Iliad Schmiliad

At my new(ish) FOB, we get incoming rockets and mortars often.  This camp's nickname is "Rocket City."  Some Talib or some such will lob in a round and our radar will pick it up.  What's supposed to happen is that the radar detects it in flight and triggers the warning system to give people some time to get in bunkers or seek other cover.  What's supposed to happen has only happened once that I can recall.  The three short bursts of the siren went off and the "Giant Voice" reported "INCOMING! INCOMING! INCOMING!" in its monotone/slightly robotic manner and four seconds later there was a BOOM!  That was just enough time to start making a move for cover, but not enough to get there.

That's what's supposed to happen.  What usually does happen though is that the radar doesn't detect the projectile or it doesn't trigger the warning system.  Thus our notification is all backwards.  We'll hear a BOOM! or THWUMP! and then five minutes later, the siren and Giant Voice go off.  Even though the danger has passed, we have to go to the bunkers and wait the 5-30 minutes it takes to hear the Giant Voice tell us "ALL CLEAR! EMERGENCY TERMINATED! RESUME OPERATION ACTIVITIES OR RECOVERY AT THIS TIME! ALL CLEAR!"

Since, a) even if you hear the siren before the impact there's not enough time to get to the bunker, and b), the vast majority of the time, the round landed some time before, there's not a huge sense of urgency to get to the bunker.  Especially when it's the middle of the day and you must leave your air-conditioned office to swelter in the 120+ degree heat.

"INCOMING! INCOMING! INCOMING!" wailed away the other day.  I got up from my desk and headed for the door, but paused, turned back around, and grabbed a book off the desk so I'd have something to do other than stare at the gravel floor of the bunker.  I'm not much for the jabbering of the tradesmen who filter into the bunker.

To most, if not all, the fact that my favorite book is The Iliad is slightly to completely pretentious.  I know this.  Doesn't change the fact it's my favorite book.  I've several editions to include the Lattimore paperback I first read in college to my prized hardback Everyman's Library Fitzgerald.  I bought the Fitzgerald at a bookstore outside of San Francisco when my brother and I were doing a roadtrip after I'd completed my 19 week Field Artillery Officer Basic Course in November of 2001.  I knew I was heading off to Germany and thence to war, be it in Afghanistan or Iraq (indeed, the first question I asked my commander when I arrived in Bamberg was when we were going to Iraq; invasion was fairly obvious from the moment of 9/11).

I've carried my worn, salmon-colored, cloth-bound Fitzgerald all over the world.  Alexander the Great not only took a copy of The Iliad with him as he conquered the known world, but slept with it under his pillow.  I don't sleep with it under my pillow, but I have carried it to five continents.  It'll be with me when I get to the other two.  Every year or two I'll read it afresh.  This past year in Afghanistan, I've not put a complete reading in, but have gone in fits and starts.  My bookmark is halfway through.  

Thus it was that I sat on the bench in the bunker and opened up my tome of grisly killings.  I'd barely made it a few lines (for those who do not know, The Iliad is a poem) when an hispanic tradesman (plumber/carpenter/electrician or some such) said, "Wow. You read all that so far?"

"Oh yes," I said, offhandedly, "though not all at once.  I've been picking my way through it."

"You must read a lot. What book is it?"

"The Iliad," I said to unmistakable incomprehension.

"Oh," he said, clearly not interested but wanting to carry on the conversation, "what's it about?"

I'm always struck when people have absolutely no idea about such things, even if I understand that I'm rather peculiar in my love of classics.  I tried to frame it in a way that would get across, in a facile way, my interest.

"It's the foundation of Western Literature," I said.  His eyes glazed at the word "literature."  (I don't consider Gilgamesh western lit; I don't have a particular reason why other than I refuse to cede the title to someone other than Homer).

I regrouped.

"It's about the Trojan war."  Surely that would spark some comprehension.  Nope.  I got the cow gaze.

"Um. It's about ancient warfare between the Greeks and Trojans.  It has fighting and heroes.  Helen of Troy.  Achilles..."

If I were a comedian, this would be called "bombing."

"Um, you've heard of The Odyssey?" I offered.  

"Nope."

"Sure you have.  You know...Odysseus.  The cyclops..."  I was struggling.  It was not working.

"Oh, yeah. Maybe," he offered out of pity.

"Anyway," I said, "it's my favorite book.  It's got gods and heroes and fighting."

"Yeah. That sounds good, I guess.  But I wouldn't pick it up.  Not with a name like The Iliad, you know?"

I tried to be amenable.  "Oh sure. I can understand that."  I couldn't really.

His attitude subtly went from trying to be agreeable to being condescending to the egghead.  Maybe I'd somehow unconsciously put out the vibe first.  I've no idea.

"How'd you even hear of that?"

"Well, like I said it's the foundation...my dad's a college English professor and when I was little he'd tell me stories from Greek mythology and Beowulf and..."

I didn't tell him that I met Robert Fitzgerald when I was a small child.  THAT clearly would have been lost on him.  His eyes glazed again and he looked away and semi-smiled to himself.

"Oh. A dork" was the conclusion that I read unmistakeably on his face.

About that time, we got "ALL CLEAR! EMERGENCY TERMINATED! RESUME OPERATION ACTIVITIES OR RECOVERY AT THIS TIME! ALL CLEAR!"

He gave me an awkward nod of his head and got up.  I awkwardly nodded and went back to my office.

http://www.amazon.com/Iliad-Everymans-Library-Classics-Contemporary/dp/0679410759

And You Thought Dorm Rooms Were Bad

I lived in a dorm room my freshman year of college.  It was perhaps 10' x 15' and had two plastic-wrapped mattresses (to protect from various bodily emissions no doubt, be they gastrointestinal or venereal) on opposite walls and separated by perhaps 2 feet.  There were also two tiny desks crammed in there.  Other than that it had very little space.  I am, by admission, a filthy pig.  My roommate Bryan was not.  Bryan was a good guy.  He was quirky, but an acceptable roommate.  He had a penchant for smoking pipes (not in the room...though I do fondly recall the smell of his tobacco), listening to Soul Coughing and Ben Folds Five, and playing Final Fantasy VII.  I was, as I stated, a filthy pig.  He got to put up with my piles of dirty laundry that I'd refuse to wash until they were capable of ending OR spawning life.  He surely got the worse end of the deal.  

Well, he also got to admire my bad-ass Carmen Electra poster, so I'd call it Even Steven.

Living in a dorm room sucks no matter whom the roommate.  Cramped conditions and little-to-no-privacy.  Things that ordinarily would not be a major issue, like someone muttering in their sleep, snoring and/or flatulence, come to be, not even aggravations or frustrations, but justifications for plotting intricately detailed and exceedingly painful murder.  Bryan was fine.  I was worse.  Even so, I only lived in the dorm my freshman year.  After that, I got an apartment, where, even though I had roommates, I could shut my bedroom door and be left the hell alone so that my frustration and aggravation didn't get to homicidal levels.  


Out here, I started out in a tent.  Great.  I was in the army before.  It was like the old-fashioned "open bay" barracks.  It sucked, but I was under no illusions that it would be otherwise.  It was March of last year.  During the day it was in the fifties (at best) but at night it was around freezing.  As I was the New Guy, I got a top bunk.  There were probably 80+ people in there.  The tents have a central air tube that the heater pumps the air down.  It was set to be a balmy 80 degrees for the people on the bottom bunks.  Up on the top bunk, I had the heat hitting me from 18" away.  It approached 90 degrees.  Then also, regardless of whether it was 80 or 90 degrees, there were lots of people in the tent from countries where hygiene is a novel concept.  Heat=nasty body funk.  Gross.  Still, I was under no illusions.  Snoring? No illusions.


When I transferred from there, I went to another open bay, but this time I got my own bunk to myself.  I was able to block off the sides with blankets and flags (I don't leave home without my SC flag and my SC Battle Flag, "Big Red").  It didn't stink as bad.  It was still noisy.  Nonetheless, I was still under no illusions of privacy.


However, in June of last year, I moved into a B-hut.  A B-hut is a 32' x 20' plywood hut.  On the inside there is a central walkway and on either side it is divided into 4 living spaces, each of which are approximately 8'x 8'.  The floor plan looks like this:

The B-hut is a huge improvement, except for one very crucial part: it helps you lie to yourself.  Now, 8'x8' is not much space at all, but compared to living in a tent with 80+ smelly foreigners, it's heaven.  I can shut my plywood door and be surrounded by my plywood walls, and I feel like I'm almost normal.  Almost.


The first few days I was in my B-hut cell, I was working hard on lying to myself, that I finally had privacy.  When that door shut, I wasn't necessarily in Afghanistan anymore.  I could be anywhere...so long as "anywhere" had 7' tall plywood walls and my bed took up virtually half the space.  Unfortunately, reality kept intruding.  

Sound.


The B-Hut ceiling is about 10' tall, but the walls of each cell are only 7'.  In between the top of the wall and the ceiling is open, that way the light that runs along the center band of the ceiling shines on all of us.  Yay.  The problem with sound, though, wasn't that my fellow tenants were noisy; not specifically; it was that it was too quiet.  There was zero ambient noise.  That meant any noise I heard or produced was amplified.  If I rolled over, the springs sounded like banshees wailing.  Bob's snores sounded like a symphony of chainsaws.  Malik's scratching himself sounded like...him scratching himself.  It was too much.  I quickly went and bought a fan and left it on so it would give some cover sound.


Smell.


I can handle noise.  I don't like it, but I can get used to it.  I was an artillery officer.  I got to the point where I was sleeping when cannons were going off.  I'm not as good with smells, but I've been in the Army.  I can handle some funk.  Not preferred, but okay.  The problem in my B-hut is that I have someone in the Balkans directly across the hallway from me.  The problem, surprisingly, is not funk.  It's virtually the opposite of it.


You see, every morning, like clockwork, I'm woken up.  I'm not woken up by sounds.  Those I can ignore.  I'm not woken up by funk.  That, I can ignore.  No, I'm woken up by the blasts of perfume that the ONE GODDAM BOSNIAN WHO ACTUALLY CARES ABOUT HIS PERSONAL HYGIENE AND I JUST HAD TO HAVE LIVE ACROSS FROM ME showers himself with each morning.  

I have sleeping problems.  I have for a decade.  I struggle to get to sleep and often wake up in the middle of the night.  The one time where I actually manage some sleep is just before dawn, right when this Balkan Bastard is taking his Christian Dior bath.

Actually, that's not right at all. It's not Christian Dior.  Whatever he puts on I can only describe as Old Lady Perfume, the garish, super-bright kind that old ladies wear not because it's subtle or sexy or even pleasant, but because their sense of smell is gone and it can jackhammer into their deadened olfactory receptors and therefore they can be sure it overpowers whatever strange smells might be emanating from their hard-to-reach panes (fat-folds). 

Sadly, now that you've seen this picture, you know the smell I'm talking about.

There I am, finally in the arms of Morpheus (God of Dreams, not Laurence Fishburne -Ed), when this horrifying stench hits me.  I'm immediately awake and furious.  Instead of being able to lie to myself that I'm "anywhere", I'm immediately aware of the fact that I'm in a goddam hut in Afghanistan across from a dam Bosnian.  The worst part is, I can't complain.  "Hey, stop being one of the only people from your area of the planet who is at least aware enough to try to mask his b.o."  No way I can do that.   Even if I did, he wouldn't have to listen to me.  There's no way Human Resources backs me up on that one.  Really, all I can do is resort to my old standby of plotting intricate and exceedingly painful murder.


The only good news is that someday, should I ever have a lazy-ass teenager of my own who won't get out of bed, I'll know how to get the little bastard moving.

Meeting Face

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Ouchers

I have/had an ingrown toenail. Never had one this bad before. I've always been able to dig them out on my own before. This one was...unpleasant...to say the least. I'd bump my toe and electric bolts of furious pain would shoot up my foot and leg. I'd clench everything and burst inhale. I had to go to the docs.

The doctors that the company hires are foreigners. I got two Macedonian docs. I'm okay going to a foreigner for health care if it's something simple like a cold or the flu, but when blades start coming out, I get more than a bit skeptical of medical training in other countries, particularly in nearly 3rd world Balkan countries.

The lady doc was the one with the blade. It was not a scalpel. It really looked more like a super-skinny box cutter. She started probing.

"There pain?" she asked as she made her initial forays.

I'm not necessarily the most physically dominating guy, I know, but I like to feel that I can handle pain at least the way a normal man would. Sure, there was a little pain, but she was digging around under my nail bed with a razor; there was going to be pain. Now, while I can handle (a bit) of pain, I'm not foolish about it. I don't really see any need to watch my flesh cut. I turned my head. I suppose that wasn't macho.

"There pain?" she asked, seemingly because I wasn't watching.

"A little. It's fine."

Then she stone-crab-pinced her non-blade-holding fingers directly on the inflamed nerve cluster.

"There pain?" she asked, almost pleased she'd found where the pain was, as evidenced by my quick inhalation when she pierced the spot.

"We not want you hurt. We give anesthesia."

I happen to know from prior experience that anesthesia typically hurts as much if not more than anything else. Yup, they jammed the needle into the nerves, but only on the 3rd attempt. The first two were queries to see where they could make my toe bleed but not numb anything important.

I did not gasp. I did not cry. I DID clench my fists.

Then she decided to go in deep with the blade. It turned out she hadn't stabbed the nerves deep enough with the anesthesia. I winced.

An eruption of Bosnian followed. I heard her say it.

The other doc said, "You know what he said?" (The male doc refers to both genders as "he" or "him.")

"Yup, she called me a baby."

"You are big man and..." he said but couldn't finished and started chuckling.

She laughed.

Half-jokingly, I said, "Feet have a lot of nerves, and since mine are so much bigger than most peoples, I have more nerves."

I'm pretty sure I took this reasoning from my brother, verbatim, when he tried to explain his non-stoic reaction to having a German doctor use his foot for a pin-cushion.

They laughed more.

I considered violent acts.

She stopped laughing.

"No more anesthesia. There going to be pain."

I ended up watching most of what she was doing and it really seemed like she didn't do much cutting of the offending toenail. She got up under it and into the nailbed a bit, but mostly she cut flesh, which had the rather typical effect of bleeding, a lot.

Layman that I am, it just seemed like she scraped at it a bit, but then got aggravated by the blood blocking her view so she jammed gauze dripping with betadine underneath the nail.

"How did she jam gauze into the nail bed" you might ask.

"With the tip of a sharp pair of scissors" I answer.

There were repeated looks of merriment between the two Bosnians every time I winced. Finally, at the end, I was told, "Okay. You come back tomorrow to clean. You take shower?"

"Most people prefer if I do."

"Yes. Keep foot out of shower," the male doctor said as he pantomimed shampooing his head and hopping on one leg, the other kicked way out like he were auditioning for the Rockettes.

"Ohkiedohkie."

"Oh, before you leave...," he said as he handed me a bag of ibuprofen, "for pain."

I put my flip-flop on and left.

I don't think I was quite the baby they thought I was, but I do know that I wouldn't last two seconds under torture.

Confusion and Fury (Abject Whining)

I've not written much of late about the job because, frankly, it's not an exciting job and it's highly routine. The strange thing about it is that it's both monotonous AND chaotic. Surely that makes sense to those who have experienced this sort of thing and incomprehensible to those who haven't.

Basically, my job is to make sure people get where they need to go. It's frustrating because I don't control any assets to move people myself. When people need to get to a distant base, I put in requests to get them flown there; when they need to get to local bases, I put in requests for the military to take them there in Rhinos (up-armored buses). I don't fly the helicopters or drive the buses; I don't even set their schedule. I put people's names on lists and get told when they can be moved. Knowing the way that the helicopters and buses tend to move, I try to balance my requests and give people reasonable expectations when they can move. It's a bit stressful, because the PAX (lingo for passengers), don't want to hear that I'm having problems with the helo planners or that the military is running behind. They want to get where they need to go ASAP. Especially if they're trying to get out to go on vacation.

Overall, I not only do that coordination, but I run around and receive the PAX when they get off the helicopters and Rhinos and I'm there to help them move all their baggage when they get on. Some mornings I'm up at 0450 doing this. Some nights I'm up past midnight doing this. While the number of PAX was low, I was doing the coordination plus execution by myself. There are relatively set times when helos and Rhinos move so I would have frantic bouts of chaos (especially if a Rhino and helicopter arrived at the same time) and then long periods of nothing to do.

The camp I'm on is going through "Transition." My company is Fluor. It won a contract for all the northern Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) in Afghanistan. That's in between 60-80 bases. My company has employees who run the dining facilities, provide and maintain the generators, import and keep the water clean, kill the pests on the FOBs, etc. Basically, we run the camps so the military can focus on going out and killing bad guys. At any rate, we took over these camps from a company that lost the contract bid, KBR. Fluor has been transitioning the property and a good many of the employees from KBR. To deal with counting all the property and hiring all the new employees over (which for the switched employees sometimes just means literally switching hats), a "Transition Team" gets sent to each base going through transition. A transition team can be upwards of 100 people. Moving them is tough because they are on intense deadlines and so they can't give notice. They say "I need to go here now!" and I have to jump through hoops to try to get them taken care of. No one wants to hear that they didn't give you enough notice.

I'm going on vacation in a few days. For most people, that means that they can start winding down at work and getting into the vacation mindset. My camp is in transition now and won't finish until the 15th, so I've been running around like a chicken with its head cut off. In addition, unlike virtually every other department, whose jobs become easier once transition is finished, movement gets exponentially tougher because we are importing 60% of the KBR work force (and thus more than doubling the Fluor work force). When I first got here, I was "pushing" about 4-5 people a day. Lately it's been 30. Pretty soon it will be 60.

My boss, who I initially liked until I discovered he's a two-faced back-stabber, finally came to my base to look over things to see what was needed since I'm going on vacation soon and he needs to send people to cover. While he paid lip service to the fact that I've moved all the people through my area (I'm responsible for not only my FOB, but seven others) without any missing their flights out of country (which can cost them hundreds or even thousands of dollars) with virtually no assistance (he did send me a Kosovar to act as my deputy two weeks ago; but even then that's barely enough) or support (I'm doing all my paperwork/emails from my bunk because they don't have office space for me), he really came down to tell me I need to do things more like how they do it at the main FOB, Bagram. Mind you, Bagram is a perpetual mess, because his leadership style is to send away anyone who is doing a good job there. He likes chaos and problems because then he can step in and "fix" it and impress the higher ups. That's why he has Bosnians and Macedonians scheduling all the helicopters; that's why he has sent away a lawyer, a chemical engineer, and anyone else who has shown himself to be competent out to run other FOBs, far away from the eyes of upper management. At any rate, instead of me doing what I have been doing, he wants me to cede what little planning I actually *can* do to the bosnian planners. Fine. I'm leaving in a few days for vacation. I can let it blow up in his face.

Cut to today.

After I get people on the morning helicopter run, I get on to update my paperwork. I send in my list of people I need to move tomorrow so the planners can figure it out, which the boss told me to do. A planner emails me to tell me that the list he has doesn't match the one I just sent him. I wonder which one of us will be right? He sends me his list. I email him back to inform him that the list he has for tomorrow's flight has the same names he put on today's manifest, the very people I just put on a helicopter to him. "Oh...we must have a problem with our process." No....you don't say... The thing is, that planner is the good one. Which of course means my boss is sending him to replace me here at my FOB while I'm gone on vacation. Because he can't have someone who is "good" (even if they aren't really so great) stay in one place and do the damn job.

On a positive note. I have a great paycheck and all the drama a girl could want! Hooray!

Kabul

The storm came from the west,
grey and black and blue and glorious,
a reverse nightfall.
An anvil cloud,
ferocious in its pregnant beauty,
dwarfs the mountain cradle.

Above, the pale blue stretches to its lazy limit
with no idea of the barrage to come

But I am shielded,
protected by a warm embrace of sunshine,
as the storm, the wolf, skirts and prods
but the shepherdess' pen holds fast

and, safe, I am simply struck by such natural sublimity.

A torrent pierces another portion of the pen.
While I am secure and serene and unaware
and staring at the wrong threat, my head in the clouds,
brains and fingers and eyes and ears and
rent meat come plodding down.
A man, a bomb, an abattoir.
A baby cries on mother's corpse.

Indifferent, the skies are pretty.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/world/asia/19afghan.html

Musings at 50 Days In

1. I got into a discussion with a friend of mine who passed along comments he'd gotten from a friend who attended a lecture by a well-known author. The author said that he tended to write in restaurants because if he tried to write in his office (he was a college professor), he had too many people bothering him to get any work done. As I tend to turn every discussion into something about myself, even when it's completely unwarranted, as it was in that discussion, I added my piece on the creative process. How I had the gall to insinuate myself into comparing what I do to a published author, I have no idea. I chalk it up to my Carpenter-ness. Nonetheless, 2 cents on writing:

"Though, of course, not a selling author, I do my best writing in bars and restaurants, but for a different reason. If I'm secluded, I'll think of something else to do: read a book, call someone, play a videogame, watch a movie. Anything but write. If I'm in a noisy place, where I've gone specifically to write, then I focus. Also, and this probably sounds horrid, but I get caught up in details that the reader wouldn't think about ordinarily. A few drinks frees the pen, at least for the draft, and I get a lot more done. Also, much of what I write, fiction-wise, is dialogue based, and I get great material and ideas from listening to the banter around me. Or a lot of cuss words. Plus, if you're really, truly writing when you're in a place like that, and not just pretending in order to attract women, you are virtually guaranteed of attracting a woman; ordinarily, one interested in books, writing, and/or weird men: the trifecta of qualities I look for in a woman."

2. I find what soldiers write on port-o-potty walls to be quite instructive. Apparently, situational homosexuality isn't homosexuality at all. "I'm 100% straight, but when you're deployed, there's nothing wrong with letting a dude..." I had no idea.

3. I hate cell phones. I've always hated cell phones. I got (illegally) ordered to get one when I was in the army. When I got out of the army, I deactivated it and then swore I'd hold out as long as I could. I find them to mostly be codependency enablers or electronic leashes. The year after the army, I bounced around from place to place, traveling to all manner of places and I did what the hell I wanted and my family and friends understood that if they wanted to get in touch with me, that email worked just fine and that if it was truly an issue, they could email me and I'd use a calling card to check in.

Finally, at law school, I broke down and got a cell phone for personal use. I was pretty darn broke and after my first semester of landline, the cell phone was simply much cheaper. I got the phone and tried to stick true to my beliefs. I left it plugged in at my apartment for maybe a month. Then I got used to the convenience and it was attached to me for the next two years. Argh! I felt like a hypocrite, but what to do? When I got the job in Afghanistan, I was thrilled to be able to deactivate the cell phone again. Woohoo! Autonomy!

Except that over here, every employee gets issued a cell phone. The cell phone network we use is called Roshan. It's an Iranian company. We have to be careful what we say because the assumption is that everything is being listened to by various foreign intelligence services. For the most part, they get to listen to me make supply requests. The thing that I despise about this particular cell phone is that the one they issued us had a battery life of, no lie, approximately one hour. It failed to recognize the SIM card 50% of the time. It shut itself off occasionally when you pressed a button. I hate cell phones, but I really, really, really hated the cell phone they issued me. What the hell was the point of saving a few dollars for those horrible phones when they didn't work? After 3 weeks, I broke down and bought the cheapest phone I could find ($57). The battery on this one lasts four days and it doesn't shut itself off. I hate it, but at least it works.

I don't give anyone my number unless I'm basically ordered to. When I finally leave Afghanistan, I'm gonna try to hold off from getting another one again. Probably not gonna last long on that one, but sometimes you have to fight the fight, even when you know you're gonna
lose.

4. One thing that I always annoys me when I've watched movies set in the future is the patent stupidity of the weapons. The weapons in those flicks are the same weapons we have now, but just with assorted crap bolted on. Yup, patent stupidity...except that 5 years after I got out the army, I discover that the weapons all have assorted crap bolted on (scopes, laser targeters, bipods for M4s, rail systems).

5. When I first starting running to get myself back in shape, while I was in Bagram, I was surprised by the fact that my speed and cardio were a lot better than I thought they'd be. Within a week or two, I was running 2 miles in about 13:30. Not bad for being, by my estimation, 30lbs overweight. I had to wait a week after I got sent here to the base in Kabul to exercise. The first time I tried to run here, I felt like I was gonna die. I barely made the two miles in 18 minutes. I've dropped it down to 16 minutes in a couple of weeks, but, still, it's brutal running here. Bagram is 4400 feet, Kabul is approximately 5900 feet. I knew I was susceptible to altitude, but I thought that was really only an issue at over 10,000 feet. Nope. This lowcountry boy ain't made for heights. Which is strange, considering I love the mountains so much.

My Job Has the Same Idiots Your Job Has

I've been a bit ornery of late, arguing with folks about various things (mostly the Confederacy...don't get me started...no, really, don't get me started), all of which boil down to ego issues (them, not me...I am modest and meek).

Anyway, I am at a satellite camp here in Afghanistan. The main camp is Bagram. There, our planning cell (two bosnians, and an American woman), arrange the next day's flights. The planners routinely make mistakes. They routinely can't get out the list of flights until very late each night because they do God Knows What during the day. Virtually all problems the Air Operations department have start and end in the planning cell. Because they are virtually always wrong, they are constantly being checked on by the Boss, Tom. Because they are constantly being checked on, they constantly do whatever they can to cast the blame of any issues on others.

I've had to fight with them tooth and nail recently just to get some very basic, common sense changes made. All it took was them saying "sure. not a problem," but first we had to go through two days of me explaining why I needed (A) done, them responding something about (Q) which had no bearing, me explaining (A) again, as if to a child, them arguing (pi), me circumventing and explaining (A) to Tom in a matter of seconds and Tom emailing the planning cell and telling them to do what I tell them. Then the planning cell mass replies to the email from Tom, saying the suggestion to change (A) was theirs all along. It's lovely.

I've tried to work with them and just smile and be nice and give them way, way more information than they need. I call them with updates so they're not surprised by any of my requests. Today, I had way, way, way more people show up for flights for tomorrow than I had counted on. I didn't call the planning cell to demand an extra helicopter. I usually put people on military helicopters (which the planners have nothing to do with and so can't screw up), so it wasn't a huge issue. Still, I called the planners to let them know I had a very large amount of people needing to fly. I worked out over the phone with the American, Holly, that I'd send them on military but I'd send an email just to confirm our phone call. I did this in an email titled "Sweet Jesus!" Thirty minutes later, I sent my daily report to the planners which showed the people who needed to fly from my location.

Five hours later, I got this response to my daily report from one of the Bosnian planners. He made sure to include Tom on the email.

"If we had this information before 10 AM this morning we could plan to support this on Fluor Rotary.

Thank you for Fluor Rotary

Adnan"

That was his snide way of saying "We can help you if you tell us in time, but you didn't do your job." I'd had enough, and I've been in a combative mood of late, so I replied (to all):

"Adnan,


This information was included in my email to Bagram Travel titled "Sweet Jesus!", where I explained the situation. Please read all emails before flaming me to others. Especially when the explanatory email came thirty minutes before this one.

Or we can continue to send "your fault" emails. I'm a lawyer and I have a lot of time on my hands. I wouldn't recommend it, but it's your call.

Cheers.

Ajax Carpenter"

Update**********************************************
Adnan's reply:
"Ajax,

First of all considering traffic of emails which are coming to Bagram Travel inbox I have to admit that I do not have time to pay attention on Spam emails.

The subject of email should reflect the content of email and its importance otherwise it can be missed.

The purpose of my email was not pointing the finger to anyone, it was simply highlighting the importance of timely information for us. ( A day before you have been complaining how we do not support you enough).

Friendly advise: If you have a lot of time on hand please try to get information on time so that all of us can work better and end their workdays on time.

PS.
Your family must be very proud on the fact that you are a lawyer. "

One Month Down

1. If I ever hear a woman complaining that she can't find a man, I'm going to tell her to get a job in a warzone. The women here have their pick (though these contractors are not the pick of the litter, admittedly). I'd estimate the male/female ratio is 60-1, if not greater. The women need not be particularly attractive either, but if they are, look out. There is a female contractor, a forklift operator by the name of Amber, with a potty mouth that would make a sailor's toes curl and gigundous gigundas. When she comes into the office for any reason, 20 Bosnians appear out of thin air. I'm only a month in so I am not able to look past her startling vulgarity, weathered looks, or painted-on eyebrows, but who knows. Look for the wedding invitations.

2. Sleeping at an airfield is fun. Aside from the helicopters and fighters and cargo jets, a couple of times a night, the Voice of God comes on the base loudspeakers and announces that the "Aerial Firing Range is now hot." I don't mind so much when the Voice of God sounds like he should, his deep voice booming out, but when a highpitched 18yo squeaks on there, my faith is tested.

3. My boss, Tom, is easygoing and likes joking around. I like that. I was concerned that my bizarro sense of humor might get me in trouble, but, nope, I fit right in. Someone came in the office looking for information. I asked if he'd spoken with Tom and he told me he didn't know Tom. Tom was on the other side of a divider wall where I knew he could hear and I saw that Tom was coming around to talk to the guy. I said, "How do you not know Tom? Everyone knows Tom...but that's because he has to register in every neighborhood he goes to." Tom laughed. Time to my firing: +/- 20 days.

4. While I like Tom, he makes some of the most inexplicable management decisions I've ever imagined. The big one was that he brought Emir back to our FOB. Tom told me that it was for a day or two until he could ship Emir off to another satellite FOB. My guys, who hate Emir, panicked and wanted to know what was going on. I told them what Tom told me. One of them said Emir said when he got off the helicopter he was back to get his old job back. Suffice to say, Emir's being back did not work well. He kept antagonizing the others and they'd come, terrified, to me. I cautiously expressed my concern to Tom, but Tom refused to do anything about it. Finally, when Emir boasted to my guys that I was getting pushed out and he was taking over, they threatened to mutiny. I calmed them down but went to Tom about it. He said nothing of the sort was going to happen.

5. So, of course, he shipped me off to FOB Phoenix, a base in Kabul, to do a "recon." Tom mentioned it the day after Emir got back, so despite his protestations that there was nothing to look into, well, it was pretty obvious. Phoenix is the only air FOB in Kabul (minus the Kabul International Airport, which Fluor employees are not supposed to go to for the time being) so he tried to sell it to me as a big step up in responsibility and autonomy. He'd sent Emir to do a recon also (when Emir got off he helicopter on his return, he asked my guys "Andre packed yet?"), but I needed to go because Emir didn't have a security clearance and couldn't see everything I could. I went, and sure enough, while I was there, Tom told me he was placing me there full time.

I don't mind in the least. The FOB is much smaller and easier to get around. It's mostly paved so there's not nearly as much dust. I have no bosses, no colleagues, and no subordinates. I do my job and have a snack. I'm no longer sleeping on a top bunk in a smelly tent, but rather, I'm in a massive hangar with plenty of space. The bathrooms are nicer. There's pool tables, ping-pong tables, horseshoe pits and an indoor basketball court. The internet isn't blocked like it is at Bagram so I can go pretty much wherever I want. Yup, for Afghanistan, Phoenix is pretty much heaven.

6. Okay, by now, most people, including my mother and people that worry, will have checked out, I hope. I couldn't really mention it in my first communiques, but when I was getting off the airplane from Dubai, literally I was standing at the top of the rolling stairs, about to walk down onto the tarmac, I watched an airplane crash on the runway next to me. Disasters are nothing like in movies or TV. I sort of expected tragic music to blare in the background, but nope, I simply watched in silence as the left engine clipped the runway (I later found out the landing gear had failed), burst into flames, and the plane began skidding down the runway, making a wide left turn before coming to a halt rolled on to its left wing. What impressed me was that the fire engines were chasing after it within about 45 seconds and that there wasn't an explosion. I later heard the pilots came out of the plane (only pilots since it was a cargo plane) screaming and crying, which is understandable when faced with a jet fuel incineration of a death. If I were them, from that point forward, I'd feel invincible in the air. I mean, who's ever heard of someone crashing TWICE?

At any rate, that was an inauspicious beginning to my Afghanistan adventure. I was very glad I was getting off of a plane when I saw that, as opposed to getting on.

7. We got rocketed twice while I was in Bagram, within days of each other. The first attack, I didn't even hear. The Voice of God woke me up. Many of the other contractors in my tent went running for the bunker as they tried to get on their body armor and helmets. I checked into my office for accountability, to show that I wasn't dead. Then I went back to sleep. That rocket hit a B-Hut, which is a long, one-story wood house that is subdivided into a bunch of compartments that people use as rooms. Think cubicles for living. The rocket killed one guy but the other two people next to him were fine. That just goes to show that my attitude about the rockets and mortars is correct. It's a lottery. It pretty much has to be a direct strike. If that happens, you were just due.

Two nights later, I heard the rocket go over my tent but didn't hear the impact. In Iraq, I'd not only hear the rockets and mortars impact, I'd feel it. I'd wake up on the floor of my hut, my hands covering my head, my lungs giving my heart a bearhug as it tried to set the beats per minute world record. Not being cavalier, but this just hasn't bothered me in Afghanistan. I signed in and went right back to sleep.

8. In Phoenix, the hangar that I sleep in counts as a "hardened structure", meaning that in case of rockets or mortars we are safe in there. I'm amazed by American technological advances. Apparently, we've come up with a an aluminum that can repel incoming explosive projectiles. That, or idiotically, the powers that be simply slapped a sign that says "hardened structure" on a death trap. It's okay though, should a rocket hit, it's not like it would send secondary shrapnel from the aluminum roof all over the place. Waitaminute...

Actually, there are bunkers just out back of the hangar, so they must have realized that aluminum does not make good protective material. Oh wait, the bunkers are aluminum tractor trailer boxes with no sandbagging. I'm starting to think they just want a place where they can corral all the dead bodies.

Educating our Soldiers. Uh Oh.

March 10, 2010

1. College Version 1.0 One of the most prominent buildings here on the FOB is the education center. There are signs all over it and posters for the online universities it represents. These posters are all over the FOB. Ordinarily I’d be all for encouraging people to get college credit, but when one of the colleges is, and I’m not making this up, “The University of Maryland University College Europe,” I think attending may actually damage brain cells and lower job prospects. I sure as hell wouldn’t expect anyone to hire me if I graduated from the Preparatory Academy School of Scholastic Academic Prep.

When I was in the army, the young soldiers thought that all that differentiated them from me was that I had a college degree; they were NOT impressed. “College ain’t nothing. I’m taking classes now.” “Indeed,” I’d offer, “but you can ‘take a course’ in literally two hours to get credit.” “Exactly! How dumb you feel for wasting four years on that?”

P.S. This isn't the first idiocy to come from the University of Maryland. First of all, they have a fight song. Why is that retarded? Because their mascot is a turtle. A turtle, of course, doesn't fight. The lyrics of the fight song command, "fight, fight, fight" when it should obviously say "hide, hide, hide." If the disaster of having a mascot who, by its very nature was selected by survival by Nature because it doesn't fight, wasn't bad enough, it also isn't even a bad-ass turtle. At least a snapping turtle can put a hurtin' on you before it holes up. Nope. A terrapin. I looked it up to find out exactly what differentiates a terrapin. Not good for the U of M: "This eight-inch long freshwater turtle is considered by many to have the best meat among turtles. Its flesh is often pounded and served like steak."

P.P.S. They should pass out helmets to the soft heads at the graduation ceremony for the University of Maryland. Or maybe a protective shell they can crawl into. Yes, that would be fitting.

2. College Version 2.0 One of the other colleges that I see on posters everywhere is Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. Think about that. I'm not sure it's such a good idea to bring the flight school TO Afghanistan. Wasn't it flight school and Afghanistan that started this War on Terror in the first place?

D.R.A.M.A.

March 9, 2010

My silence of the past week hasn’t been due to any absence of interesting material, in fact, far from it. I have walked into an office political storm that, heretofore, I thought had only been talked about in caricature. Yowsa. So…

I landed on Monday, March 1st. After I’d been issued my plated protective vest and helmet, I was sent over to transient billeting. I was put in a tent loaded with 200 bunk beds. Sleeping in a tent with 399 other guys is honestly the part of this whole deal that I figured would be the most grating. Still, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the bunk beds had actual mattresses on them. In Iraq, I had a metal bed frame, but instead of springs and metal links supporting it, there was simply rebar. Instead of a proper mattress, I had a foam rubber pad. That was actually comfortable for the first fifteen minutes, until it compressed. For the next year, I pretty much slept on lightly padded rebar. Thus, a mattress is a huge selling point.

Still, I had plenty of time after I’d been given my bunk. I hitched a ride on a FOB (Forward Operating Base) shuttle over to the other side where the offices are. The FOB is huge and the shuttle ride can take 45 minutes, with the extraordinary traffic here. At any rate, I managed to make my way over to where my office was purported to be. Fortunately, it was there.

I walked into the building (and actual 1 story building! Not a tent!) to chaos. Someone asked me if they could help me. I introduced myself. There was a low rumble of what seemed like excitement. The boss, Tom, a gregarious yankee, scooted up. He was very excited. “Hey, everyone! This is Andre. The new guy!” I awkwardly waved and said hello.

Tom took me outside to talk. He was very excited that I’d arrived. They were/are grossly undermanned and he’d been waiting for me to arrive. He arranged for me to move into the tent next to the office. He mentioned that I had an “impressive resume.” I’d not heard that one before.

The office has, including me, five Americans, the rest are Eastern Europeans (the majority being Bosnian, though we have Macedonians and Albanians…well, Albanian Macedonians) and Asians from the Philippines and Sri Lanka and India. I call the office “The Olympic Village.”

Tom took the time to tell me what my job is, at least for the moment. I work in Air Operations. We are responsible for all in-country travel of company personnel. This is accomplished by rotary (helicopters) or fixed-wing (airplanes). Fluor has a contract with a helicopter company so we have much more control over flight times and manifests (what people and what cargo are going where) than we do over fixed wing, which is typically run by the military. For fixed wing, we can only request the people and cargo we’d like and they tell us whether we can do it. The majority of our planning is for rotary. Fluor personnel are not allowed to travel by ground in Afghanistan. They can only fly. Since Bagram is the larger of two bases that fly people out of country, we are the largest air operations in the country. It is chaos.

I didn’t start work until Wednesday because I had to go to one day of in-processing. I was having the worst case of jet-lag I’ve ever dealt with so I went to bed at 7pm the night before. I was in the office at 5:30am. Tom came in and set down what he wanted me to do. First of all, the basic, obvious part was that he wanted me to learn as much as possible from the other coordinators. There are four of them, three Americans (Stephanie, Holly, and Chad) and one Bosnian (Emir). Ordinarily, foreigners don’t get the supervisor positions because they are cheaper to hire and it isn’t necessary to pay them the same as Americans. Tom had gone up the ladder to get Emir hired at a higher level (still paid less than an American, but much more than other Bosnians).

One would think that Emir, who with the rest of the Bosnians in the department had been working for a sub-contractor $2700 a month (still fantastic pay considering the average annual income in Bosnia is $2980. $2980! A YEAR!), would be extremely appreciative that Tom had convinced Fluor to hire them on at approximately double the money (so approximately 20 times the annual salary in Bosnia). Hell, if someone hired me for a job that paid over 20 times the US average annual income, I’d definitely consider touching his/her leg inappropriately, if ordered to. I might even offer. (Annual US individual average income is $35499. To get paid as well as a Bosnian comparatively, I’d have to be paid $709,980. I am not paid $709,980.) Beyond that, as mentioned, Tom had taken a lot of flak to get Emir paid even more than that to be a coordinator. Emir was not appreciative. Emir was pissed off that Americans got paid more. Very pissed off. Tom had been rather blunt. He told Emir, “I don't know what to tell you. Deal with it or crawl back in the womb and get born again on the right piece of real estate.”

Tom told me about all of this my first morning. Apparently, someone had passed on salary information to a website, so all the Bosnians knew exactly how much everyone makes. The issue of not being paid as much as the other American coordinators had apparently been simmering, but my arrival blew it up. I found that all to be distasteful, but outside of my control and thus care. I was here to do a job. What it was, well, we weren’t quite sure, but I was going to learn what I could. Additionally, Tom wanted me to review our operations and do common-sense checks and trouble shoot. There is no question the office needs improvement. Chaos.

My first two days, I came up with a number of areas where I had questions. I didn’t think I was doing anything revolutionary, just asking why the personnel in the office were doing what they were doing, but Tom was quite pleased. Tom being quite pleased with me did not make Emir happy. Emir and the other Bosnians were arguing with Tom often, and in a manner I thought was inappropriate for employees to talk to a supervisor.

Tom took me out to the flight line (where the helicopters and airplanes land) on my second day. Emir and the Bosnians were furious, claiming that the helicopter company personnel were kicking people and cargo off the helicopters simply because they didn’t want to fly and because they hated the Bosnians. When Tom and I went out there, that wasn’t what came across at all. What came across was that the Bosnians weren’t respecting the helicopter company’s rules, designed to keep people safe. The Bosnians weren’t weighing passengers and their equipment and annotating those weighed on the proper paperwork. Aside from that, the Bosnians were cursing and yelling, hardly tactics designed to get the helicopter company to help them out.

Tom calmed down the situation, ordered the Bosnians to follow the rules, and we got the people and equipment on the helicopters. As we walked away, Tom told me, “That’s going to piss off Emir even more, because I embarrassed him.” I asked how Tom had embarrassed Emir. “Because I showed that it was relatively easy to solve the problem so he thinks I’ve shamed him.”

I didn’t know what to think about that kind of attitude. It just seemed damned childish to me.

The next morning, I saw Tom and Emir arguing. Shortly thereafter, Tom came into the office. “Change of plan. André, you’re no longer on review. You’re in charge of the flight line. Emir has decided to quit.”

Day three and all of a sudden, I’m in charge of the operational portion of the job. Awesome. I was dumbfounded that someone making 20 to 30 times the average salary of his country would quit that job over ego. I was also dumbfounded by the fact that Emir and his close confederates held me personally responsible. Emir’s brother-in-law, Ahmed, who Tom had hired as a favor to Emir, refused to work for me. Mirza K., a young guy, Emir’s good friend, was surly and confrontational. “I don’t report to you,” he told me when I went out to the flight line, “I work for Emir.” I had to have Tom make a department-wide announcement that I was in charge. Just how I wanted to make an impression. Sweet. (Sigh…)

Later that night, some of the other Bosnians came to me to tell me how happy they were that Emir had gotten fired and that I was in charge. Apparently, Emir had taken his authority to his head and treated the other Bosnians outside of his posse like second-class citizens. “We’re on your side.” Great, now it was being portrayed as me v. Emir. I was bewildered. All I knew is that I’d gotten hired for a job. I’d walked into a civil war.

The next couple of days involved Emir, who, though he had quit hadn’t left and now realized how badly he’d shot himself in the foot, was still around, going to Tom to repeatedly tell Tom how I don’t know anything and that everything was going to blow up. It’s true, I’d only been there for a few days. I didn’t know the details, but, ultimately, a) it wasn’t an overly difficult job to grasp, and b) I don’t have to know the details; I have to know how to make the people who do know the details do their jobs and make sure we meet our objectives. That, I can do. That is management.

Anyway, I was the bad guy and the hero. Ahmed refused to have anything to do with me and Mirza K. was argumentative. Eddie and Mirza E. kept telling me how smart and wonderful I am. The rest of the Bosnians hunkered down to see how everything else played out.

Fortunately, I was able to institute a degree of planning into the process that standardized things and, other than out-of-nowhere changes, we’ve run smoothly. The helicopter company has bent over backwards to help because I listened to them and integrated their rules. Tom has been happy because flights are typically going out as planned, and when they aren’t, it hasn’t been because of operational issues.

After five days, Emir finally flew this morning. Thank Jesus.

Afghanistan- March 10

March 4, 2010

1. Simply for the fact that the Bagram Air Field (next to Kabul) is surrounded by snow capped mountains, it reminds me of Anchorage. While it’s dirty, dusty, and muddy all around me, it’s nice to look up and see pretty skies and snow. Below the mountains? Well, it’s dusty here. I mean, really, really dusty. The past few days it’s rained though, so it’s been muddy. I mean, really, really muddy. The roads on the FOB (forward operating base) are mostly dirt and when it rains they erupt in foot-deep pot holes. There are shuttles to take people from one side of the FOB to the other. Luckily, I don’t have to go to the far side.

2. It smells here. It just does. What does it smell like? A distant septic tank. Iraq smelled like that. Dubai smelled like that. Afghanistan smells like that. You get used to it, but yeah, ugh. Still, it could be much worse. It smells like that because we’re doing our best to take care of the plumbing issues here. When I was first in Iraq, we had burn crappers. What’s a burn crapper? It’s a wooden outhouse where your deposit goes into a 55-gallon drum cut in half. When that drum got full, it got removed to a burn location. You’d fill it up with diesel, set it on fire and stir it with a long stick/pole. Poop on fire makes poop flakes/ash. It can be pretty until you realize it’s poop flakes/ash. The smell of diesel burned poop flakes is way, way, way worse than a distant septic tank.

We actually have toilets here (in containers like the backs of tractor trailers) and I’m thankful for them, particularly because we can flush the toilet paper. Often times in countries like these, you have to throw your used paper into a trash can next to the toilet because the plumbing is too small to handle it. Retraining yourself to throw toilet paper into a trashcan is a pain, and then when you go on vacation, it’s a hard/embarrassing habit to break. What I don’t like about our toilets is that they’re the German models. The Germans are famed as engineers, but they haven’t figured out how to make a decent toilet. These are the shelf model. Our wonderful American toilets are bowls with plenty of wonderful water to smother and mask the fumes. The shelf toilet has a shelf six inches under your posterior where your former meals pile up. There’s no water on that shelf. Thus, it reeks. When you’re finished and flush, a massive jet of water slams your deposit into the front of the toilet where it then slides down a drain. Other than people who like looking at poop, it’s a horrible, horrible system (well, it obviously isn’t water wasteful, but I don’t care). Make sure you shut the lid before you flush is all I can say. You don’t want to learn why so take my word on it.

3. I'm fine with my living conditions. My coworkers are of the opinion that we are living in the stone ages and bitch at every opportunity. When I first got here, they put me in the transient tents. Those tents have approximately 200 bunk beds. I'd heard horror stories, but the beds didn't seem so bad. They actually had mattresses. When I was in Iraq, I had a bunk, but no mattress. That meant that I put a foam rubber pad on top of iron cross bars. The foam rubber compressed after 15 minutes and I slept on iron cross bars for the next 10 months. A mattress is a luxury to me.

After they got us into the tent on the first day, we had free time, so I went to find where my job/office was located. I met my boss and he immediately had me moved to the Air Ops sleeping tent, right next to the office. I'm stoked about that because the transient tenting is on the other side of the FOB and it took a 45 minute shuttle ride to get to the office. The Air Ops tent is smaller. There are about 50 of us in there. I'm on a top bunk (not so fun as an adult), but I have a mattress. The heating duct, which runs down the center of the tent, blows on me. Not so pleasant when it's warm during the day; the tent gets to about 80 degrees and smells like wet hamster, but at night, when it's cold, it's nice enough. I'm fine with how things are. People bitch about the conditions, but that stuns me. We're in a war zone. I'm stoked about being dry and warm and (relatively) comfortable.

4. I'm a bad judge of food. When I don't have to cook it, I like it. We get the DFAC (Dining Facility). That's been fine for me. Because this is the biggest base in AFG, we also have a Burger King, Subway, Pizza Hut, Popeye's Chicken, and Dairy Queen. I'm not going to eat at those if I can help it. A) Why spend money when I don't need to and B) I'm trying to lose weight. The DFAC doesn't slop huge portions on us. I like that.

5. I finally found out what my job is. I knew my job title was Air Operations Coordinator, but no one in Greenville could really give me any information on what an Air Ops Coordinator does. I met my boss and it’s pretty straightforward (in theory). Fluor is responsible for many dozens of bases and we have personnel on them. My job is supposed to be coordinating their movement from base to base, most of the time when they are coming to Bagram to get on airplane flights to Dubai for R&R or getting back here from R&R and going back to their FOBs. That sounds easy enough, but there are untold moving parts and different departments who all have their fingers in the pie that it’s sheer chaos. The old phrase is “There’s more than one way to screw a cat.” (I’m pretty sure that’s the phrase, anyway.) We’re actually trying to come up with just one way to make things more efficient.

6. We get mortared here occasionally. I haven’t been mortared here yet, but it’s gonna happen. When I say occasionally, I don’t mean daily. I don’t even mean weekly. My boss said we’d been mortared maybe 20 times in the 14 months he’d been here. From my experience, mortars aren’t that dangerous, at least in likelihood you’ll get injured by one. Typically it takes a direct strike. If you get hit directly by a mortar, it was your time. If it weren’t the mortar, God was gonna hit you with a bus or lightning or something. We’re supposed to go to concrete bunkers if we get incoming. Usually, by the time you make it to the bunkers, the attack has finished.

7. Out of an office of approximately 50, there are only 6 Americans. The rest are Bosnians and Philippinos. I call the office “The Olympic Village.” The Bosnians are teaching me Bosnian cuss words. I wish I’d remembered the cusswords the Bulgarians taught me a couple of years ago in Alaska. One of the Bosnians, Eddie (well, in Bosnian it’s nigh-on indecipherable, so he just goes by Eddie), was an English Professor in Sarajevo drove me around the FOB. After a while he said, “You are not like other Americans. I know you for an hour and already I can tell you are very strange. We are going to be friends.”

8. General facts: The time difference is 9 1/2 hours. It's currently 6:30am on thursday, so it's 9pm on wednesday in SC. It's 4500-5000 feet here. They gave us all anti-malaria pills. After I had a mental breakdown (of sorts) in Iraq due to the anti-malaria medication they gave us (lariam), and it turned out we didn’t need to take that, I didn’t even bring the anti malaria pills this time. I was right not too. Malaria carrying mosquitos don’t get above 2200 feet. I’m not taking pills just because a drug company convinced my company to buy the pills.

Hookers! Hookers! Hookers!

March 1st, 2010

I was in Greenville for approximately a month. I had managed to make it the first 30 years of my life never having gone there. I hope to never have to go there again. (Hell with Clemson! Go Cocks!) My first week there involved “training”, which was little more than filling out paperwork that I’d already filled out prior to my arrival. What little more there was mostly had to do with prostitutes. I had done an online certification on human trafficking, which required my printing out the certificate, signing it, scanning it, and then emailing it to the company. We had to do that one at least one more time, plus I think there were more. The surveys were titled “Awareness of Human Trafficking” or some such, but what they really meant was “Don’t Use Hookers!”

When I got to my first unit in the army I was amazed to meet people who not only had frequented brothels, but were proud of the fact. Contractors apparently come from the same stock, but, since they make inordinately more money, they use inordinately more hookers. Thus, the company attempted to put a face on those many prostitutes by presenting them as victims of international crime, dubbed “human trafficking.” I’d have to say the company failed spectacularly.

Though Fluor threw money all over the place, even going so far as to book me a $950 plane ticket from Charleston to Greenville (which I cancelled for being ridiculously wasteful), they paired us up in rooms in the Crowne Plaza Hotel. My first roommate hesitantly mentioned his use of prostitutes. My second roommate had no qualms whatsoever. He trumpeted hookers as a necessity of the modern age. Once, while drinking, he informed me that he’d heard a rumor that the cleaning ladies were “pros”, so he took it upon himself to call the front desk and ask the manager if he could get some action. He was notified that rumor was incorrect. The day that I left Greenville (the three weeks after the week of filling out paperwork mostly involved me playing video games in a classroom to clock in my required 40 hours), the roommate tried to bargain with me.

Him: “Sir (He really liked the idea of me being a captain), you gotta promise me something.”

Me: (knowing where this was going) “Um. We’ll see.”

Him: “Sir, you gotta promise me you’ll get a hooker in Dubai!”

Me: “No. I’m not promising that.”

Him: “But Sir! Why not? They’re hot.”

Me: “Not my thing.”

Him: “You’re not gonna get laid for four months. You’re gonna go crazy. Trust me.”

Me: “I guess I’ll have to make do.”

Perhaps I should mention that directly before that exchange, when I walked into the room, he was webchatting with a prostitute. I say she was a prostitute and not an internet “model” because they were chatting about her fees for sex.

At any rate, I put all thought of sex workers out of my mind when I got to the airport. I was seriously dreading the 12 ½ hour flight from Washington DC to Dubai. I had visions of cramped seats and screaming children; my luck wasn’t doing too well since I’d managed to lose my cell phone on the connector flight from Greenville to DC. I was thrilled to discover, however, that I got a seat in front of the bulkhead with plenty of legroom and there was not a child in our section of the plane. God be praised.

We were only going to be in Dubai for 12 hours, and we had significantly less time than that after the time it took to wait for our luggage and get through customs. Finally, we got to the hotel. The company put us in a swanky $300 a night hotel. It even had a separate face washer, though it was a bit unusual that was right next to the toilet. Still, it did the job. Those Arabs are strange.

Anyway, while we were checking in, up above us, on the mezzanine level, were prostitutes motioning for us to come up and say hello. A porter walked by me and thrust a piece of paper in my hand. It read:

Sketch Bar: One free beer or spirit of choice!

Then it had a perforated tear off portion where we were to put our name and room number for accounting purposes. Sometimes there are times in your life where you get to announce “Hey, I’m an idiot!” This was one of them. I wasn’t going to do it. First of all, “Sketch Bar”? Yes, the name was drawn in wavy pencil to conjure up images of artistry, but the last thing anyone with any intelligence is gonna do is go to a foreign country, hang out with hookers and take a free drink at a sketchy bar. “One free beer or spirit of choice! Free roofie and wallet removal!” Probably not gonna happen in a $300 a night hotel, but still, there’s no way I’m doing that.

Six hours after I finally got checked into my room, I was back in the shuttle back to the airport. I mentioned the Sketch Bar and the prostitutes to the kind, regal-looking grandfather sitting next to me. He told me the better prostitutes were actually around the corner and down two blocks. I now have no faith in humanity.

P.S. Yes, I know what a bidet is. Calm down.

P.P.S. It just so happens I like to use the bidet to wash my face.