What Is An Expat?

Same As It Ever Was

Well, things have gone back to normal here. After a week and a half of things being quiet on the FOB, we’ve started getting incoming again. For some reason they have more or less turned off the outgoing, too. They’re a lot harder to hear, since it now is more windy and rainy than it used to be, though they don’t seem to want to attack in the rain. On one of the last iterations, our security guy called the all clear just as the heavens opened up and poured a heavy rain on us. I raced out of the bunker, and only had a smidgen of key trouble before I realized I hadn’t locked the door in the first place.

One day I was taking care of an issue whilst reading up on my Russian grammar, since I have not really gone back over the rules in some time. I was engrossed in the rules for the accusative case, which defines your direct objects. It’s pretty basic for what it’s worth, but I’m trying to be thorough. It was approximately 2:19 PM. That old familiar whistling cranks up, with the accompanying vaguely sick feeling. This simply isn’t fair. How can this happen twice? Anyway, this one is headed right for me, I can just tell. It gets louder and louder. It must be a laser guided rocket, it’s heading straight for the container. I struggle to accomplish my basic objective – must get the pants back up. That’s all I hope for; all that I want out of my last bit of luck. Dignity in small doses. You ever try to crouch and pull your pants up at the same time? It ain’t easy, I can tell you, but I made it look good!

(Nah, kinda doubt that. I bet I looked more so than my usual idiot.)

This one is going to hit right outside, and the sandbags aren’t going to help, and some of me is going to end up in the shower, I’m quite sure of that. That will be kind of convenient I guess, but there’s gonna be drain problems I bet. As success moves up to waist level, I feel a sense of accomplishment knowing that in my final milliseconds I made it. For some unknown reason I feel a final cringe may help, so I execute that with precision. (more…)

8 Clicks and A World Away

As it turns out, there is a bird out the next morning. Poor George has been waiting for days, whereas I am lucky enough to get nice day service. A small bright spot in an otherwise FUBARed trip. The travel babysitter always recognizes me and remembers my name, which is vaguely non-John Smith and has been in the news, though not lately. She used to work in Billeting. I am assuming she caught on the name thing, instead of me making a really bad impression. Of course, she’s polite enough, so I could have somehow made a good impression too, being as I am so uber-cool, it’s indescribable. Or at least some people think that. I call them crazy. I don’t even believe that shit. (more…)

Man, it really has gone dusty outside. It’s a very fine dust, but as near as I can tell it’s blanketing the whole city. I think visibility is at 2-300m at the most. You can see fine close up, but you can’t see a damn thing beyond that. It doesn’t really seem to be a windy swirly kind of thing; it’s just sitting there. At least I don’t have contacts anymore, that’d well and truly suck. And the time counts down…

Hey Man, It’s Like A War or Something!

Mosul Palace

Woohoo! Time to get out for a bit again, and go to Dubai for a few days. It’s been in planning for many weeks now. As it turns out, my timing has put it into a very busy time. Oops. It will be nice, since things have been rather active here since the start of Ramadan, whereas before you’d get an attack just at the end of the call to prayer as if to punctuate it with a concussive and shrapnel filled “amen.” I’d comment on the etymology of “amen” but that would be digressing even farther than usual for me. Also, I may have used the word describing the study of bugs instead of word origins there. I don’t feel like looking it up though. Where was I?

Oh yes, anyways, during Ramadan we got hit several times a day. Before, it was just harassment fire. Then I think they started trying to kill people. Very ill-mannered of them.

And then Fallujah kicked off. (more…)

More later. I will relate a short funny thing though: I was reading something on how dangerous Mosul was now, and thinking to myself, “Ha ha, if they only kneBAAAAAMMMMM!!!!!! I was halfway out the door when I realized that was the controlled blast we’d been warned of, and about 1 second later “controlled blast, controlled blast” comes over the radio. It was to take care of a UXO about 150m away. They must have packed that thing with about 8 lbs of C-4. At least I wasn’t the guy who was on the shitter. Been there, done that. We had a laugh about it. Beats the alternatives.

Anyway, the LWOP was a bust, I’m very disappointed by that. But we’ll see each other soon. I might leave here a bit earlier, depending on my cash goals. It’s only 7 weeks, but thinking about dropping it down to say, 4 is an attractive option.