Catching up

A lot has happened since my last post. For starters...

• finished my training in Kingston, ON
  
• broke up with JM, got back together, broke up, got back together, and finally in December 2009 broke up for the last time.
  
• met Olek in Calculus, started seeing each other casually, then as we got to know each other through the next few months, fell in love. It's a long and complicated story for me to tell. Maybe in another post. But together we're now the happiest we've ever been.
  
• got a job at a Tim Hortons working overnights, until I can go to Kingston again in July
  
• ...

post from 3 June 2010
Feet

Summer of 2009, I went to Kingston, Ontario for my Apprenticeship training as a Signals Operator. It was four months of good, hard work. Towards the beginning of the last month, we had a short navigation exercise in place of our usual ruck march. I had two teammates, JP from Alberta and PE from PEI (strangely). One person would be the Radio person, carrying the radio, making radio checks, that sort of thing. Another would be the Navigator, leading the rest of us. And the last person was deemed the Safety person, making sure everyone got water/shade.

The Radio person would carry the radio in their rucksack. To make things easier, we swapped rucksacks.

Now, PE is a pretty humble (maybe even simple) but strong/convicted person. If something makes sense to him, it's sort of absolute in his mind. If it doesn't make sense, it doesn't really matter, so long as he knows what to do. I think we decided to put the radio into JP's or my ruck. We had three rucks: Radio, EP's and Spare (either mine or JP's, I can't remember). To switch up the roles, we would just switch rucks.

For one branch, I carried EP's, and it was entirely too heavy. I know mine was just a hair under the requirement of, I think, 11kg. I can't guess how heavy his ruck was, but 11kg was just right for me, being a rather petite Chinese girl. His was too heavy for me, and that should have been the end of discussion right there. I should have demanded we switch the radio, but I didn't. However, partway through the route, I asked to take a break.

I think JP was navigating at the time. He said no, so that we could make good time. I then asked if we could walk slower. Again, he said no. And since I didn't draw the line earlier, I should have drawn it there. But there's something about the military attitude that tells you anything less is weakness and weakness doesn't belong.

I don't know why. Nobody takes me seriously. Maybe I trust too easily.

So we continued, and I fell behind. JP and PE would stop periodically and encourage me to hurry up.

After the navigation exercise was the Battle Fitness Test (13km ruck march in 2hr 26min wearing 24.5kg; then fireman-carry a soldier of similar height/weight for 100m in 60s; then shovel out a box of gravel into another box [roughly 2m by 1m and less than 1m deep] in 6min).

Aside
I just finished reading this blog entry about a navy PO doing a BFT.

"The pain to an extent, the mental discipline of ignoring the pain, the running, the walking, countering the increasing desire to quit, counting breaths, were all variable within my realm of control. Leg spasms and Charlie-horses, however, were outside of that realm of control and threatened to ruin everything."

That's something I can really appreciate. It's not just the physical exertion, but the mental exertion to block out the pain and keep going and refusing to quit. I've done two BFTs in my life so I can't tell you if it gets harder or easier.

And after the BFT was the 2-week field training exercise (FTX).

That was the hardest month of my life, physically. And I wasn't sure how my relationship with JM would survive. (There's another story for another day, the story of Andre, a man I met in Kingston. Thinking about him and how he'd impacted my life helped me through that month.)

I managed to get to the base hospital once after the FTX and spoke with a nurse of sorts. She told me I had a "metatarsal drop". Basically, there's an arch where our toes join our feet, sort of like the undersides of our knuckles on our hands. And that arch is what absorbs impact first when our feet touch the ground. But for my left foot, one of those toe bones had fallen out of the arch, so that now, all that impact would go on that one knuckle-joint. She asked how old I was, and then recommended I get out of the military. I wanted to scream.

Fortunately, she did give me some spongy cushions to put in my shoes. It might help, she said. Maybe.

Thankfully, they worked, though they were so awkward to use, that I only wore them every second day, and that worked out fine in Kingston.

After




post from 7 Feb 2010
Math

I feel like I'm going through a sort of second adolescence.

When I was a teenager growing up, I was trying to figure out who I was. Now, I have a clearer idea of who I am, but I'm not so sure where I will fit into society.

I guess this started a few days ago when I went to talk to a program advisor on campus. I thought I was taking the correct courses, but turns out I'm not. So I'll have to change my program, maybe. If I'm lucky, they'll let me use my current courses.

I talked to a Math Advisor, who happened to be my Multivariable Calc professor! I told him I'm not certain what I like to do with Math or where even I could be employed in the future.

(I must pause for a moment to address this: In my mind, it seems very clear that I'm going to marry Olek, he'll be an Actuary and I'll be--whatever I'll be--so he can ring in all that money and I could potentially be a career housewife. It's an interesting image to have so clear in my mind...)

As I was talking to my prof, I mentioned that I love Math but don't terribly enjoy working with numbers. He remarked that it wasn't so uncommon as those who love literature but dislike spelling. I said I might have been interested in going into either Academia or Pure Math, except that I'd need to be much better at it. And then he said something that sobered me up:

"If you're the kind of person who wakes up with a problem you came up with that night, and decides to spend all day solving it, and enjoy every moment of it, then maybe Academia is for you. But then you're competing with hundreds of people just like that, and you'll have to be the best of those. Then you move onto Graduate Studies, and you'll have to be the best of those. Then you go to find employment and--do you see where I'm going with this?"

I may have the love of math, but I don't have this competitiveness.

I've also had to come to terms with an unusual presupposition I've had. I've had to finally realise that I am, in fact, not a prodigy. I'm not specially gifted at any one thing. Instead, I am somewhat gifted in several areas.


Dad told me a Chinese fable. Here's what I recall from it:

One cannot look at two things and see both clearly.

One cannot listen to two things and hear both clearly.

In the animal kingdom, there is an animal [a lizard, I think] with no talents except one. He cannot run or jump or swim, but he can fly. Yet, in the animal kingdom, there is an animal with five talents. He thinks he is so smart, that when a predator comes, he can do any of these five things to get away. Yet when the predator comes, he cannot decide quickly enough and is eaten anyway. But the other animal, the one that is so dumb that he can only do one thing, when the predator comes for him, he does the one thing he knows how to do and flies away.

I get the point.

I think I'll go into education. It's a humble profession, but I'm not a terribly humble person. I always want to teach everything--I want to tell everyone everything... I always assume everyone wants to know the things I know. But that isn't always so, and I gotta learn that.

Though I might just work consultation... Or any odd-job, really...

"People who are good at math are often good problem-solvers. And some employers just look for that," my prof had said, "not just at the degree."

I wouldn't just be doing math at my job... My prof said that there's a shortage of science teachers... I wonder if I can fill that role...

For Education, I'd need two "teachable" subjects... Math and...?
Comp Sci (I already have some credits...)
Physics (that would be a BITCH to get a degree in...)
Art (if there's no one else)
Music (if there's no one else)
English (a degree I really don't want to have to get)



So, now to think who I'll be to the world...


It's so strange--I mean, I'm so young... And I've found someone whom I want to be in my life--the rest of my life... I want to make him waffles for breakfast, exchange kisses on our way to work, eat last night's leftovers for lunch, come home to each other, make dinner together, exchange stories about how our respective days went, eat together, maybe have a drink and relax and fall asleep together.

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