May 16th

For the love of God, where did the last ten days go? This is a good thing right? As we say in the Navy, if I sleep 12 hours a day, cruise is only 3 months long. I can extend that principle to say that if I day dream and completely zone out all day PLUS sleep 12 hours a day, I can whittle this baby down to about 12 minutes. The bad news is that 12 hours of sleep all on one day is a pipe dream.

Today was a huge milestone. We passed with flying colors. The girls in my office say that's because I've lowered my standards to the point where shit just doesn't matter any more. That may be entirely true, however, we still passed the milestone. It's the official "First Haircut" day. This is always one of the most tenuous days when you're new on a ship (or military facility - in this case paradise but the tension is the same). The problem it's the proverbial box o' chocolates.

You pray that 1) this person is a woman, 2) they recongnize that I AM in fact a woman as well (it pains me to say that this is not always the case... As a 16 year old, I might buy it but damn! I'm pushing 40 with wrinkles and...like no 5 o'clock shadow. What on earth do I need! Even with ear rings in I get called sir. Really this is exasperating!) and 3) they speaka da englais.

Even when they speaka da englais, you don't know if JUST A LITTLE OFF THE BACK AND OVER THE EARS gets translated to "Please shave my head with a #1 and make it snappy!" The last haircut I got at Camp Smith in Hawaii was before Iron Man. You need to look good for the race photos after all. That was in September. I didn't get another haircut until February. The Filipino woman who Naired my head didn't under stand that a "little off the sides" meant...you know...a little off the sides and not Marine Corps regulation high and tight.

My husband says the solution is fake boobs. I'm a keep-it-real kind of girl. For some reason, I feel that communication is the problem and not the fact that I am slender and have short hair. This is a catch 22 by the way. Short hair begets more short hair.

So we passed hair cut day. I walked into the beauty salon (they call it that by the way - I don't know if "Master Cuts" translates at all in Arabic. If it did, it would something like the worm writing above and then I don't think anyone would know that it was in fact a beauty salon. It would come out like some high pitched warble that could mean anything from "Your sister has warts!" to "My lebnah has mold on it.")

Filipino-woman cut my hair without incident and the world is all good. So despite the sand storm in which we ran our Armistice Day 5K (and so begins the Arifjan T-shirt collection) and being in charge of an office that is about to explode, all is right with the world. Thank God for Hawaiian coffee and good hair cuts :) Aloha until next time.

May 6th

OMG, let me first start this off with I can't believe that Favre is in negotiations with the Vikings. Did you hear that rumble? That crackling sound that permeates throughout the entire globe? That's hell freezing over folks. Forgive the expression folks but I feel like we all got screwed without the obligatory "I love you" at the end. Alas! It's cats and dogs officially living together!!! OK, vent complete. It's day 10. I've included nothing about the 5 W's of Kuwait and no movie quotes so far. So much to do and so little time... I'll give as much info on Kuwait and Arifjan as I can but just to issue the disclaimer in advance, we aren't even allowed to have cameras on base. OK, we all know everyone does and likely people are posting pictures everywhere but there will be chances in the future for me to take pictures of things much more exciting than the Nathan's Hotdog stand next to the pool. I live in POD. I don't know why it's capitalized. It might be an acronym for something like....hmmmm....Personal Oppression Device. Private Officer Domicile. Pickled Onions and Dates. I don't know. It's the Army and while we may have the same acronyms, they mean entirely different things. "PSD" in Navy means Personnel Support Department. Booger-eater clerks who screw up our pay. In Army, it means Personal Support Detachment which loosely translates to "Bad Ass Gun-Totin' Dudes who Drive Suburbans and Protect DV's". Imagine my confusion. In any case, think "18-wheeler" boxes. I live in half an 18-wheeler box and thank God! There's no sink or running water but at least it's private - just me and the Honu Posse. On a ship, this would be the equivalent of the "bowling alley" state room for those who know. The guy I replaced left me a nice desk, chair and a practically brand new refrigerator (yea!!). I can now eat breakfast in my room. I'll be back to ezekial cereal and soy milk in no time. (And yes, espresso maker is on the way...) The walls are plain gray so I feel right at home. On order is a gi-normous Hawaiian state flag (6 feet by 10 feet) that cost me an arm and a leg but man is it going to look good on my long wall. Yes, pictures of this will be sent along with pictures of my lederhosen espresso cup. (We're just a bundle of fun here :)!) My predecessor also left me some carpets which makes the POD all the more homey. The bathroom is about 50 yards down the walkway which is decidedly inconvenient at 11pm, 2am, and 4 am when I have a tendency to have to get up (yes, all 3). Did you know that the sun starts coming up here at 4am? One would only know this if they have to drag their ass out of bed to walk 50 yards to the can at 4am. There is one window in each unit but no one really opens then and they have outer shutters that are similar to hurricane shutters. I'm going to go out on a limb and say no one knows their neighbors here. Once a day (and you wouldn't expect this) I have to open the door wide to air the pace out because it gets wicked humid. On days I bike in my room, this wouldn't be a surprise but it's all the time. I must be the only person who has this problem. People walk by and I get the suspicious "stink eye" expression. The walls must be pretty thick here because several times, I've done "moving day" in which every piece of furniture has been moved around. This means one bed, two bed stands, one TV with VCR and stand and two very large metal stand-up lockers. These are all slid across a linoleum floor making maximum noise. (Think of the ship from the movie Galaxy Quest pulling out of its docking station. If I have to explain this, you wouldn't understand.) No one has complained so far which is nice as most of the noise I make is after midnight. The night I put my bike together, I dropped everything at least once. This includes frame, wheels, seat, floor pump and allen tool. All ended up on the floor due to a combination of jet lag and delirium. Good times! And all my beer-stealing, gun-totin' turtle can do is sit there and smile at me. Worthless! The only time the walls aren't thick enough to melt out sound is at 0600. The Army has deemed it necessary to play bugle music loud enough to be heard up in Iraq. This is really inconvenient for my personal program especially since my room is right next to a speaker. The good news is this random noise generator makes it feel like home. If only they would ring the bells to state the time like onboard ship. They also do random noise at 1700 and taps. Lots and lots of bugle music. I'm expecting Custer or Patton to pop into the office at any moment. The showers make me giggle. Ever seen Lost in Translation with Bill Murray? He gets into a shower in Japan and the shower head is about 12" to low. They are the same here. I'm trying to figure it out. It's not like mid-eastern people are shorter than the average population. Chalk this up to another part of the Land Of Not Quite Right. Funny Thing About Kuwait Thought For the Day: Kuwaitis LOVE their automobiles ("Au-tohmoh-beeeeeeelllll!" random thought - name that movie). Seriously, I need to start taking photos from my non-existent camera. They REALLY love their trucks. If you're in South Carolina, you might see a red neck cruising along with a dixie and a gun rack in the rear window of his Chevy. Here, it's Abdullah in his man-dress and head gear with a rear window "mirage" of the ruling King of Kuwait in his rear window. And this was one pimped-out fire-engine red Chevy. It's simply bizarre. The concept of personal space is completely different over here as well. Last week I peeked in my rear-view mirror to be treated to the sight of four little brown men lined up shoulder to shoulder in the front of one of those mini cargo trucks. They line their front windows with "curtains" that have tassels so it's just the funniest visage of four dudes squeezed in like sardines in a truck with dangling curtains. Funny Story o' the Day: Last week, my predecessor and I were out doing a fam run of the city. A little back ground on Kuwait - they have traffic "laws" here but to say they're enforced would be....a stretch. People in Benz's and Porches (because they have more money here than Davey Crockett - movie reference #4 BTW) fly by doing about 120 mph. The speed limit is 120kph (~74 mph). I'm here to tell you that a Suburban's speed governor kicks in at about 105 mph. Anyhoo, we're truckin' along at about....105 mph when this Explorer gets right on my ass. I pull one lane over to let him pass. He passes then slows down. Basically (apparently he might have a governor also) we play highway tag for the next 10 clicks. At one point I pulled out in front of him to pass another car and nearly clipped bumpers (SOP out here) and the race was officially "game on". BTW, this is the Bubba version of Kuwaiti. He's a young dude in a pimped out Explorer with a cheesy mustache and a tight t-shirt over his....large belly with a ball cap of course on backwards. We have our military hats on the dash so it's obvious as he stares at us when he passes that he knows we're Americans. After about 10 clicks, he's finally up ahead of me and lo and behold, it's the one day a year the Kuwaiti Highway Patrol is out. He gets pulled over while we cruise on by at the legal speed limit of course. He's got his head full out of the window with the absolute funniest grin of irony on his face staring at us as we cruise on by while he's pulled over by the cops. Priceless.

May 3rd

Wow, what a week. I think I left off with my last day at Ft. McCrady so that leaves a butt-ton of stuff in between then and now. The trip to Kuwait was as expected...freakin' long. We left South Carolina at a reasonable time on Saturday evening for our first leg to Bangor, ME. The local VFW came out in force and provided salt, sugar and other junk food to see us off. My take on the whole process. They feel like they're coming out to do us a service but from our perspective, we feel like we have to do them a service since they took the time to come out there. I spent my time in the terminal making phone calls and drinking Red Bull. (Yes, I know. It hasn't stopped there. My shipment of Gu and Power Bars is on the way but the RB is tiding me over. Not that this makes it good for you. Today I had three to get through my bike. This crap will probably kill me if I don't get some Gu soon.) Anyhoo, yet again I digress. One of the funniest things about this whole trip was the fact that we got on the airplane without a single security inspection. I made it a point to bring water, lots of toiletries that were greater than 1 oz and they were scattered all over my back pack. On top of that, I carried my M9. Standard procedure but I gotta tell ya, it's HIGH-larious to see 200 weapons on an airplane. You betchyerass it's for my safety! For once the airplane safety pamphlet got it right.

We arrived at Bangor to more VFW. More handshakes. I don't know if they realize that all we want to do is grab a beer at the bar. They say that we don't know what we want and need to reassurance that there are people rooting for us. No, really, I want a beer. My people are elsewhere but there's beer like...right HERE! Bangor, ME to Liepzig, Germany. Once again disappointed. Don't know if I mentioned that I got addicted to coffee in the past three weeks but after 24 hours of no sleep and very little food, when we landed in Germany, all I wanted was a good cup of coffee. We're in Europe, right? That should be easy? Um....no but you can get 16 kinds of beers and believe it or not, marijuana iced tea. (I sound like a broken record when I say...) I don't make this up folks. For the record, we weren't allowed to drink the beer. Or the MJ iced tea. But they did have the worst coffee I have ever tasted. Really, it was worse than Army coffee. The little terminal we waited in while the airplane refueled was obviously set up by the US gov't for this very purpose. When we arrived there were already other US servicemen waiting for their planes and more arrived while we waited. They had a little minimart where you could by...hmmmm...let's see, chocolate, twinkies and a ton of other American style junk food plus $20 souvenier coffee mugs, other over priced merchandise and of course, marijuana iced tea. I bought a little espresso cup in the shape of lederhosen. The beer stein espresso cup was about $20. I'm not that German anymore. We finally arrived in Kuwait City International Airport late in the evening. After the painful bus trip to Camp Virginia (the Navy's in-processing station), we unloaded the trucks with all our gear. Since each person on this 200 person plane had 4 sea bags wirth of gear, you can imagine how long this took. You basically set up two sets of lines by each 18-wheeler (not everyone of course because you have the inevitable shit-bags that don't lift a finger to assist even with their own bags). Bags unloaded, I grabbed by gear (all present!!!) and hoisted them over to my tent. It's about a 12-person airconditioned tent but we were the lucky ones to squeeze in 4 people. Lots of room. Drop the bags, unload the "sleeping system" which is Army-ese for "sleeping bag". I'll just call it, you know....sleeping bag. So it's midnight thiry. No real meal or sleep in 48 hours. Wired. We drug our asses over to the chow hall and I ate the best eggs ever. OK, not really but at the time they were. Top that off with a scoop of Baskin Robbins Chocolate and I swear I was in heaven. That's one of the things about Army chow halls. You see, on an aircraft carrier, hard ice cream is a delicacy. On nights where they actually serve the stuff, you walk in the Ward Room and suddenly excitement ripples through the crowd. "OOOOOO!!!! Hard ice cream!!!" The normal stuff is the machine soft serve which we have all the time but tastes like ass. The common term for it is "dog" and you always get soft serve from the "dog machine". It's called "dog" because it looks like, you know....dog doo. Hence the excitement for hard ice cream when it's served. Enter the chow hall to realize that in the Army, they serve this stuff (and brand name no less) at every meal. For free. It's like you have to eat it because it's there and it's free. This is why the Navy if fat just in case you were wondering. So yes, I had a scoop of Baskin Robbins. Scandalous! I finally laid my head down on my sleeping bag about 2am. Since the other occupants were still getting gear stowed, the lights were still on. About 3:30 am, I poked my head out of my bag to see why the lights were still freakin' on. This is what's wrong with your military folks. We don't turn off the lights because why? Yup, no answer, sorry. Still haven't figured that one out. Four bodies bundled up with broad daylight in the tent. WWWWTTTTTTFFFFF????? Just so you know, I used to think that Fallon, NV was the armpit of the world. Now I know that there are places that are....so....much....worse. Camp Virginia is not the bottom of the list since it does have a Starbucks but krykie it's freakin' close. I drug my butt out of my sleeping (system) bag and worked my way over to Starbucks. Half of the people I got off the plane with were already there shell shocked but with real coffee in front of them. It was like entering the twighlight zone after dropping down a black hole. The good news was this was to be a short lived stay at Camp Virginia. After coffee, we all trudged over to get a brief where they tell us the obvious. Basically it drills down to "no fun will be had and the beatings will continue until the morale improves or you leave the Middle East". Awesome! So that ends the training portion of my journey to Kuwait. That afternoon precisely at 2:15 in the afternoon, my savior showed up in a Suburban and whisked my off to Camp Arifjan, the home of my new job. Whisked being the operative word. I think we drove 105 mph all the way home although at the time I didn't realize it as my guy and I were already deep in conversation turning over the job. That's about it for tonight. There's so much I'm forgetting so sorry if this is a bit boring. There are so many little stories that made it interesting along the way. As a reminder to self for tomorrow's blog, mention Kuwaiti dude that got pulled over for speeding. Priceless. Also mention camel in truck on the way to LSA as well as speed bumps at Ali Al Salem.