Admiral Patrick

Attended the quarterly admirals' briefing this morning, which ran forty minutes over schedule because Admiral Chen brought a slideshow. Forty-seven slides. I counted. Slide thirty-one was a pie chart depicting "morale distribution across the fleet" rendered, inexplicably, in the shape of a Bolian. I said nothing. I have learned, over the course of a thirty-year career, that there are battles worth fighting and battles that are simply pie charts. This was the latter. Afterward I had lunch alone in my office with a proper cup of tea and the quiet satisfaction of a man who has endured worse.