(thing) by Nene Sun Aug 11 2002 at 18:22:15
Welcome to another issue of Life in the Swedish Army, the weekly dump of entries from my diary, being written as I go through national service in the armed forces of Sweden. See my wu in this node if this is the first of the LitSA write-ups you've seen. It contains some background info which will be expanded later when I get to writing a proper LitSA metanode.

This week was SLOW. Not slow the way you think about Volvo 240's, more like the way time always moves slowly when you want it to move fast, and vice versa. So in other words, this week was rather boring. Not that I don't consider long lessons in leadership theory and psychology to be meaningful, nor do I actively dislike four-hour passes of parade marching, it's just that there are other things that one gets to do while in the army that are far more enjoyable.

Rant about this week being boring ends here. This week's entries follow!

7th of August, 2002 - 18:23
A new week has dawned, so far without any major surprises. We've seriously begun training for the royal guard duty which awaits us next week, and have also been told what we'll be doing in the future; My position, the title of which I can't translate to English in a satisfactory manner (so I won't try), will have me doing stuff like driving large trucks, taking care of various computers, firing Big Guns(TM), and lots of other similarly stimulating activities. Kind of a jack-of-all-trades position, you might say.

As for the guard duties next week, I was assigned the job of telephone post, meaning on the one side that I don't have to do any of the boring ceremonial stuff normally associated with guarding the royal family, and on the other side, lots of late evenings stuck in a comms room watching security monitors and chatting with, among others, Swedish Secret Service (SÄPO), and, with a bit of luck, some members of the royal family. I am hoping it'll be fun.

(Notes): Accepting feedback: Reject, Defend, Explain, Understand, Change.

9th of August, 2002 - 11:44
Friday, and the week is slowly approaching its end. Due to some rather unfortunate circumstances I did not have the time to write anything yesterday; I witnessed a rather messy drowning accident while I and a few members of my group were having PE at the rather popular beach in Bredsand. Not very pleasant, especially since the poor victim (noone I knew) was quite dead when they finally fished him out. He's the first dead person I've ever seen, possibly the second or third if "not-sures" count. Anyway, this accident combined with my own disastrously bad luck at playing Chicago later that same evening put me in a dreadful mood which lasted until I finally found my way into bed.

Apart from the sad events of friday and lots of parade exercises, the week has been spent on lessons on leadership. We also did a funny group exercise thing called "feedback", the basic idea of which is that every member of the group says exactly what he or she thinks about his or her colleagues. More fun than I expected. Right now however, it is time for lunch, followed by an afternoon of (mostly) cleaning the barracks. I wish I was home already.

As it happened, I was excused from the cleaning due to my unfortunate presense at the site of the accident in Bredsand. One of the officers had gotten wind of what had happened and was considerate enough to call in the crisis group to make sure that none of us who were there were in any way mentally affected by the trauma of seeing a dead guy being fished out of a lake. Oh well.

That concludes this week's events. However, before I finish, I'd like to recommend to all of you one piece of music and one piece of reading no self-respecting geek should be without. <-- day 43-49 | day 57-70 -->
I like it!