There’s more to living than being alive.

There’s a lot of things i have to do before i leave. (welcome to the subtle art of understatement)

On that list i’ve got;

• Get my passport
• Save some money (get a job maybe? definitely)
• Pay for plane tickets
• Organize my gear
• Buy a camera, to keep those memories
• Get in better shape, but *better* is never going to be better enough for where i’m going
• Tell my friends and family how i really feel about each of them.
  • This is probably a stupid idea, motivated by the fact i’m having my midlife crisis at nineteen. I want to be.. a better, more likeable man, and to do that i think i need some personality reform. Right now, i’d call myself boring. I’ve got this dry sarcastic sense of humor that is only ever mildly entertaining – usually achieved via ridicule – and as much as i’d consider myself relatively articulate, at times to the point of manipulatism, i don’t think i could name someone who understands Matt.
  • So.. what i aim to do is a little bio on the people i love and value. I’ll add a picture, a backstory, a happy time and a disappointment, and this can serve as my testimony to them, of who they are to me, how i view them, and serve also as a means of memoriam, as i fear i’ll never see many of them ever again.
  • You might be saying “gee Matt, stop being such an arrogant bigot, no-one cares what you think of them!”. You’re probably right, and i’m not here to play judge, jury and executioner, and if anyone takes offense they’re welcome to take it up with me. This isn’t judgement, this is my means, as a horribly reclusive person – in hiding as a awkward loudmouth attempting to be insightful, of telling each and every one of the people who i’ve cared about, and who have shaped me as a person, how i feel about them.
  • If you still think i’m a jerk, please forgive me.
• Catch up with old friends more, if they’ll have me.
• Pay off my debts
• Learn not to say yes, when i really mean no.
• Learn the intro to Atreyu’s “Demonology and Heartache” on my guitar. I love that song.

Just for fun (and fuel to write about.);

• Get drunk in town and wander all the way home absolutely blind
• Shower in a waterfall
• Sing a great song, in front of an audience
• Ask someone i only just met on a date.
• Sleep under the stars, on a beach somewhere
• Make an enemy.
  • Schopenhauer: “We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.”
  • note to self – upon completion, do not kill enemy.
• Get kicked out of somewhere. Doesn’t matter where.

I’m sure i’ll think of more later, but this shall do for now. I think even i, have had enough of my sombre tones for one night.

“So little done, so much to do.”

Matt.

p.s; anyone who can quote the lyrical reference for this post title wins ten (ten! omg!) points. If you don’t know it, cheat, look it up, and listen to it. Broaden your artistic appreciation damnit.

Parachute Regiment!

So i’ve basically decided i’m moving to the UK to join the paras, pending a few unanswered questions;

• Do i need British Citizenship to join the parachute regiment?
• Do i need to have a period of residency in the UK before i’m allowed to enlist?

I suppose that’s it actually. Pretty easy huh?

You’d think so. but apparently the British army doesn’t get the brightest bunch to work in their recruiting centre. Allow me to illustrate in form of my recent correspondence with one of their recruiters.

My question:

From: “Matt Diefenbach” <Corran_DW@hotmail.com>
To: <barracks@armycareersoffice.co.uk>
Subject: abroad entry

Hi,

I’m interested in getting some information on joining the parachute regiment, specifically on the process for joining from abroad (Australia) and the complications that involves.

Namely, i’ve read that for some regiments there’s a mandatory period of residency in the UK, and for some others there’s even a requirement of British citizenship.

Do either of those two particular requirements apply to the Parachute Regiment?

Thanks,

Matt

The response:

From: CSjt Gary Harriss [mailto:barracks@armycareersoffice.co.uk]
Sent: Monday, 7 April 2008 8:54 PM
To: Corran_DW@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: abroad entry

Hi, thank you for contacting the Online Office.

yes you must pass all this to get in.

When you apply to join The British Army from overseas, please send your details to the following email Address.

rg@acio.mod.uk

To apply for service in the British Army from overseas, you must also be over 16 and under the age of 32 to apply;

Full Name
Full Postal Address
Date and Place of birth
The full UK Postal address of your sponsor.

If you do not intend to stay with your UK sponsor you must also provide the full UK address where you will be accommodated during your application.

You must also send a valid passport number, place of issue and expiry date.

Please list in full your education qualifications. All applicants MUST have completed Secondary education up to the age of 16.

Should you be invited to the UK for testing you will be required to support yourself financially for at least 6 months while the selection process is completed.

The overseas cell try to reply to all emails within 2 days. This will place you on the overseas application list. Each name is dealt with in order, an application pack will go out to you in the normal post.

*blahblahblah useless irrelevant drivel copied out of some recruiters manual*

This is all great information, thanks Gary!

…

er, sorry to trouble you, but could you maybe just, y’know, answer my question?

From: “Matt Diefenbach” <Corran_DW@hotmail.com>
To: “‘CSjt Gary Harriss’” <barracks@armycareersoffice.co.uk>
Subject: RE: abroad entry

Thanks for your response Gary,

Just to clarify, to join the parachute regiment specifically, is there a minimum period of residency in the UK before it will be allowed?

Or should this enquiry be directed to the email address you mentioned?

Thanks,

Matt

Catch more flies with honey than vinegar, no?

Hi, thank you for contacting the Online Office.

NO you can apply from the start if you passed the selection for this job once you get to the UK.

Regards
CSjt Gary Harriss
OnLine Office

Well.

That.. hurt my head.

Lets try to work through this together?

“No, you can apply from the start, if you passed selection for this job once you get in the UK”

So.. after correcting? his grammar, the sentence is a tad more readable. I’m assuming that he’s attempting to say:

Dear Matt,

Thank you for contacting the Online Army Recruitment office!

No, the Parachute Regiment doesn’t require you to have either British citizenship or to have lived a certain period in the UK

So long as you pass the basic selection that the Royal Green Army and the Parachute Regiment requires, you will be able to enlist when you get to the UK.

Thanks for your enquiry,

CSjt Gary Harriss

Online Office.

Ah, that was better. Wouldn’t it be great if the whole world was literate and polite?

In the meantime, someone get Gary a copy of English comprehension 101.

Obviously i could be looking at this through rose tinted glasses so to speak, and just reading it the way i want to, so i’ll have to find some source of confirmation. Either the British embassy in Australia, or i’ll buy a calling card or something and call the UK office.

Other than the career thing, life is swell! (god i hate that word) Ryan and Rita have their twins now, which is.. to say the least, sleep depriving. Ryan is more the mother than Rita, which is sickeningly cute (by cute i mean i sometimes get the overwhelming urge to gaybash him).

The children (Lillian and Jake) are healthy which is good to see, and Ricky doesn’t feel too left out as of yet which is fantastic. I’m still waking up to the little bastard slapping me on the head yelling “FAT, FAT, FAT, FATS SLEEPING”. Someone let my self esteem know when he manages to start saying M sounds =(

So at the moment i’m in the process of looking for a job, save some money for the trip. If all goes well, i could be out of here in a month, maybe two?

Answers please?

Matt.

Q: So what are you up to?

A: See userpic

3:42am – should be sleeping, but i’m not

I’m trying to decide on my future.

Long story? you betcha. Lets look at it like this:

• 2006:

Finally gave up on school, half-way through year twelve! leaving with nothing to show for it but a 50-hour-a-week checkout chick job i’m sure i could have obtained otherwise. So what do i do? turn to the army. I’d always enjoyed the notion of backbreaking labor, so i applied to become a carpenter in the Australian army. Come test day i breezed through the mental exercises designed to dumbfound the simple mouthbreathers society needs to filter out of it’s armed forces, only to be told “we dont need any carpenters, wanna be a rifleman!?”

I promptly told them where they could shove that.

Fast forward a month; Matt is now a trainee IT technician with the Cairns City Council. Working there was pleasant, though my instructor was a hideous gorilla-resembling old man who managed to hold down the lethal combination of stupidity and bull-headed stubbornness. I quickly found most of the stuff he was “teaching” was complete and utter rubbish and i matured for that point alone.

I worked there for nigh on six months, when i had one of my patented crises, deciding that IT is not for me. So i left and became a painters apprentice, which, while fulfilling with the manual labor aspect was completely and utterly mentally draining in that the work was so crude and simple.

I fucked that one off real quick, after about a month i think, and decided to move to Brisbane with my then-girlfriend, Trina.

• 2007:

So off i went, leaving Cairns with not more than some money, a few worldly possessions and my delusion of meaningful intimacy with my “love”. Ignorance is bliss.

We moved into a quaint but very homely apartment in Newmarket, just outside Brisbane. All was good for a while, Trina had work at the Coles down the road, and i found my IT skills were in hot demand, even so much as to secure an interview and eventually a job seven minutes after emailing off my resume in application of the position.

The work, however, was as lackluster as usual, which was only exacerbated by the hopeless management i had to endure while working there at the hand of another gorilla-looking-fellow with the same idiot complex as my previous mentor. Eventually i lost the position, the monotony of the work drove me to doing irresponsible thing, such as shirking responsibility and generally not working as hard or as i should (for me,this is a common response to something i dislike – especially work).

After losing that position, i just floated for a bit. I think i literally wasted two months just sitting at home, doing nothing, and living off my savings. It was both a welcome holiday from being a grown-up and torture.

Eventually i got fed up with the lack of stimulation and i re-entered the jobseeking market. I quickly got headhunted for a role with a rather big name IT company called Unisys, the job being to make sure the numerous cretins that populate Education Queensland’s TAFE system don’t get too scared by the fancy new *cough*eightyearold*cough* technology the government provides them to do their jobs.

The environment at Unisys fostered my ambition to a degree, and i got very serious about my career for once. I studied like a madman in my spare time – of which i had little, i found myself spending a ten hours day at work, only to come home to my partner, to spend the rest of my day cooking and cleaning for her.

The ambition that Unisys managed to impart on me finally got the better of me, and i began to seek work that didn’t have me clenching my fists in anger at the stupidity of both the system they work by, and the people who uphold the system.

Meanwhile my frustrations at home were getting the better of me, and this all came to a head when Neal, Lisa, Chloe, Poppi and Sam came down to visit for a week or so. It was a great thing to do, and i really enjoyed hanging out with my old friends again after not seeing them for so long. Especially considering i had no social life whatsoever. The girls coming down just helped to highlight how i felt about Trina’s lack of ambition (working just enough to get by, with me paying the bills) and her mannerisms toward me at the time – ie; she was more interested in playing her videogames than me, and i’d often find myself talking to her only to be ignored because she was so lost in her little world.

So i left Trina. Well.. “left”. I moved out, okay? i moved in with Zac, to a really nice apartment in Fortitude Valley. I thought my life was just beginning. I got a new fantastic job WAY OVER MY HEAD with Commander ICT, with the prestigious title of Systems Engineer/Network Design Consultant, and though i was obviously not qualified nor tested, my manager took a leap of faith in me and i believe i did everything in my power to make that leap justified.

So here i was believing my social life would improve – i’d finally have some friends maybe? – my work life had improved, and my living circumstances were much more luxurious. I was being paid an exorbitant amount of money for a job that while challenging, was eventually very slow paced. And all the better, i kept seeing Trina on the side, trying to work out how i really felt about her. I screwed her around something severe, and i regret that.

This vicious cycle continued with nothing noteworthy until just before Christmas, when Zac decided to invite someone he’d met three nights prior in a nightclub to come live with us. I wasn’t thrilled, but i figured he wanted it, it’d be for a short term, and he was paying rent too. So why not hey? big mistake.

This houseguest was the most blatantly appallingly stereotypical homosexual you could ever hope to meet. It’s like he went and got the book of stereotypes, looked up homosexual, and decided thats how he’s going to act. To the letter. Needless to say between the void of personality and the incessant self absorbed behavior, not to mention the compulsive lying, i began to grow quite weary of his company. But i kept my mouth shut, for Zac’s sake. Second big mistake.

It was about this time i was becoming more and more disillusioned with the IT worker lifestyle, and i dreaded going to work as much as before. My salvation came in a random phonecall from defense force recruiting. The soldier on the phone wanted to offer me a job in Australia’s elite Commandos, due to my excellent test scores the year prior. I got really behind this idea, because it embodied so many things i wanted. A job with the grueling backbreaking labor, that still required active concentration and mental hardship. Things looked perfect.

I went on a health binge, reworked my entire (nonexistant) diet, and took up exercising a lot more often and a lot more vigorously. I was feeling great again, i had hope.

• 2008:

In late January i lost my job to a random six-hundred employee (1/3 of the company) flash-mass-redundancy. In the same week Zac and i got issued a notice to leave our apartment, due to the illegality of Zac’s company. I was pissed.

To add insult to injury, Trina decided she’d had enough of me, forgoing her stalkerish behavior and just gave up. I still don’t know how i feel about this. I love(ed) her, but hated her behavior, and it drove me away.

In one fel swoop, i managed to lose everything i had worked so hard for. I lost how i identified myself, and without any support to fall back on, i got into some shit habits. I became more of a loner than usual, focused entirely on my army gig. It was my everything..

After a while i decided to move back to Cairns, on the pretense of having a little working muck-around time before i signed my life away to the army.. but really, all i wanted was to be with close friends again, and feel a little bit of camaraderie. To feel close to people, to feel valued, to feel wanted.

Needless to say, i found the people i still put so much stead in, had long since stopped putting any in me. I’ve been staying with Ryan for two months now, and i could count on one hand the amount of times i’ve seen the majority of them – nay, all of them. It’s hurtful to think that the people i loved just dont value me the same, but i guess i’ll get over it. Back to being a loner eh?

This brings everything pretty much up to date.

With my newfound sense of degraded self worth, i’m highly considering – as in i’m almost good to say i’m doing it – moving to the UK and joining the British Parachute Regiment, instead of the Australian Commandos. The paras are probably the most elite infantry regiment in the world, and they’re a very demanding bunch – just my cup of tea. This also lets me do some traveling, which is fantastic. Apart from the pretty huge step of leaving behind everything i know, it seems like the logical option.

International travel brings back memories of hardships, one especially.

There’s a girl i care very much about, love as a friend, once loved as much more. She’s one of my oldest friends, and someone who’s opinions i put a lot of value in.

Years ago she told me she loved me, and i told her the same. This would be fantastic if we weren’t a pacific ocean apart – that’s a hell of a commute, even for love (quiet you hopeless romanticist bastard..).

Eventually what was bound to happen, happened, and it all went belly up over something really childish, and we’ve hardly spoken since. I lost both my best friend and possibly the girl i’ve cared most about that day, and i regret it more than i have the eloquence to express. On and off, ever since then, i’ve tried to speak with her, not to gain anything back but our friendship, with very little success.

With the prospect of my international travel on the horizon i decided to try once more. I told her, that if she’d have me, i wanted to meet her. No strings attached, a coffee at the airport or something so simple. The conversation that followed told me a lot of things i didn’t know about the way she felt. It appears i hurt her more than i knew, and i’d love to tell her – but cant – that i feel the hurt as much as she does. She doesn’t want to see me, because of the loose ties and the complicated nature of our relationship. I can understand it, and i refuse to accept it at the same time.

I feel like everything would be perfect, if i met her. Because of all people, this quirky girl from the US has understood me more than any other.

I think that’s what i want, understanding.

…

looking to buy -> direction in life.

Matt.