Steve : Numen

A quick weekend getaway to the IZ

2006-03-13T20:30:00.000+03:00

"It's Friday the 13th come on a Monday."

If you are much younger than me, you may not be able to put that quotation into context. It is from a wonderful cartoon strip from when I was young (yes, I was young once ...) called "Pogo" which was the "Doonesbury" of its day.

Anyway, today is Monday 13 March, and I am back in Camp Victory, after spending the weekend in the International Zone in Baghdad. I was able to take a helo over there and back, so the journey was fairly short in duration. When one has to take the "Rhino," it takes about 5-6 hours, due to the through-the-neighborhoods-of-Baghdad routing, and checkpoints, and less than trivial inconveniences such as IEDs and RPGs. The distance, as the crow (or helicopter) flies is about 3.5 miles, so I was happy to sign up for SpaceA (space available) and take the trip. I got some nice pictures of Baghdad from about 100 feet up.

One of the more ludicrous experiences for me so far over here (and trust me, there have been a boatload of ludicrous experiences) is that Big Defense Contractor has located the Security/Badging Office inside of a gate through which you must pass with the proper badge. Hello? Can you say Catch-22? I arrive at the gate, intending to proceed to the Badging Office, in order that I might procure a badge, which will allow me through the gate. Have you got the picture crystal clear yet? Yet another outstanding example of less-than-optimal solutions by the mother of all disappointing performers, BDC.

I did get the badge, which allows me free access to all things BDC. Unfortunately (or, if you are the American Ambassador, perhaps you are thinking that your prayers ARE being answered), BDC does NOT run the site where the Embassy is located. I tried the South entrance, heavily guarded by Columbian mercenaries (I am NOT making this up: apparently, they have NO fear, and make wonderful security guards; maybe it's the coca~ne which gives them fearlessness), and was turned away by a soldier who instructed me that BDC uses the Main and North entrances. Fine, I go to the Main entrance, where I am told that BDC must use the South and North entrances. OK, I go to the North entrance, where I am told that BDC must use the South and Main entrance. I put a stop to all this madness, schmoozed the guard in my best street Spanish, and he let me through the gate.

Once inside, I managed to procure some really nice Polo Shirts with United States Embassy - Baghdad and the State Department Eagle embroidered on the front left. I also observed some shirts with the emblem embroidered on the front right, which makes no sense in my world.

I was in the IZ for three full days, having flown there last Thursday morning, and working in the Procurement Offices for BDC on Friday and Saturday. The dining facilities in the Embassy were OUTSTANDING, easily the best so far on my travels through Iraq. But that makes sense, since the personnel eating at the Embassy D-Fac are State Department employees, other contractors, and military types of all flavors (I didn't ask, they didn't tell ...). At the BDC sites in Iraq where I have been working, it's only BDC employees and, for the most part, the Army, which is notoriously forgiving in its consideration for fine dining.

I flew back out on Sunday, and put in a short day at the office.

One of the sanity-saving devices used frequently by me on this trip is iTunes. I have a nice library (thank you, Vector Ivanov), and I have been able to download this season's "Lost" episodes. I watched all of Season 1 of "Lost" in 6 days. 24 episodes in 6 days. Yikes. Since then, I have spaced it out, never more than 2 episodes in a day. The Lovely One was going to send me the DVDs for Season 1, but they did not arrive at our house, so she has not sent them to me, but it all worked out because a colleague here already had them.

Speaking of colleagues, I welcomed back Fearless Leader, Principal, D2, Mongo, and Ken yesterday. They are on a different project and will stay beyond my exit on 31 March. (For those who missed out on last summer's blockbuster blogs: Fearless Leader is the CEO of the consulting firm for which I work; Principal is a colleague who, uh, used to be a principal; D2 is a colleague whose initials are D. D. - duh!; Mongo is 6-5 and weighs 260 and works out and is fit and is also a Doctoral Candidate at UTD in Organizational Change Management; and Ken is Barbie's boyfriend. No, really, I think his wife's name is Barbie.

It's good to have friends around you in a goofy country like Iraq.

All things blog,

Moi

Catching up on all things Iraq

2006-02-19T20:24:00.000+03:00

Howdy, buckaroos! It's your old friend, Moi, and I am here to tell you that things are just ducky in the Beautiful Baghdad Bureau of Big Defense Contractor. I was walking around today, taking the day off, and one of the things I noticed is that people are not very friendly around here. I try to make eye contact with those I encounter on my meanderings, and I say things like "Howdy" or "Hello" or "Howyadoin'?" but I usually encounter mumbled replies, looks of shock, or glares of intrusion-detection.

Do not most of these people come from Texas? What's up with THAT?

I guess it may stem from the personalities of those who choose to come work in the Middle East, although with a civilian population as big as it is here, I would have expected a lot more diversity in the crowd. Loners, though, are the rule here.

I have been on this particular contract since 30 Jan, when I left The Lovely One and the Daughters in Dallas and flew through Frankfurt to Dubai, and then caught the Russian-piloted Phoenix Air Charter from Dubai to Baghdad. I arrived 1 Feb, moved into my delightfully decorated hooch (the previous tenant apparently had a subscription to 'Maxim' magazine, and he was generous enough to paper the walls with the proof), and proceeded to work a few days in BDC's Regional Procurement Office in Camp Liberty, Baghdad. Liberty is a hop, skip and a jump from Camp Victory, where I was working last summer (May/Jun/Jul); it is also where the biggest PX (think Government KMart) is located, and it is also the location of the ever-popular Haji Mart, where local Iraqi vendors sell everything from rugs to knick-knacks to old Iraqi money to china and silver embossed with Saddam's emblem.

I had to go back to Dubai for a seminar, but we were bumped off of our intended flight on Mon 6 Feb, and had to go out Tue 7 Feb instead. If you weren't aware of it, BDC has only the ONE flight out of Baghdad every day, and it is always 100% sold out, although we technically don't BUY our tickets. They put me up in a very nice hotel, the Jumeirah Emirates Towers Hotel (if you go to the website, it's the second tower from the left in the picture; the first tower (the taller one) is the Office Tower).

While we were in Dubai, we went snow skiing. I am not making this up. I have the receipts and the pictures to prove it. Ski Dubai is an artificial mountain inside one of the newest of the 24 malls in and around Dubai (Mall of the Emirates), and it has snow skiing, snowboarding, and other fun snow activities like snowball fights, and falling down, and being kicked off the slopes for not being a skier (this didn't happen to ME, but it did happen to my friends who had never skied before, but who tried to get on the slopes saying that they were accomplished skiers -- HA!). It is fairly amusing to see the UAE natives in snow gear. I still don't know how the women got down that hill in their burkas ...

On our way back from Dubai, I flew to Baghdad twice. The day started, as it always does when flying into Baghdad International Airport (BIAP for short), at 0230 when I gathered up my suitcases, checked out of the Hotel -- you will be happy to know that BDC had a negotiated rate of only 700 Dirhams (~$195) per night, as opposed to me just walking in and getting the standard rate of 1850 Dhs (~$530) per night; Hey, I am glad to save YOUR tax dollars, you know -- and got myself to BDC's Dispatch Hotel, where they loaded us on a bus, gave us the Security briefing, the HR briefing, and the Air Ops briefing, and we went to the airport, arriving around 0330. At 0400, they give us a Boarding Pass, we go through luggage screening, check our luggage, go through Passport Control, a secondary screening, and then we wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Around 0715, we board some more busses just outside the gate, and we are whisked to our lovely Boeing 727 (I could swear that this plane once flew for Braniff Airlines in Dallas) and we take off around 0800.

We fly to within 25 miles of Baghdad (in other words, about 2 hours out of a two-and-a-half hour flight) when the pilot announces that because of "visibility issues" we were turning around and going back to Dubai.

Stunned silence on the jet. My colleague leans across the aisle and asks, "What did he just say the reason for turning around was?"

I reply, "It doesn't matter what the reason was. We are going back to Dubai, and we can ruminate over all the possibilities of why we turned around as we wait to fly back to BIAP."

It's funny, because I talked with more than a few persons in Liberty once we had landed, and they swore up and down that the skies were clear, the sun was shining, and there was no dust in the air. My gut feeling is that the Army (who is nominally in charge of BIAP) probably had some Intel that there were "security issues" that prevented us from landing. In fact, someone should ask Mr. President if anyone in the US was making a call to the insurgents in Baghdad on 11 Feb around 1000 Iraq time ...

I digress, so back to Terminal 2 in Dubai: we sit around in Dubai for almost three hours, and then we finally get the call to "Load 'em up!" and we get back on the busses, get whisked once again to the plane, take off from Dubai for a second time that day, and land around 1930 (that's 7:30 PM for 95% of the WORLD). After an uneventful trip from BIAP to BTC (the Baghdad Transient Center, BDC's way of handling all travellers into and out of Iraq), we claim our luggage and get to our hooches.

It is now 2100 (9 PM), and if you have been following along carefully, you will notice that I have been up since 2:30 AM, and it is now 9 PM, and oh, by the way, when did I eat breakfast? When did I eat lunch? and When did I eat dinner?

So that FASTING thing started a little early for me this year. Usually I wait until Ash Wednesday to cut out things from my regular eating routine, but this year, I started on 11 Feb 2006.

Anyhoo, that's the news from the Middle Eastern Front. More in another missive, at another time.

I miss being at home, with my wife and daughters and friends and dogs and cats. I miss going to The Fig and singing in the Choir there. I miss going to Legal Grounds.

But I'll be back soon. That's a promise.

Moi

End of year update ...

2005-12-30T08:42:00.000+03:00

Hello again, from lovely LSA Anaconda, Balad Air Base, Iraq. It has been getting chilly here lately, but at least it's a DRY chill. I was told that November to March is the rainy season in Iraq, but so far? Nada, zip, zilch, nothing. A few unremarkable sprinkles every other week or so for a few minutes, but that's it. Pat Robertson would say that God is punishing Iraq for being an infidel country. Pat Robertson would say that, but I sure wouldn't.

I had a lovely Christmas Dinner last Sunday. The DFAC staff pulled out all the stops on the Christmas decorations, too. Reindeer, Santa Claus, elves, Nativity scenes, camels, wise men, streamers, lights, Merry Christmas banners (none of that Happy Holidays crap over here!), all the usual suspects. They served a pretty good [processed] Turkey, the ham was actually pink (instead of the standard grey and dry), a big steamship round from which they carved Roast Beef, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and Pumpkin Pie with Vanilla Ice Cream. It's not often I say that a meal at the DFAC is good, but this was one of those times. They even served bubbly: carbonated Welch's white grape juice, of course.

Speaking of alcohol, more than 30 Big Defense Contractor employees were issued one-way tickets home in the past couple of days. It seems that BDC Security Ops and HR folks, along with the Military Police, searched a whole slew of hooches -- while the occupants were not there, of course -- and found alcohol, drugs, or pornography in their rooms. Prohibition being what it is, these people found a way to possess some or all of the contraband items, which is a sure-fire way to get fired.

I have noticed that a lot of my speech/writing patterns have taken on a decidedly military slant: sure-fire is one example.

I have received notice that my $ervice$ will be required for a few more weeks, at which point (mid-January) I will be able to come home for a couple of weeks. Of course, I am going to be going to Los Angeles for 5 of those 14 days for a Bike Race (see my Bio at the top of the page), but The Lovely One and The Girls understand. I hope.

About 1 Feb, I will be coming back (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, murmurs the crowd ...) to the Middle East on yet another project which will take me through 1 April.

Speaking of crowds, I attended the USO Show here at Balad on 23 Dec. You are not going to believe who the emcee of this show was. Here's some hints: Outspoken Liberal. Opposes the Republican Party. Has a radio talk show. Was a writer and actor on Saturday Night Live. Wrote a fairly funny book about Rush Limbaugh and other assorted conservatives.

That's right, folks: Al Franken was over here, and I got my picture taken with him after the show. If I can figure out a way to get my images smaller, I will post pictures from the show. Al did a MEAN Saddam Hussein impression. His co-host was Traylor Howard, the ditzy assistant on "Monk."

A couple of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders were also here, and naturally I got my picture taken with them, too. (Note to TLO: I have been in love with the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders since I was, like, 15, so just get over it .)

This was Al Franken's THIRD year to do the USO Show in Iraq. Although he is decidedly anti-war, he is definitely pro-soldier, and that's what the USO show was all about. There were no politics on the night of the show, just great entertainment (if you like country, you would have LOVED this show) and a boatload of support from the home front. The soldiers warmed up to Al after he did his Saddam impersonation, and they were stompin' and hootin' and hollerin' for most of the show after that. A couple of the C&W guys were veterans: one of them was on the Mogadishu mission which went bad (see the movie "BlackHawk Down"), and another was in Daddy Bush's Gulf War I. They were both big with the crowd.

I got pictures of a couple of the K-9s over here at Anaconda: a German Shepherd/Malinois mix, and a purebred Malinois. Beautiful dogs, and very obedient, too. Just goes to show you what training and discipline will do to a dog.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas season. I wish you all a Happy New Year's! If you are a single-malt lover (Dalwhinnie is my favorite), please indulge yourself on N Y's Eve and have one for me.

Auld Lang Syne,

Moi

I have been meme'd

2005-12-11T21:46:00.000+03:00

... or something like that. My friend Patti was "tagged" by a friend of hers, so she tagged me, and now I have to write 15 fun facts about Books and Me. Here goes:

1. When I was a very young child, about 7 years old, my mom (a teacher) worked during the summer selling World Book Encyclopedia to all our friends. The reward at the end of the summer, besides making a little bit of extra money, was that we received a set of the 1964 World Book Encyclopedia, with Yearbook, and (2-volume) Dictionary. The next summer, we moved into the new house on Windchime, and my mom had a Study on the second floor, right across from the bathroom shared by me and my three siblings. On a shelf in the Study (which was really just a huge walk-in closet with shelves and a window, and room for a desk) sat the nice new, red World Books. I started reading them. Literally. I would grab a volume and head into the bathroom, and read and read and read, much to the chagrin of my sister and brothers. If I knew that I was going to be there for a while, I would grab the 'S' volume; if it was just a short trip, I would grab the 'J-K' volume. The upshot is that by the time I finished elementary school, I had read the entire encyclopedia, and most of the Dictionary. Good news: I found out about a LOT of different things. Bad news: I found out about a LOT of different things, and I have always had an insatiable curiousity to find out more. It was the foundation for my becoming a Renaissance Man. It is a curse to be blessed with a little bit of knowledge about a lot of different things. Heinlein wrote that "specialization is for insects." And I agree with him.

2. By the time I got out of 6th grade, I had read the trilogy "Lord of the Rings."

3. By the time I graduated from high school, I had read the trilogy "Lord of the Rings" two more times. To date, I have read it seven times. I also started in on "Silmarillon" and other fun stuff that Tolkien wrote.

4. I have a weakness for used book stores. The Lovely One and I will go, periodically, to Half Price Books to just walk around and look. She is a big fan of Half.com, a great source for discount-priced books.

5. One of my favorite books ever is "100 Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a Nobel-laureate.

6. Over here in Iraq, I just finished reading "Peyton Place" and "Return to Peyton Place." If you have only "heard" about Peyton Place, I commend this book to you. The trick is to remember that these were written in 1956, by a woman. Scandalous.

7. TLO once got me a photo-book by Annie Liebowitz. The best thing is that she stood in line to get it autographed. Sweeeeeeeet!

8. Doctor Sis is always trying to get me to read stuff, but one of her best suggestions was to read "Iron John." Men, if you want to have a clue, you will read and grok this fairy tale.

9. TLO and I try to stay away from NYTimes Bestsellers. I mean, if the masses are reading it, how good can it really be?

10. Ugh. This list is harder than I thought it would be. OK, I have never read "The Idiot" or "The Brothers Karamazov" or anything else by Dostoievski (sp?); I did watch the Flying Karamazov Brothers once on TV.

11. TLO found a book, "Sarum" about the Stonehenge area of England, great writing, tremendous research, the author is an English Michener (Edward Rutherford). While in Iraq, I found another Rutherford tome in the MWR Library: "Russka" about Russia over the centuries. I highly recommend both of them.

12. A friend of mine just got published: "Lord Vishnu's Love Handles" is a spy novel, sorta, and it's about Lakewood, and Dallas, and affluenza, and the CIA, and it's written by Will Clarke. I met Will at Legal Grounds, a most excellent coffee shop in Lakewood.

13. I have read almost everything by John Irving and Kurt Vonnegut. I think Irving has one of the best senses of humor of any writer in America.

14. In a strange twist of fate, my senior thesis in high school was on John Barth. Doctor Sis' PH.D. dissertation was on John Barth. No, we didn't find this out until afterwards. Barth is a crazy guy, but enjoyable reading.

15. I had forgotten that I was such a big Heinlein fan. Time Enough For Love, The Past Through Tomorrow, Job: A Comedy of Justice, Friday, Rocketship Galileo, etc. Heinlein was PROLIFIC. And I think I have read at least 40 of his books.

Ok, so there's my list. And now I tag my nephew Nicolas, my friend Candy, and my friend (and Candy's Hubby) Tom.

My flight is WHEN?!?

2005-11-29T02:59:00.000+03:00

It’s a good thing I like flying, because I have been doing a lot of it recently.

We left Tallil last week, on Thursday 24 Nov. Mongo (the new kid working with me in Tallil and elsewhere: he is 6’4”, about 240 pounds, and works out a LOT) and I had to get up at 5:30 AM in order to catch the bus from the Gazebo (just outside of our hooches) to the Dining Facility. We were standing at the Gazebo, waiting, and watching a beautiful sunrise, and waiting, and watching a couple of buses leave the parking lot – neither of them was going to the DFAC, and waiting, and finally, about 6:20 AM, a bus took us to the DFAC.

This wouldn’t be so bad, except that we were assured, several times, that the busses ran every 15 minutes, or so, and we had very little time to spare. We ate breakfast, and then we were lucky enough to catch a ride back with one of the Big Defense Contractor admins, who had her own vehicle.

We made it back to the hooches, gathered up our gear, and waited on the Gazebo for HR to pick us up at 7:15 AM. They were on time, and we went to Air Ops to “sign in” at 0730. We went through several briefings, and finally about 0930 they told us to be back at 1130.

At 1130, we waited some more, and finally got on a bus which took us to the plane on the tarmac. We lifted off without incident, and about an hour later, we landed in Baghdad.

I overnighted in Camp Parker, and got to visit with Principal and another colleague (I haven’t made up a nickname for him yet).

Friday 25 Nov, I go to the Baghdad Transient Center to sign in at 0730 (after having eaten breakfast, of course!), and they tell us to come back around 0930. At 0930, we start the usual delays associated with travel in and out of Baghdad International (BIAP), but we finally get on the busses to take us to BIAP around 1200. We process through, and then the real waiting begins.

Fast forward through 4½ boring hours and we finally get on a plane bound for Dubai. This is the first time I have been on this charter that it wasn’t chock full of people. It was weird, having all that room on the plane. Normally, these flights are 100% full. Period. No more, no less. I guess everyone that needed to get out before Thanksgiving had already flown.

I was on the exit row, alone, so I had LOTS of leg room, plus three seats to crash out in, and I did. Two and a half hours later, we landed in Dubai.

I spent the rest of Friday night, and all day Saturday, in Dubai, making preparations to go to Tbilisi, Georgia. I had to go buy a winter coat, because it is about 5 degrees Celsius in the mornings here (high 30s). Do you know how hard it is to find a winter coat in Dubai?

I go to sleep Friday night, and I leave a wakeup call for 0100, because I recalled that my flight for Tbilisi left at 0330. I recall thinking to myself that I should check the itinerary again. I sure wish I had, because when the wakeup call came, I got dressed, pulled out the tickets at 0120, and noticed that my flight was at 0210.

Holy S@#$%!!

I went to the airport anyway, hoping for a miracle, but I returned to the hotel, checked back into the room I had just left, and waited for morning to come.

I had a backup plan in place, though: instead of going through Baku on Azerbaijan Airlines, I had reservations to go through Istanbul on Sunday afternoon, so that’s what I did. I flew from Dubai to Istanbul, then Istanbul to Tblisi. Business class on the second leg, and I was able to sit around the airport in the Turkish Airlines CIP lounge (I guess CIP is sort of like VIP, except that it was about the same as a Motel 6 conference room). I can’t complain too much, since the lattes were free, and the Internet connection was fairly solid.

The other nice thing is that I didn’t have to go through Baku, Azerbaijan. Did you guys see where the police and opposition political party had a nice little run-in with each other on Saturday? I know I saw it on My.Yahoo, so I am fairly sure it must have made the mainstream US press.

As soon as I got here in Tbilisi, I started making my plans to leave, and then to get back into Iraq, and get to Camp Anaconda. Travel in the Middle East, and into and out of Iraq, is not quite like going from Houston to Dallas on Southwest Airlines. BDC offers one flight per day, and if you aren’t on it, then you get to spend another day in Paradise. Depending on where you are when you miss the one flight, Paradise could be Dubai. Or it could be Iraq.

Happy Thanksgiving to mit, yduj, and kram

2005-11-25T05:15:00.000+03:00

Gentle Reader: you will have to indulge me as I write the following to my brothers and sister. Inasmuch as my PDA battery has died, and Big Defense Contractor doesn't allow me to store "personal" email addresses in their Outlook client, and my Address Book at swbell.net is empty (remind me to start synching my Mac to .Mac! perhaps I can keep track of folks better than this from now on), I am going to send my Thanksgiving message to my siblings via the post below. You can read it if you want to. But you don't have to if you don't.

Dear Buddees,

Since I am the furthest east of all of us, I get to celebrate Thanksgiving before any of you. Yay. It's not quite the same when you are not with family and friends. I had to fly today, from Tallil (a base in southern Iraq) to Baghdad, and tomorrow I go to Dubai. Sunday I will fly to Republic of Georgia (Caspian Sea) and I will be there a week.

I miss you all, but please know that not a day goes by that I don't think about you and your families, usually when I am saying my grace (to myself) before eating. It does not surprise me in the least to see how many soldiers bow their heads and pray before meals. Like me, perhaps they miss those they are not with ...

So Happy Thanksgiving! Indulge yourself in the things I did not get to see this year: pumpkin pie, candied yams/sweet potatoes, really good cornbread stuffing, white meat from the breast of the turkey, Waldorf salad, chocolate cream pie, and a good cup of coffee afterwards. Don't go feeling sorry for me, though: I did have turkey (although it was dark, and seemed to be reconstituted); I had dressing (ok, this is a really liberal use of the word); I had gravy (but NOT homemade); and I did have cranberry sauce (but it wasn't Ocean Spray).

I hope the Cowboys win on Thursday, and I hope the Aggies keep it respectable (or even win? ha!) on Friday.

All my love,

evetS

Deep in my soul, I cried

2005-11-24T05:45:00.000+03:00

I am wrapping up my nice little stay here in lovely LSA Adder, or T1, or Camp Cupcake, whatever you want to call it. Tomorrow I fly to Baghdad International Airport, where I will hopefully have VIP housing for Thursday night (notice that I am flying on a day which I once swore I would never travel on: Thanksgiving -- although the crowds here are nothing like the crowds in America: we tend to wear Personal Protection Equipment as we move around the country). Friday I catch a charter from BIAP to Dubai, and I will probably be in Dubai for a couple of days. I can't wait to go see the Duty Free at Dubai International Airport. It is ACRES and ACRES of some of the best tax-free discount shopping in the world, and I am not making this up. Other airports can pretend that their duty-free is fairly nice, but Dubai sets the standard as far as I can tell.

It's been a fun two weeks. The students have been good, the presentations have been excellent, I have had a chance to sleep in late every now and then (something that escaped me when I was at Camp Victory in May/June/July earlier this year). There's also something nice about having a day off every week. Most of the Big Defense Contractor employees have to work 84 hours a week: that's 7 12-hour days for you non-math majors like my wife, The Lovely One. Of course, my daughter the Math Genius could have given you that equation in about 4 seconds. Did I mention that she WON the Math Olympiad for the whole freaking School District in the Big City last year? I am a proud dad.

The Lovely One did a very lovely thing this week: she sent me an email which had been sent to her, and in it was a link to the website of the Church we used to attend before we transferred to the FigNation up north from where we live (The Cathedral Church of Saint Matthew). This Church has a dynamite music program, and I was lucky enough to be a part of its choir for the better part of 7 years. Anyway, I cruised on over to the website, clicked on the "Listen to the Choir" link, and I was transported, spiritually, to the concert we gave in November of 2004. As I sat and listened to some surprisingly well-recorded hymns, with organ, and horn quartet accompaniement, I recalled the moments with exquisite clarity. I can visualize where I was standing. I recall our Organist/Choirmaster improvising his intros to some well-known and much-loved hymns (it was the Festival of Hymns, after all ...). And as I cued up the last hymn we sang that night (it was the first one listed on the web page because for some reason the webmaster listed them alphabetically rather than in order performed; this is heresy, like making a CD of "Dark Side of the Moon" and ordering the songs alphabetically: it renders the effect of P. Floyd's music inert; it is meant to be played in a certain order; I did the right and proper thing, and played them into my headphones, sitting in my office in Tallil, Iraq, in the order in which we sang them), I recalled why "Abide with me" is my all-time, number one, no questions asked favorite hymn. Even though it makes me sob like a baby. The chord progressions, the tenor lines, all contribute to a greatness, a swelling of heart and soul and body. I had what I like to call a God moment, when it really doesn't matter that I am in Iraq, or that the US may or may not have good reasons for being here, because in the end it doesn't matter anyway: what matters is that I was IN THE MOMENT, and I was present to it, and I was enjoying it, and I was wallowing in it. We have sung this hymn several times in my chorister life, and each time we sang it, there must have been something going on in my life, or it was the occasion in which we sang it (I recall a celebration we did at the Church many years ago for World Aids Day; a lot of friends from the Diocese were there, and as we sang this hymn, processing out at the end of the service, I could not see my hymnbook anymore because my eyes had welled up with water, my throat had thickened, I was stumbling down the aisle in my purple robe and white cotta; I think it was because I was thinking of the friends I saw no more), I just cannot make it all the way through without getting all verklempt.

And I do not want to hear from my really musical friends who don't like this hymn because it is "maudlin" or "mawkish". I don't care, and you can't change my mind, so don't try. This hymn was sung at the wedding of George VI, and at the wedding of his daughter, Elizabeth (now Queen E~ II). So there.

At the Festival, we sang this hymn with standard organ accompaniement on verse 1. Verse 2: cue the horn quartet. By verse 3 (horn descant) I could barely make it through the words. And verse 4 -- starting with a very piano organ which fades to nothingness -- ends up being a cappela, with the choir spread out around the aisles of the nave of the Church. And as a I sat in my dark office in Tallil, late at night, with nothing going on except this hymn, and this moment, I experienced all over again the feelings I had the night that I sang it at the Festival of Hymns. And deep in my soul, I cried.

The text of the song, written by Henry Francis Lyte, 1847
The tune, "Eventide" by William Henry Monk, 1861

Abide with me: fast falls the eventide;
the darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide:
when other helpers fail and comforts flee,
help of the helpless, O abide with me.

I need thy presence every passing hour;
what but thy grace can foil the tempter's power?
Who, like thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

I fear no foe, with thee at hand to bless;
ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death's dark sting? where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if thou abide with me.

Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes;
shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies;
heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee;
in life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

Ur not going to believe this ...

2005-11-15T07:40:00.000+03:00

I am back in Iraq, in lovely "Camp Cupcake" (the locals' nickname for this camp; it's really LSA Adder, or T-1, in southern Iraq). We are close to Tallil Air Base, and the soldiers here are Army, Navy, and Air Force. I have seen no Marines, and that's probably because Marines go to where the fighting is, and this place isn't that at all.

The really interesting fact about this place is that Abraham reputedly grew up near here, in the village of Ur. You know Abraham: he's the Patriarch of all things religious: Jews, Christians, Muslims. I believe there are some good stories about Abraham, and Ur, in Genesis.

There's a wonderful Ziggurat, conveniently named The Ziggurat of Ur, which I plan on visiting later this week. Luckily for TLO and the Daughters of Dallas, the Z~ is within the perimeter of our camp, and we don't have to go traipsing through the Iraqi countryside to get there. I will have to don my Protective Personal Equipment, though, since you never know .... anyway, the Z~ was built about 3,000 BC (!!) and maybe served as a model for the Great Pyramids of Egypt.

Adder got its nickname (Cupcake) because we are in the middle of Shii'a Muslim country. Or is it Sunni Muslim country? I can't remember, but I know that whatever Saddam and his buddies were (the minority Muslims in power for so long), this group of Muslims is the Other Group that likes Americans. Or something like that. So our Rocket Propelled Grenades and Mortars and Improvised Explosive Device count is next to zero for the last 18 months.

I started way too late in the day for this post, and I have to cut it short. Me Sleepy. Plus, we're about 48 hours away from a Full Moon, and I have to build up my energy reserves for the Transition. I HAVE told you about that wolf thing, haven't I?

Moi

Red alert!

2005-09-25T06:40:00.000+04:00

I have been involved in four Red Alerts since arriving at Camp Anaconda. I don't want to freak anyone out here, but apparently it's a fairly routine thing for this camp. GlobalSecurity.org referred to Anaconda as "MortaritaVille" for all the mortars landing here in early 2003. The situation is much improved since then.

A few days ago, I was on a bus from the office area of BDC to one of the four Dining Facilities (DFAC). On our way to the DFAC, the red alert klaxon comes on, and our bus drivers (idiots from the Phillipines) have one response: drive directly to the nearest bunker, park the bus, lean the seat back, and go to sleep.

Please note that I have nothing against Filipinos, or the Phillipines. I just don't like the idiots they hired from there to drive our busses.

Anyway, siesta time was conveniently next to the Fuel Distribution Point of this huge airbase. As you might imagine, it takes a LOT OF FUEL to keep the jets and helicopters and cars and trucks and SUVs and electrical generators running. They keep the fuel in these berm-surrounded bladders (each bladder holds about 25,000 gallons of fuel), and there are about 75-100 bladders at the Fuel Farm. I don't know about you, but I can think of better places to be during a Red Alert than RIGHT NEXT TO EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE SHTUFF.

When we went to Green All Clear, we had to wake up Senor Marcos.

This morning, the Red Alert went off very conveniently at 7:44 AM. I was just heading out of the hooch to go get a cup of coffee (this is absolutely the ONLY thing I will consume from the Convoy Cafe; this DFAC is located 80 meters from my hooch, but I have only eaten there once). The Cafe closes at 8:00 AM, so this Red Alert was disturbing, to say the least: how in the hell can I get a cuppa Joe when the Red Alert is going on?

I called The Lovely One, since I had nowhere to go, and we were talking for a while, when the power went off in my hooch. THAT'S WHEN I PUT ON MY PPE (Kevlar vest, helmet, etc.). I went outside, as if that could enlighten me in any way, and a few minutes later came back in to my hooch to discover that the power was back on. Oh, by the way, when you lose power, you lose the network, and you lose the phone call you were just on. There's something vaguely disturbing to TLO as she is talking to me talking about Red Alerts, and the line goes dead.

So I get the computer back on line, and there's this frantic email from TLO, and I get SKYPE -- Ok, let me digress here: you guys have GOT to get Skype; I make phone calls from my PC to TLO's Mac on Skype and it costs NOTHING. Skype is free at www.skype.com and I recommend it highly. You can call other Skype users for free, and any calls I make to the US on land lines or cell phones costs about 2.5 cents/minute! I even talk to Dr. Sis in Rome, Italy for 2.5 cents/minute. -- running again, and there are like three voicemails on my Skype account, all of them concerning TLO's concern for me.

I email her immediately, I AM OK. I also call her, and tell her I AM OK. I have to rush off at this point, since we finally got the Green All Clear signal, and my meeting starts at 0830, and it is now about 0815. I make it to the meeting on time.

It's really strange, though, to think about these red alerts. Many of the people here have been here so long that they don't take these red alerts seriously. Seriously, they don't. They continue doing whatever it is that they are doing, they don't don their PPE, they continue driving down roads, or walking between buildings, or going for smokes. God help me if I ever get that complacent over here.

Moi

Fast forward two months

2005-09-15T07:56:00.000+04:00

It has been about two months since I visited this blog, but I feel obligated (The Lovely One is compelling, I say again, compelling me to write something on the blog) to contribute some recent history.

I got home from the first Middle East/Central Asia trip on July 23, a day which lasted, for me, exactly 33 hours. Such is the nature of flying east-to-west through nine time zones. Georgia (as in the Republic of ...) is an interesting, awesome place. Lots of greenery, vineyards, cows, dogs, environmental variety, terrain -- in short, a complete change of pace from dusty, dusty, hot Iraq/Afghanistan/Uzbekistan. I will endeavor to fill you in on how great Georgia is later, but here's a short tease: Georgians have been making wine for longer than any other region on earth, and I do believe that I can attest to their expertise.

So I get a phone call from Fearless Leader about the first week in September, letting me know that Big Defense Contractor wants us to go to a couple of locations in Iraq, Kuwait, and Dubai to conduct some Business Simulations of incorporating Subcontracts into the procurement software we rolled out in July. I got the full details of my travel plans on 6 Sep, and on 8 Sep I took an AA flight from DFW to London Gatwick, then I caught an Emirates Air flight to Dubai.

We stayed in the "al Murooj Rotana Hotel" in Dubai -- go here to look at the al Murooj on the web -- and did some training on this Business Simulation activity. I suppose the closest approximation to what we are doing is Functional Analysis or Use Case Analysis, only we are NOT doing it from an Object Oriented Programming perspective. The software we are using is based on a Windows 3.1 interface. I did NOT typo that last sentence. I am not making this up. Moreover, it is being channeled through a Citrix client, which is a lot like trying to water your lawn with a spray bottle: it'll get the job done, it's just that it takes longer than it should. Citrix is an extremely small pipe.

On Tuesday morning, Principal (he is going to the USM-I site in the International (a.k.a. Green) Zone) and I got up at 3:00 AM, got to the airport at 4:00 AM for a Roll Call with BDC, caught the charter flight at 6:30 AM from Dubai to Baghdad International on Phoenix Air (can there be a worse name for an airline than Phoenix Air?!?), and landed safely at BIAP about 9:30 AM. We parted paths at that point: Principal went over to Camp Victory, and had to stay there for most of the day and part of the night. His ride from Victory to USM-I took place in a Rhino, a very Hard Vehicle used to transport folks from Victory through the city of Baghdad to the IZ. Rhinos have about 8" of metal surrounding everything, and they can run on flat tires, and they are surrounded by MANY security vehicles with lots of weaponry. It's a fairly short trip, but it takes a long time. He rolled into USM-I about 5:30 AM, and had to start his Biz Sim at 9:00 AM. Good thing he can get by on a couple hours of sleep.

Lobster Boy went to Kuwait. FL says he wanted to give LBoy a break since he has been stuck in Afghanistan since going there the first week in July. He finally got out of THAT hell-hole of the universe on Labor Day. Kuwait, although not as nice as Dubai, is tons better than anything in Iraq.

I caught a flight from Baghdad to Balad Air Base a couple of hours after arriving in Baghdad. Balad is about 65 kilometers north of Baghdad, and it is a major staging point for all the convoys going north to fun places like Tikrit (Saddam's home town) and Mosul. Camp Anaconda is where all the BDC folks are, there are about 3,000 civilians here, and almost half of them have something to do with either driving trucks or fixing trucks or loading trucks. I find it hard to engage these poor souls in any conversation more challenging than, "So, it sure is hot, isn't it?" or "Wow, these hooches don't have wheels on them anymore."

My first day got washed out because the folks who were supposed to handle my logistics (meeting room, living accomodations, contacting the interested parties, etc.) were asleep when they handed out initiative, so I took over and got everything in place for tomorrow.

This will be a very short-term trip, as it ends (light candles, kill chickens, burn incense NOW) on 27 Sep. Keep the prayers and good thoughts and karma coming my way, and divert some towards TLO and The Girls, too.

L&K,

Moi

P.S. I managed to watch the Cowboys beat San Diego on Live Broadcast at the Hotel. Props to Aaron Glenn, an Aggie, for intercepting the ball on fourth down in the end zone.

Uzbeki style

2005-07-11T06:07:00.000+04:00

Prime rib, medium rare, carved from the roast. Seafood gumbo with shrimp and crab legs. Cornbread with real butter. Red beans and rice. A couple of bbq ribs. Pumpkin pie with ice cream, and real milk.

And that's what I had for dinner tonight, my first meal in Karshi, Uzbekistan. This is an outstanding facility (Camp Stronghold Freedom); it's too bad that the Uzbeki government and the USA are not getting along well anymore (something about human rights violations). They have asked us to leave, so I may be one of a handful of Americans who can say they have visited Uzbekistan. Lucky me.

K2 -- as it is known in the BDC community -- was the initial staging area for US and multinational forces fighting terrorism in Afghanistan, in 2001. Remember Osama bin Laden? This is where the forces gathered, preparing to seek out and capture/destroy bin Laden and al Qaeda terrorists.

I took a short tour -- short only because this is relatively small base, about 1 square mile -- and saw an outstanding library at the MWR (Morale Recreation and Welfare); great gym; outdoor basketball courts; decent housing for both BDC and military personnel; very nice PX with some local Uzbeki swag; a beauty shop/day spa that offers massages - SWEEEET! I believe I have a slight pain in my lower back coming on ...

I hope all of you have been following the Tour de France. Lance looks strong, but his team cratered on him today. It's still two weeks to go, though.

I am kind of rambling because I am really tired right now. Friday morning I got up at 6:00 AM, hung around the Baghdad Transient center until 3:30 PM, when we were whisked off to Baghdad International Airport (a dreadful place; if you HAVE to be there, make sure you GO before you go, if you know what I mean. I think the cleaning crew left with Saddam in 2003). A dust storm had blown into Iraq, and the airport was closed for most of the day. We waited in the terminal for almost 3 hours, waiting for visibility to clear out to 1500 meters (about a mile). Our plane finally left for Dubai at 7:30 PM, and got in around 9:30. BDC then bussed us to an airport hotel (not a five-star, nor a four-star, nor a three-star, etc.). I was able to take a shower at the cabana by the pool, just in time to attend an 11:00 PM meeting, and be bussed back to the Dubai airport, where I checked in at 12:00 AM, and waited in the terminal for a 2:15 AM flight to Bagram in Afghanistan. We got in about 5:00 AM, and I stumbled over to Submariner's office, and he took me to breakfast.

My flight out was scheduled for 4:00 PM that afternoon, so I figured what the hell, I'll just stay up. When I checked in to BDC Operations, they told me that the flight was cancelled, and that I could catch the next one at 12:05 AM. Remember, I had been up for about 34 hours at this point, and I was fairly wiped out from all this flying at night stuff. I declined their kind offer, and instead opted for the 4:00 AM roll call, 4:30 AM bus to the airport at Bagram, and supposedly a 7:30 AM flight to K2.

Having gone to bed about 11:00 PM, I got up at 4 this morning, checked in with OPS, they bussed me to the airport, and I checked in at the terminal, where they told me that the flight had been cancelled. (I was shocked, shocked I tell you, to discover that the neither the Swiss nor the Germans were running things over here.) SO I sat in the terminal, leaving once to go eat breakfast, and once to go visit Submariner (his question to me: "What are you doing here? Did you oversleep?" I could have hit him at that point.), and finally about 12:00 noon, they told me that I could go to K2. The flight out was about 1:30 PM, and I got here about 3:00 PM, and now I have had about 5 hours sleep since Friday morning. It is now 9:00 PM SUnday night. I hope this blog is making sense.

Waiting in terminals sucks. I did manage to catch the tail end of "Sixth Sense" and the beginning of "War of the Worlds" with Tom Cruise (thumbs sideways on this one) while in Bagram.

The C-130 flight here was funny, if only because it is a huge cargo plane, and you ride in the cargo bay, and there were two of us going to K2, and two crewmen, and one 40-lb box. That's it. Your tax dollars at work, ferrying two people and a box.

So I am headed off to dreamland now. I managed to meet most of my students (I am training 6 folks at this base) tonight.

More later, as the drama unfolds. At least I am back on regular time (GMT + 5 hours) rather than that weird Afghani time (4 1/2 hours ahead of GMT).

L&K,

Moi

Frequent flyer miles ...

2005-07-10T06:48:00.000+04:00

The other day, FL asked me to take on an additional task: go to Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and the Republic of Georgia, and continue training and supporting BDC's employees in the software which rolled out July 3.

I am writing this at Bagram Air Field after flying from Baghdad to Dubai on Friday night, July 8, and then flying a charter from Dubai to Bagram at 2:15 this morning (Sat July 9). Tomorrow morning, I catch a 7:00 AM mil-flight (a C-130, for you veterans out there) to Karshi , Uzbekistan . I will be there for 4-5 days. Then I head back to BAF, catch the charter to Dubai, and take a commercial flight to Tbilisi, Georgia.

FL says I should pay HIM for being able to go to Georgia, and from what I have seen and heard about it, he's right.

At any rate, I will NOT be heading back to Dallas on July 12 like I thought. It looks like I will be going back on July 24. More stay, more pay, as I like to tell myself every now and then.

Submariner and Lobster (the New Guy's nickname, since he impressed us all one night at the DFAC by eating three plates of lobsters and crab legs) have been in Afghanistan for about a week. I caught up with S~ today, and he will be heading back to Dallas for some much-needed R&R and quality time with his kids.

I, too, am looking forward to seeing The Lovely One and the Two GIrls soon.

Thanks to all of you for reading and commenting. It has been a hectic past two-and-a-half weeks, getting ready for the GoLive of July 3 with this new software. Things should settle down over the next two weeks, though, and I am hopeful that I can post some more stories. Submariner took a dim view of my poem, but I will post some as they hit me.

L&K,

Moi

P.S. Can somebody please tell me why the Afghanistan time zone is GMT/UTC + 4:30?

Walking home at midnight

2005-06-22T03:59:00.000+04:00

Waxing gibbous o’er a sickly landscape
mistress moon casts shadows not seen by others.
Concrete walls, baked by the blazing orb in midday,
ooze heat well into the middle night silent hours.
Walk alone, along this man-made path of slab and brick and mortar,
and note the silence pervasive and cold.
Taupe palm fronds and beige leaves,
evidence of yet another dusty dusty day, lie still.
No porch lights, no conversations (wafting through air),
no reminders of others living, working, sleeping here.
In this place there is wake, work, eat, sleep.
Tomorrow is like yesterday.
Revel in Today.

Another day in Paradise ...

2005-06-19T21:07:00.000+04:00

I wanted to give you an idea of our living conditions. Notice that there are no clouds in the sky. It's fairly hot here, even at night. The concrete monstrosities are called T-Walls, and they are used to "protect" us from rocket and mortar attacks. Inasmuch as we are pretty far "inland" from the perimeter of the camp, the chances of a rocket or mortar reaching this far are remote. The T-Walls serve the purpose of limiting the damage from shrapnel and explosive fire. If the device explodes outside the T-Wall, your hooch is untouched. If it explodes on the inside of the T-Wall, everyone else's hooch is untouched. Please note that I wrote that last sentence without any sense of irony.

I am standing outside my single-wide, constantly air-conditioned (65 degrees) hooch. This next picture gives you an idea of how tall the T-Walls are. Our T-Walls (as in the civilian BDC folks') are larger and bigger and better than the military ones. No, I do not know why.

This is a finished but unconsecrated (is that the proper phrase?) mosque on the grounds of CampVictory. No one (and especially infidels) is allowed inside this structure. Saddam Hussein had it built in 2002, but when the US came calling, it had not been "blessed" by the mullahs yet, so here it sits: beautiful, serene, and completely useless.

This is our graduation picture for the May 20-21 Buyers Class. Just another day in Paradise. Submariner refused to let his picture be taken; he said something about losing his soul. Note that all of the BDC folks have either removed the ever-present ID badges, or have turned them around so that the pictures are not showing. This is so that none of you know that we are over here. Shhhhhh.....

On the main road out of the airport, you can choose between going to Fallujah, or going to Baghdad. The Baghdad option includes the popular Abu-Ghraib district, famous for its hospitality.

News of an interesting nature ...

2005-06-14T04:05:00.000+04:00

The bad news first: BDC wants us to stay an extra 2 1/2 weeks, through July 14 or so, to help out with the rollout of the new software.

The Good News: more stay, more pay. It's as simple as that. Plus, I can't leave Iraq until BDC lets me leave, so I figure, "In for a penny, in for a pound!" Another nice thing about staying is that, as consultants, the biggest affirmation that you are doing things right (read that: the way that the BDC wants it done) is to get add-on work, scope extensions, etc. So all of us on the Team feel good about it.

Submariner and New Guy (you haven't met NG yet, but since I just met him about 6 hours ago, I don't really know too much about him either; he is here because Princess left us a couple of weeks ago) will be deployed to Afghanistan, and Principal and I will go to the other end of the same place we are already at; it used to be called Victory North, but now it is called Camp Liberty. We might have to live in tents, after all! Like I said, this place is a lot like summer camp.

More later, it's off to Step Aerobics for me ...

Moi

Camp Victory: It's not for everyone

2005-06-09T00:45:00.000+04:00

We had a couple of "incidents" last week. You probably saw or heard or read about one of them; the other probably didn't make it to the mainstream media outlets. Fasten your seat belts, and I will fill you in.

It was a bright and dusty day. Tuesday (31 May) the sun shone. I believe I recall that the weather forecast for Baghdad was "abundant sunshine." We get a lot of that here. But when it's not sunny and hot, it's dusty and hot. The dust here is freakish. It coats everything. Remind me to post some pictures of the Mother of All Duststorms, taken last year by one of my students. Anyway, I digress (quelle surprise!). The Liberty PX has a nice big plaza surrounded on one side by the PX, and the other sides by trailers with Popeye's, Burger King, and CinnaBuns (yum!) on one end, and trailers with a Jewelry Shop, Beauty Shop, Barber Shop, AT&T Call Center, Plant Shop, Rug Shop, and Gift Shop at the other end. The plaza is used at night to show movies, and last Tuesday was the opening night of Star Wars III. About 15-20 minutes after the movie started, a rocket grenade, launched from somewhere in Baghdad City proper, landed in the plaza about 150 meters from a crowd of about 200+ soldiers and civilians watching the movie. Only a couple of people were injured, due to the fact that the insurgents launch these projectiles with absolutely no training or guidance whatsoever (think Bottle Rockets on the 4th of July, you never know which way they will go). It is just luck that they even land where they are intended. Other than the injuries, the main damage was shrapnel blowing into a couple of the trailers, but since it was Dark-thirty PM, the shops were all closed. We went by a couple of days later to see the plaza, and the light pole right next to the depression was riddled with shrapnel. The lights still worked, of course :-)

Anyway, this caused BDC to go into a mode called "100% Accountability." At the time of the incident, the team was finishing up some administrivia for the two-day class which had started that day. FL was on his daily walk, accompanied this night by Princess and Principal, Submariner was Skype'ing his kids back in Big D, and I was tending to some email. One of the BDC manager types (The Panicked One) flew into the room, breathlessly shouting something about a rocket attack at the Liberty PX and/or the BTC (where our students live). She wanted to know where all of the Team was, and where all of our students were.

This is where working for BDC becomes an exercise in patience. The way Accountability works is this: the Operations Center has this database (or Excel spreadsheet, I'm not sure which) which lists all personnel assigned to the TTC (Theater Training Center). As Instructors, the entire Team is listed on the TTC Accountability Sheet. Each day that we have a class, our Students are also listed on the TTC Accountability Sheet. But they are "technically" only assigned to the TTC during classroom hours; at night they go to their accomadations at the BTC (Baghdad Transition Center). So when this thing happened Tuesday night at 9:00 PM or so, our students had been gone for at least 3 hours. After we received the portion of the printout relating to our class, we were able to validate that Submariner et moi were, indeed, sitting at the TTC. A few minutes later, Princess and Principal walked in, and we validated their presence as well. FL took a little longer, because he was still out walking. Meanwhile, The Panicked One still wanted to know if we had, and I am not making this up, Validated our Students' Continued Existence. We told her that aside from a couple of students who were local (lived at Victory, or Liberty, or Slayer), all the transient students from other camps in Iraq were at the BTC. She said something about how "We have to go down and knock on doors, and validate them!"

At which point The Calm One (a new character; a manager at BDC; and obviously ex-military) pointed out that if the students are at the BTC, then shouldn't the BTC Validate them? Yes. Yes, they should.

Anyway, the Panicked One was not one to be trifled with. She roped a couple of our local liaisons to go with her to the BTC to Validate students. It was about 10:30 PM by this time, and my buddy Mark later told me that he got back from the BTC about 3:00 AM.

The next morning, I came in to the TTC, and

Submariner: "Do you recall the party girl from yesterday?"

Moi: "You mean Vicky? Why, yes. Yes, I do."

S: "It seems like PG wasn't in her assigned quarters at the BTC last night. During 100% Accountability."

M: "Hmmmmm.... Let me guess ..."

S: "Oh, no need to. You've already connected the dots."

M: "Is she in trouble?"

S: "Yes. Yes, she is. And my guess is that she will be sleeping in her own quarters for about a month ..."

So finally, about 14 hours after they started it, BDC had completed the 100% Accountability exercise. Is it just me, or was this an extraordinarily long time to complete this exercise? I don't know, since I have no referential data.

On Wednesday (1 Jun) we start class at 8:30 AM (Party Girl is looking sullen today) and Submariner launches into his module. About 9:00 AM, the building is shaken by a percussion wave and accompanying loud explosion from about a mile away. This is the incident that those of you in the US may have seen on the news. A car bomb exploded at one of the checkpoints on the main road from Baghdad City to Baghdad International Airport. It was a FAIRLY LOUD explosion. Submariner took it all in stride, and continued teaching. Princess, meanwhile, was trying to help Party Girl with one of the exercises, and immediately after the explosion, I looked up and saw Princess trying to occupy Party Girl's chair, while PG was still in it, and her arms were locked around PG, and Submariner later told me that the look of abject terror on Princess' face was astounding. I got up, motioned to Submariner that I would go investigate, and he continued teaching. I walked around the hallways of TTC, but no one seemed to know anything. I later found out (from BDC folks) that THAT is the standard operational result for almost anything that happens here: no one really knows what is happening. Maybe that's a good thing. Too many facts, and they might get in the way of the rumors.

The next day, FL tells the Team that Princess is de-mob'ing back to Dallas(pronounced DEE MOAB ING, as in demobilization; it's BDC-speak for leaving, or getting the hell outta Dodge). It just wasn't her cup of tea, I guess.

Don't get me wrong here: I can understand when someone embarks on a journey, and it turns out to be a different boat, or plane, or roller coaster, than the one they were expecting. I'm just not sure how anyone could come over here, to Iraq, and be surprised at the presence of armaments, ordnance, and bombs. It's a WAR ZONE, remember?

So Princess has left the building, and the Team is down to Four. We have a new cadet on the way, and he will arrive this weekend from Dallas via Houston and Kuwait.

Thursday, the BDC upped the Force Protection Measures to Red from the Yellow that it has been since I arrived: whenever you left a building, you had to wear your PPE. It cut down on the breaks significantly. It was for only one day, though. We went back to Yellow at 1600. We DID decide to keep our PPE in the TTC, though. On the Wednesday of the car bomb, I was the one who went back to the hooches, and I put my PPE on, and I grabbed Submariner's PPE, and Princess' PPE from her hooch, and I hauled it back to the TTC. Normally about a four-minute walk, I stopped twice. Twice! to rest at the bus stop and again at the park benches. PPE is heavy, it's about 38 lbs of steel and kevlar, plus the kevlar helmet, and I was wearing/carrying three sets of it. I have GOT to quit smoking!

So that's about it for the excitement from last week. Oh, and they cancelled the Plaza Theater for the indefinite future.

Any questions?

Around Dubai

2005-06-01T22:05:00.000+04:00

We are pretty lucky to have FL along: he has worked and lived in the Middle East for many years, and he is very knowledgeable about things Arabic. He also knows where all the great restaurants are. One night he took us to Fish Market, an incredibly edible place in some really nice hotel, and it overlooks the Dubai Creek. Once you get settled at your table, and drinks have been ordered, you go with your "hostess" to a very large display of all kinds of fish and seafood. You point to the appetizer you want (shrimp, prawns (large shrimp), tiger prawns(EXTREMELY large shrimp, TLO would think she had died and gone to heaven at this point), mussels, clams, lobsters, squid, octopus, scallops, and the hostess puts it in a basket, and you then decide HOW you want it prepared. Steamed, fried, sauteed, whatever, with different sauces and herbs and things. On the other side of the young lady in the picture is where you pick the fish you want for your main entree. Grouper, hammour, other fishies I didn't recognize, snapper, etc. Same deal: you point to what you want, then tell them how to prepare it, and what sauces and/or seasonings you want. Finally, there's a salad-getting bar and vegetable-getting bar. I gave this place two thumbs up.

You have to wear bibs at The Fish Market. I wished that I could have kept mine.

(L-R: moi, Principal, Submariner, Princess, Fearless Leader)

Flowers are few and far between in Dubai: it's an arid, hot climate you know ...

This is the circular stair to the upstairs dining room at Shakespeare and Co., an excellent business lunch place. It also serves a FINE cup of coffee. The Accenture Dubai office thought that coffee meant providing us with Instant Nescafe Gold and hot water. Yuck. I sniffed this place out within two hours of arriving at work.

Dubai: Capitalist City

2005-06-01T21:06:00.000+04:00

Dubai is the most "Western" of the Arab countries. It is one of the Emirates of the United Arab Emirates. It is also - by far - the safest big city I have ever been in. There is no crime: no murder, no rape, no assault, no theft, no burgalry, nothing. I think it is because justice here is SWIFT and SURE. You do not get a second strike.

Since the city/country is relatively young, in the sense that it has only been since the 1960s when oil was discovered here, almost everything in Dubai is new. Apparently, a lot of investors think that Dubai will serve as the financial center of the Middle East, because they are building office towers and residences by the dozens. One project initially broke ground with 6 towers (all in excess of 60 stories) two years ago, but they have upgraded their plans and will now build 20 towers in the same complex. All of it FULLY FUNDED, and at least 60% sold in each of the twenty towers. Fourteen of them haven't even been designed yet. If you are entrepreneurially inclined, this is the place to be for the next 10-15 years.

This is a shot of a new tower going up on Sheikh Zayed Road.

I think that it is near the al Attar office building where we attended Train The Trainer Training in Dubai.

I was fascinated by the architecture of this new tower.

Architecture students should be required to go here and gawk.

The blue with red trim building in center left is owned by Japanese investors. You can tell because there's a pagoda on top of the penthouse :-)

Apparently, no facade is too ostentatious.

High rise residences, luxury hotels, office buildings. The land values are outrageous, which explains why so many of the towers are slender and tall: there's no footprint. If you have a small lot, you build up.

The deceptive thing about Sheikh Zayed Road is that both sides of this main thoroughfare are lined with these skyscrapers, but if you venture about 200 meters beyond the towers, you encounter sand, and poverty.

Advertising on the sides of buildings runs about 1.2 million dollars per month. They LOVE the dollar here. The official currency, the dirham, is tied to the US dollar, and has been fixed at $1=3.67Dhs since 1967. Gee, that sounds like the time that US companies discovered oil here :-)

This shot was taken from a moving taxi at dusk, so I apologize for the lowlight condition. Both of these buildings are BEAUTIFUL.

2005-06-01T17:53:00.000+04:00

These pics are from the "Getting Started" album:

Which one doesn't belong?

(L-R: Principal, moi, Princess, and Fearless Leader)

Submariner took the first shot, FL is taking this one

(L-R: Principal, moi, Princess, Submariner)

Nice view of a nice roundabout just outside the Rydges Plaza Hotel, Dubai

Great shot of FL

Ready for lunch at the Automatic Cafe and Restaurant, Dubai

Christina, John, Principal, and Hani at TrainTheTrainer, Dubai

Princess, in a typical pose, at TrainTheTrainer, Dubai

Submariner and FL at TrainTheTrainer, Dubai

Moi with Tiger Woods et al at Accenture, Dubai

I wanna come back as a lifeguard

2005-05-28T07:15:00.000+04:00

The Army has a swimming pool over here, but there are no lifeguards, so the place is closed. Permanently. Or until they can convince some Valley guy or girl to come to Iraq to be a lifeguard. The Army is really particular about safety and welfare. The Australians have a great swimming pool, it's over by the Palace, but none of the Army guys and girls can go there because, you know, it has no lifeguard. The Australians, of course, have a serious genetic disposition to swimming (see the entry at the Sydney Olympics under 'Thorpedo'), plus just about anyone in Australia who has breath and sight is capable of being a lifeguard. Although not all of them should wear Speedos, if you know what I mean, and I think that you do.

I am hoping to hop on the Blue/White bus and catch some activity at the Aussie Pool. I ain't a-feared of swimmin' with no lifeguard on dooty. Besides, how dangerous can it be? Even if I were to get into serious trouble in the water, it's a small pool, surrounded by DOZENS of really really physically fit soldiers and ex-lifeguards from Aussie-land.

We made it over to the Big PX at Camp Liberty the other day. (OK, this is confusing, but to get from camp Victory to Liberty PX you have to take the GreyLine I or Greyline II bus.) First prize goes to Cinnabuns for having a trailer serving Cinnabuns. There's also a Bazaar where local Iraqi vendors sell crap made in Hong Kong or one of the Koreas or Shanghai. In the Bazaar, there is an Antiques dealer who is selling, and I am not making this up, genuine Wedgewood Bone China, trimmed in 24K Gold, that either is EXACTLY LIKE the pattern that Saddam Hussein used, or IS THE EXACT DISH that he used. It is really hard to tell from the sign on the dishes. I am fairly certain that should some lucky soldier actually buy this rare piece of Iraqicana, the antiques dealer would be able to procure another genuine dish about a month from now, after the first soldier has shipped back home. ("I'm shocked, shocked, to find gambling going on in your club." Louis in Casablanca)

Anyway, the Big PX is a littly underwhelming, to say the least. Let me know now what you want as a souvenir. I am still looking for snow-globes of anything Baghdad or Iraq, but it is fairly difficult to even explain the concept of a snow globe to a broken-english speaking native who is standing in the shade, and it's 97 degrees. And it's not even the hot part of the summer yet. I hear that winter is really much much cooler, about 80 degrees in the shade. Yikes!

I am going to regress on my next post, because I want to share the Wonderful World of Dubai with you.

My God, they're so young ...

2005-05-28T06:52:00.000+04:00

It has been a glorious week here in sunny Baghdad. It all started Sunday night when we finished our 7th straight teaching day, and then on Monday we had our first Non-Teaching Day since we arrived. It's hard to say that it was a Day Off, since no one here ever has a Day Off, but I enjoyed it anyway. It was nice to sleep in until about 8:20, get up, head over to the DFAC, get turned away because breakfast is only served until 8:30, and we arrived at 8:32. Inasmuch as I don't ever eat breakfast at home, it was not too big of a deal. I headed over to Green Beans Coffee and got a big cuppa Joe.

All of us (Submariner, Princess, Principal, Fearless Leader, et moi) decided to take the bus lines (there are three of them: Red, White, and Blue) and see where they went. If you are like me, you basically have NO IDEA of what this camp is really like. It's crazy, because apparently it used to be a wildlife refuge, and there's this big palace (known around these parts as The Palace, or The Hunting Palace) where Saddam and his buddies used to hang out, and they would go on these "hunts" looking for wild animals, which were conveniently staked to the ground in an open area, and they would sneak up on these ferocious beasts, and shoot them, and then they would be SO PROUD that they were the Fearless Hunters. Give me a friggin' break.

The bus lines are fairly straightforward: Blue goes clockwise around the lake which abuts The Palace; White goes a lot like Blue, except at some point north of here it takes a left when Blue takes a right; and Red, which ultimately turned out to be the one that I wanted all day long, goes to the MWR facility. MWR (Morale, Welfare, Recreation) is a fairly important building on any military facility. It's a place where the soldiers can kick back, there's usually a pool table or seven, darts, video games, a theater, a big TV, etc. On select nights they move all the furniture out of the biggest room and then it becomes a dance hall. In Iraq, you can't serve any liquor or beer, so the dances don't exactly sell out. There's also the Internet rooms which are extremely important for Today's Military Person.

Submariner and I were the only ones to take the Red line to the MWR building (Princess, FL, and Principal had just about had enough of hot dusty busses), but it was worth the trip. There's a table in the Big TV room that has some scrapbooks of stuff that kids and adults from America have sent to the Army or Air Force or whatever, the usual "we're proud of you" kind of writing assignment from an English Teacher in Marshall.

I started leafing through the scrapbook, and I lost it. I read letter after letter after letter; most of them were from PS269 in Brooklyn, NY. Here's a great example of what these 10-year-old kids wrote to our servicemen:

Dear Soldier,

Thanks for protecting the USA, and for keeping the Empire State Building safe. I hope you and the other soldiers are safe in Iraq.

Please try to take care of yourselves.

Sincerely,

Gina
PS269, 1957 Nostrand Ave, Brooklyn

When I saw that some kid in Brooklyn is thanking the soldier for making sure that the Empire State Building is safe, I just wept. And I thought about all the kids over here in Iraq, carrying weapons, driving Humvees, flying Apache helicopters. I see them at every meal, wherever I walk, at the PX, the DFAC, Green Beans Coffee. And I am amazed and amazed and amazed again that these soldiers are our front line in the War on Terror.

And I think to myself, 'My God. They're so young.'

Numen: What it is all about

2005-05-21T09:10:00.000+04:00

A few years back, I was emailing a daily "psuedo-blog" to friends with the writings of Madeleine L'Engle (an amazing writer, I commend her highly to you). She used the word "numinous" while writing about angels, and I was unfamiliar with the term, so like any good life-long learner, I looked it up. And thus discovered the name for my business, Numen Creative (I know, it's redundant, but hey, I'm from The Department of Redundancy Department).

numen (noun)
1. A presiding divinity or spirit of a place.
2. A spirit believed by animists to inhabit certain natural phenomena or objects.
3. Creative energy; genius.

Definition 1: Romans (as in Caesar) used to believe in this.
Definition 2: Definitely not me.
Definition 3: AMEN!

So far, so good: No hat ...

2005-05-21T08:50:00.000+04:00

I just got off the phone with The Lovely One, and she suggested to me that perhaps I should NOT post blogs detailing the events of two weeks ago, or last week, but rather start posting about stuff that is happening NOW.

Right.

So here I am, near the airport in Baghdad, at a REALLY LARGE SECURE SAFE GREEN ZONE PLACE where lots and lots of military-type people live and work (and they ALL have weapons, buster, so don't even think about messing with me). After the first few days here (I arrived, as they say here, "in-country" five days ago), my initial impression was, "Gee, this is a lot like summer camp." I was in the Boy Scouts years and years ago, and I went to summer camp every year at either Camp Texoma (on Lake Texoma, the largest man-made lake in Texas) or Camp Constantin (Possum Kingdom Lake, another man-made swimmin' and fishin' and boatin' place). Both camps were dry and dusty and hot. And you walked. Everywhere. For everything. The only differences here are that there is no canoeing, or swimming, or archery. But there is a trading post, and there's lots of hiking, and my hooch is a lot better than the tents at Texoma/Constantin.

This place is dry, very dry. Like a good martini, only without the alcohol or the liquid. And it is hot. I don't mean hot like Dallas in August. I mean hot like the Sahara hot. And this is weird: it is a different sun here. I don't know exactly how to explain that last sentence, but it is true. It is an oppressively hot sun here. I have found myself consuming, at a minimum, 1.5 liters of bottled water between breakfast and lunch, and another 1.5 liters of bottled water by dinnertime. It is standard practice to keep a 1.5 liter bottle next to the bed, so that anytime you wake up during the night, you reach for the water, and THEN you do whatever it is that you woke up to do. This place will dehydrate you very fast.

Back to that sun thing: maybe it's the latitutde, or the complete lack of clouds in the sky, or the constant presence of DUST everywhere.

I should have brought workboots, because my nice leather shoes are just not going to make it through this experience unscathed. I have already mentally assigned them into the category of "yard work/house work" shoes after I get back to Dallas. I had my shoes shined twice while I was at that really nice hotel in Houston, and I had them shined again in Dubai. I looked at them after two days here, and I threw in the towel.

The dust is everywhere. We have these worker bees (foreign country nationals, usually from Pakistan, India, the Phillipines, etc., wherever you can find LOTS AND LOTS OF CHEAP LABOR) who come in and sweep and mop our buildings twice a day. It's not so much that they are actually CLEANING the place as it is they are removing the 1/2" layer of dust that accumulates in any place after about six hours. You know how if you have a beam of sunlight streaming into a room, you can see the dust particles in the air? We are using a projector in our Presentations, and it's like there's a fog along that light path from the projector to the screen.

I also have never, ever, in my life, blown my nose as much as I have here. I don't mean those short little "keep-it-clean" blows into one small Kleenex. After a few hours here, you find yourself in the Male Latrine (no, really, that's the label on the door, it is actually pretty nice, except that there's dust on everything), cutting loose with a good 15-20 second blow into several large paper towels. And that's how your day starts.

I have also never pee'd as much as I have here. I guess that is a direct correlation of consuming 4-5 liters of water a day. I have also cut my caffeine consumption by at LEAST 75%. Coffee is a diuretic, you know ...

Back to that summer camp thing. It IS a lot like summer camp here, because I walk everywhere. I walk from my hooch (I am NOT making this up, it is what our living quarters are called) to the TTC (Theater Training Center), along a path that is, in no particular order, dirt, gravel, more dirt, more gravel, asphalt, back to dirt, sidewalk, more dirt, road, gravel, and finally dirt. The trees and bushes and palms along my walk are all fairly dry looking. I'm pretty sure it's the sun thing.

From the TTC, where I deposit my backpack (REASON WHY LATER), I walk to the DFAC (this walk is mainly dirt, dirt, gravel, and dirt). The DFAC is where we eat our meals, courtesy of the BDC (Big Defense Contractor). I have a US DOD badge with my smiling picture on it, along with a biometric of my blood type, right index finger print, and the words "Army Contractor" that allows me to eat my meals with all the military types and other Army Contractors (BDC personnel).

The first time I walked to the DFAC, I had my hat on, along with my sunglasses. Did I tell you that it was hot over here? And as far as sunglasses go, it's not that it is bright (and it is). It's more that there is a constant glare from all the concrete T-walls and sand and dirt everywhere.

So I walk into the DFAC, after being "OK'd" by a soldier in full battle gear, and the absolute first thing that you MUST do is wash your hands and face. On account of the dust, you see. They provide 8 sinks, soap, and towels, and EVERYONE washes his or her hands and face before you proceed into the dining hall.

BAD MOVE NUMBER ONE: I ablute myself (that one's for all my Priest friends 8-D) and walk into the hall, where I am immediately told by the Counting Soldier, "Uncover, sir! Please take your hat off."

Chagrined, I remove my hat and stuff it into the back of my belt. The Counting Soldier is the one who has one of those mechanical counters, which increments by one each time he presses it. I assume (and probably correctly) that THAT is the mechanism for BDC to bill the US Government for meals consumed "in-country." Fairly sophisticated technique, I must say.

BAD MOVE NUMBER TWO: The second time I went to DFAC, I remembered to remove my hat before I walked into the dining hall (well, aren't I just the smart one, after all?), and I shoved my sunglasses up on top of my head.

Counting Soldier (a female, this time) immediately told me, "Remove your glasses, sir!"

Chagrined again, I remove my sunglasses from the top of my head and stuff them in my shirt pocket.

[Serious Moment Ahead, Kleenex at the ready]

If you ever have the privilege of dining in a military establishment, the first thing you may notice is that NO ONE WEARS A HAT, or helmet, or cover of any kind, in the place. I asked Submariner about it, and he told me that no one wears a hat in a mess hall, ever. At any base. Anywhere in the world. Ever.

And the reason is simple: There are, at any given time, and somewhere in the world, POW's and MIA's. THEY may not be eating a meal today. YOU are. You honor them, and respect them, and REMEMBER them, by removing your hat as you enter the dining hall.

I haven't worn my hat to the DFAC again.

[Blow your nose, wipe your eyes]

As far as the backpack goes, no one is allowed to carry any packs, or bags, or anything, into a military dining facility anymore. Remember last year when a suicide bomber made it into a DFAC somewhere in Iraq, and blew himself up in the dining hall? He was wearing a backpack filled with explosives.

That also explains why the soldiers who check my ID are in full battle gear. I am grateful for their attention to detail.

Nice digs ...

2005-05-21T07:15:00.000+04:00

I flew to Houston from Dallas on Sun 1 May 05. My flight was at 5:00 PM (or as I have come to learn over here, 1700 hours), and I had to be at the airport around 3:30. I am pretty sure I finished packing about 2:30 PM, which is amazing considering I started packing around 2:00. TLO (The Lovely One) kept on bugging me for several days toward the end of April, always with the same refrain: "Do you realize that you are going overseas for 8 weeks on Sunday?!?"

(I just love it when a plan all comes together 8^D)

Why I couldn't have taken a nice Southwest Airlines flight from Love Field is beyond me, but we had to go out of DFW on Continental Airlines (insert thought here: I worked on the Continental Airlines Bankruptcy in 1984 as one of my first jobs with Arthur Andersen) to the Bush in Houston. Oh, wait, now I remember: my flight was paid for by BDC (Big Defense Contractor). Since BDC has a rather large presence in Houston, it makes sense that they would use a local carrier for all their flights.

So the team (Fearless Leader, Principal, Submariner, Princess, et moi) assembled at Terminal B (insert question: why do they call it a TERMINAL when you are STARTING from there?), and I proceeded to check my two very large suitcases, and I went through the security detectors carrying my laptop in its case and my backpack. All sharp instruments (Swiss Army knife, another smaller Swiss Army knife, nail clippers, emery board (yes, I carry an emery board with me, quit laughing), and razors) had been safely secured in the checked luggage (which weighed, if you are curious, about 58 lbs).

We get to the gate, and board the plane, after which we wait. And wait. And wait. And finally about 5:30 we take off for Houston, nice flight, just about the time they are starting to level off, the attendants start to distribute the soft drinks, and they make it to my row (did I tell you I was sitting on the next-to-last row of the plane?) right about the time that Capt. Goodflight comes on and tells us of our approach into Houston. I slam down my drink, and toss it to the flight attendant, and we land without incident in the sunny north forty of Houston Intercontinental Bush [league?] Airport.

Picking up our bags is a hoot, because I am traveling with: Fearless Leader, who needs one of those rent-a-carts for his luggage, so he rents one; Principal, who needs one of those rent-a-carts, so he rents one; Princess, you knew this was coming, so she rents one; and Submariner, who shoulders his backpack, slings his laptop, and picks up his two large suitcases. Meanwhile, I decide that it is WAY TOO EARLY in this trip to be a hero, so I meander outside and take one of the abandoned rent-a-carts, readily available near the taxi-stands, and go back inside to load up my two large suitcases (with all the SHARP things inside them, oh boy, I can't wait to get to them), and my laptop, and my backpack.

FL decides that instead of renting two cars, like BDC had suggested, it would be far more sensible to rent a van for the week that we will be in Houston. Good move, except that the van seats: a driver (Submariner), a passenger (Fearless Leader), two people in the middle seat (the Princess et moi), and Principal in the back row. Except that we had to fold down 2/3 of the back row because of ALL THE FRIGGIN' LUGGAGE we are carrying with us. I mean, everyone on the team has at LEAST two large suitcases, a laptop bag, a backpack, a fanny pack, maybe an overnighter, perhaps a suit bag, a hat box or three, and assorted makeup cases (OK, this last item is hyperbole, only the Princess has a makeup case).

We drive to our Hotel for the week, which has the strangely misleading name of Inn at the Ballpark. There is only one Ballpark in the World: it is "The Ballpark in Arlington." This hotel in Houston is nowhere near Arlington, Texas, where the Beloved Rangers play The Great Game of Baseball. It is, however, a short city block across the street from Minute Maid Park (which may have been named Enron Field at one time, but gee, we all know how THAT turned out). I am guessing that "Inn at the Minute Maid" doesn't have quite the cachet of "Inn at the Ballpark."

Fearless Leader takes us all out to dinner at Papacito's (or something like that), and we get back to our HAFH (home away from home) for the next week.

The rooms are prepaid (BDC must use this Inn a lot, because our check in reflected the BDC booking rate of $79/night), the laundry is included, and there is a free breakfast coupon for every night I am staying there.

Nice digs if you can get them. I highly recommend "Inn near the Minute Maid" in Houston.

An interesting adventure

2005-04-28T09:01:00.000+04:00

I just accepted a 60-day deployment (civilian, not military) to Dubai and Iraq. This should be interesting.