I think a lot and here’s a few things I’ve been thinking about. This is more for me to just keep a journal of than anything else.
Like everyone else, I was asked at a young age, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” Everyone else said scientist, lawyer, doctor, teacher, policeman. But I said, “I want to be an astronaut ” A lot of the adults laughed or wowed in surprise, probably because they were all too aware that Korea didn’t have a space program. Few years after that, I found out that I was near-sighted. So my dream of one day literally going to the moon will probably never happen, but I’ve never lost my wonderment of the vastness of the space above us. I finished watching “From Earth to the Moon” and I liked it for the most part. It left me wondering what could have been.
How has it come to this? Less than 40 years after an event that seemed to unite the world in harmony, we are on the verge of a war without an end. Not war with just another country like Iran or ideology like so called ‘terrorism,’ but a war against anyone who looks differently than us, and who looks at us with anything other than indifference or reverence.
And in the course of human endeavor should we abandon our imagination in lieu of that which makes us mere mortals under the heavenly skies? Shall we be bound by the forces that have governed the limitations of our hopes and dreams? No. Because I believe, and I believe that human achievement in this vast space which we only know of to be ours will displace our fears and mistrust into the stars above, instead of merely relocating our sorrows and frustrations upon others on this lonely planet of ours.
We are, after all, all short-lived travelers circumnavigating one of many stars. And yet we choose, out of our own free will, to ensure that the longevity of anyone other than those of our faith, color, and ideas are voided sooner than our willingness to communicate and understand not our differences, but the similarities that a soul of a child would not be deterred from accepting.
I was deployed for the war as an administrative specialist. Nothing glamorous, no glory. But we trained so hard and and our group was so cohesive that our First Sergeant Basilio, an army special forces soldier, claimed that he would rather be in charge of our platoon than any infantry platoon out there. We ran 5 miles every other day with an occasional 9 miler and few long road marches. We did ambush, patrolling, medivac, and rules of engagement training, and did them again, and again. I was pumping 225 lbs, and was in the gym 5 days of the week for 2-3 hours a time. This was in 100+ degree heat. We roamed the streets in our civilians with concealed pistols. And drove around at times in bulletproof SUVs.
In the last couple weeks, a lot of the things that we’ve been doing in Africa seem to have become declassified as the tensions in the area have become increasingly frequent.
“Many dead” in U.S. strike at al Qaeda in Somalia
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070109/ts_nm/somalia_conflict_dc_93
Besides al-Sudani, Washington has named Comorian Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Kenyan Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan among those in Somalia.
So I suppose now people will know what we were doing under Marine Central Command (MARCENT, recently changed command to the Navy) at Camp Lemonier, Djiobuti. There are some things that I’m more than willing to talk about how the war was. Like how hot it was, how similar in style it was with the movie “Jarhead,” and unlike “Black Hawk Down,” and the kinds of people I met and what I learned from being around different cultures both internally as a soldier in US Army and externally operating within various countries. But some things I will never talk about. Everything else is fair game, as long as you ask the right questions. I’ll be more than honest with people because I feel that is one of the rarely utilitized virtues that keeps my life simple and fulfilling. My mom still doesn’t like it when I smoke cigars once every 6 months. Or when I go out with my friends and end up drinking a bottle or two of beer. But at least I’m always honest what I’m going to do before I leave and I think she appreciates that although I’m not perfect, I’m very honest about my imperfections.
Thanks, Tommy, for the spontaneous get together. I really needed that.
A shotglass shattered on the kitchen floor. No one even flinched. Instead, we all casually gravitated over to help clea up. Brings back some memories, of the times that we all made mistakes. No fingers were pointed, only the immediate willingness to help out. That was probably the biggest thing I took away from being around you guys for 16 months, when we had no one but ourselves to rely on.
-What? We’re gonna be in Kuwait for another 6 months? What the fuck? I wanna get the fuck out of here!
–Oh well. I’m gonna go build a porch.
-Yeah, you go ahead and do that
–I guess I’m gonna have to build it on my own, then.
-Fuck that, I’m not gonna let you build a porch by yourself.
—Yeah shit really hit the fan after you guys left. An IED went off in the security point and a chopper went down at you-know-where.
-If I could freeze time here and leave for a deployment overseas for a year and come back and …
–everything would be exactly how we left it, I’d do that shit again, too.
—Yeah, me too
—-Yeah
-Too bad that won’t happen.
–Yeah, I still think about it a lot, though.
We all went in a little different, and came out a little messed up. But for those 16 precious months, I felt a sense of belonging I haven’t felt since.
We’re all a little sick of the war. Remember when speech and writing used to be so poignant, so inspirational, that you started to believe in something outside of yourself?
Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind. (John F. Kennedy)
You are either with us or against us. (George W. Bush)
Remember how back in 26 June, 2006 I posted that “Warren Buffett gives away $37 Billion Dollars, 85% of his net wealth”? Well, a lot of people that aren’t into investments don’t realize that all of the wealth that he’s giving away is currently in a stock form. Well, now it’s worth $46.1 Billion. Out of 231 countries listed in the CIA World Factbook, the donation would rank at 80th largest GDP, behind Kuwait and before Costa Rica.
So if you want to know how much it is worth now, think about it this way:
Buffett has 474,998 Class A shares of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A), which equals to some 30% ownership of the company.
This will be converted to Class B shares, which multiplies the Class A shares by 30 (=14,249,940).
He will be donating 12.05 million of those shares to 5 philanthropic organizations (84.56% of his net worth), 10 million of those shares going to Bill and Melinda Foundation.
Back in June, Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares (BRK-B) were trading at around $3070.54, which the media used to calculate $37 Billion to easily illustrate the significance of this donation.
Since then, BRK-B shares have been climbing. Today, it closed at $3,650. In the past month, it hit is highest ever, $3,825. At that mark, the donation would have been calcuated as $46.1 Billion Dollars.
-A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives. (Jackie Robinson)
-We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. (Winton Churchill)
-In 1999 the Gates Foundation gave $50 million to malaria research, and I was told that we had just doubled the amount of private money going to fight that disease… About $1 billion is spent each year to combat baldness. (Bill Gates)
http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/09/magazines/fortune/Gates_philanthropy.fortune/index.htm
The world will be introduced to new 7 wonders of the world on 07.07.07. You can vote for your choice here:
http://www.new7wonders.com/index.php?id=426
Only one of the seven wonders of the Ancient World survives — the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. The other six were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.
I’m hoping to visit at most 4 of the candidates of the wonders of the world during my trip down to South America this summer: Chichen Itza, Mexico, Easter Island, Ecuador, Machu Picchu, Peru, and The Statue of Christ Redeemer, Brazil. Some candidate choices I don’t agree with, like the Golden Gate Bridge (already knocked out) and the Statue of Liberty.
What can I say? I’m sick and tired of church and its politics. I’ve never seen a foundation that advocates understanding concurrently foster so much internal strife and distrust behind the veil of pretentiousness.