You’ll be pleased to know that Josh arrived safely in Melbourne yesterday afternoon. He is now ensconced in his little room and being introduced to RAAF life. This week he has introductory lectures, medicals and the like, and will be kitted out in his uniform.
If you have Josh’s mobile number, then feel free to send him an SMS as he has mobile phone reception in his room. You could also possibly call him, but I cannot guarantee he’ll be in his room at the time.
If you would like to write to him, please e-mail me at sludge1948 at hotmail dot com and I will forward his postal address to you!
I know I said adieus before, but something pretty special just happened. I didn’t really want a going away party, I’m not much for them. So, as a lot of you are already aware, Melly has been secretly mischeiving behind my back to gather up the most wonderful collection of inspirational letters. A few moments ago she took me aside and gave them to me to read. Thank you SO much to Mum and Dad, Mark and Nat, Fiona and Rob, Beth, Trina, Ric, Erica and Chris. I cried a bit, laughed a lot and more than anything else simply treasure the words you have sent me.
I’m gonna take them down with me to OTS. It’s truely amazing that there is that many of you who believe in me and my ability to succeed. Simply awesome! Thank you all very much, it means a lot to me!
….don’t know when I’ll be back again. Well, that’s not exactly true, it will be in about 4 months…..exact dates unknown. Tomorrow morning at around 8am I set out for Brisbane Airport with Melly and Freaky Steve. We have to be at the airport, checked in, half an hour before departure. The plane leaves at 10:50am.
From there my wife will bid me farewell as I go off to Officer Training School at RAAF Williams, Point Cook, Victoria. I have been waiting for this day for about 18 months now. After 4 sets of interviews, fitness tests and medicals it’s finally here, and…..I’m a bit nervous.
Yesterday I was in Brisbane for the swaring in ceremony. Though they didn’t do any swaring in, I am apparently now enlisted as an RAAF Officer….all I have to do now is make it through the training! The morning was quite good. I met a few of the people I will be on course with, and thank God above they weren’t drongos…..as was the norm during my time in the Army. There was about 6 of us from Queensland, so I imagine once all the other states have their cadets arrive on course we should have a total of around 30 people. I’m kinda hoping it’s a bit less, as the smaller the group the tight we should be as a team.
The whole idea of being away from family and friends for 4 months, perhaps more, is a bit dawnting. I’ve been waiting in nervous anticipation for so long and the day has finally come, and to be honest I don’t know what to expect. Every one has been telling me I will do well and have fun, I hope they’re right.
I’m trying my best to go into the course with a positive perspective, because in the end I’m gonna need all the help I can get. Being away from my home town, around strangers is going to be trying enough, I’m gonna need all the morale I can muster. On that note, feel free to write to me…Receiving letters is a great pick-me-up. I’ll be getting Melly to pass on my postal details, once I know them, to all those who would like to write. Just let Melly know.
I’ll also be passing on blogs to Melly to post on my site while I am away so that eSinner.com doesn’t get neglected. I will not be able to go into too much detail I wouldn’t think, but general updates and so forth will be included. I’d like to thank all my regular readers for your support of the last while leading up the this important point in my life, and ask that you all stay tuned for more updates in the coming weeks.
Adieus!
Did I ever mention that I hate spammers? My web host disabled all MT comments for all it’s hosted blogs as spammers are targeting the mt-comments.cgi script that is used by MT installations to post comments. It’s a bit of a bemmer really, I had been wondering why I hadn’t been getting any comments in a while, and low and behold, I stumble across this problem while trying to comment on Melly, Fiona and Rob’s blogs. They are with the same webhost, and are having the same difficulties.
Luckily there was a simple way around the problem….renaming the file and editing the config fixed it up. So now we can go back to having a workable blog once again.
In other news, I only have 3 days and a sleep until I fly away to Victoria to start my Officer Training for the Royal Australian Air Force…. I’m starting to get really nervous….but more on that later. For now, I bid you goodnite.