http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

Discuss....

Exams in January

I have got 2 psychology exams to sit in the New Year.  I have just checked my candidate statement of entry and I think I have been entered for the wrong ones!  Not good at all.  It is my own fault for not checking sooner.  Work has been hectic these last few months moving between ships and I have not done anywhere enough studying anyway.  It looks as though I may have to cuff the exams, hardly the right attitude for A levels!  As soon as these exams are out of the way I need to start thinking about an NVQ in management, which will go towards my resettlement.

Time to move on?

So many in my position in the RN are approaching their termination date to leave the Service.  Quite a few others have submitted notice to leave before their termination date, which speaks volumes.  Should I stay or should I go?  Three more years and it is my time to leave.  There seem to be plenty of opportunities to work offshore in maritime security, maybe that is the direction I should be heading in.  I am close to my pension so I'll stay until 2015, unless I win the lottery!  The pension scheme will be changed in 2015, obviously not for the better, so that might be a good time to leave anyway.  
The Royal Australian Navy and Royal New Zealand Navy are most likely going to be taking an interest in who has taken or been made redundant from the RN.  There are a lot of disgruntled blokes with good skills at the moment.  

A Run Ashore

I was thinking the other day about how much time I have left to serve and the runs ashore in the last 20 years.  There are still a lot of places I haven't been.  I have never been bothered that I haven't had a Far East deployment, but to have never had a deployment around the Caribbean is disappointing.  Still, I have a few years left, so hopefully I'll get a couple more deployments yet.  Since 2005 my only major deployments have been to the South Atlantic and the Falkland Islands.  It's my own fault for serving on T42 Destroyers.  So I decide to take my next sea draft on another class of ship, a T23 Frigate, in the hope of deploying somewhere else. Well, I will deploy but to the Falklands again!
Places visited with the RN that I remember off the top of my head;
Gibraltar - countless occasions
Malta - 2
Sicily - Catania 3
Sardinia - 1
Italy - (Ancona, Brindisi, Naples, Trieste, Venice 6
Germany - Hamburg 1
France - Cherbourg, Brest 4
Netherlands - Amsterdam 1
Eire - Cork 1
Iraq - Deployed on operations
Kuwait - Deployed on operations
Dubai - 3
Muscat - 1
Doha - 1
Greek mainland - Piraeus, Patras, Athens, Thessaloniki 5
Crete - 5
Corfu - 4
Cyprus - 4
USA - New York, Miami, Baltimore 3
Falkland Islands - 5
South Georgia - 5
Madeira
Uruguay - Montevideo 4
Brazil - Rio, Recife, Santos 7
Argentina - 1
Chile - Punta Arenas, Valparaiso 3
Latvia - 1
Estonia - 1
Sierra Leone - 1
Ghana - 1
Balearics - 2
Canary Islands - 1
Russia - St Petersburg - 1
Egypt - Alexandria, Cairo, El Alamein - 1
Israel - Haifa 1


Join the Navy and see the world!

Sick Parade

Christmas leave is about to start and one of the watch keepers has turned up with broken fingers!  You couldn't make it up.  So somebody else has now been stitched up to do the bloke's duties.  Tomorrow I have another sicknote returning to the ship.  Three months downgraded and not fit for sea, but fit enough to play representative sport for an establishment.  I hope he is turning up anyway!

Cake Tuesday

This is my first post after realising that I can't actually post anything whilst at sea.  In future I will have to jot some thoughts down on paper.  


Well, just back alongside FLJ after spending 2 weeks in northern latitudes watching friends watching us.  Beam seas all the way up and all the way down too.  Some big seas, and the only respite was some time spent at anchor in Scapa Flow, which can only be described as the Falkland Islands of the north!  Mind you, I enjoy being in the Falklands!


I finally get some people back who decided that they didn't want to go to sea and earn the Queen's shilling, but expect it to be given to them.  Amazed to be asked if it is okay to take leave!