Friday, April 27, 2012
DAY 229 (Sunday 18 March 2012)
MOTHER’S DAY
Nothing much happened today, we were supposed to be
getting up and going for a bike ride but it never happened as I was still
aching from the sports that I did on Thursday, so I just curled up back under
the duvet for another hour or so. I did however;
get all my ironing done and a couple of letters written.
DAY 228 (Saturday 17 March 2012)
HAPPY ST PADDY’S DAY.
Today the only thing that I did really was go
into THAMEL with Charlie to go and get a rucksack for me ready for when we do
our trek to EVEREST BASE CAMP in April.
The weather is getting hotter, on the way to THAMEL the temperature
outside of the bank said 16oC and on the way back it had got to 23oC
and we had only been gone just over an hour or so.
As tomorrow is Mother’s Day I asked my sister to
give my mum a hug from me as I wouldn’t be there to do it myself this year.
DAY 227 (Friday 16 March 2012)
Well today was a normal working day, so
I really don’t have much to say, just so glad that it is the weekend.
DAY 226 (Thursday 15 March 2012)
Today was the Commander’s Cup Competition;
there were 2 main teams that were made up of all the personnel who came over
from POKHARA, DHARAN and us from here in Kathmandu. The events that were to make up the
Commander’s Cup were Badminton (mens, ladies & mixed doubles), Basketball,
Volleyball (mens & ladies, I played in this one and scored the winning
point (yay me)) and finally the swimming (another event that I competed in),
this was quite fun actually as there were 3 events to the swimming and it
consisted of 3 relays races, the first one being swimming with a hard hat on
(which was not allowed to be tied on), you also had to keep your had above
water, so no back stroke swimming was allowed, which was a pity as backstroke
is my strongest stroke, however, I did beat my opponent doing the front crawl,
the second one was swimming with military boots on, that was such a hoot to
watch, especially when the swimmer got back to the start to hand over as they
literally got dragged out of the water (as per the picture below), the final
event was swimming for as long as you can under water, although my team of
swimmers (not me this time), did well, it wasn’t well enough as the other team
pipped us on the distance, saying that though they did have Capt Guy Norton
swimming for them and he is over 6 feet, so he had height / length on his side
and the pool isn’t the biggest of pools.
Changing
over of the boots
After all the events for the day, the
final event was in the evening to see who the winning team would be and the
event was entertainment, there were 3 judges, the Comd (Colonel Andrew Mills),
COS (Lt Col Elton Davis) and the GM (Maj Hitman Gurung), each team had to
provide at least 4 bits of entertainment, these mainly consisted of the girls
doing a dance, and the blokes singing. I
am pleased to say that we think it was because of Capt Frances Fox that we won
(for a number of reasons), and overall our team one the Commander’s Cup.
Frances
(Capt Fox)
Overall the whole day was a lot of fun
and it was good to get out of the office for some fun and relaxation after the
rest of the week that we had.
Roll on to the next Commander’s Cup next
year.
I was also given this morning my passes
and permits that are required for when we get to LUKLA to start our EVEREST
Trek and I have paid for my flights too.
So it’s official, I am going to EVEREST BASE CAMP trekking with my
hubby.
DAY 225 (Wednesday 14 March 2012)
Well I made it back into the Families
Reception Centre for 0545hrs, which was to be the start of a long morning as we
were not due to finish the exercise until 1330hrs. After a few more scenarios, which my section
weren’t really involved in ENDEX was finally called at 0900hrs, this made quite
a few people happy, we all had to close down our various sections then it was
back to work for us for the rest of the day, but as it was a Wednesday (sports
afternoon day), most people sacked it for the afternoon come lunch time. Unfortunately not for this call sign as I had
a few emails come in that needed to be actioned.
DAY 224 (Tuesday 13 March 2012)
Well today was certainly interesting, we
had briefings all morning before the main Exercise started after lunch, it is
supposed to be a 24 hour exercise but we were told that we would get stood down
at midnight for 6 hours to get some rest.
The briefings consisted having a medical
briefing in what to do to help the injured in the event of an quake taking
place, briefing from NST (Nepal Signal Troop) on what our communications will
be and a briefing from BK (Maj Kelsall) in what to do and how we should be
prepared if a big quake should hit, that last briefing actually brought it home
to some people to the intensity of what could happen and where the safest
places were to be when a quake hits.
After lunch some of us heard the tannoy
system calling the start of the exercise, we had to meet up by the CHAUTARA to
be briefed as to what the situation is and who was going to be running with
what cell and who were going to be casualties.
There was me, the GM, Mandy Childs, Prakash and Uttam working within the
Families Reception Centre, here we were to process any family within the
Brigade of Gurkhas that were working here in Nepal and account for them, some
of the families were taking part in the exercise but not all of them, which I
thought was a bit nuts, but hey that was their choice, anyway, poor Jackie
McCulloch had scenario where her house had cracks in the walls, the gas and
water couldn’t be shut off (to avoid any further damage if an explosion
occurred), she left her dog behind (which she really didn’t want to do), she
was fine in herself as she had no injuries.
As she was one of the first to reach the Families Reception Centre and
was processed, we actually were able to put her to work by helping us with any
of the other families that came in.
Throughout the day things happened as a
result of the earthquake but later on there was an aftershock and in the event
of the aftershock Jackie’s dog had been killed (she is well and fine really,
it’s all play acting so don’t panic).
Another wife also died in the incident.
It does bring it home to you as to what can happen during these events.
Anyway, the civilians were stood down at
around 2000hrs and the rest of us military people had to battle it through
until much later, but we were eventually stood down for the night at around
2330hrs, we were all supposed to stay on camp in the transit accommodation as
we were allowed to leave camp, however, as my house is actually on camp I snuck
back to my own bed but I have to make sure that I am back before 0600hrs.
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