I'll take my chances

The man has spoken:

"Let's see what time I knock off...Yeah I should be able to make it down by 8:30pm!"

Right, so what's left to do now is to tell him what he's gotten himself into. At least we've arranged for an espionage briefing come Sunday. But I just have a feeling that his guts still won't betray us in the face of all possible shenanigans. Haha, we're in for a treat one way or another. If the barbecue works out, we'd better have a serving of equally or even more lip-smacking chicken soup for the soul. Definitely looking forward to the 19th.

So that's a good cause for celebration. The good cause rather. Because unfortunately, I was hardly able to finish any work today, and this is really getting on my nerves. Though I did complete the bridge for the new tune I've been working on, and I'm quite satisfied with it.

What does scare me is the amount of time left on my hands till when it's just the pen, the paper and me in a frigid hall with about 400 other studious clones. There is so little of it left that I find myself constantly entertaining thoughts about just becoming a missionary in Africa and snoozing in the Savannah. That works for about...5 seconds on a particularly hopeless day? I then remember the people here for whom I would die rather than be separated from. So what began with a sigh ends with a sigh.

As of now, it's step by step, fork by fork, today's share of manna then tomorrow's share of manna. If I don't take what's right, I won't know what's left. Carpe diem, but live for eternity at the same time. Goodness me, what a load of self-didacticism. And most of all it reminds of a passage in my EE text actually. It takes place when the protagonist (who is an Anglican priest) attempts to fanatically justify his...well...fanaticism, for gambling.

'I cannot see', he said, 'that such a God, whose fundamental requirement of us is that we gamble our mortal souls, every second of our temporal existence...It is true! We must gamble every instant of our allotted span. We must stake everything on the unprovable fact of His existence.'

Chapter 57, Oscar and Lucinda

by Peter Carey

Slap me in the face if I ever say I agree with this. Wait, but not even to the tiniest extent? Well, maybe, but I just don't call it gambling. I call it faith. And the promise that follows is not a growing debt of evidence, but a contract pending on eternity.