feel like puking after reading the last post.

anyway army is mind numbing on an unprecedented scale.

but then again it has its compensations, especially in terms of the people you meet. guess i'm lucky to be in a section full of very nice people. and also fairly nice commanders in platoon/company/whatever. in a strange way it's sort of familiar.

civilian life whirls to mad dionysian rhythms and in a way on tekong it's all done for you. all nice and measured, you don't have to decide on anything because it's all laid out for you. minds get suspended even for the tiniest details and decisions that normal people make, such as - what to eat today? what time to sleep? so it's sort of stable and certain. bookout days are kind of disorientating.

as gibbon was wont to remark, his time served in the local militia was not entirely wasted when he got down to writing about the military decline of the roman empire...

2 weeks were spent learning about stuff, some of it quite interesting and not all of which were intended by the people who run/created the army. (and i don't mean things like how to strip and assemble a rifle or load a magazine or tie camou netting to your helmet. and i don't just mean the vulgarities, which are, overall, nothing new.)

but still it is very constrictive. but 2 years (or rather, one year ten months) will pass rather quickly, i hope.