What Is An Expat?

These people are hopeless. They can’t “provide” travel except from Dubai. This project is very poorly run and the staff is not helpful. I find it’s best to distance yourself from relying on other people where possible. Nobody is going to look out for your interests like you are, and they may not bother to look out for you at all. Lucky for me I am resourceful. If I understood the hyper-fast speaking Indian (?) guy at the Uzbekistan Airways counter I called, I just show up and I got me a ticket. Gonna be a busy trip, but a good one. I go Mosul Palace back to Mosul Airfield, fly down to Baghdad, then later on to Dubai where I take custody of myself, arrange a few things and then on to Tashkent I go…

One week, and I am there!

Sigh…here’s the latest travel fiasco they’ve hit me with.

I put in for R&R with a departure from Sharjah (an airport in the UAE) to Tashkent. They have a direct flight from there 2 days a week, at a fare of somewhere around $600. I think the one I looked at left around noon, and arrived about 3PM.

The proposed itinerary I got has me leaving from Dubai (still in the UAE) at 2:50AM with a 4ish hour flight to Istanbul, where I wait 12 hours, and take a 3-4 hour flight to Tashkent, which arrives at 1:15AM. Add in a couple hours each side and you have a hell of a long day. This ticket is almost $1200. I advised them this was not an acceptable option.

Somebody’s a schmuck…just don’t know who. Just not gonna let it be me.

Here are some random pictures from Mosul Airfield.

They’re international!

Couple of views of the airport, from the other side…

Here’s the prison. It probably sucks to be there.

Here are some…bunkers. Ahem. (Riiiight…)

I can’t control my fear of a The Mister Tom Flood…

…but I do my best.

Tommy and I worked together at K2 in Uzbekistan, like many other guys who are in Mosul now. A majority of guys are at the camp across the street from the airfield. I’ve somehow been veered off to the Palace site.

The view from KBR HQ…

The local mosque across from HQ…

Some friends of ours, never mind the bird poop…

Outward Bound

I finally get all the approvals to go. This involves me short-circuiting the process and going straight to the people I need to get things done. Going through the proper HR chain involves about 8 different layers of obfuscation. I get all the pieces collected, and tell travel when I am going. I make this decision on my own, but no one questions me. It’s a relief to get this all in process since not only am I trying to get out of here, I am trying to get out of here on a specific schedule so that I can visit with that special someone on the way out. (more…)

But in a few days I am going down the road to the Mosul Palace instead. It’s about 15 minutes away I think. Flying milair up here was interesting, because while we pulled a heck of a lot more g’s (pos and neg) than we ever would in the Uzbekistan prop planes, I never at all felt like maybe the pilot didn’t know exactly what he was doing, or where exactly the airport was at.

Apparently there are only 30 people / 20 computers down at the Palace so I will prolly be asleep most of the time.