What Is An Expat?

There are so many kinds:

– Consider the people who act like children. I swear these have got to be the easiest jobs in the world, particularly given the pay. Therefore people have to get into all sorts of not getting along / reindeer games bullshit. It’s like working with a bunch of kindergarten kids sometimes.

– Finding out someone who you went to a lot of trouble to get away from can still affect you here truly sucks. They can’t prevent me from doing what I want to do, however they can make it where I have to go to extra time and trouble stealthing my way in. They give people too much control, and your friendly support drones have a habit of doing the stupidest things to involve those people, when they don’t need to be involved.

I can rant about this, but if my request is rejected, it’s best I don’t say anything else yet. Sorry, I know that doesn’t make much sense to you.

– Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner mortarman is back on the prowl. What a pain in the ass that guy is. Just have a sandwich on your meal breaks like everybody else, pal. The random nature of these things is the irritant. The other day some poor guy picked the wrong time to climb down out of his watchtower to take a leak. Generally they don’t hit much, but sometimes…

The other day we were in the operations office. There was a bang outside , and myself and two other sensible people went to the floor while Hans the Blind Turkish Guy runs like hell outside for the bunker at the combat lightning speed. Good reflexes, because he was the first to react, but a bad decision. In this case however, he got lucky, since there was only the one noise…which upon further investigation, since it just sounded wrong somehow, ended up being an exploding tire, not an exploding rocket or mortar shell. You don’t want to go running outside, since maybe there’s more than one on the way. We have sandbags about 5 or 6 feet high outside the containers, so on the floor you are relatively safe as long as one doesn’t come through the roof. Basically, there’s nothing you can do about the first one since it’s random, but in case of several rounds or secondaries, you can be flat. Then, if there’s a break, you can run for the bunker. I don’t really see the point in that, since mostly we aren’t seeing any sustained barrages anyway.

Anyway, it’s weird since there’s all sorts of thumping noises. You just have to learn to filter it out. It boils down to the fact that the not-very-loud dull noises don’t matter. It if isn’t a container or vehicle door closing and thumping from pressure, it could be an actual explosion. However, if it isn’t painfully and scarily loud, it’s too far away to hurt you, and you don’t really need to worry about it. Even the really loud ones can be far away, but given that it could be a close RPG, not as close mortar round, not to far away big mortar, safely ranged BF Rocket, or quite far away car bomb you really can’t tell, so making friends with the floor or your favorite concrete barrier isn’t a bad idea. Our camp is up on top of a hill, so it’s better, because anything not impacting the top of the hill isn’t much of a concern. There was an IED and a couple of secondaries down on the road yesterday morning at about 5:10 AM. I could tell it was downhill somewhere, so I merely prepared to unass the bed. It stopped, and I turned on the radio, but no one called for accountability, so I went back to sleep after a while, in time of course for the other guy’s watch alarm to go off. He sleeps through the first iteration, and wakes up at the end of the second. Can’t wait to get my own container, a room of my own, my own chitter and chower!

They did something odd in the DFac last night. I think their hearts were in the right place, but their brains had not joined the party. It was a candlelit dinner night. Most of the lights were off, and candles had been placed on the tables and lit. On some speakers, smooth jazzy R&B music was playing. You know, the stuff that makes you think of your beloved, or beliked, and how much you miss them and want to be up close and personal with them? WTF? That’s just horrible. Hey, it’s Think of Your Special One 8000 Miles Away Night! It’s ok, don’t cry, you’ll be together again soon…schmucks.

PS – they caught a couple of “Got Mortar?” jackasses. Go team! Only one of the two had fired, and luckily it was a dud. For some reason they arrested them instead of smearing them all over the nearest convenient backstop.

Here are a few pics from the other day in Mosul, same day as all the fun stuff was going on.

These folks are with the MPs. They had set up a new position on our roof for observation during the evenings. They have a SAW in front of them that you can’t see. I talked to them for a while. One guy in their unit had been killed in the morning with the car bombing of the police station, a couple critically wounded, and some others wounded also.

The area between the building at the horizon and the tower is where one of the car bombs went off.

I’m not sure what this one is, but something is obviously burning. I don’t recall hearing anything that evening though. Usually pretty much anything going off can be heard if you are not asleep, and depending on the size and distance, that might not be a factor.

A later shot where you can see the smoke better. There was a whole lot more in the morning. I didn’t go up on the roof then. When they gave the all clear, there was some small arms fire not too far the other side of the wall, but it wasn’t very motivated. Still, rooftop not a good place to be at that time.