Amen to Josh
Josh IMs me sometime so late that I must be crazy out of it from writing my paper. Anyway, him and I had just had a conversation about life...the point of life and what not. Then a little bit later, he IMs me with this tale. Amazing. It helps cheer me up. I know some of my closer friends have already "noticed", but I am going through a really rough time. It's getting better and at least I feel control over my life again. I just think that when situations happen like what happened to Josh, we should all take time and reflect. I never put enough time into reflecting.
Josh writes:
"There is a point to all of this. I swear.
It was late. Around 1 am. I was still hung over from the night before. I was hungry. Here in Korea you cant exactly drive to your late night fast-food joint. I was scrounging through the food I had in my room trying to find something that required little effort that my stomach could handle. I decided on popcorn. I never eat popcorn but I have had this box of popcorn for the longest time. On the bag it said microwave for 4 minutes. I knew that was way too long. I put it in for 3 minutes. I walked away to make a phone call. There was still 30 seconds left on the timer when I noticed that the microwave was full of smoke. I responded quickly. I threw the fan up in the window, started waving a towel at the smoke alarm. Not a huge deal at this point. Much to my dismay, the red light started blinking and alarm started going off. Not a big deal if you are living in a house or your own apartment. Here on an Air Force Base the smoke alarms are all wired directly to the Fire Department. You cant take the batteries out because that is considered destruction of government property. To compound the problem I have alcohol in my room, and I know that if the Fire Department comes they are going to have a look around and Im going to get busted. Im trying to dispose of evidence and get the smoke out of my room before the buildings fire alarm goes off and we have to evacuate the building. I have people knocking on my door asking if everything is ok. It is chaos. It went from trying to make a calm bag of popcorn to complete chaos...mayhem...pandemonium.
One of my neighbors went to get the floor manager to ask him what I should do about the alarm. He says its not a big deal. He said to just call the Fire Department and let them know what was up. When I call they are pretty cool. They just take down my information, tell me everything is cool, and suggest I just keep trying to ventilate my room. The smoke alarm turns off. Things are calming down. Major problem is over. Now I just have pissed off neighbors. Ive wasted 2 full nights worth of alcohol. A room with a stench of biblical proportions, and Im still hungry. The microwave is still leaking smoke but now I had multiple fans going. I was afraid to open the microwave because then a large quantity of smoke would come out and possibly set the alarm off again. I decided the best thing to do at this point was to go get something to eat. I grabbed a friend and we went to the one place on base there is to get something to eat at 1 am.
We come back an hour later. Its now around 0230. The room still smells, but not terribly so. I decided that this was the time to try and extract the charred bag of popcorn from my now brown microwave. I get a plastic bag, throw the popcorn in it, tie it up, and head to the dumpster. When I get to the dumpster my friend and I notice something. There is a couch sitting next to it. I dispose of the popcorn and start inspecting the couch. Cant find anything wrong with it. Its a beautiful brown leather full sized couch. My friend didn't have room for the couch in his room, so he didn't want it. I however could not let this couch go to waste. Now the new problem. The dumpster is a full 300 yards away from my dorm, and I live on the 3rd floor. I have never backed away from the challenge. It was hard, but we managed. It took about 40 minutes, but we accomplished our mission. After we got the couch in my room, he went and got some beers from his room and we sat up till about 0600 watching My Name Is Earl.
The irony behind the whole situation is that if I wouldn't have burnt the popcorn, I never would have taken my trash out at 2 oclock in the damn morning. Some of you might be thinking What's the big deal? You found a couch. Things are a bit different living on a military base in South Korea...Trust me. My couch is a huge deal. All the guys are jealous. Its funny how things work out. How something so bad can actually turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Now the reward here, my couch, was obvious and almost immediate. The couch is really a metaphor for all good things in life. You always have to keep your head up because for every action, there is a reaction. It took some work, some sweating, a lot of effort, but I managed to turn a bad situation into something great. I makes me think of how we would all be if we applied this to all aspects of our lives. Sometimes the bad things put you in the place you needed to be for something even better to happen."
I wuv you Joshie.
Josh writes:
"There is a point to all of this. I swear.
It was late. Around 1 am. I was still hung over from the night before. I was hungry. Here in Korea you cant exactly drive to your late night fast-food joint. I was scrounging through the food I had in my room trying to find something that required little effort that my stomach could handle. I decided on popcorn. I never eat popcorn but I have had this box of popcorn for the longest time. On the bag it said microwave for 4 minutes. I knew that was way too long. I put it in for 3 minutes. I walked away to make a phone call. There was still 30 seconds left on the timer when I noticed that the microwave was full of smoke. I responded quickly. I threw the fan up in the window, started waving a towel at the smoke alarm. Not a huge deal at this point. Much to my dismay, the red light started blinking and alarm started going off. Not a big deal if you are living in a house or your own apartment. Here on an Air Force Base the smoke alarms are all wired directly to the Fire Department. You cant take the batteries out because that is considered destruction of government property. To compound the problem I have alcohol in my room, and I know that if the Fire Department comes they are going to have a look around and Im going to get busted. Im trying to dispose of evidence and get the smoke out of my room before the buildings fire alarm goes off and we have to evacuate the building. I have people knocking on my door asking if everything is ok. It is chaos. It went from trying to make a calm bag of popcorn to complete chaos...mayhem...pandemonium.
One of my neighbors went to get the floor manager to ask him what I should do about the alarm. He says its not a big deal. He said to just call the Fire Department and let them know what was up. When I call they are pretty cool. They just take down my information, tell me everything is cool, and suggest I just keep trying to ventilate my room. The smoke alarm turns off. Things are calming down. Major problem is over. Now I just have pissed off neighbors. Ive wasted 2 full nights worth of alcohol. A room with a stench of biblical proportions, and Im still hungry. The microwave is still leaking smoke but now I had multiple fans going. I was afraid to open the microwave because then a large quantity of smoke would come out and possibly set the alarm off again. I decided the best thing to do at this point was to go get something to eat. I grabbed a friend and we went to the one place on base there is to get something to eat at 1 am.
We come back an hour later. Its now around 0230. The room still smells, but not terribly so. I decided that this was the time to try and extract the charred bag of popcorn from my now brown microwave. I get a plastic bag, throw the popcorn in it, tie it up, and head to the dumpster. When I get to the dumpster my friend and I notice something. There is a couch sitting next to it. I dispose of the popcorn and start inspecting the couch. Cant find anything wrong with it. Its a beautiful brown leather full sized couch. My friend didn't have room for the couch in his room, so he didn't want it. I however could not let this couch go to waste. Now the new problem. The dumpster is a full 300 yards away from my dorm, and I live on the 3rd floor. I have never backed away from the challenge. It was hard, but we managed. It took about 40 minutes, but we accomplished our mission. After we got the couch in my room, he went and got some beers from his room and we sat up till about 0600 watching My Name Is Earl.
The irony behind the whole situation is that if I wouldn't have burnt the popcorn, I never would have taken my trash out at 2 oclock in the damn morning. Some of you might be thinking What's the big deal? You found a couch. Things are a bit different living on a military base in South Korea...Trust me. My couch is a huge deal. All the guys are jealous. Its funny how things work out. How something so bad can actually turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Now the reward here, my couch, was obvious and almost immediate. The couch is really a metaphor for all good things in life. You always have to keep your head up because for every action, there is a reaction. It took some work, some sweating, a lot of effort, but I managed to turn a bad situation into something great. I makes me think of how we would all be if we applied this to all aspects of our lives. Sometimes the bad things put you in the place you needed to be for something even better to happen."
I wuv you Joshie.