc, or safety swinging circle, can be dangerous for other ships to cut into.
Lastly, I just did this design, meant to be A4 sized, for the Minister to sign when he visits the ship in a few weeks' time. I like the name of the exercise. I was thinking of a design for this one, and recalled this photo, for which I couldn't find anything else more apt for the purpose. The sky is actually part of another picture, because the original photo of the ship didn't have enough of it.
I read before in Digital SLR that there are photographers who dedicate themselves to magazine photography. That is, they take photographs with concepts of where to put text boxes and how to position them in mind. Sounds quite interesting. We've all seen that before, but never really put much thought into it.
Labels: design, jolly pirates, navy, NS
posted by joseph at 4:18 PM