What are you still doing here?

Wait, what? I’m still here?  Hmmm thought I was going to leave by now.  Oh well.  So I’m still living the life at C^3.  Turns out my replacement had some minor delays so I said I’d hang around a little longer till he got it sorted out and gets here, shouldn’t be too long so no big deal.  Me staying a little longer than planned is much better on the whole than not having any overlap and him having to learn everything on his own.  Once he gets here we’ll have a few days of overlap where I need to try and teach him all the ins and outs of my “normal” routine.  I put together a list of that this week, it’s pretty short.  But there is a lot of other stuff that I do “as needed” which takes up a larger chunk of my time so getting him ready for those random bits is important too.  At least for me a large part of this job is reactionary so really what I’m doing any given day/week is dependent on what is going on across the country and here at C^3.

I did get to have some fun this week.  The boss and I went over to Bagram for a day to take care of some administrative stuff.  Aside from seeing most of the guys over there we also got to see the new PIF that one of the teams is installing.  Basically when it is all delivered, setup and functional it will have the capabilities of a regular machine shop back stateside.  There are some issues with the whole concept and scheme of implementation and how you make something like that useful while still following all the army rules on R&D type activity but when they get it all sorted out it could be a really awesome capability to have.  Either way it was neat to go check it out and see all the machines and talk to some of the guys that I normally only talk to over email.

They gave me the choice of which DFAC to go to for lunch, so in my ongoing quest to eat at every DFAC at Bagram I choose to go to the BBQ Tent. (ok do you really need any other reason to go to the BBQ tent, I mean they serve actual grilled food.)  Of course it was delicious; I had ribs that I ended up turning into a sandwich.  Pretty much any meat product is better when surrounded by bread, I don’t know why it works like that all I know is that it is delicious.  Oh I had sweet tea and corn on the cob too so that brought everything together rather well.  Also that means that I’ve eaten at every DFAC that I know of at Bagram,  I imagine there are still a few on the list that I haven’t hit but I doubt there are many, especially not if we only count US DFACs. I’ve been to seven, but I don’t know the true number of how many there are.  Not bad considering I don’t live there, also I’ve been to a DFAC that one of the guys that has been at Bagram from the last year has never eaten at.

Once we got done with all the stuff we had to do in Bagram we had some time before our flight to kill so we ended up going to the Bagram PX and then the Bazaar that they had setup. (Their bazaar is more of a permanent fixture where as the one at C^3 is a once a week deal.)  I found what I was looking for at the PX so that was a worthwhile trip.  At the bazaar we ended up spending all of our time at one shop talking with one dealer.  One of the guys we were with wanted to buy an old rifle so most of the time was spent haggling over the price and quality and all sorts of things like that.  He actually go a fairly good deal all things considered.  As this was going on I was looking around, mostly just the usual collection of trinkets which are all pretty cool until you start seeing the same thing over and over at all the different shops in the different bazaars.  LOTS of stuff that isn’t nearly as old as they want it to look like it is, which is kind of a shame since a lot of it is pretty neat.  Anyway one thing this vendor did have that I had seen before but in in such quantity was old Afghan Afghani bills.  He had stacks of them.  Now of course they have been replaced by new currency and so these old ones are pretty much worthless, still I’ve always liked old money for some reason and stacks of it is even better.  But why would I ever need stacks of old cash…..Monopoly….yeah that’s right.  When I get back I’ll be able to play Monopoly with a foreign country’s currency.  Well worth the price I paid for it even considering how much I overpaid for a few stacks of worthless bills. (still I did pretty well considering his initial price,  plus did I mention playing monopoly with REAL currency from another country?  Is that wrong?)  Now they didn’t make 500 Afghani bills so I just got a bunch of extra 100’s and then a stack of 1000’s as well.  Plus since the rules of Monopoly say that there isn’t supposed to be a limit to the amount of money in the game it should workout without any problems.  Holding the stack it feels like I robbed a bank.  I don’t even play Monopoly that much, but when I do I’ll have the best set ever!

And we still got back to C^3 just in time to go to dinner.  (This was a major concern, not mine but still glad it worked it.)  Plus I got in a couple more Blackhawk rides, good times.  Helicopters are the coolest way to travel.

Another week another canceled trip.  The boss and I were supposed to go over to Bagram for some business but that got canceled at the last minute for who knows why.  Oh well.  It is kind of disappointing but not a huge deal.

I got a shot this week, we all had to get flu shots at the little clinic they have here.   I have nothing against flu shots for any reason other than I’m just against shots as a general rule.   People sticking pointy metal objects into my body just doesn’t do it for me, I like my skin puncture free.  I got a ton of shots before coming over here but for some reason this one just wants to keep feeling sore.  On the other hand I got a flu shot which I generally consider a good thing (actual shot part excluded), especially around here where we all work/live in such close quarters.  Hopefully I’ll be out of here before anything starts going around, we’ll see. 

Not a whole lot has been going on here, pretty slow really which is kind of annoying I’m getting pretty short so I won’t complain too much.   I would like to thank the Navy today.  Today was the Navy’s “birthday” and so they cooked up some steamship round for dinner, which was a welcome break.  So thanks Navy.  (For a landlocked country we have a lot of Navy people here, go figure.)

The big news this week (ok there is more than one thing but I’m only sharing this for now) is we had a “mini-bazaar” on Saturday night.  They brought in a few vendors from one of the nearby bases.  These guys had more or less the same stuff that you can get at our normal bazaar on the weekends and it was outside so the lighting was less than ideal.  Also I think the prices were a little higher than our normal bazaar.  I didn’t buy anything.  Actually I think I’m finally starting to get semi decent at negotiating prices so it’s a little more fun to shop at the bazaar.

They also had a bunch of guys cooking traditional Afghan food and serving that.  They have great food here.  Good flatbread, great lamb kabobs, then rice and chicken with spices. (Similar to a curry)  The lamb kabobs are really good wrapped up in a piece of flatbread.  So that was pretty cool, we don’t get that many opportunities to eat local food, plus while we do have a rather nice DFAC it is really nice to eat something else every now and again.

But wait, there’s more!  Live entertainment!  They had a local afghan band come in and play for a few hours.  Not only that but a lot of the locals that work here got out and danced some we got some traditional music and dancing which was pretty cool.  Of course they played some less traditional stuff too, at least it sounded different. And there were plenty of people dancing and just generally having a good time.  So I hung out there for most of the evening just enjoying the atmosphere.  Something different and there really aren’t all that many opportunities to be social outside of the office here.  I had a pretty good conversation with one of the BGs who is here which was neat, doesn’t happen everyday.

Unrelated to the “mini-bazaar” but related to live music there has actually been a pretty big concert series going on throughout Kabul over the last month or so.  Bands play at a different venue each night and they don’t tell people where it will be that night till the day of.  Obviously still somewhat underground, but still pretty cool that they are doing stuff like that.  Also saw the webpage for the Kabul Golf Club, look it up, dedication is all I can say to that one.  The MAJ I work next to showed me a daily brief which has all the normal stuff but then the last section of it is something about Afghanistan or Kabul which is really interesting.  I wish I had found out about that at the beginning of my tour here as I would know a lot more about the country and people had I been able to read that every day.  As you may expect from a city located on the old Silk Road there is a TON of history and historic buildings around here, even considering all the war this country has seen in the last 30+ years. Maybe in 30 years this will be like Vietnam and we'll be able to come back as tourists, that would be pretty cool.

Things that didn't happen

And we’re back, actually I didn’t go anywhere I’ve been here the whole time.  Another week in the books.  So this time last week I was anticipating leaving the next morning to go down to Kandahar for a few days to do some stuff down there.  Well that didn’t happen.  First my flight to Bagram, which I got up early for, got canceled for no apparent reason.  Now this isn’t the first time something like this has happened, in all reality it is pretty common for flights to get canceled even when you were approved for them and were on the schedule when you went to bed.  Just another part of traveling in theater which you get used to and just accept,  really unless you’re wearing a star (or more) on your chest there isn’t a whole lot you can do about it.  Anyway there was another flight scheduled for that afternoon which looked like it should have space so I could hop on and make it down to Bargam to meet up with the guys I was going to head down to Kandahar with so I figured I’d just hop on that one.  Cue forward 6 or 7 hours.  I’m back out waiting for the flight with some other people.  Then this GO walks up with his posse, not really that rare of an occurrence here at the C3 and they start waiting for a flight as well.  Well this GO somehow had an M4, which is somewhat weird but I guess if you’re a GO you can get whatever you want, people don’t say NO to GOs even when they should.  Anyway this guy had the WORST muzzle discipline I’ve ever seen.  Just because you have a star doesn’t mean common sense rules for handling a firearm don’t apply to you.  It almost got to the point where I was ready to go over and remind him where not to point the thing.  I guess that’s why they normally don’t let GOs have long guns…  Anywho the flights we were waiting for got canceled.  Well except for the GOs but that is a different story for a different time.  (I would have been a terrible army officer)  So no trip down to Kandahar for me, as going the next day would have made an already short trip not even worth it.

On the plus side I was able to hit up the Bazaar over the weekend which was nice as I had been wanting to pick some stuff up before I left.  I got two really nice paintings which Im pretty happy about.  Also picked up some other random stuff.  I have a few more things on the list assuming I get a few more chances which I should.  I also got the Massoud getup, and by that I mean a scarf, parkul, and blanket. (Went with a nice camel hair one)  I got a lot of comments on them as I got some of the rarer colors I think.  But they look good.  Now the MAJs and I are working on getting some pictures taken with all of us in our get ups.  Actually If I got a tan I could probably go walk the streets without to much trouble, or so I’ve been told.  I’m not going to test that one out.  Now I have a bunch of stuff to ship home too, especially with trying to get rid of as much stuff as possible so I don’t have to carry much back with me.

Speaking of redeployment.  It has been a rather exciting week on that front too.  My replacement had a medical issue pop up so for a while I was looking at extending while he got that taken care of, but it turned out to be nothing major so he is back on track to get here when scheduled.  Which of course is good both for him and me, everyone wins.  Actually I wouldn’t have minded staying a few more weeks but I have NO problems going home.  Also going home is less paperwork which is a plus. 

It’s rained here the past two days, the season really is changing.  It has even been getting pretty chilly at night when I go out after working out.  But I’ve always liked the fall so no complaints there.  Hopefully it doesn’t rain tomorrow since that would keep them from grilling steaks and the grilled steaks are much much better than the non-grilled steaks.  Actually I’m fine waiting for a day without rain for the steaks, but I don’t get to make those sorts of decisions.  Thanks the MAJ I did find out about the Mango sorbet bars they have here, they are actually rather good and close enough to fruit that I can pretend they are healthy and aren’t really a dessert. (hey they are 30% pulp, that has to count for something.)  I snack so much here, and I’ve never been a huge snacker.  Oh well I’m still at the lower end of what I feel is acceptable for my weight so I guess it hasn’t hurt to much.

Not much else to report, life goes on. 

What's Up? Not much.

Hi.  I’m in a pretty good mood today, not sure why but who cares.  Actually who knows if Ill even be able to post this.  The internet is supposed to be sucky at the moment due to a cut fiber somewhere between J-bad and Tarin Kwot?sp?  We’ll see.  I recently found out that Pandora works over here which was kinda surprising, I thought there might be licenseing issues with playing it here in Afghanistan, guess not.  It isn’t the best quality and sometimes it is choppy but ehh, it seems to ok enough.  Bandwidth shouldn’t be to big a problem, people skype here, that is a lot more bandwidth.   I haven’t even though I got everything set up to do it.  I guess I probably should sometime.

This week was busyish, just seems to be a lot of little things going on at the moment. Enough to keep me busy but nothing big.  So I guess that’s ok.  I think I’m going to be pretty busy for the next few days so that should be good, help the time pass a little faster.

We’re about to get a new boss here too, by we I mean C^3 as a whole.  Trading in the old two star for a new one.  So this place has been a little crazy due to that, not that I’m really involved in that but I do imagine there will be some changes in the near future because of it. 

I guess part of the reason that things have been better recently is that I’ve finally started to feel like part of the group.  The new MAJ that I sit next to is awesome, he and I get along really well and he knows another MAJ who is also pretty cool.  Of course we’re pretty much always busting on each other but it is fun and it helps keep things interesting.  I think the COL finds it pretty funny cause whenever we are in the office busting on each other and I look over at him he has this big smile on his face but he never says anything or chimes in.  I guess we’re cheap entertainment. 

It’s fall now in case you weren’t paying attention.  I really only bring this up cause I was still kind of in the June mode and then it started getting a little chilly.  Actually the real downside is that it is getting dark way to early.  We’re going to really have to start eating earlier and earlier at dinner if we want to continue eating outside.  I didn’t think I would have to use any of the cold weather gear that they gave me when I came over here but it seems like I just might if it gets any colder.  Other than that we’ve had some amazing days out here.  The weather here is pretty nice, very similar to Los Alamos as far as I can tell.  Nothing like home has been.  I’m going to miss the endless sunny days when I go home. 

They canceled the bazaar last weekend, which stunk cause I actually was going to buy some stuff.  Maybe I’ll get a chance to this weekend, we’ll see.  I don’t have a whole ton of chances left.  

Ehh I don’t really have a whole lot to talk about tonight I guess, haven’t really done anything interesting sorry.  Maybe next week I’ll have some interesting to talk about so stay tuned!

Kites

What? Another week?  Already? Drat, I don’t really have much to talk about, nothing nearly as interesting as the excitement from last week!

Well first off we got a new roommate so back to three in the room.  He is a pretty cool guy and we all seem to get along fairly well so no real complaints.  I’m getting used to the bottom bunk, we have it setup with a blanket over the side that opens into the room and a walll locker at the foot, the head and other side are against walls so when I close the curtain I have my own little space complete with a small light and a fan which is pretty nice.  Also it is a lot darker at night which is nice as I like it dark, however I will admit that it is much easier to get up in the morning with some light, I need to get one of those alarm clocks that slowly turns on the lights before/as you’re waking up.  Well not here and I guess I don’t really need it at home but anyway.

I found a kite this week!  That was somewhat exciting, there I was just walking along and a lonely kite was sitting on the ground.  Of course I gathered it up along with the string that was attached to it.  I have it hanging on the wall up in the office now, not sure what I want to do with it as it probably wouldn’t survive the trip home, it is just made out of tissue paper and bamboo.  The string is neat, I think it starts out as normal fishing line but then is covered with something.  Kite fighting is a popular sport around these parts and for that you cover the string with ground up glass as I understand it and I guess that is what it could be as the string really just feels like sandpaper if you run it between your fingers but honestly I was expecting a little more.  Then again I guess when it is under tension it might work pretty well?  I don’t really know the details of kite fighting.

Actually I found two kites this week, I found a second one which was larger than the first dangling off the side of one of the buildings here but decided to leave it for someone else since I couldn’t even figure out what to do with one kite.

Work has been going ok.  I haven’t been super busy.  The boss got back from a trip he was on last weekend.  While I like working for him it was kind of cool it have him out of the office if only because then I got to do more and I felt a little more important.  He also has me working on getting a review of my deployment worked up so I can update it and not have to create it all from memory once I get home.  It’s not a bad idea and I’m sort of glad he is making me do it cause I probably wouldn’t be doing it ahead of time if he wasn’t.  Of course I’ll have more to add once I’m done but I have a good chunk of it done.  He wanted to look over it the other day which was fine and then we had a conversation about it.  First off I’m a bit blunt in it and tried to write it honestly and truthfully since I think there are some things that need fixing and improvement.  I think I was pretty fair about it as I listed the good things too and how I would recommend improving the things I thought needed improvement.  Anyway he read it and I was expecting him to want to discuss some of the things I wrote and my suggestions a bit more be he seemed pretty pleased with it and while we talked about it some the conversation wasn’t about the parts I thought it would be about.  He disagreed with some of the assessments I made about the job and how I fit it, plus he seems to think I’m doing a good job at my job which was nice to hear, who doesn’t want their boss to think they do a good job.  I still feel like I could be doing a lot more.  This experience really could be a stepping stone to other things once I get back, but I’m not sure if I want it to be, at least not yet.

Ehh If nothing else I got some kick ass pictures!

I live and work in a bunker

Well there was certainly a lot of excitement this week.  For those of you who don’t read the news, you should, there was a relatively “big” Taliban attack this week.  A small group of Taliban stormed an abandoned high rise building that was only partially constructed and started shooting at the US Embassy and ISAF from the upper floors, both small arms fire and RPGs.  According to the reports I read on the web the building was about 800m away which is pretty far if you want to hit anything accurately with small arms or RPGs.  Not that they really care about hitting what they shoot at, they just want publicity.  Which they got. 

C^3 apparently took some small arms fire during this so that made it exciting here as well.  I got to watch some video feeds from the big balloon that they have here which was kind of cool, and some UAV feed so it wasn’t a total waste.  Although seeing everyone sitting at their desks working on their computers while wearing body armor and Kevlar was something you don’t see everyday.  This place actually felt like we might be in a war zone for a little bit, but it is still rather cupcakey. 

Prior to all this we had a ceremony on 11 Sept, it was pretty good, CSM Hill (the ISAF CSM) spoke.  They had a small band there, I didn’t know we had bands in theater.  That struck me as pretty odd.  So at these formations everyone is well in formation yours truly included which makes it a tad strange.  I’ve never really been taught to stand at attention or at ease properly and while it doesn’t seem to hard to fake by watching other people and using common sense im sure we civilians stick out.  Also they never told us what to do with saluting and that sort of thing.  I don’t salute which is correct for a civilian but its also odd to be one of the few not doing a traditional military salute during the national anthem.  I mean I still take off my cover and put my hand over my heart and all which as far as I can tell is the correct thing for a civilian to do.  I guess my point is with all the stupid training I had to take to come over here something on the proper civilian things to do in these sets of circumstances would be handy as there wasn’t much consensus among civilians if you looked around.

They had a new type of chicken nugget at the DFAC one day at lunch, they were awesome.  I had the best chicken salad, it was awesome.  But they haven’t made fresh bread in the mornings in at least a month, im not happy about that.

So I’ve been wanting to play a game for a while, I was finally able to talk some of the people I know here into it Sunday evening but not till later in the evening since people had other things they had to do first.  Anyway I went outside and ran into a kite string which was impossible to see in the dark and a couple other people ran into as well.  We found one end of it (no kite) which was good cause then we could get it out of the walkway.  So I decided to try and find the other end thinking that there would either be a kite on it or atleast there wouldn’t be a kite string laying around.  About 10-15 min later I had a huge bundle of kite string with two ends and no kite, drat. I stuffed it in my pocket since there wasn’t a trash can around and proceeded down to the basement to meet up with my friends to play a game.  I walked into their office and one of them was standing there with two kites they she had gotten somehow and trying to figure out how to get some kite string.  Now if you’ve ever been in a situation like this and someone randomly walks in and offers you some kite string that might seem a little strange or atleast a bad attempt at a joke.  Luck for me I had a bunch of kite string still stashed in my pocket.  And that my friends is how you become a miracle worker.  I love it when the lack of a plan comes together.

So after the kite string incident we went over to the Gym which has the library and game room attached.  They weren’t up for monopoly so we ended up with clue and sorry.  Sorry was the game of choice however it was missing a red pawn which I tried to quickly use to my advantage my shifting the board so I could be red, however it’s pretty easy to tell I was missing a pawn so I ended up using Miss Scarlet as my secret weapon (aka 4^th pawn.).  I haven’t played Sorry in ages.  There is actually a surprising amount of strategy for such a simple game.  Nowhere near as much as im used to in Settlers or Puerto Rico or the like but enough to make it interesting.  I’m also happy to report that I managed to win though it was a close one at the end, well atleast between red and blue.  Someone had also sent over a bunch of cheap Hawaiian decorations, which we had found on the shelves where people put stuff they get that is for the taking.  So we were sitting around playing Sorry in the Library with Miss Scarlet wearing Leis.  It was funny.  And nice to get atleast one game in, maybe we’ll get another one in this weekend.

Also one of my roommates redeployed yesterday.  So now I have a bottom bunk and until we get another roommate a little more room.  All of which is pretty good.  I’ll have a guy above me once I get a roommate which I imagine will happen in the rather near future but we’ll see.  Still I have a bottom bunk with curtain so I can make it darker.  Actually being in the top bunk wasn’t that bad.  Hopefully we wont get another roommate for a while so I wont have much time left when we do get one but again knowing how the rooming situation is around here I kinda doubt that will happen, we’ll see.

ADAD

Another week.  So I pretty much don’t remember anything really interesting that happened this week.  I figure I’ll just start typing and I’m sure I’ll end up talking about something.  Last Saturday night I got a very strong desire to play a board game.  I guess that shouldn’t be a big surprise considering how much I play games at home and how few I’ve played recently.  So I’m going to try and get a game of monopoly or possibly risk if they have it down in the mwr together.  I went looking for some people last weekend but that didn’t work out, however the MAJ I sit next to expressed some interest in a game at some point and I think we could get one or two other guys in so that might turn out rather well.  We’ll see.  I really just need a clone of myself, someone to play all the crazy games I want to play with.  Oh well, they need to come up with more games that you can play one player as well as multiplayer, and for this video games don’t count.  Yeah they are fun and all just sometimes you want to roll dice and stuff like that. 

Tonight I’m sitting out at one of the picnic tables in the courtyard which there isn’t really anything special about.  Except tonight they happen to be having a Movie night out here.  They have one of the nice projectors out of a conference room out playing some movie that just came out that I’ve never heard of and have no interest in watching.  But it is still kinda cool, they have it projecting up on one of the buildings, I’m guessing the screen size is about similar to the “screen” we had in college so rather large, but much much better quality.  They have a sound system hooked up and a lot of the picnic tables arrayed around to see well.  They even brought out the popcorn machine from the movie room and have coolers with drinks in them.  Yeah we have a popcorn machine, reminds me of Yarnell-Hoffer.  This place really is pretty swank, especially compared to some of the other bases I visited on my little jaunt around country.

Work was really hit or miss this week.  Either I was really busy or pretty slow.  I’ve got some stuff going on but I have a feeling the next week or so is going to be pretty slow, we’ll see.  Actually going on that trip and the follow-on to that has kept me pretty busy working stuff from it so that was good on all fronts.  Not that I find that outcome surprising or anything, I still wish I could do more good stuff like that.  It is both fun and useful to all involved.  Of course very little of this stuff is going to get fully resolved before I leave but I knew that coming in.  There’s a lot going on here that I’m not at all involved with but it is pretty neat to be able to be a fly on the wall for some of the things going on as this conflict continues to evolve, it really gives you a different perspective than you can get most other places.

I’m starting to get kinda short too. Which I talked about some in my last post and I’m sure I’ll talk about more and more as I get shorter and shorter.  I’m still somewhat apprehensive about that whole bit but I think I have a little bit better of a plan and I know I’ll continue to mentally revise and redo it till I get home and it all falls apart anyway so I’m not overly worried.  Biggest thing I’ve been dreading is buying some paintings at the Bazaar, Id like to because I think they are pretty neat not to mention my room/home could use some more decoration on the walls.  I dunno why I’m just not really looking forward to buying them.  Probably because I’ve figured out I don’t really like to haggle which is a must over here.  But with all the haggling that happens over here I’ve started to wonder what would happen if I tried to haggle more when I got back to the states.  I doubt it would go over well, still might have to try it a time or too at select locations.  What I should really try and get here is a Kite, they are pretty hardcore with the kites.  I mean how many other big cities to people just go outdoors or on rooftops and fly kites?  It is pretty neat to see them at dinner in the evenings.

I’m randomly reminded of the end of CarTalk, well folks you’ve wasted another perfectly good three minutes reading about my random thoughts during this crazy adventure.