Should leave tonight on the hard car. Couple-three days getting to Dubai, 4 days in Dubai or so. After that should be a month in Uz, then probably a couple in Thailand. I don’t know how often I will have net access, but I will be writing. It’s not like there aren’t internet cafes around the world. I’ll have my laptop so I won’t have to think it up all there while paying by the minute or hour.
I won’t miss Iraq, but there are some good folks around.
I was listening to some music last night and thought of a song I had not listened to in a while. It is “Aisha†by the group Outlandish. They are from Denmark apparently, with members from Honduras, Pakistan, and Morocco.
I first heard this song in December of 2003 in Tashkent. Actually, there is a possibility I first heard it in October, but looking back I can’t be sure. Anyways, it makes a better story if it’s December, so it is officially December. So there! It was on or about mid-December and a friend of mine and I were on the way out on R&R. We had processed in Houston together and arrived a day or two apart. We spent a few days there before flying out. Of course this was before the lockdowns and other ridiculous stuff imposed by the company folks, so you could go out and do whatever you wanted. Out in the clubs we heard this amazing song. We both noticed it, and it was obvious that nearly everyone else really seemed to like it a lot, too. In a nutshell, it sings the praises of a woman living her life. It tugs all the right heartstrings. (more…)
Yes, I dredged up some older posts from another board. I started to get a little confused on which had been posted where, and didn’t want to leave stories untold, or worse yet told twice. I’m getting short and need to clear out the story queue before I go, because that will become an adventure too.
In a nutshell: I start out of here 1 January. Will spend a few days in Dubai with friends, doing a dive or a few, and a little bit o’ networking if I can. I’ll come back to that. (more…)
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…)
Well…it seems I am not going to Uzbekistan. Just when I thought I was going to get out of here and that LOGCAP was done screwing up everything they touch, they get in one last jab, and boy was it a doozy. I’m of course glad to know they are only looking out for me. 
So now I am apparently heading to Malaysia instead. Suffice for now to say that I had a sticky set of criteria to work within, to meet both my goals of seeing my special someone, and not doing anything to get myself fired. I will be leaving this job under my own power, at a time of my own choosing. It certainly made mincemeat of one of my other goals though, but there isn’t a whole lot I can do about that, and the possibility of changing the circumstances on that one doesn’t leave me anything to work with. It’s kind of hard to meet the parents if you can’t get in the country.
Oh I could, don’t get me wrong. I could do it, and in a way that they couldn’t prove anything, either. But if they decided to check up on me (a definite sure were I heading to an alternate ‘stan) they’d find the lack of findable proof as reason enough to fire me for some bullshit alternate reason anyways. It’d be simpler for them that way.
It’s funny — I’m not sure on what planet Uz wouldn’t be safer than the U.S., but goddamn if I can’t go to one because it’s dangerous…
Rant over. I gotta figure out interesting stuff to see and do in Malaysia.
PS – If you don’t follow the news, none of that made any sense. They had a few bombings in Tashkent again.
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