Future worries, what's happening next, stuff
I've been thinking a lot about the near future recently. My own future.
There's the university thing for a start. It's nice to have an offer already, but it's just the start. There are currently two outstanding problems that I have to solve: Financial burdens, and how I'm going to start school when I technically still belong to the army. Both of them worry me equally.
I might have to take a student bank loan for the money. I've calculated a bit, and I think I could use some info here if possible, but I think that I will need about S$150,000 for the entirety of my studying time. That's quite a sum, even though it's lower than what I thought. So I need to get that amount of money from some bank for a while, then I'm going to have to pay them back when I finish.
This branches off to a related, even more future-problem: Archeology isn't exactly a cash cow, and I'm worried that this thing I'm studying will not give me a job. I'm okay with working on something totally unrelated if it pays alright, but I would want to do something that I'm trained to do, and I'm not sure if there's a lot of work for me after my studies. Help, Lotje? :|
My other worry is about when I leave the army. If things go normally, my last day will be on the 7th of September. But UCAS says the first day of school falls on the 1st. Obviously, something has got to give, and I think the military has got to go.
There are two options. One is that they let me leave early, with no strings attached. I go and never look back. This looks to be increasingly impossible because I have heard that they stopped allowing people to do that some time ago. But I'm still going to ask my superiors one more time.
The other option is to go early, on the condition that I have to finish my stint when I'm done, even if I have only one more day left. This is quite stupid, I know, but I have no choice. I could be taking this route too, and come back to serve my remaining time when I'm on my holidays or something. (Yeah, it sounds like prison..)
Both problems have not been solved yet, but I will need to tie these loose ends up quick becauseI don't have much time left. I'm leaving for an overseas training exercise for a month in April, and I still have to do my student visas and stuff.
Gah, so many things.
In current events, I'm undergoing training week after week, in preparation for the overseas thing I guess. It's quite tiring and sometimes I wish I'm out of here sooner. I'm getting there yes, but it can't come fast enough.
I've played Call of Duty 4. It's amazingly fun and intense. People, usually veterans of war and regulars in the military have said that it's eerily similar to real combat situations. I can't say if that's correct since I've never been in one myself, but it's professional enough for me. I know campy when I see one.
Played a bit of Assassin's Creed too. Looks and plays better than I thought. Haven't got very far with it though. I'm playing WoW and The Witcher for now, and I still have Mass Effect in its plastic wrapper...
There's the university thing for a start. It's nice to have an offer already, but it's just the start. There are currently two outstanding problems that I have to solve: Financial burdens, and how I'm going to start school when I technically still belong to the army. Both of them worry me equally.
I might have to take a student bank loan for the money. I've calculated a bit, and I think I could use some info here if possible, but I think that I will need about S$150,000 for the entirety of my studying time. That's quite a sum, even though it's lower than what I thought. So I need to get that amount of money from some bank for a while, then I'm going to have to pay them back when I finish.
This branches off to a related, even more future-problem: Archeology isn't exactly a cash cow, and I'm worried that this thing I'm studying will not give me a job. I'm okay with working on something totally unrelated if it pays alright, but I would want to do something that I'm trained to do, and I'm not sure if there's a lot of work for me after my studies. Help, Lotje? :|
My other worry is about when I leave the army. If things go normally, my last day will be on the 7th of September. But UCAS says the first day of school falls on the 1st. Obviously, something has got to give, and I think the military has got to go.
There are two options. One is that they let me leave early, with no strings attached. I go and never look back. This looks to be increasingly impossible because I have heard that they stopped allowing people to do that some time ago. But I'm still going to ask my superiors one more time.
The other option is to go early, on the condition that I have to finish my stint when I'm done, even if I have only one more day left. This is quite stupid, I know, but I have no choice. I could be taking this route too, and come back to serve my remaining time when I'm on my holidays or something. (Yeah, it sounds like prison..)
Both problems have not been solved yet, but I will need to tie these loose ends up quick becauseI don't have much time left. I'm leaving for an overseas training exercise for a month in April, and I still have to do my student visas and stuff.
Gah, so many things.
In current events, I'm undergoing training week after week, in preparation for the overseas thing I guess. It's quite tiring and sometimes I wish I'm out of here sooner. I'm getting there yes, but it can't come fast enough.
I've played Call of Duty 4. It's amazingly fun and intense. People, usually veterans of war and regulars in the military have said that it's eerily similar to real combat situations. I can't say if that's correct since I've never been in one myself, but it's professional enough for me. I know campy when I see one.
Played a bit of Assassin's Creed too. Looks and plays better than I thought. Haven't got very far with it though. I'm playing WoW and The Witcher for now, and I still have Mass Effect in its plastic wrapper...