Well, I have a law interview in a few hours, and to be honest, I'm terrified.

Actually, it's quite surprising how easy it is to be afraid if you put your mind to it. Law is 15 tims oversuscribed, so doesn't that mean I have less than a one-in-fifteen chance of getting in? Suppose I don't, then where would I go? Even if I do, is it really what I want? How am I supposed to survive there? What if I don't impress the inteviewers? What if old habits really do die hard, and I say something really stupid? What if I look like a lost-in-translation Mongolian tribesman after styling my hair?

Obviously, paranoia rears its ugly head. And I still think I'm going to say something really silly. to mask the fact that No preparation was involved.

Well, I never thought I'd say this, but thank goodness for the army.

It's been a long week! And it's nice to end it on a quiet note, without anyone from the outside world desecrating my sanctum of peace.

Actual work has begun, and while it does prove itself to be infintely more exciting han sitting in a classroom randomly clicking on notes about engines that the typical arts student would rather blow his brains out and mop them up later than attempt to comprehend, the stretches of boredom have enabled me to solve many a sudoku puzzle, discover the truths of the universe and watch the grass grow like an indifferent mother watches her child grow into a slave of the education system.

To the disappointment of several sadistic trainees, however, a hard yank on the back of the mechanic jumpsuit does not produce a wedgie of cosmic proportions. Also, almost dying at the hands of an idiot and a landrover is less enticing and more stupid than it sounds.

---

In our fast-moving world, the emphasis is on effeciency and convenience. How quickly you can get to point A to point B, how fast you can cook the 3-minute maggi noodle, how clear-cut your masters thesis is, how fast you derive the maximum enjoyment out of that music album or scream and rip it to shreds. As a result, there isn't much room left for traditional values.

This isn't the case of a perfectly good traditional systems and regimes being substituted in favour of more ruthless, unfeeling policies, however ; Not all the time, anyway. Even though Avril Lavigne topping record charts and the Backstreet Boys reforming may have signs of the world ending, the demise(or relative silence) of other hemorrhage-inducing artists does show that even in our forsaken age there is still some sort of natural balance.

Even if old ministers who honestly look more like prunes, raisins, and other varieties of dried fruits may wax lyrical about the importance of paying homage to the past, the fact is that, well, what's past is past, and someitmes there isn't any lesson to be gleaned from it that hasn't already been endlessly preached by other relics of the past, for example, above-mentioned ministers themselves. You'd almost wonder if they were underscoring their own importance by tlking about the importance of the past.

Like they said in Meet the Robinsons ; Keep Moving Forward. Because if you're not moving forward, you're either in stasis or backpedaling, both of which are a lot less fun. It doesn't matter that the road forward is one riddled with disasters, nasty potholes and fattening fast food chains, at some point things have to look up.

....Right? Right?

The higher up we rise, the less we see of the ground below us.

Even at the dawn of civilisation, people worked together with nature, living off the land, just only fulfilling their needs. Trees were ample shelter, despite tales of the Thor not being particularly fond of trees. Soil was a perfectly good resting surface, and the stars were arguably the most beautiful things ever to exist before the advent of the computer. And maybe it still is.

One would be hard-pressed to argue against the fact that human civilisation has come a long way, the exception being the couch potato who'd seen one too many episodes of The Jetsons in a row. At the same time, however, one barely goes a single day without looking up at large clouds of smog that block the sky, electrical appliances that rendered the Gods of Thunder unemployed and subsequently working as those ancient toilet cleaners you always see around from your employment day to your retirement day. In fact, pollution has become such a problem it's almost as if the Earth has been deemed by its wilful masters to be irrelevant by now.

I guess people just don't get the idea. Just like a sergeant/warrant/(rank here) is a sad lonely soul without chao recruits or fucking trainees to scream at, us humans are really nothing without the world around us. If electricity was cut off from the entire world due to a thermomechanic alternating current through the epicenter of the universe, we'd be deader than an eskimo in a desert, without a dessert.

It may be fun to float in the air and levitate around the clouds, but when you lose sight of the ground, and everyone else there is but mere insects, present only to pay tribute to your very countenance, you stop being a member of the world. It's almost unnatural that the more you distance yourself, the more powerful you become.

I would say something really clever and wise yet funny right now, but the shock of having a landrover almost hit my head still rattles me.

---

They (who I have no idea really is) say that freedom is the ultimate form of restraint. I'm not really sure how true this is, since said person probably never lived in a communist nation before. But give a person enough freedom, and he'll probably choose to restrain himself in some way.

This happens because of the power of the society. By giving the people freedom, society gains power. As a result, society gets to choose who they wish to make their champion whom they rally behind, or who whose wool to kiwi to make them the black sheep of the herd. People for the most part are largely the same, but everyone has a certain kink in them that makes them their own little special snowflake. Some people like to be alone, where people don't interrupt their thoughts, some people feel an unhealthy urge to prove their worth that it becomes irksome, and some people oil their own body and walk around in tights in a bout of self-delusion. As a result, people who use their freedom by not keeping these kinks in check find themselves battered and alienated by society. It's almost like politics - The most honest people lose out.

As a result, the people who used to freedom to exercise restraint remain relevant in society, and the resulting social hierachy becomes a sort of twisted order in its own way. And order is the result of restraint. If you leave people to their own devices, eventually they'll create their own order. Even in a land of chaos, chaos is the order of the day - It's only called chaos because rich people are upset they can't own the country.

As someone who doesn't have a problem with restraint or freedom, it makes me wonder why the one time I really need to stop shackling myself the restraint always overwhelms the freedom.

Greater than the rest of the world? Perhaps so.

Seeing as how mecha (mechanic, not big Japanese robots as I'd like) training has been rather boring so far, I have taken up a new hobby : Foresight and Portent!

To demonstrate my overwhelming talent as a protege, allow me to show you some of my latest insights :

I will be doing guard duty next week.

Within the next five years, there will be an earthquake in Taiwan, since, well, there pretty much always is.

I will probably not care.

I can even quote myself from the future!

"ZZZZZZZ" - Lying under a 5-tonner or a landrover in a few months.

"I can count the number of Hanson fans in the world on my fingers now!" - After losing both my hands in an self-inflicted accident.

So, well, nope, I really haven't been doing much.

And the mind pays the price.