Beast Within

As sentient, rational beings, we tend to take pride in having conscious control of our decisions. The hard truth that we sometimes find very difficult to acknowledge is that we are running on very biological, very fallible hardware. No matter how high above the rest of the animals we like to imagine ourselves, we are actually crawling around on all fours together with the rest of them, clawing ourselves from place to place to satisfy our primitive, primeval cravings. To beat this irrational hunger, to seperate oneself from this corporeal husk, would that not be ultimate triumph of Man over beast? Unfortunately, flesh is just as much a part of us as soul; the incoherent whims of the body jostle with emotional and logical thoughts for room within our minds.

Rivers

You're swimming along a fast-moving river. every once in a while, it branches into a few streams. If you react fast enough, you can direct yourself into the stream that you want to go into, and feel good about yourself. That is, until the next junction looms. If you didn't manage to go down the path you wanted, you could try to swim against the current, and eventually tire yourself to the point of drowning. Or, you could just keep on going forward, and make sure that you succeed at the next junction. So the river flows, and so you flow along with it.

Complacency and regret are the two most dangerous things in life.

There's dust on everything

Hello, I'm typing this from a little place called Australia.

Although such a long time has passed, I don't really have a lot to update on, which goes to show just how little actually happens around here. The first week was pre-insertion so basically we just hung around, "acclimatising to the weather", which in case you were wondering was pretty cold, with temperatures peaking at 26 degrees C and going down as low as 7 degrees C.

When we finally entered the training area, we were greeted by a huge patch of dust, rocks and dust. Seriously, you cannot go above 20kph without kicking up a sandstorm behind your vehicle, and anything you leave on your table will receive a fine coat of powder after a few hours. The most taxing period was the first 5 days in the training area, where our line-laying training was put to the ultimate test to lay close to a hundred telephone lines to various parts of the camp, nearly completely suspended overhead. It was challenging of course, but the feeling of calling home after a week using IDD lines that you set up yourself is a satisfaction that other vocations will never experience :D

And then there's the rebro duty. Occasionally, we will be sent up to this secluded hill in pairs to man a rebro station, and basically left to our own devices for 6 days. When I went up there for the first time as the first detachment, there was literally nothing up there and we had to set up tents and radios. It's basically windier, dustier and colder than anywhere at sea level, which is kind of sucky, but still I survived so I'm not complaining. My second duty is coming soon, but now we have lots of awesome stuff like electricity set up so all's good.

It feel's like just a few weeks ago when it was my friends and I hanging around after school, studying and trying hard not to get distracted, playing Monopoly Deal, playing with boomerangs, eating at the caifan stall and the chicken rice stall, and realising that we had failed at not getting distracted. Now the next batch of NJCians steps up to take the challenge, so I'd just like to wish all of you good luck :) (that is if any of you even come here).

I realise that all I want for my birthday is to be able to celebrate it with family and friends. Luckily, that's a present I'm confident of receiving.