So Long And Thanks For All The Fish.... For Now...

Unfortunately I will off to Thailand for one month and won't be able to update this blog till about the 2nd of April. Nevertheless I will bring my trusty journal along and update that, hopefully I will get some good blog posts out of that when I come back. I apologize for the inconvenience but don't panic, I will be back.

Sloth

Today, I was taking the bus back home after running some errands buying stuff I will need for my Thailand trip. Seated in front of me was a guy who had a earphone on, so one would logically assume he was listening to music or something like that. Logic is such a lair. Why do I say that? Well here is what happened. His handphone rang, so he reached into the bag he was carrying and took out his phone. One would again assume he would answer the phone, put the phone on his ear and say, "hello" right? Wrong again. Instead he took out his phone, attached it to the earphone adaptor and answered his phone. It turns out that he was not listening to music with the earphones he had on, instead it was his phone's handsfree kit.

Why is this significant? Well I think it is very scary when putting a phone to your ear to answer it requires too much effort. The original purpose of a handsfree kit is to enable a driver to talk on the phone even if he is driving. Little did we know that now the handsfree kit is now a device that encourages laziness. We live in a world obsessed with making our lives easier, a bit too obsessed I think, so much so that we have become lazy because of it. Stuff like the remote control, fast food home delivery, the escalator and so on have made us slothful, It is down right wrong, it is a sin in fact and with the increasing rates of obesity in the world, I am not sure that encouraging sloth is a good idea. Am I saying that we should do away with those things? No, but we should be wise about the way we use these things, they provide conveniences, they are not suppose to encourage sloth.

As the saying goes, we make the world that make us. So pehapes we are asking for it making a world like that. But I don't believe we do not have a choice, we always have a choice about the way we live our lives, so I guess my takeaway from this little encounter on the bus is to choose wisely. With that said, I am going for a run, a long one.

SOC

The infamous 1.5 KM SAF SOC (Standard Obstacle Course) is a yearly bane for all SAF personel holding a combat vocation. It is also one of the things that convinces me that the world is fair, some are just more fair than others. Why do I say that? Well I have seen people literally just laughing through the entire thing, thinking nothing of it, flying through the obstacles like poetry in motion. Passing the under 9 minute timing is nothing to these kind of people, some of which finish the course in under 8 minutes. Then there are people like me, who need nothing short of divine intervention to pass. The world is fair.

I took my SOC test last week, not expecting to pass. The conditions were bad, the weather sucked, I was not feeling all that well and I was under alot of pressure. Our OC wanted all of us in the company to pass before we went to Thailand for ATEC and I wanted to only suffer the evils of the SOC only once and did not want to run it again. In the words of my CSM, "Do it once, do it good."

I tried to get my head in the game at the start line, visualizing each obstacles along the way, saying a quick pray to God for strength and that whatever happens, it will be according to his will. On the word GO! my detail started running. At the very next moment I was at the finish line with everything happening in between a blur. Looking at my watch I went, "WOW! I actually passed!" The world is fair. If it is not I can be sure that I have a God who loves me and looks out for my interest no matter what. All things do indeed happen for the good of those who love Him.