It was a pretty sedate if not quite sedated Saturday COS in not-so-sunny Gedong, I was initially under the impression that I'd finally be able to overturn that sleep deficit of mine but apparently waking at 5am for flag raising (in an otherwise empty battalion) thinks otherwise.

The week started off interestingly enough, a semi-important presentation to some visiting general with loads of crabs and a couple of stars floating around to grace the occasion and 3 chocolate bars ferrying them around, imagine! Yet I somehow got the impression that they didn't really care how well we presented. Though the foreign one did pepper us with a few questions, it was probably more out of polite curiosity than anything else, and I got a strong vibe that it really didn't matter to our side at all so long as there were no major complaints. Oh well.

The rest is only noteworthy for how unremarkable it was. Greasing the rack pins on our bridges is a tedious task; involving degreasing each of 748 pins (try saying that number out in Chinese lol) by way of vigorous twisting and wiping them individually with newspaper before going over it all again with a fresh coat of grease. We did that for 3 bridges on Wed, and what I found remarkably unremarkable was that amidst the twist, pull, degrease and repeat, twist, pull and repeat, barely a thought crossed my mind. I seriously found myself thinking about why I wasn't thinking about anything, till that thought itself was shoved to the back of my head beneath the mindless repetition. It's not like I'm new to repetition, shooting made sure of that, yet it's as if there's zero stimulus in the work I'm doing, or it's so totally mindlessly absorbing that I'm unable to wander whilst doing it, besides occasionally cursing under my breath as I wipe my sweat with my sleeve or knee, hands too dirty you see. I'm honestly quite scared whenever I stop to evaluate, if you will, the extent that my mind has degenerated over the past months.

Well anyway, time to type something random. I've been thinking (oh the irony given what I just typed above) and I suppose a lot of grief and frustration we have is due to our expectations, and more specifically, due to a mismatch between these expectations and reality. I've got loads of section mates complaining that they don't feel like they're being treated as sergeants; that we don't enjoy the privileges which they feel we deserve. Though I obviously wouldn't balk at greater privileges, I don't think things are that bad, I mean, what more do you want to ask for? Expectations that arise from a misplaced sense of entitlement are obviously begging to be disappointed. I guess not having had had a true taste of reality, and constantly being rewarded for most of the things we've been doing in much of our early life, we've come to expect alot; be it recognition, material recompensation etc for effort towards anything we do, and this results in a faulty or truly unrealistic gauge of the proportion of effort:reward. I haven't quite come to terms with it myself and occasionally find myself wondering why the world isn't bending over backwards to kiss the ground at my feet for every little thing I do, every little pearl of wisdom that spills from my mouth. Cause that's obviously the way the world's supposed to work, right? Obviously that's only one way to look at it. In such cases it's imperative to relook our mindset to adjust our expectations accordingly and be less delusional about things. But what about when expectations aren't overly high; when reality simply fails to meet expectations where it should. It would obviously be a travesty to resign oneself to the reality of things; who'd change things (for better or worse) otherwise? Like most things there's probably a happy medium between delusional and cynical resignation for each of us, and what I'm trying to say is that it's very important to learn to choose your battles. Sometimes when you give up you might be right that you're wrong, that's better than being wrong that you're right, but if you're passionate about it maybe it doesn't matter either way.

More than a little presumptuous I'm aware, and probably an overly simplistic treatment but that's the "best" I can muster for now.

Bleh off to sleep now. Just found out that tomorrow morning's convoy was cancelled so I retracted my am off for nothing. I really do hope we win today's match though :/