This week been interesting, the highlight is that I got emails from the Drachenwald chatelaine. There are two other SCA people here other than the ones I have described before. One from An Tir and the other Midrealm. One has brought Fencing Kit for two people. How he got two swords and two daggers here is beyond me. The plan at this point is to get together sometime this week. Yaaaa!

The market is back. It’s been closed for the last two weeks after some sort of bomb scare, or at least that’s the rumor. With it closed the merchants are willing to make a deal as a result got some great deals like two hand carved tables, now I need to figure out how to send them home. Got one parcel sent a week ago so should get to Ottawa in the next week or two.

The big disappointment was I missed the last cottage weekend with the collage friends. One of my friends has a family cottage near midland and we all get together once or twice a year. Well He has decided that he will move to BC in the next few months. So this gathering on the May long weekend would be the last for some time if ever. As you can imagine I could not go.

Almost lost my computer this week when the fan blew up inside the computer, and as it’s a portable it has a custom fan. Solution was to MacGyver up something. Got my hands on a cheap cooling pad and made up a gasket with some piping and cocking, drilled a few holes and poof she is nice and cool again. Unlike the weather it’s been getting into the mid 40’s in the shade here. Add another 15 degree once you get into the sun. What scares me is I am getting use to it and don’t mind it so much.

A Box From Home

I received a care package from Kes and Menkin, It’s makes a big difference to get something back from home. I feel bad for Menkin as he may starve come july. It looks like they sent the pennsic junk food stash including his microwave dinners. It was nice to have Kraft dinner again after three months without it. The parcel was greatly appreciated; it’s a needed connection back home. Remind me that this is not forever.

There are people here who have been here for years, were in Kabul before that, Bosnia before that, and Africa before that. This is their career. I hate to admit as much as I complain about it but there is things that appeal to it. It’s a easy life style, It’s government work ware someone feeds you and does your laundry. It’s very rarely boring unless you try to make it so, and then there is a rocket attack. My MacGyver tendencies do serve me well here. I miss home too much to stay like the hard core here, But I could see myself doing this every few years.

It sucks some time being a civilian here. Ran into Vlod and his team, he asked about a ride alas I had the bongo truck and can’t have people rind in the back. Many of the military, foreign and Canadian, look down at us for taking jobs from servicemen, as a form of profiteer or mercenary. The result is that they will throw the book at us if we get caught bending or breaking the rules. I already had a few run in over caring a camera. This is compounded by the fact that this place is kept running by bending and breaking the rules. What bugs me the most is a few hours it struck me I could have just given the keys to Vlod, jumped in the passenger seat, and if anyone asks say one of his guys was feeling a bit of heat stroke coming on.

I hoping I’ll run into him or Eric on market day tomorrow. My send home box is almost full, just needed to find a few more items I can send home. There is a few items I could get, maybe a small table or a few more pieces of stone ware that looks good on a feast table. The box I got turned out to be bigger than I thought so it’s been delayed sending it back. It should take a few weeks to get home.

The speedy internet has left me it only lasted a few days… this bugs me more as they are choosing to give us bad internet. Many companies here are making a lot of money offering really bad service because they can have monopolies on base. RANT RANT RANT… My names John and I am addicted to high speed internet….

The slow internet does leave me a bit of time in the evenings to write, as many probably notice I almost never posted before getting here, it also frees some time to work on projects. The jerkin is talking to me reminding me that I have a late July dead line to get it done. The only problem is that another project idea is bugging me. It’s nothing that will win me laurel brownie points but we will see if it stays in my head….

Well today was my day off so I spent it lounging around trying my best to stay off my foot. Went down to pizza hut for lunch and had pizza and wings, I always go out for lunch on my day off. This place lends itself to routine; it’s how you get by here, if not you get the weight of the time you spend away from home. I will have to soon change my weekend routine as I am only a few pages from finishing the book Kes and Menkin gave me, and I usually spend the afternoon reading on my days off as its too hot to do anything else. I expect I’ll replace it with working on the jerkin project.
There is a risk that I may repeat myself over and over again with clichés as most of the extraordinary things that happen here are not to be repeated over an internet forum.


There are little things like how a few days ago when getting some items the French shop I got coins for change. This may not sounds strange to you but for me that was extraordinary as the currency here is the pog. Yes I am talking about little cardboard disk fad from the late 80’s. They make little cardboard currency to use instead of change. The reasoning is that solders don’t want a pocket full of noisy coins.

My internet has well gotten a whole lot better. The reason is simple, the end of a monopoly. There is now two providers of internet to the tent lines and so the previous provider is losing the 100$/month members like myself to the competitor who’s offers a service for 90$ and is a bit faster and without the web blocks. SO all the 100$ account holders speed got a boost Friday night as a way to keep people from leaving. I hope that both companies stay around so this increase in speed is not a temporary thing. Before any one asks yes I am paying 100$ US for something before the boost was not much better then dial up, and yes it’s very frustrating, and yes i have mentioned that many times before.

Other things that happen here may get to the press like how we had a British harrier crash this week. It was all we talked about for a few days. Did the pilot survive? Did you see it go down? etc… The news article below has a picture taken from a harrier of the city itself. That’s not my city that’s the real city a few miles away. As a civilian contractor I’m not going to get to see that place, it’s not allowed by companies insurance for me to ever leave this base other than by plane. I have very little contact with the locals, I’m finding that a bit disappointing as times goes on I am more and more curious. For me this base is Afghanistan.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/5322750/Pilot-ejects-from-RAF-Harrier-crash.html

Life in KAF, well for me the last week has been below average. Not for any particular reason just that morel has been sinking for the last few weeks for the employee of the company. The company about a month ago announced that future contracts won’t have quite as many perks. With other items related to vacations and end of contract many people feel that they have been lied to. On top of that other companies have been brain hunting and people are leaving. It’s having a subtle effect of bringing people down.

Myself, I’m feeling old this week, got out of bed on Monday with a foot in a lot of pain. After a visit to the clinic turns out the change of diet here has given me gout of all things. Yes Gout. Not fun while I try to move computers and printers around. Before any one sends me a wave of medical advice about it I already got flooded here. I don’t drink alcohol here as it’s a dry site other then the two rationed beers a month. I eat very little red meet. The kicker here is that they use corn syrup as the primary sweetener instead of refine sugar and for me that’s has effects.

Any way this post is getting quite depressing. So let’s get onto other things more cheery. The drive in movie are up and running. Before I came here a bunch of tech people would put up a screen on the side of the oasis and a projector once a week and have a sort of mini drive in theater. That’s been down for some time as they expanded the oasis. Last week they got the screen up and I been helping out with that. We had the original MASH movie last Saturday, Insert surreal moments. Yes we had real med-evac helicopters flying in the back ground. There were a few times you could spot the parallels. In a few weeks some of the tech will be at end of contract and I will be the one picking the movies. This worries me as I know that my taste of movies is not typical, but I just make sure to bounce ideas off of people.

On the base side they are paving the roads here. This is good news in two ways, first the speed limit has been raised to a whopping 20 Km/h and second it will reduce the amount of dust in the air. There will still be lots of dust in the air but every little bit helps.

So any way I am still alive and kicking, Hope to hear from people soon.





With all the rain, ware the ware pools there is lots of green, too bad there is not more places for water to pool at. The ground here just refuses to absorb the water for any time.



This is one of the photographers that was with the reports at the PM visit, she had three huge cameras that were bigger then her



Harper him self telling the forces how lucky they are that his in power ...




The army of reporters that was following the PM around...

online again Yaaa!!!!

Some may have noticed I have not posted in about a week. The reason is a lack of internet in the tents. As the network is a hodgepodge of switches all it takes is someone to unplug one in the chain to bring everything down. And that’s exactly what happened 5 evenings in a row. Tonight is my first night ware I have more than 30 minutes of internet.

Last Friday was my birthday and I want to thank all the people who sent me happy birthday messages on facebook. I was feeling a bit down and forgotten till I got hit by a massive wave of messages. Thank you

The Prime minister visit today, most of the Canadian personal were shuffled together to listen to a speech. It had very strong overtones of “vote for us, the other guys don’t like you or your families, we give you the best stuff”. Most entertaining part was watching the press scatter around trying to get the best shot or best sound clip. I got some pictures and will post them on the blog at a future date.

Work has been quite. Spending most of my time there cleaning out printers after dust storms and moving computers from once office to another as different departments jockey for the ideal office space. It’s quite understandable when office space here can range from purpose build low rise building to a tent in the back of a depot area and everything imaginable in between.

The weather here can’t make up its mind. It rained last Thursday night to dust storm on Friday to blazing heat for the last three days. I am starting to get use to the heat, the day time high averages is now around 35 to 40 degree C and still climbing as summer gets closer. When pennsic roles around and every one else is sweating in the heat I be the one with the puzzle look on his dry, tan, face wondering if I need a coat.

Eric the bad baron is back and talking about is London trip, and I am green with envy. I get one paid vacation each contract and it looks as I will be doing at least two at any rate to save up some money. This first contract will be pennsic and that is confirmed. The question is what about the next contact’s vacation. My idea is to go to London like Eric but with a twist, either on the way there or back retrace the Orient Express. I love traveling by train and use to do it all the time when I was a kid when my family lived in Moose Factory. Its five trains from Istanbul to London with one stage being the remaining Orient Express. I can stay a day or two in each city like Munich and Paris. Does anyone have thoughts or suggestions?

Your Lost Friend John M.