Scripted Monochrome

It’s been a crazy fast 8.5 weeks and here we are exactly 1 week from the POP of my 2nd 1st batch of recruits. The title merely describes the figure epitomising the very last hurdle to clear before my recruits officially become privates.

It’s not been an easy time. Obviously. I’m physically (or at least my melanin count’s off the charts) and mentally burnt, but it’s been somewhat of a pleasure to see how them recruits have progressed from the time they first came in. A mental note to self to give them some reward which I’d promised near the beginning of BMT. Must remember to always keep promises. You cannot afford to ignore that, especially as a commander.

Their appraisals about the commanders came in last week and from what I read the general vibe was that my relative inexperience as a commander did show at times and there was definitely room for improvement. I thank those people who had the courage to express their honest opinions. I was especially encouraged when I read about a few ‘glowing’ appraisals and hope that is what they sincerely think of me.

So here I am, 8 more months to ORD give or take a couple of days. I had breakfast with John today after service and it was a great time of catching up, I’ve drifted a little away from my church friends lately, no thanks to the continous weekend burnings.

I can’t wait for next Sunday to come.

(We can do this.)

http://retrospection.posterous.com/24 in retrospect

Searching for answers on why it’s so hard to be a christian in a military organisation, especially as a junior NCO.

Command is a wonderful experience that teaches you lifelong lessons, but when the upper hierachy values black and white deliverables to the extreme it gets difficult to remain focused on the means by which you achieve those deliverables and in creeps the temptation to compromise ethics and biblical values to get to the end.

As a junior commander from which professionalism and competence is highly demanded from, it gets very demoralising when others, not necessarily my peers, let personal matters cloud their judgement and responsibility in ensuring a fair workload for everyone even though I’d readily admit I’m far from perfect in this area.

I shan’t go into specifics to make sure I don’t get mysterious letters and men in suits knocking on my door. But I guess the problems and challenges which I face are more or less derived from the utter depravity of mankind. The onus therefore lies within me to avoid the temptation of following the footsteps of others who have compromised values. I too need to stop conforming myself to the expectations and demands of others in a manner that is Christlike.

But I’m failing terribly and my flaws only get exaggerated in this military environment.

http://retrospection.posterous.com/trial-by-fire in retrospect

Was formally welcomed into the Zion Family today. Now entitled to crackers and ribena every first Sunday of the month :)

On other thoughts of the day, sociology’s a pretty interesting and rather scientific field of study. Actually its not really a field of study, more like a subset of the general field of economics. Perhaps in the same way that chemistry comes under physics?

Perhaps I should read it up more, along with psychology especially given what I do for NS…

http://retrospection.posterous.com/microcosm in retrospect

I am 20 years old. I lack inspiration, motivation and drive in my life. Is this what they refer to as cynicism as people grow out of their teenage years? The giving in to the constant pressures applied upon me this past couple of weeks speaks like an emotional barometer. Among other things, the lack of things happening in my life is taking a toll on me. God, I need your direction to guide me back to the path from which I so often like to stray. These are doldrums from which I so yearn to break free from. I need to pray much much more and accept what God has for me. It’s 2 weeks to officially reaffirming my faith and still I do so many things most would term un-Christ like. Stop thinking about the big stuff when you haven’t got the basics right. She will come when you are ready, so drop the thought cause you’re far from ready yet. Would you stand up for what you think is right and bear the earthly consequences to uphold your beliefs?http://retrospection.posterous.com/standstill in retrospect

“It’s not that I’m particular naive or ignorant all the time, sometimes I just choose not to let such things bother me.”

“Stop searching for the right person to be your soulmate. Ask yourself if you can be the right soulmate for that person. If your confidence shrinks and you drop your guts that means you’re not ready yet.”

Anyway, batch incoming. Won’t be around with a while.

http://retrospection.posterous.com/more-musings in retrospect

1 year soldier.

And its one week to the next intake of recruits. Time to scrap the SME mentality of, well, throwing smoke ;) heh and get into the zone, so to speak.

What kind of commander do I want to be and what image do I want to portray to my men?

But before that, Switchfoot.

http://retrospection.posterous.com/setting-the-stage in retrospect

Reading an old friend’s blog from the past led me to ponder a little about myself.

You know, many years ago (okay just 3) there was a little bit of craze over personality profiling. Looking back in 20/20 hindsight, it seems now that those days were filled with that classic psychological condition where one reads about something supposed to describe oneself, likes it and reinforces his belief that this is true. I’m sure there’s a name for such a condition and ordinarily I’d spend upwards of an entire afternoon finding about it on wikipedia, reading it to its entirety whilst clicking every single link that sounded interesting and then also clicking links within those links and so on and so forth. I guess that’s where a good large portion of my teenage youth went to huh.

And so, in those days, the very first personality test I took classified me as an INTP. Yup, if you’ll only google a little about it you will find plenty of nuggets of information about it, such as that particular personality type being of Einstein’s and more about the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator.

But I digress.

Anyway, after reading the text provided to me by ACJC to describe how people of our type acted, I got a little interested and decided to do serious googling and did numerous online tests to verify that and pored through the associated reading material. Lots of my thoughts are pretty well encapsulated in my past blogs which you should have no trouble finding. Needless to say, when it comes to Matthaeus, “a little” is a little bit of an understatement.

After going through catcheism class and other things, namely, army, the recent stumbling onto my friend’s blog encouraged yet another thought provoking experience. Have I changed? Am I still an INTP? Do I still want to be an INTP? Do I want to change?

Ordinarily, I’d go through the whole gamut of tests all over again to, well, “check myself out”. Again, the 20 year old me is no longer bothered with such impulsive thoughts. In pokemon terms, I’ve levelled up a few times, so to speak, and now focus on bigger things. Which may not necessarily refer to them being that much better.

So, what’s changed? Nothing much, really. Being myself still feels like myself and there’s nothing really new about that. But hey wait, there seems to be a lot less energy, a lot more cynicism, less hyperactiveness on facebook (but maybe cause of twitter), apathy towards mousehunt, can’t care less about msn, and wait for it… I haven’t played dota by myself at home in months!

Is that what the grown ups call maturity? I don’t know. The underlying major issues still seem to be there, the extremely short attention span when listening to speakers, the associated mind drifting and inability to sit still in church service, the almost Sheldon Cooper-like condescension when when someone gets his or her ideas wrong and most dangerously, the chronic judgement (usually made after the initial moments of my impression) that a certain person will never be smarter than myself.

And wait, I still do have all those geek hobbies. Reading about the latest tech, messing around with the mac, doing personal study on war history and modern geopolitics, thrashing thoughts about theoretical physics and lately fussing over audiophile equipment.

And well, if my memory serves me well (admittedly, it usually does in regard to matters such as this with a few embarassing exceptions), those indeed are some of the classic traits of an INTP.

But then, if you do detailed reads on all the other traits within the MBTI system, which I have, the memory of which has been stored in some dark corner of my gray matter, awaiting an eventual recall for an irrelevant situation or fading away uselessly as is the fate of most of what I read… Wait I digressed again. Well, all the other traits do have their own quirks. So we all have our weaknesses, however much we try to hide it or present it as attractively as possible.

So do we let ourselves subscribe to this system, formulated most incidentally by an INTP himself? Am I going to let myself be defined by what another human thinks about people like me?

There is no right personality that we should look up to. As Christians we are called to become like Christ and nope, I don’t recall ever reading that he had any weaknesses. So why should we let ourselves be limited by what others say of us? Why should I let myself be limited by what others say of me?

Dear God, thank you for what you did two thousand-ish years ago. Please change me for who you want me to be though it will be so difficult and painful. Destroy my resistance to your change. By the way, I do have a place in your Kingdom, right?

This is the war of my life.

http://retrospection.posterous.com/taking-personal-inventory in retrospect

For the times when you realised too late that you opened your mouth for far too long than you should have.http://retrospection.posterous.com/blabbermouth in retrospect

“Love’s a contradiction
Many mirrors and smoke
Love will keep you wishing
My heart will keep me broke”

http://retrospection.posterous.com/mirrors-and-smoke in retrospect