short subtle lesson in optimism

[comment 6th Feb 06: first post of the year. somehow it disappeared and i had to repost it today. The post below comes immediately after this one by time of writing]

Its been a long time since i last blogged. To be exact, i think i haven't blogged at all this year. And we're already past the first month of it.
i've been spending the nights at home for the past two weeks. This will continue for an indefinite amount of time, and may last till 20th Feb. The reason is that i'm currently attached to the ISTEC, School of Military Intelligence to help out in the very tedious process of drawing map overlays on the computer using some obscure GIS (geographical information system) software. Its commercial, proprietry, and probably very expensive, and not very user-friendly in my opinion. Such work entails drawing thousands of polygons and hence millions of mouseclicks. very good for training a specific hand-eye coordination haha...of course these things sound quite impressive, especially those military organisation acronymns, but we who are involved in this work for too long have grown numb to it already. There is nothing interesting to it, and its very very tedious. I wish we had software to replace this work, and if DSTA actually worked at it, they'll get it done. But of course i am very critical and skeptical of DSTA's work. To say the least, their software is NOT user-friendly. I won't even bother going into the technical details of their products, and the products of our local defence industry in general. I've seen it, and i think it sucks. Never mind that ST Engineering doesn't seem to be exploiting carbon fibre composites in the best way. Who cares if you make your UAV with that?! Its just as flimsy and i probably it will break with repeated hard handling. What a great way to add more cost to your product.
okay stop. my criticisms never end...
on thursday evening i decided to spend the night back at sungei gedong camp, where i'm permanently based at. And make my way down to Pasir Laba Camp, which is my current temporary workplace. That'll save my mum from having to wake up early in the morning to fetch me to camp. And Jurong's very very far away from the east. I crossed my fingers while having dinner (mmm very good Hokkien fried mee, always my favourite) at the basement food court at Lot One shoppers' mall. Don't get bound my some errand. And then that fateful call came. My friend (colleague) is very busy with some work and we're running a tight schedule (which i'm freed of to assist in the work at SMI). It also happened that he was the orderly sergeant (we call it AOS for Armour HQ Orderly Sergeant) that day and since there would be some important inspection at the Ops Room the following day, he would have to spend the night studying lots of standing orders and procedures pertaining to emergencies. Since I was returning to camp, I would have to take over his job, spend the night in the Ops Room studying and face the inspectors tomorrow.
As it turned out, those inspectors were mostly handled by our guys from the Ops Branch (of course, not by the NSF third sergeants). I stood at a corner with the sergeant i'd be handing over my duties to after the inspection, and the day's duty orderly officer. Us sergeants didn't get many questions, and all that i had prepared for had been in vain. I was relieved when it was all over and it turned out not to be much. I forgot those negative thoughts of "why me?"
And i learnt some things too.
I am now probably the NSF third sergeant most aware of our camp's crisis management procedures.
And I learnt what being Optimistic means when i observed the guy who was taking over my duty.
Its quite an irony how my friends like to describe me as optimistic. As much as it is flattering, and as much as i used to be (or maybe only appeared that way) in the past, i guess this cannot be said of my current self. I must admit that i am now a more pessimistic person. And the other guy just seems quite cavalier to the impending inspection. His demeanor (?) was so carefree, it was to me like a model of what a person one could potentially become when freed from the shackles of pessimism.
That was such a discovery.