Off to do stuff for King and Country

[illosipuli]

...or at least sort of. As some of you know, I'm leaving to do my part for the homeland in the form of obligatory military service on Monday. What this practically means is that I'll be gone for the next two weeks and will be offline for most of the time, other than some weekends, from there on out. The service will last for either half a year or a whole 12 months, depending on whether they put me in officer training or not. I'm not particularly excited about this, especially since the whole thing is making me put my studies on hold, but since the government wants me to learn how to shoot, I don't really have a say. Hey, maybe I'll gain something from all of this, you never know. Anyway, don't be surprised if I won't be online very much for a while. Wish me luck!

Here's a short presentation on what I will be learning during the coming months:

[Nuttmegger]

Best of luck. Remember that fall damage is more painful in the real world. I'm pretty sure that's the only major difference.

Stay safe.

[The Sero.ps]

National service... ouch.

Anyway, I'm fairly certain it will be a very interesting experience Hope you can enjoy it

Best of luck. Remember that fall damage is more painful in the real world. I'm pretty sure that's the only major difference.

Stay safe.

No respawns And have you played Minecraft? Fall damage in that is a beach.

[MacNetron.ps]

Try not to rocket jump too much

Good luck mate!

[almightybob.ps]

Sucks that they're forcing you and that you have to interrupt studies, but you never know, you might enjoy it and learn some useful things! Good luck anyway, and we'll be right here when you get back

[mr.brick]

No dead ringers to use either, so yea, good luck!

[Equinoxo]

GLHF! That looks like the noble sport of curling in that video, will you be curling?

[grom.ps]

Sorry you have to do this but I've known a few people who have done Finnish National Service and they mostly say it's not as bad as it seems - try to get a useful speciality after basic training - try to drop lots of hints about computers/IT and try to go for the Finnish equivalent of the Signals (UK army branch who deal with all communications including all of the IT stuff - loads of my work colleagues leant UNIX/Linux in the signals so it paid off for them as they got well paid careers out of service).

More than anything, use the time to learn as much as you can about everything - it's free training after all and have as much fun as you can without killing anyone. Oh, also make as many contacts as you can - they'll help you a lot in later life, trust me
If nothing else, just be thankful you're not in the Israeli army - they pretty much go straight onto the front line (although it pains me to describe Palestine as a front line but that's a different story)

[Wondwi.ps]

Good luck!

[Logan.ps]

Good Luck dude. Hope it's a rewarding experience and that you stay safe!!!! We'll look forward to having you back

[Dances With Playstuff]

I'm sure you'll do good mate, but be careful nevertheless. We'll be awaiting your return

[illosipuli]

Yeah, I'm not too worried about it. I'm sure it'll be fine, I'm just not thrilled about having to spend extra time doing something that probably won't benefit me in any way in the future. Also goddamnit, it snowed last night, just when I hoped to have a nice, snowless, dry winter.

And for your enjoyment...

[Boylee.ps]

Good luck.

[illosipuli]

So, it's been three weeks. I'm on my second weekend off now, holy crap am I tired. Last week especially was really tough, we spent pretty much the whole week outside skiing, shooting and learning how to dig mines into the ground. Generally speaking it's been pretty fun, my "roommates" are fun guys to be around and I find living in the 'corps surprisingly enjoyable. Well, the overnight camp last week was pretty gnarly, but otherwise it's been cool. I was assigned to the artillery, I'll probably specialise in directing artillery fire when my basic training period is over. The worst things so far have been some of the complete morons you have to tolerate, and being excessively tired on vacations. Also I caught a really bad cough over a week ago, I should probably do something about it at some point.

And if I gain nothing else from all of this, at least I can say I've fired and can assemble/disassemble one of these. And you can't help but feel badass when you're in a forest in the middle of the night, in full snow camo and a tactical vest, with a rifle in your hand.

[Nuttmegger]

STOP MAKING FINLAND SOUND AWESOME. ITS PAINFUL.

[illosipuli]

Hah, you wouldn't believe the amount of whinging and moaning I hear every day. I guess the whole thing does sound amazing to an outsider, but when you actually have to be there, it's the worst thing ever to most people. And I have to say, it's not that easy to wake up at 5 or 6 in the morning every day and spend the whole day in the freezing cold outside. That reminds me, I need to put my army clothes on and get going in a minute, don't want to miss my bus...

[Nuttmegger]

THAT'S BETTER.

[Chips.ps]

How to dig mines into the ground? Is that like... T planting the bomb in CS?

Glad you're finding some aspects of it enjoyable

[Kelika]

How to dig mines into the ground? Is that like... T planting the bomb in CS?

Would the code be 735560 aswell?!

[illosipuli]

The mines aren't all that fancy. They're essentially 10kg blocks of TNT that blow up when 150kg of weight is put on them. You twist your entrenching tool (a foldable spade) so that it looks a bit like a pick and bash a hole in the ground (or snow). Then you lob the thing in there, apply the fuse part and cover the whole thing up. And there you have it, drive on that baby in a tank, you're stuck. Drive on it in a truck, you're toast.


What's really starting to bug me about this thing is, that the weekends are too short to fully recover from a week of kicking ass and chewing bubble gum. Also, every time I'm home I feel really out-of-place and can't think of anything to do. When you're under constant stress and always in a hurry to do something, free time just feels dull and boring. And even though I'd love to spend the nights out with buddies, I'm too tired to go anywhere. Today was a good example, I was so tired at 10pm that I decided to stay home instead of going to a friend's house to make drinks. I've been sober for over a month, this can't be normal!