Sister-Friend Day/Human Rights Day/Christmas Parade Of Lights (Oklahoma)
2005-12-10 @ 9:41 p.m.

Enlisted into Raven Company yesterday. Thus began a two-year journey, the ending of which I don't give a damn about at the moment because all I'm doing is counting the days to my first book-out. A lot of administrative stuff on the first day, so nothing much happened, although my sectionmates who enlisted earlier said two jokers came over here pretending to be commanders. Surprisingly, the food was still fairly decent at dinner after the parents had all gone back to the mainland. The drinks, however, belong to that indiscriminate variety served at CAP 2002, which is to say that they either taste fairly similar or suspiciously unlike what they're supposed to taste like. To be honest, saying goodbye to my family wasn't as hard as I'd expected. Still waiting to miss my folks!

My section has decided to wake up early everyday so that we won't have to jostle with the rest of our platoon to use the toilets. Since I used to wake up as early as 530 am on school days, 445 am is just a slightly more ungodly time of the morning. I like my section, I really do. A bunch of rather sensible people, not the mindlessly enthusiastic sort you sometimes get in the army. Amusingly enough, there's another Ian in my section, who seems to have had an unsavoury encounter with one of the spirits still said to haunt this side of Tekong. More administrative stuff and surprisingly little regimentation. Either my platoon's blessed with outstandingly humane instructors, or PTP is always this freaking slack.