After six months in Auckland, I have recently moved to my fourth flat and accepted my third teaching job. I am now living in the city once again, and I am working at 'Modern Age Institute of Learning'. The house is far better than the last one, and the job pays about twice as much per hour (when one factors in one's planning hours). Also, the job carries greater responsibility and professional freedom - so I'm happy.

My plans remain about the same: I hope to get onto the Army Selection Board, which will mean a trip to Wellington and a little exercise, and to make it onto Officer Training next year. Otherwise, I will pursue further English teaching by gaining my Cambridge DELTA (the teaching equivalent of a Masters, App Ling), and then moving on, perhaps, to Russia.

16 June 2003 Work's good. I'm co-coordinator for the TOEIC/Business English course, which effectively means that I'm paid to plan as much as I'm paid to teach - and it's about time! The job is a good one, and I'm giving it my best.

I've now done the army interview, and I think it went fairly well. If it did, I'll soon be off for a week's assessment and training on what's called an 'Officer Selection Board'. Basically, they will test my wits and gumption as they take pains to run me to the ground; and I'm bloody looking forward to it!

Otherwise, there's not much more to tell, other than that my girlfriend recently told me she loves me, and it warmed my heart...

06 July 2003 Ting has left to China for six weeks, and so I am now adjusting to life without her. Even if it allows time for introspection and exercise, I am still missing her muchly. It's good to have someone to miss so much when at the same time you know they're coming back. She means more to me every day now, and I do believe that she may prove to be a partner for life. I just hope that I can be as good to her as she is to me.

Seems I made it past the interview and I'm now training hard in preparation for the Officer Selection Board (OSB, said ozbee). It's down in Wellington and it goes from the 14th to the 18th. I am very excited about it and I have been averaging about two hours' exercise daily, six days a week. I think that I am nearing the state physically where I will be able to endure much of what they throw at me, even if my muscles are screaming at me, and I hope that I'm mentally ready as well. I have read one good book (Train Tough The Army Way, by Mark Bender, Lieutenant Colonel [Ret.]) about how to mentally prepare oneself for such challenges, and I hope with a bit of meditation and composure, I will be ready to perform to their expectations.

Thankfully work was good about allowing me this time off. I will begin teaching the next TOEIC class on the week after the OSB. Joshua, my teaching partner, and I got good reviews for our last course. All the students were happy, or more than happy, about all aspects of our work, and the only thing that my boss seemed a little unhappy about was that one student commented that they didn't want to go back to the General English class now that they thought they were really being challenged. Several of the students have already expressed their intentions of sitting the course again, despite the risk of some repetition, rather than go back to anything else the school can offer. I guess this means that I am securely employed for the meanwhile.

27 July 2003 My week in Trentham has now passed, and although I had a thoroughly good and challenging time, a career in the army is not to be. The army psychologist had me pegged as the wrong type after our interview on the second day of the camp (which is not to say, as she cautiously pointed out, that I have anything to worry about regarding my mental health). I was just a perfectly good square peg vainly exploring my chances of fitting into a round hole.

Otherwise I think I did fairly well. I was physically ready for everything they threw at me, including several hours of running, hurdles and weight carrying on the last full day, and I think that I performed reasonably well on most of the theory, although one potential weakness did reveal itself.

Speculating on what held me back, perhaps the statistics involved will save me much conjecture: Of the five-hundred who applied, about 180 passed the exams and interviews to find themselves spread out over about three such camps, with my camp holding about sixty-four people. Of those, it seems that about half passed. The ratio of people under twenty-four years old who passed seems to be about eight in ten. For those over twenty-four, it was more like two in ten. Of the two who passed in my group of seven, one was ex-army and the other was enlisting as an army psychologist (meaning in both cases more professionalism and less expense for the army), but they were also very good and I believe they earned their success. Still, I know of no successful candidate over twenty-four that wasn't army, ex-army or entering in a specialist capacity, and so those of us who were unsuccessful have opted not to take it personally. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and I am not bitter about the result. It is after all preferable to discover one's unsuitability at this stage, than to find out too late that one doesn't have the stuff to lead others into battle to kill and be killed.

I also discovered something about the army that I would have undoubtedly had troubles with had I been an officer. At one point in the Officers' Mess I had to listen to one officer of high rank go on for fifteen minutes about the precise process of malaria as it takes hold in the liver and the bloodstream. Observing the officers generally, I witnessed much empty intellectualism and a constant power trip of grease-and-be-greased amidst the ranks. Indeed, I was appalled by the arrogant display of some of the officers, including one female Lieutenant and the Brigadier General, and had I been accepted I would have had serious doubts about going in. This being the case, I do believe that the army has made the right and pragmatic decision in not accepting me, although I may have perhaps reconciled myself to the idea, and I would have liked the chance to prove myself in this capacity. I am left now with the encouraging words of one Major, whom I much respected, ''We don't always get the right people, but we seldom get the wrong people''. He confirmed that by this he meant that those of us who were not accepted may still have made good officers, but the ones that were selected will make good officers almost certainly.

What now?

Well, I will throw myself all the more into my English teaching, with it in mind to get my teaching diploma (the Cambridge DELTA) as soon as possible, and then perhaps progress with a degree in teaching English as a second language. Also, I am still thinking about teaching for a period in Russia, and then there's always the possibility that I might try out for an officer's career in the Navy, but I will save all these ideas for some future update.

Conclusion

Looking back on these entries a year or so later, I feel that I was being reasonable in my assessment of my failure, if a little harsh in my assessment of the various characters who I met on the camp. Truly, no one who shared my profile - zero army experience, not a specialist, older than about 23 - was accepted for Officer Training. It is understandable that the army wants to get people when they are fresh out of school or university. It didn't take me long to reconcile myself to the reality that I would never realise this dream, and the incredible experiences that have since happened only confirm that this was not my destiny.

A month went by between my last Auckland entry and my first entry in Poland. Obviously, something happened, and it may be assumed that I was very busy in this time arranging for work, visas and plane tickets, etc. As I said in both my Introduction and in the journal entries themselves, I was quite happy with my last job. It was full-time, excellent money, excellent responsibility and experience, and it had potential. My boss had recently asked me if I would like to work as a Head Teacher and Trainer of the Business English (TOEIC) course in the Beijing branch in China.

One day, I went home to Ting feeling quite on top of the world. I had just signed a full-time contract with the school, negotiating excellent benefits and a pay increase, and I finally felt as if I had job stability and a future to really look forward to. A day or two later, discovering that two weeks' pay had not gone into my account, some management personnel told us at a staff meeting that the school was on the brink of bankruptcy. We could leave now, and we would definitely lose the two weeks' pay, or we could stay for another week in the hope that the school would be saved. If successful, we would keep all our money and our jobs. If unsuccessful, we would stand to lose three weeks' pay in total.

It was to gamble a week for the sake of two, and in any case there wasn't much else for us to do, and so most of us - in one of New Zealand's largest language schools, with five campuses throughout the country - chose to stay on and hope. Needless to say, our gamble failed, and we lost all. It was a lot of money. With thousands of students, the government was quick to avert an international scandal (which would have devastated my country's prospects as an international provider of education) by immediately placing every student in other schools. They were very well looked after and lost nothing. For us teachers, most of us New Zealand citizens, we were left high and dry, and never were we to get a penny back. The liquidators, naturally, liquidated the company to their profit, but none of it came my way (even when employees are supposed to be at the top of the creditors' list).

Somewhat strapped for cash, I had to find something quickly, and I decided once again that I had had a gut's full of my mother country. I knew I would have to leave Ting, and I probably knew that this would mean the end for us, though we told ourselves that we would get back together after a few years. With Asia out of the way, I began applying for work in Europe, with the initial aim of working in a Slavic country, whether it be Russia, Poland or the Czech Republic.

And the rest is history. The first job offer that I liked came from Mikolow in Poland, and that seemed good enough for me. I left New Zealand knowing that my destiny was no longer there. There are better opportunities for me, given my profession, in almost any other part of the world.