Originally posted by Gordonator:
[b]Sometimes she forgets she is a
woman
MAJOR Tan is the new poster girl for women in the Singapore
military.
The petite 1.55m woman is part of the elite Naval Diving Unit,
whose job includes bomb disposal and underwater mine
clearing.
One of her missions was during the 2003 RSS Courageous collision
when she was involved in searching for the missing officers.
But even for a woman, getting emotional on the job is not an
option.
'It was part of my job. I have to see it objectively. It was a
mission and that is the foremost importance.'
Still, the oldest of three children admitted she does have fears
about her work.
'That kind of danger, they are all real, it is a matter of how we
approach it. We take all the safety measures and we are prepared
for the worst case scenarios,' she said.
Major Tan - who enlisted in 1994 - was the unit's first female
diver when she joined it in 2000 and now runs two
departments.
But despite being in a male-dominated environment, she said there
are no issues about her gender.
'When I am with the troops, sometimes I forget I'm a woman,' she
said with a laugh.
Although she always had dreams of joining the men in green, Major
Tan claims she was hardly athletic during her school days.
It was only during her Basic Military Training (BMT) that The
Nanyang Technological University engineering student started
getting into physical training.
And she's never looked back.
She now has over 30 international marathons, triathlons and Ironman
races under her slim belt.
She's also training for the 2007 Adventure Racing World
Championship, a seven-day endurance race which requires trekking,
kayaking, mountain biking, rock-climbing, on very little sleep,
through the Scottish highlands in May this year.
And even though her face shone with excitement as she talked about
scaling mountains whose total ascent comes to 27,000m (Mount
Everest is 8,850m), she revealed she is still afraid of
heights.
'The fear is always there. What matters is how you resolve it,' she
said.[/b]
Wonder how her future hubby needs to do while in bed...
"Dive! Dive! Dive! Go deeper!"
