John Moran in Afghanistan

I am still alive

2011-06-03T13:49:00.001-07:00

I have not posted in a very long time, the truth be know is that i have little to talk about. It's ground hog day, each day more or less the same as the last. There has been a few ups and downs and i'll talk a bit about them but nothing much is happening with me. Honest. Why the defensive tone, a few friends and family have gotten on me for not posting in over a month so here is the update.

The ups seem to be attached to my free time spent adding to my SCA kit. I have two more linen shirts made, this brings it to five, the final goal is ten so i have one for each day at pennsic but for this trip its to a total of three and i have the fabric for the additional one more. At the same time i am using some silk brocade scarfs here to make a very rich jerkin.

I have ordered five late English cooking pots, it will cost a fortune but i can't resist they are the crowning bit of cooking kit. There not perfect period as they are cast iron not cast bronze. Not saying that the iron is not period they are the exception not the rule. The Bronze are gorges and were an option for a bit more money but they have big safety risks as they can give a really bad case of food poisoning if not used correctly. This did have its challenges as I had to fight a bit with Paypal as there automated defences was saspecious of a Canadian credit card paying for a english purchase well using a satellite connection from some unknown location. (unknow to it) So it kept blocking the payment and i had to keep calling Paypal to try to sort it out.

There has been a few downs, the one that most threw me off my game was losing my hat, yes that little poofy black hat is now no more, it got stolen or dropped while i was at a fencing practice. By chance my mother has found hidden away the original pattern and the wool fabric the original was made from.

The find is the result of at my mother has finally decided to move down south to her childhood home in south west Ontario. That does mean that i will have to say good buy to house my parents have lived in since I was eleven. Its going to be a bit of a challenge to sort threw some 25 years worth of clutter before it can be sold.

The summer heat is coming in so its now averaging 40+ C here in mid day. This place is still surreal as usual, one of the cleaners garden has produced a group of six-foot tall sunflowers that look totally out of place here add some nice colour to the otherwise tan landscape.

The king of surreal moments for me was when I was sitting on my tents porch on my day off working a shirt watching a few of my camp mates try to teach them selves cricket when i heard a chime version of “puff the magic dragon” go driving by on its way to one of the PX stores. Turns out the British brought over an ice-cream truck with chime music and all, the only thing that differs this one from any other normal motorized frozen dairy establishment is that the truck is painted in a desert camouflage pattern.

The only other news i have is my vacation is set to be in late August to early September and shorter due to the strange moving out contract we are getting. And yes that makes it official, no Pennsic for me this year.

So that is it for me, I am thinking of every one and hope to see every one in August.

Back in KAF

2011-04-19T12:54:00.000-07:00

Alot has changed in the few weeks i was gone. The big one is my boss is gone. He had been here from the start of this mission and was planning to finish here had left. Resign out of the blue, turns out there was a bit of a scandal here and details are but rumours. Any one who reads my blog will know that there is no truth here just rumours. Its change the dynamics of the office a bit.

I was told when i left that soon after my return they have a new contract ready for me. Turns out that’s not true the military has not given the project a confirmed end date and with the election that may not happen any time soon. It means to me is I have no idea when I will see home again.

When I first got back there is only one other fencer and he is leaving in two weeks so the fencing looks to end with him. There seems to have been a reprieve from this fate, there is a bunch of new US units rotating in and so we picked up two SCA people one of which is a barron from Midrealm, and a small army of people just interested to try out the fencing. It means now i have to switch gears to teaching mode. I always feel a bit fake at this as i have very little experience and no authorizations in fencing, but its like all things here you do the best with what we have.

Any way I'm a little melancholy with not knowing what my summer is going to be like or were but not much can be done at this point other then put my focus on the work and get it done. I'll have lots to do as i have enough linen to make two more shirts and more on the way. My current pet project of using a slave computer back at my apartment seems to be working we will see how that turns out in the long run. I will keep myself busy.

London Log Day 2 (April 3rd)

2011-04-19T12:22:00.000-07:00

Day Two was spent just at Hampton court. This time i had all day and so i started by walking the gardens. The Gardens are all now Georgian design with its own little maze... I got lucky and found my way threw it on my first try. The thought came to me if i ever get my own house with a lawn that i will have to make up a maze...

The Palace is a classic of early 16th century brick contraction with Gothic decorative elements. Turns out that they had a showing of paintings from Henry VIII period including the field of cloth of gold. As imagine I took a lot of photos. Its hard to take photo of these pictures as the paintings have four hundred year old layer of glossy varnish. It drove the automatic optics in my camera nuts trying to make sense of the lighting. I Got to take a close look at the camps kitchens and it looks that they had purpose built tents with a buffet style serving as there is little sign of chairs around the serving tables.

Again i spent most of the day in the kitchen picking the brains of the reactors a number of which are professional historians and archaeologist. I got to sit and chat and was informed the table in front of me was put in the early 17th century. It mad how close the history is.

Once the tourists had gone i was invited to the the back office and parts of the castle not normally open to the public. They showed how the castle had been expanded and that there was a window in there office that had bin closed off since Elizabeth the first time. It how makes a lovely Gothic style book shelf. Even offered to help out then next time I'm there if i can get the right garb.

The castle had been expanded threw the seventeenth and early Georgian periods but what makes it different is that very little was removed in the process. The courts stands on a very large peace of real estate so they just added another peace. I was shown that one of the long buildings that now houses the offices and gift stores is the oldest garrison barracks in England but nothing is mentioned in the number of pamphlets given out. Turns out there is a number of examples of this threw out the castle.

Oh before i forgot when i got there the main court yards were full of BBC props. They were using them for the background for some upcoming fantasy TV show. It was interesting to walk around the made up castle market and giggle at some the incorrect items but all so how they have mastered the ten foot rule. The Market looks great when you first step in but once you are walking among the fake stalls and well placed peaces of fake wood it becomes very plastic like a flock of pink plastic flamingos. The only thing that seems to save it is the 30 feet of real castle looming over you on all four sides.

Oh on a side notes on every castle movie and tv show they put two great long banners on each side of the main gate of the caste. They are hide the assortment of modern signs and modern hardware that enviable gets mounted on ether side of the gate for modern security. A place name plaque, the little this way to the washrooms or that way to the gift shops. All washed away with to long stretches of broad cloth and some paint.

A couple of the reactors played name that prop. Ohh that’s from the new Merlin show or from robin hood or harry potter. It scary how well they could spot the origin of the different objects. I gather from a few comments that they been approached a few times about helping out as with the popularity of HD the old 10 foot rule is not working as well.

Hampton court is stands as my favourite castle from the week and will stand for a while, its not the fanciest or biggest but you can tell its the most lived in. It feels more alive then any of the other castles.

London Day 1

2011-04-17T12:33:00.001-07:00

OK I have been back in KAF for a week and not posted a thing... I have my exscuses that could make a very long post onto them selves as a few supprises were waiting for me when i got here, but then i miss talking about England... I am still mentally digesting my time there, as it was a blur of some of my most favourite things, Castles, Cathedrals, and Museums. My brain was left in a happy state of mush. Some part of me still has ideas of leaving in England other then I have little way to make a living.

Day One in England

Arrived at Heathrow about half past six in the morning, after fun with security cached the subway to Chelsea to see if there was any chance i could check in early, it was eight when i walked in. After my last hotel in London being tiny I was worried on what I would get. This hotel was under a bit of renovations so that was not a good sign. My room was not ready so it will have to wait till later.

Dropped my luggage and went walked to Westminster, One thing i have to say about my hotel it was well located. Once in Westminster after i had finished staring at the clock tower and heard Big Ben chime I found the river cruse and was enjoying the trip up the river ... I watch the assortment of architecture that have sprung up along the Thames, the centuries of architects attempts to get as many river facing flats out of a given peace of real estate. I eventually had to catch a bit of sleep as i was fighting off 5 hours of jet lag and quite a bit of motion sickness residue from the flight. The trip took most of the day and i made it to Hampton Court around three in the afternoon.

Hampton court was all i had hoped and more. I had made it a point to come down when they were doing a cooking demo. The reanactors spotted my hat right off. I was able to chat it up a bit and compare notes. They were impress i could quote a few of the cook books they were using. It was the end of the day and headed back to my hotel by train. I would be back tomorrow, I'll save people from a rant how I love English rail systems.

My Hotel room was much larger then the last and i had not to worry. The double bead still took up most of the main room but there was a small table and shelves. The kitchen was no more then 4 foot square bit it had a little fridge, sink and a double hot plate. It also had a little apartment size washer/dryer unit. It felt pleasant and this time in London I’m not getting the claustrophobic feeling I that plagued me last time I was here.

More London to follow

Dubai part 2

2011-03-13T14:44:00.000-07:00

Lets start by asking you to forgive me as this post is a bit incoherent, i have been in the terminal almost 8 hours and my mind is starting to go from the boredom. To give it scope of boring, back in KAF were there is officially nothing to do in your spare time I may post a entry every few weeks, its been less then three hours and i'm posting again....

I think there is a school of design when it comes to air port terminals. I think they are all about movement. The seats are uncountable so you can't really sit for too long before you have to stand up and move just to get blood flow back. When you do sit it give you a chance to people watch as they take there turn on the journey to no ware specific. I have a conspiracy theory that they want to tire people out for the flights so they will sleep instead of bugging the flight crew.

Right now i am camped out next to recharge centre to get some juice back into the little net-book. Its a bit of a people way station for the technically dependent. As we are not far from the McDonald’s you see the odd person stop and have to decide what is more important to feed them selves or there electronics.

This decision has to be made often by the electronic junky. It could be why the truly nerdy only seem to come in two sizes, boney or spherical. All dependent on which side is more often found to be heaver in ones mental scale of importance.

The poor guy next to me is trying his best not to be notice as he hogs most of the plugs in the recharge booth, as he charges a laptop, cell phone, mp3 player, and camera. I'm waiting for any moment for him to pull out a GPS or a portable DVD player.

Dubia is the Vegas of the middle east and the air port very much reflects that. The people going by are a equal mix from the four corners of the world. In any given moment i may see a tall blond in high heel boots and a skin tight tank top walking next to a women in a fully clad black berkas.

Some of the people travailing with me have gone to the emirates lounge. You pay $60 US for 4 hours and you get access to leather couches you can actually sleep on, shower facilities and as much cheep booze as you can hold. I have avoided this temptation in the hope i may get some sleep on the 8 hour flight to London.

Dubai

2011-03-13T11:11:00.000-07:00

Ya! Dubai terminal three has free wi-fi internet. Status Report, first of four flights is down.

Dubai for reasons I'm not totally clear has most of there international flights leaving in the wee hours of the morn. For example my flight leaves at three am. Now as my last flight got in at six pm i have a few hours to sit ... and .... umm .... post a blog entry.

I need to avoid the huge duty free here, you can get cigarettes, whisky, wine, and chocolate here for way too cheep. Fortunate for me i don't take part in much of the above other then the chocolate but a few other travel mates are not the same, one seems to be drooling over the $100 21 year-old Glenfiddich. What my bane here is the two books stores here, thank goodness they don't have history or science sections, its mostly light reading.

Any way the battery on my little netbook is starting to run dry so I'll post the next chance i get ....

Packing light

2011-03-12T10:48:00.000-08:00

To Bring, or Not to Bring, that is the dilemma. Whether its calmer in the mind to wonder the lost and damage of outrageous transfers, or to take ones luggage a lack of volume. And by compressing stuff then. To fly to move, no rest; and by a move to go we must.

The problem is Dubai. As we now are not free to enter the city with out much paper changing hands some of which being monies it now limited to air port transfers. To make this transfer of one person is quite easy, the question, the dilemma, the mystery, is if your check luggage will do the same. As we go from the charter terminal to the main emirates terminal. This is done with a third party escort service. When I say escort service I don't mean pretty girls of a willing nature who laugh at all your jokes, I mean a bunch of shift workers who are a thousand miles from home who could care less if your flight leaves in ten hours or ten mines and who may at some point move your check luggage but you won't know till you get to your destination.

So i am here after my last shift before vacation packing and unpacking my backpack trying to see what i can get in and still have it small enough to be considered carry on. Things i have sacrificed at this point is a half finished pewter mold of St. George slaying a dragon, a few trinkets i was going to give away, and my sewing kit.

Curious on what the weather will be like at the other end, here its just above 20 C with the sun out. We've not had rain in a week so every thing has dried up but not so much to fill the air with dust. It really doesn’t get much nicer here, and i am leaving. Hmm.. I think this vacation could have been timed better.

What ever the weather it will be nice to be home with a place of my own. See you all soon.

less then a week

2011-03-10T04:31:00.000-08:00

With less then a week left till i am home time is starting to slow down....... I'm trying to keep my self busy finishing a linen shirt and carving my first pewter badge mold ready for testing when i get home. I do the test here but sadly someone killed the hot plate trying to make KD in the rain. Before any one ask and as much as i like KD, it wasn't me.

I hate to admit it but the only thing on my mind is food. Try not to snack at work, enduring the de-fac food, trying not to spend money on boardwalk take-out. We did get some extra snack food as food supply try to empty sea-containers. We got BACON!!!. Frozen, some what stale, pre-cooked bacon, but its still bacon. Its a real battle to lose wight here when we spend so much time waiting for the chaos of the move to start, it's a good time to go on vocation.

The office is still slow, there is not much happening and we can see the list of things to do build up for the move out. None of that we can touch till we get the OK to start packing. So we sit and wait, we get the odd printer call that breaks up the day... At the same time a number of people who have been here for a while are leaving. So we will have a office of relatively new people.

The newest kid on the block is a young guy from our inventory department. Need to gag the little disgruntled demon in ones head that tells you that you have school and career experience and make the same as him who has none but he is hard working and eager to learn and with the big move coming up that is worth a lot more to us then some know-it-all who sits around all day.

So all that is left is to count the days and hours till i am back on a plane...

PS: My list of things to Eat when home: Sushi, A holiday foul with all the fixings, Tourtiere, A proper Pizza, A proper Sub Sandwich, Canadian improper Chinese take out. A huge plate of Nachos, A salad that’s made of things other then lattice, cucumber and olives. A sauce that didn't come from a very large tin. To just eat with a metal fork and a ceramic plate, And of course a box of old fashion Kraft dinner.

Ahh ... It's Raining Again

2011-02-22T05:35:00.001-08:00

Like any one lost for a conversation topic, I'll start with the weather. Its rainy season, the last two weeks it has rained more days then not. Last weekend it reached its peak. For a few days this whole camp was the land of the thousand lakes. It got bad enough that they ordered no unnecessary road traffic as all the unpaved roads were becoming nothing but potholes. We stopped using our gators, for an apparent six wheel “off road” they are horrible ride on potholes. There has been rumors of landmines appearing in some of the holes. A little reminder this camp is built on what was a Russian mind filed some 30 years ago.

My cold is gone but this place is hard on the immune system so it did take two weeks to get over what should have been a few day cold. In the process lost a few weeks worth of gym time so trying to catch up... Its turning out harder then plan to lose weight, I've only lost little more then ten pounds in the last two months.

The big chains like burger king and pizza hut were given the boot during Gen. McChrystal stints. They have been replaced by some independents that in truth are producing much better food then the chains were. I hate to admit it but the food is quite good with everything considered. The de-fac's still leave allot to be desired but there is nine of them so you have a bit of selection depending how far you are willing to walk/drive. To top it off you can smell your food now, the poo-pond has been shut down, being drained and cleaned up.

Before you really couldn't smell anything other then the over riding odder of sewage that you eventually acclimatized to. Now this place has a whole landscape of smells from the partially burnt diesel of the roads to the charcoal fires from the new burger place. I hate to say this but this place is becoming more and more tolerable to live at, too bad we are leaving this year.

For those who might be interested I'll be back in Ottawa for March 15th till April fools ... Any way that’s the news from the not so sunny shores of Lake KAF.

It doesn’t matter some weeks are just going to suck...

2011-02-08T10:06:00.000-08:00

I've spent all this week sick with a head cold. Getting sick here is part of life with so many people coming and going. It means i lost a week in the gym and fencing. I'll try to go to the gym every day this coming week and see what happens.

The bizarre was not so good this week ether, an outfit i promised someone had been sold, So I'll have to wait to see if i can get another when they restock. The prices are still going up with more and more US personal coming to base. You can't even get the $2 carton of cigarettes any more. I picked up some moves, three for $5 Chinese ripped copies. Due to miss labelling and bad copies only one of the three was watchable.

While there I let myself be swindled by shinnies. I brook two golden rules of market shopping; never purchased a gem stone at the bizarre, and always haggle. I've become a veteran of the market and built up a network of merchants and so become lazy. I am use to starting with the whisper in my ear price. The Gem are a totally new thing, so new merchants to deal with. The plan was just look around but one just caught my eye. Turns out its a lab grown sapphire, but it's pretty and didn't cost too much. It will still serve its purpose.

This new interest in gem and the new purpose started with a few shops on the boardwalk opening up, one of them is selling quite nice gem stones at not bad prices. The idea got into my head that it be nice if some of the household regalia had real ruby and sapphires, household colours. Before any one thinks I'm some kind of big spender these stones are very low grade, too low to be sold in North America.

So looked at my pictures form the British museum to see what cuts of stone are period. I can find round and oval faceted cuts but they are the exceptions and only 15th century and later. The dominate seem to be full sphere and cabochon. I can get cabochon that are star and sphere are totally out, no one cuts stones that way anymore.

On the upside i found an article about a DIY kit for a 3D printer. For those who don't know these are printers able to make plastic objects. The Kits about $1200 US, which may sound allot but a off the shelf unit is usually around 30 to 40 thousand. ( http://www.makerbot.com/ ) Another thing to same some money up for.

Ok its been three weeks and all i got is rumors

2011-01-31T09:47:00.000-08:00

So its been a while since my last post. To be honest not much interesting has happened with me. Just keeping my self busy.

Got Vacation on the mind... it looks like mid march to mid April. Spend maybe a week to ten days at home to decompress and then back to London to take a tour of England then Hampton court cooking weekends and then take the train to low countries or say in London to do more sight see..

Its a little frustrating as we are getting rumours of Dubai closing to Canadians serving in Afghanistan. We know that the military and direct employes can not enter at this point, but there is talk that it may get extended to contractors like my self. This could damage my options for vacation.

It could be worst a number of people here had plan to go to Egypt in the next few months, that kind have gone down hill with every thing going on. The question is how many countries will have these revolutions and how many may go sour. Iran started of the same way with revolution and was hijack by the religious element.

When talking about rumors here the big story is about how the Americans have a very violent serial rapist on there hands who has attacked ten women nearly killing them and they didn't tell any one until a British girl got attacked. Turns out it's a total false rumour started when two US women charged their supervisor with sexual assault and the grape vine rolled it out from there.

We lost our ball hockey team. They got baited to get into a fight on a pre-season game with one of the military teams. The military team played a very physical game and some of us got hurt so a argument started. After the game they informed us that three of our best players were band from the ball hockey legal here and that the team will get disbanded till next season. The rumour of course is it was all planed from the start.

Weather, we are finally getting some rain. We are technically three quarters of the way threw the rainy season here with only a few drops here or there, last night it rained all night. We still need more, if we don't get enough rain this country will have allot of unemployed farmers for the Taliban to recruit when summer comes around. Of course that just a rumour too.

Well for me I am keeping my self busy with little projects. Working on creating a search engine for out numerous media and file servers and today i got ask to make a streaming video server too. Well it keeping me busy. I'm still going to the gym and fencing, with the fencing there is only two of us coming out regularly. But as time goes by the number may pick up again.

Well that my life in a nut shell.

Another Crazy Week

2011-01-09T09:24:00.000-08:00

Nothing major happened this week, it was just a lot of little things... Well that not totally true from the point of view of the company. We had the Company CEO come to the camp and spend a half a day telling us ... well ... lots of stuff we already knew. When a project is almost done and every one knows there won't be any more jobs after a given date the managers start to panic a little.

I think it comes down to the fact that many corporations motivate by promising the imaginary. ( http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-03-31/ ) Most often this is done in less obvious ways then what in the comic, it more often seen as “what do you see as your long term goals in the company” But when the end is in sight those kind of conversations become very pointless.

The fear for the managers is people leaving before the contracts are done. The company only gets paid fro the people on the ground and if some one leaves two or three months early its not cost effective to get some one new, train then, and fly them over here so it ends up being a loss income ether way.

The solution for them seems to be to talk up Kabul, every one knows the military not asked for people yet and that there going to be sitting on a large pool of military doing nothing now that the combat mission is done. The other solution is telling how they are talking to the parent companies about giving us a leg up on position they may have.

The funny thing is no one really cared what he had to say about the projects future, it was all about Dubai. We now had to deal with getting visa for over a week and Dubai airport system seems to become a land mine field you need to navigate. Before it was a oasis to stop over at, get a few drinks, maybe go into the city. Now well we had lost luggage, missed flights, and people trapped at the air port for a couple of days sleeping on floors. We had more problems in the last week then the company would see in a year., and that with most of the past problems having more to do with people getting drunk then issues with the city or airport.

Talking about travel my vacation will be in march, and i need to tell the travel people what i want to do about a month before. That means having my travel plans ready by the end of this month. I have 25 days to spend ( 28- 3 travel days ) I will need to come back to Canada probable for only a week then spend two weeks or so going around Europe. I want to start in London, then I will have to pick two or three other cities to visit ( advise will be welcome on this choice )

I am looking forward to this as I'm going to focus on museums and castle. I'll start in London and take to Eurostar to Paris or Brussels, and train to other citys from there, i guest the real choice is France or the low countries. From my last trip to London I learn its fun to go alone but its be much better to have someone to go with. I can afford using my vacation bonus to have some one flown out but who. I'm still trying to figure that out, one of the disadvantages of being single.

I'm not the only one planning travel trips, there is a number of local cats people have made into pets and there is a strong desire to send them to good homes back in Canada, the problem is the costs. It about a thousand dollars a cat after you cover the necessary travel and vet fees needed. So people have been putting hats out and fund raising the money. Two cats have been sent home already there is talk of two others. For the long term readers the cat that was rescued from a US dumpster has been sent home the one that lives in the repair yard is the next one planned to be sent home.

Well the web sites are moving along now i have two to make and i seem to have stepped in something. There seems to be a little war between managers arguing over the planned corprate web site about if we should make it and what networks should it be on. As i got volunteered to do the next version of the site I’ll be right in the cross fire. No wonder this project has gotten no ware scene April. I May get a bit of time to work on it this week as I'm back on evening shifts next week so if the evenings turn out to be slow then i will get some done.

The evening shifts will let me spend the mornings in the gym. The gym thing is going well i did get my three trips in this week and i may get five or six in this week because of the evening shift schedule. My body is starting to get use to all this gym time and working on both upper body and core body weight work. That reminds me if any one by chance can pick up one of the hand gyro gizmo and throw that in the mail to me it will be appreciated. I apparently need to work on my wrists and this little gadget is a little weighted ball that you twist in your hand and the ball speeds up from gyroscopic forces.

My current wrist workout, fencing, is doing well. We are going to lose the other squire Ioannes Dalassenos is leaving next week but we have a few other regulars coming out and they both have talent and one is from the west kingdom. The squire is interesting as he is a lefty and will be missed, he trying to get me to go out to gulf wars and i am trying to get him out to pennsic.

I won't say too much about calibration other then apparently some of the kingdoms in the south west US have a minimum calibration for fencing. AKA they have a fencing light, you need to place “positive pressure” for the hit to count not just touch pressure. It comes from the whole phrase “It takes a sword 4 lbs of pressure to break skin” He is not the first i have ran into with this idea/rule. I had some worries when i got back last time about my fencing calibration.

Any way that was my week more or less, I hope every one is doing well on the normal side of the world. I'll try to keep the Post coming

crazy week

2011-01-02T09:10:00.000-08:00

Time for another weekly report and I have to admit this has been a crazy week for me. To set the pace this week was evening shifts, so I was working noon to nine. Making it to fencing was tight but its not far from were I work. When we get evening shift we are the only one on for the last four hours so it can be really dead or really busy. I got about equal amounts this week and alot of the busy was cause by some departments going to reduce manning for new years.

For the First time ever i went to a gym other then to fix a computer, actually twice this week, spent a -hour with a trainer each time. I kept telling my self last time I was here to go like some bad new year resolution you know your never going to do but this time I making it a point. The first trip was just covering the basics of warm up and stretching and the second trip was yesterday and he put me threw the paces on weight training.

I was going to be a keener and go again today on my own but when i got up this morning well its better to say when i tried to get up this morning and failed. My arms and legs are on revolt, so i think its best to take it easy today. The goal is to fence three times a week and go to the gym three times a week and rest on the seventh. (Insert biblical joke here)

You really start thinking of health when you are here. Another tent mate of mine had to be sent home in a hurry due to heart issues. I have mentioned in the pass how this place is dirty and unhealthy, but its is a very dusty place and so very hard on the system. I'm just happy that i got clean clothes as one of the rocket attacks this week hit the laundromat. Lucky enough they got that back up and running in a few days as if nothing happened.

We also lost electricity for a day. This was not from the rockets but the fact that most of the wiring here not really designed for the loads we put it under. The military can really lay out infrastructure in a rush but not in a way to that’s meant to last the long hall or deal with the rate things have expanded. In military fashion the same day as the power went out a fork lift came along and dropped a truck size diesel generator at the end of my tent row, electrician connected it to one of the big breaker boxes and we are back up again.

It's nice to have power back and my clock is running correct, my little alarm clock was losing two or three minutes a day under the old power sources. Fun with technology, i have been on the ground about three weeks and already have a stack of projects on the go. From making a web page for my network share to updating a corporate website that has yet to be posted I had hoped to do some of my own little projects but they have been a bit side lined, I got marked as a person who can get things done when prodded.

Any way that was my week in a nutshell minus a lot of the frustrating stuff that would bore people. I hope this is a good year for every one.

X-Mas in Afghan land

2010-12-26T07:20:00.000-08:00

Xmas in Afghanistan number two. This was the second Xmas I have spend here, its not to much of a deal for me as a nonreligious type but for some here they try there best to make a big deal of it. I think its a way of dealing with the fact you are 10 thousand km from home and families...

How we more or less celebrate here is to decorate up the shops with the odd plastic office desk size xmas tree, trade some secret santa gifts, and organizes little parties using what extra food goods we have horded in the past few months. Make the best effort to have a bit of fun. I got a wood pen this year, I've done well.

The company gives us stockings the managers throw in to our tent spaces at midnight-ish usually filled with swag from the two parent companies (swag; stuff the company can print there name on) The stuff last year for most part was pretty useless as with most swag being cheep plastic stuff from china. This year was a good year, not a peace of plastic any ware, aluminium thermos mug, micro screwdriver set, pare of knitted gloves, and the big find was leathermen style multi tool with real wood handle. Ok I know I sound like a little kid at this point but we were generally surprised on the quality of the swag this year, i've never seen such useful swag from any company before.

On Xmas day it's self a few of us volunteer to work solo as the rest take the day off, what we call minimum manning. I did the evening shift this year, not too much to do, re-image a computer and clear a paper jam. We had to play a few games this year as this roto was being some what cheep on letting us do minimum manning but we managed. Ended up feeling a little like Cratchit going to Scrooge asking for the whole day off.

Doesn't help we were not invited to the little rally put on by the defence minster with Don Cherry. A few people were disappointed by that but between some of us we use this as the test to see the difference between honest thank you and a photo op. Apparently us civies are not considered good press material in the back ground of the photos.

One tradition the military never misses here is the men's turkey dinner, this is were the officers serve the men. The dinner it self was made at the defac, that’s military speak for dinning facility, aka a cafeteria. And as expected it was cafeteria version of a turkey dinner on paper plates and plastic forks, but it is nice to have something different.

The other tradition kept here is the gift from the Taliban every year, a rocket attack. I was at work for this one so spent it in a cold concrete bunker some what under dressed for the cold of the evening. The rumour on the base was a US civilian was killed. Its been luck that no one in this company has been hurt. (knock on wood) We had two come with in 100 yards of our little tent city and one land in it while I was gone, only luck that it hit a tent not in use at the time.

Any way by rotation i got boxing day off, chance to sit down and sort a few thing out after a few days of craziness. I should be off, Happy Holidays to every one out there.

One Week Review....

2010-12-19T09:45:00.000-08:00

In many ways this place has change little from when i left, at work its like i never left other then a few people have changed. The change I've noticed more is coming here dept free, I didn't really relies how much the thought i of “paying off dept” took the edge off things. KAF now seems a little more dusty, the people here a little more annoying, and the food seems blander then I remember.

(Geek alert, you may want to skip this paragraph) My little Network has grown up with out me. When I was here last I got drafted into building a tent line network. That involved putting a wireless router in each of the forty some tent we have and all the other hardware needed to connect them together. Well other tech have taken my foundations and ran with it, with more servers faster switches, and larger data stores. When I left only a few geeky people were using it, now almost every one uses it from file sharing to internet access. I came here with a total of 8 Tara-bytes of hard drive space and I'm not even in the running for most data storage... There is people here with rack mount servers in there 8'x6' tent spaces... I'm having a bit of hardware envy issues now.

The fencing has more or less stopped while i was gone, the equipment seems to have been stolen when the stage area ware we practice was being repaired... Turns out it has been moved and we are in the process of getting it returned to a lock box next to the stage. With a little calling around and a few email there is about 4 people left that fence and so we got it started again. And like before its going to be three evenings a week.

My home away from home is almost to were I like it. I have a fridge and shelving that hangs at head level that goes around 3 sides of my tent space. This time around I have given my self more storage space and yet it fells more open, I'm getting good at this whole micro room designing. This includes a two computers and my own projector that gives me the equivalent of a 42 inch tv on my wall at the foot of my bed.

All that’s left is to make a futon. There not much of a rush for me to make it as I got a new mattress. I got here at the end of a change over of one regiment to another, and the leaving regiment supple people gave us all the remaining new mattress they had in there stores as a thank you gift and as a poke to the next regiment who they don't particularly like.

Any way not much else to talk about, just going to try and keep my self busy, soon the ground hog effect will kick in and each day will feel like the last.

Back in Afghan Land

2010-12-12T17:54:00.000-08:00

I am going back...
Most people have heard that I have gone back to Afghanistan, by the time you are reading this I'll be sitting in the sand box wondering what the hell was I thinking. I got a call a few weeks ago to come back asap and I do enjoy the work here so here I am again. The rest of this blog is a log i kept of the adventure to get to Afghan land from ottawa.

Day One:

6am: I don't have to be at the training camp till 9:30 but i hate to rush myself today. Grab a shower, wolf down some left over Chinese take out, get the last packing done and grab a taxi to the camp.

Noon: Turns out that there is not much to do at the camp other then some paperwork and the travel briefing. That's just two hours of being told “don't be late for your plane”,”don't get drunk”, and “don't anger the locals in Dubai”. All to do now is sit till our ride to the airport is ready to go.

2pm: After a hour of sitting around the van shows up for the five people leaving today load in. This number will get bigger as we pick up people along the way. Loaded the back of the van with the luggage when we hear a electronic chime music. We all looked at each other trying to figure out who bag it was coming from, too late to dig everything out to figure out which one. After about ten min. it stopped, I assume the batteries died.

4pm: Made it to the airport with two hours before the 6pm flight. Dropping off my backpack, that was a bit fun with a huge tube sticking out for my pack for the fencing blades so down the over size luggage shoot it went. Down to security and the airport lounge to wait for boarding, used this time to change my pocket money to American and AED.

8pm: The Flight was running 15 min late and a previous flight was cancelled so it was full and understocked so no drinks, but it was a hour to Toronto so no big deal ...

10pm: Toronto: We arrived late but we still had time to get a quick bite to eat, I only had time I thought for some take out box of sushi. Sat down to enjoy my slightly stale sushi and the boarding time came and went, some firemen walked by and we noticed the air port staff going to the window and taking pictures. The flight we have is on one of the new double decked Airbus A380-800, well was. One of the cargo loader screwed up the order of operation and dropped the box down before backing away from the plane and in turn dropped this steal crate right down onto the wing. Flight Cancelled.

1am: Been standing in line since they announced the cancellation of the flight. We needed to get a hold of some one in the company travel team to get new “orders” on what we should do we ended up being near the end of the line, the A380-800 can hold more then 500 people so the line was LONG........We the travailing group of now of seven (picked up a few in Toronto) are getting hotel vouchers... Emirates have filled every flight for then next three days that is going to Dubia so we don't know how long we are stuck in Toronto.

2am: Hotel In Toronto: Finally getting some sleep, food will have to wait till tomorrow. The company travel desk will call us in the Morning with a new Plan... Turns out its was my luggage that was making the music, a cheep travelling clock from England that i threw in my pack early in the packing weeks ago and totally forgot about.

Day 2

9am: Woke up a hour earlier then i needed to, the clock in the room was running fast. There is some confusion how long we can stay but not too worried. Breakfast was a bit strange, we were given coupons for the meals each with a given value but they did not give us menu instead told us what we were to get, i had to make a point to ask for eggs over hard verses the predetermined scrambled eggs. We got some marching orders from the travel coordinator, we are going to take a flight to a neighbouring emirate city of Abu Dhabi and then a bus to Dubai, still waiting for tickets.

Noon: The same happened at lunch when it came to a meal, other customers not related to emirate flight got menu and what looked like very nice dinners but people from the flight were directed to a table with three catering dishes with rice and two quite bland almost all vegetable curries. I think some one is getting scammed. We have our tickets which worked out as the hotel informed us we only had one night and needed us to leave even if the vouchers we gave them was for two nights...

5pm: Our flight leaves at 8:30 but we want to leave early from the hotel and get food at the airport, We had our fill of the hotel. Got to remember to get some magazines as this will be a 13 hour flight according to the ticket. The last person to the group of now eight had joined us, he was to meet us yesterday but his flight from Kingston got snowed in.

Day 3
9pm local time: Off of the 13 hour flight and onto a bus to Dubai. The Flight was the all economy version of the Boeing 777 so my knees hurt from seats being too close to each other, Got very little sleep so very much in a bad mood... Now on the other side of the world and need to find the bus...

11:00pm local time: Made it to a hotel in Dubai, the hotel room is nice and after the bus ride it nice to stop moving. Had some fun at the bus station here when we tried to get a taxi, apparently cars from three different companies showed up and the drivers started arguing over who could park ware. We stood there very tired after 15 hours of travel and we are literally yelling “Does any one want some money here and give us a ride?” Got a sandwich from the all night room service, quick shower to wash off the days perspiration and dust and bed by Midnight

Day 4

The last plane to KAF. Started the day at 4:30 a,m. Nice to get some sleep in a real bed. Another day of flying, the weather in Dubai is a dream at 21 C. We got three taxis for the group of us, they drive fast here and add that fact there was three they had a bit of a race going so made the trip to the airport quick if not a bit terrifying. The terminal for the chartered flights has a McDonald, its the last time to get some real fast food, I know some may argue that. Picked up a chicken big mac as my last food before KAF, there is food on the flight but that’s not real food by any ones definition. The charter company we fly in doesn’t have any planes of there own they hire other small airlines to do the actual flying. When I first came to KAF almost two years ago the sub-charter was a Ukrainian airline that flew Russian built knock-off of a airbus that came in twice a week. This time around its a Turkish company flying a quite new 737-800 that comes five times a week with another to be added soon.

I am Home

2010-03-04T14:25:00.000-08:00

Message from JDOC ... I AM HOME ... End of Message, End of Transmission

Dubai

2010-03-03T08:18:00.000-08:00

I am in Dubai at the hotels internet cafe ... One more day and I'll be in Canada...

T - One Work Day

2010-02-28T11:54:00.000-08:00

I have but one day of work left... Then they give us a bit of time off to sort out any last minute items before leaving... I'll be running around taking some last photos.. Send my last parcel of clothing and other items I can live with out...

The time warp is worst then time leading to vacation... As much as I try to keep my self busy its seems that time slows down … For most of my time here weeks would fly by, now a day seem to take forever and I know that the night before that hours drag from one to the next.

It could be worst, one from my department left last Friday and his flight got delayed as the run way here was closed to civilian traffic for operational needs. So he is told at first the plan is a hour late then four hours, eventually it ended up being almost 8 hours late. Those must have been the 8 longest hours of his life.

The Olympics are soon over, we have the gold metal hockey game tonight here around 1 AM local time. I'll be happy to see them go as I'm not much of a fan and of late its all that's on all the TV here. This whole greatest Canadian event stuff is starting to get on my nerves. This excessive nationalism that seems a century out of place make the little hairs on my back of my neck stand up. Am I being too much of a pessimist? To be honest I'm a bit annoyed that the best thing Canada thinks it can do in the modern age is hold a really cool Olympics, kind of disappoints me.... The worst part is that here we have one Canadian TV Channel and its CTV playing only events that Canada won a metal over and over and over... It's the ONLY thing to watch here !!!.... Ok enough ranting...

Speaking of games... about two weeks ago some one joined the SCA Afghanistan email list and asked if there was any armored combat here and should they bring there spare armor. I replied no but we have fencing three times a week and have quite a bit of fun doing that. Now you have to understand that there's a lot of people on the SCA Afghan email list that have nothing to do with Afghanistan, I think many joined as some sort of SCA support the troops sentiment.

Well the list started talking about different kind of easy to make armor some one could theoretically make for use over here. At this point I quit paying much attention to this thread. This was a mistake. You need to understand that due to logistics and environment here armored combat is very much a bad idea and has been tried. I wont bore you with the details why.

Some point some knight who I'll leave nameless decided it was just not right that we had fencing and not armored so he started a campaign to have a bunch of gear organized at gulf war to be sent here... I got wind of this when Menken asked about some message on the chiv list asking for donations to this effort. So a storm of emails are being sent around to try to convince people to stop. It seems that this energy has now been redirected towards making us a banner to hang at practices...

I so need to go home
Good news is there is another red belt here and hes full of energy and so I know I can pass the stewardship of Castle Cadfania to capable hands.

T - Week

2010-02-24T12:26:00.000-08:00

Today I got 4 boxes mailed out making up the bulk of the stuff I have here sent on its way back home. I have left myself one large plastic box for clothing and some remaining tools. My trip home is so close I can taste the snow from here.... Well not really, The temperature here was over 25 degree C for most of the day, you think it was summer back home other then the natural level of dust here..

With less then a week to go my goal is just keep busy to make the time move forward. I know from the past when leaving for vacation that if I don't keep busy this last week will get painfully slow. Starting to plan for the little things I want to do when I get home, starting with food. The idea I can cook for myself now seems strange. I'll get a little practice as tomorrow is the monthly company BBQ and it looks like i'll be cooking for that... With one bottle of Canadian Club BBQ souse left, The plan is to blow it with my friend here tomorrow.

Many of the people here I may never see again. Even if I do come back in the fall some of them will have ended there contracts in the meantime. Some I can keep track of is Facebook and email others but memories and faces in my photo collection.

T - Fortnight

2010-02-18T10:16:00.000-08:00

Less then a fortnight to go … I have started to pack. The biggest issue is getting the fencing blades back as long as the Canada post see them as sports equipment not as blades. It may be easier in the long run to just disassemble the blades, send the guards in the mail and take the raw blades with me in my checked luggage.

The toughest part is choosing went to actually tare everything apart and send it. In the past year I have built and collected a lot of little creature comforts in my little 6 by 8 foot tent space and so I hate to live with out them even for a few days. I got lucky in that someone that use to be in the same tent wants to move back in and wants the very complex shelving I built, this saves me disassembling it apart myself. He also purchased my fridge too …

Last weekend I forced my self to get up at 5 am to watch the opening ceremonies at the little movie theater here. Its not any ware as big as promised but hey its here. We had the reporter up front filming us. Oh if you were looking for me I was only in one shot and that was far in the back ground the rest of the time I was just out side of frame. With camera in hand I got some “threw the looking glass” shots of them filming us.

To be honest I'm not an Olympic fan but here theres not much else to watch and we seem to collectively get sucked in out of something to talk about. One thing it reminds me is how much more BC imagines its self to be a place for the upper class. There is adds for BC and Ontario running, The BC add is full of Famous people in the woods or at vineyards or the downtown Vancouver trying to look very hip. The Ontario adds just have random people ( I know there bit actors ) doing very middle class kind of things like going to a museum or seeing the sights. I know that nether of these images are accurate representations of the given Provence but its interesting to compare the self image they try to invoke especially with this Olympics being so focused heavenly on “image” of Canada. The coverage to me seems to “Hollywood North”, trying a little to hard.

The opening ceremony also marked here the start of a nasty cold spell. It was actually down below zero at night. But its not forever and it started worming up again yesterday so today was I nice 20 to 22 degrees C for almost the whole day. Now before people start lynching me at the air port when I get back you have to remember that we live in tents who only insulation is a layer of mylar and that we have to walk about 150 feet out side to go the washroom. The tents we have do have these client control units but they are notoriously unreliable.

What this means that if you get up in the middle of the night with a need to visit a water closet you have to make a judgment. You need to weigh the factors of how badly do I need to go and there for amount off time do I have to put on some layers verses my willingness to freeze my ass off. Some have just ware a few layers to bed so they do not have to make such a call or at least have a head start.

Any Way this is a Last call for anything people may want for here. I'm planning to hit the spice markets of Dubai on my way threw as well if any one wants something from there.

2010-02-11T12:50:00.000-08:00

Wow the clock keeps winding down, less then 20 days now... The weather here has been cold, we had frost the one night. OK so that may cause every one in Ottawa reading this to roll there eyes, but that's cold here. This started about a week ago the night after I last posted we got a quite large rain storm leaving this place full of water... Even washed out some of the base.

Its quite at work other then the military has shortened the amount of time we have to finish. The made it so we more or less have to fail at some point. My department prides itself in having a perfect bonus rating for getting things done in the time given. So the military has decided to shorten these times on the grounds of “just cause” … The longer I stay here the less I want to do government work back home... Any way its means now we are doing night shifts.

I did the first week and was there for the one ticket that whole week that was called in. When I got on site the guys there were packing up to go to there tents and were surprised to see me and annoyed as they had to wait while I fixed there computers. They had sent the ticket at the end of there shift in the hopes to get the first tech the next morning.

The Olympics are going to be broadcast to the new screen here. Yes the government built a small movie theater here so the soldiers could watch the Olympics on a 30 foot screen. I know that's not big for a movie screen back home but here the largest before that was the one we built for the movie nights and it was 15 feet.

With the Olympics other countries are prepping, this afternoon one of the US jets was practicing doing smoke circles in the sky, in the plan to do a proper Olympics rings at some point. Sorry didn't get pictures of this as I got no batteries for the digital camera, my charger has walked away and there seems to be a bit of a shortage of AA batteries on base. Did find some but too late to get a pic of the rings. But I am ready for when he does the main show.

Any way I will talk to you all soon...

Less then a month

2010-02-06T14:03:00.001-08:00

I did got two of the boxes I was expecting. Mostly food that is ether hard or impossible to get here including the whiskey BBQ souse I asked Kes to pick up for me. Thank you all for sending the boxes. We are not getting to many flights now as most are going to Haiti.

Some of my coworkers are talking about contracts in Haiti. In there minded ware the military goes we are soon to follow. I'll probably not go as I don't speak french. One of the companies competitor according to rumors has already got a contract and is starting to head hunt. Its one of the companies that does the bait and switch so the first wave of contracts will be quite sweet but after that they will only be taking from developing nations at much the reduce rate.

This has not prevent a few from applying. The whole thing makes me feel very ghoulish. When the earth quake hit and then announced we were sending troops many of my co-workers started talking about how nice it be to work in the Caribbean like they just book a vacation there. I put it down as a side effect of doing this for too long.

Need to think about sending things home now. The end is in sight, about 25 days to go. The only problem is I have too much stuff here so I need to start sending some of it back. The first thing will be books I think. There is also some stone ware that needs to go as well.

Its been like spring here. I'm not too sure I want to go back to the winter that waits me in Ottawa. The average temperature here has been around 20 in the day and about 15 at night. We are getting rain and I know there will be more as the month goes along. But for the last few weeks was perfect weather. It was fun well it lasted.

And some may notice that I finally have my correct heraldry up on live journal … There is a place that does custom badges, all you have to do is show up with an image and they make a badge for you. So I had one made up to put on my armor bag.

Hum other fun fact is we have a wondering camera man taking best wishes to the Olympic athletes. A few in my office were gun ho to do that but we got word from higher up that its a no no to have any dealings with the press. The companies that work here don't want to get into the public awareness but stay in the back ground only to be noticed by military upper officers.

Police State

2010-01-29T11:13:00.000-08:00

I now know what it life under a police state would be like. A few days ago you may have heard in the new the increase in security status. Back home that mean little to nothing to most people. Here on the other hand was very much different. We had arm guards check our ID's every ware we went, To go to work, to go eat, or just walking down the road.

The true reasons are out of my pay grade but one of the big targets was the few thousand people on the base that should not be here, there workers who for many reasons do not have correct ID. That may sound strange that a military base in the middle of a desert would have illegal immigrates problems but we do. We had rumors that there were suicide bombers in the camp but this proved to be just a manifest of peoples worries when the security went up so fast.

It doesn't help that for the last few days we been hit with rockets attack each day. My place of work got hit on off hours. Its strange the physics of ballistics, they don't follow common scene as we perceive it. The 500 pound shell that hit went threw a steel container door and then bounced landing about a kilometer away but the divot in the ground from the bounce was no bigger then soup bowl.

It's not all doom and gloom here. As of last Friday we have a T.G.I.Friday, I have yet to go my self and you need to stand in line for a hour to get in but that can be said about most places here.

We also had our “gators” replaced with new ones. To remind people these are 6 wheel 2 seat mini tractors about the size of a large golf cart. The new ones have glass bubbles over the seats to protect you from the weather. What they don't come with is turn signals and break lights. Now we share the road with an assortment of large armored vehicles driven from people that learned to drive in dozen different countries. In the old Gators you could stick your arm out to indicate what your doing but the bubble prevents this on the new ones.

Each department been finding clever ways to manage until the lights kits show up. The Non-tacks use a flash light to shine in the back window, the linesmen accidentally smashed the driver side door off theirs. Us we made little mechanical arms that stick out each side when you pull different cords in the cabins. I'll try to get pictures first chance I get.

Sorry to say I have yet not received mail that was sent to me around new years. We are short planes as many are being sent to Haiti to help there, there is a small chance I wont get the mail till after I leave.

The fencing is doing well. Another Red belt has shown up from Ansteorra. Hes energetic but never used a rapier yet, I think hes just happy that some one out here can understand his jargon and he gets to swing a stick of some sort.

Any way see ever one in about a month and a half.

The Golden Age ( And No its Not about the SCA )

2010-01-20T11:13:00.000-08:00

One of my little project when I was here was helping out a co-work who has a large collection of “Golden Age Hollywood” and wanted them converted from DVD to computer files so she can send her collection home ware it be safe. Well safer. … ITS DONE … 130 Movies in total. Before any one ask the Golden Age for Hollywood is the 1930's to 1960's. Now I know a bunch of movies that are classics in the bunch like My Fair Lady, Sunset Boulevard, Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, and Citizen Kane. But most of them I never heard of, is there any other in the list below that people sagest watching?

A Farewell to Arms 1932, A Place in the Sun 1951, After the Fox 1966 (aka Caccia alla volpe), Algiers 1938, All About Eve 1950, An Affair to Remeber 1957, Barbaray Coast 1935, Blackmail 1929, Blood on the Sun 1945, Born to Kill 1947, Bus Stop 1956, Calamity Jane 1953, Casablanca 1942, Charade 1963, Citizen Kane 1941, Come and Get It 1936, Come Back Little Sheba 1952, Criss Cross 1949, Dancing Lady 1933, Dark Journey 1937, Dark Passage 1947, Dead End 1937, Designing Women 1957, DOA 1950, Doctor Faustus 1967, Don't Bother To Knock 1952, Double Indemnity 1944, Fallen Angle 1945, Fathers Little Dividend 1951, Fire Over England 1937, Flying down to Rio 1933, Funny thing Happend on the Way to the Forum 1966, Gaslight 1940, Gaslight 1944, Gentleman's Agreement 1947, GI Blues 1960, Gone with the Wind 1939, Grand Hotel 1932, High Sierra 1941, His Girl Friday 1940, How Green was My Valley 1941, How to Marry a Millionaire 1953, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte 1964, I Confess 1953, I Cover the Waterfront 1933, I Wake Up Screaming 1941, In the Good Old Summertime 1949, Lady From Shanghai 1947, Laura 1944, Leave her to Heaven 1945, Lost Weekend 1945, Marty 1954, Mr Deeds Goes to Town 1936, Mr Moto's Last Warning 1939, Murder 1930, Murder my Sweet 1945, Mutiny on the Bounty 1935, My Fair Lady 1964, Never on a Sunday 1960, Niagara 1953, North By Northwest 1959, Notorious 1946, Number Seventeen 1932, Of Human Bondage 1934, Penny Serenade 1941, Portrait of Jenny 1949, Psycho 1960, Rain 1932, Rich and Strange 1931, Roberta 1935, Roman Holiday 1953, Sabotage 1936, Scarlet Empress 1934, Scarlet Street 1945, Secret Agent 1936, Shadow of a Doubt 1943, Shall We Dance 1937, Sherlock Holmes, The Woman in Green 1945, Shot in the Dark 1964, Sidewalks of London 1938, Some Like it Hot 1959, Spellbound 1945, Stella Dallas 1937, Storm in a Tea Cup 1937, Strangers on a Train 1951, Sullivan's Travels 1941, Sundown 1941, SunSet Boulevard 1950, Swing Time 1936, Teachers Pet 1958, The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss 1936 (aka Amazing Adventure), The Apartment 1959, The Asphalt Jungle 1950, The Barefoot Contessa 1954, The Barkleys of Broadway 1949, The Bat 1959, The Gay Divorcee 1934, The Ghost and Mrs Muit 1947, The Grapes of Wrath 1940, The Heiress 1949, The Killing 1956, The Lady Vanishes 1938, The Last Time I Saw Paris 1954, The Letter 1940, The Little Foxes 1941, The Lodger, A Story of the London Fog 1927, The Lost Weekend 1945, The Man Who Knew too Much 1934, The Marrying Kind 1952, The Night of the Hunter 1955, The Pajama Game 1957, The Pied Piper of Hamelin 1957, The Pride of the Yankees 1942, The Private Life of Henry VIII 1932, The Red House 1947, The Rose Tattoo 1955, The Snake Pit 1948, The Spoilers 1942, The Stranger 1946, Thirty Nine Steps 1935, This is the Army 1943, Three Guys Named Mike 1951, To Have or Have Not 1944, To Kill a Mockingbird 1962, Top Hat 1935, Topkapi 1964, Viva Las Vegas 1964, Wife vs Secretary 1936, Without Honor 1949, Witness for the Prosecution 1957, Woman on the Run 1950

2010-01-18T11:20:00.000-08:00

Fist thing : DON”T SEND ME ANYTHING. It looks like the mail is running at 4 to 6 weeks and so anything sent now will not get to me before I leave.

We got the swords from Zen warrior, Got my self a sword and dagger set. Was going to take them out today and just after getting suited up we got hit by a rocket attack. It's probably part of the big fight happening up north. (please consult the news for more details)

Got a disturbing email and I may have to do the sad job of telling my mother that her driving days are numbered. This is made worst as how the situation at my mother house and ware its located would mean it be next to impossible for here to stay in North bay if she was not able to drive. Well I have time to deal with this when I get back...

Menken in a recent LJ post mentions how in the last 33 years he seen the rise, stagnation, and now the decline of the SCA. Its not the first time I've heard this. My first event was in 91 and I was 16 after seeing an ad about the event in the local newspaper. (Yes SCA use to advertise like that) Went with a fun fur tunic as an attempt at a Norse warrior. (yes I still have it too) When looking back at that event and compare to current events I remember that event being more jovial. People danced, watched and cheered on fighters, made a big show of feast.

I put the difference in perception of a bad case of nostalgia, but maybe there more then that. Now should I wonder at 34 that when I'm 54 will I be part of the SCA. I had a little demon in the back of my head tell me that there is a chance that between now and then I could be lured away by some “Living History” group yet to be invented or dread the thought just got bored of it.

People have given a thousand reasons why there is a decline. The old phrase is “How the middle ages ought to have been”. I call it the “old phrase” as you never hear this used by more current generation, some on that's joined in the last ten maybe 15 years. Many define them selves by what activities they do, events are done not because people want to organize them but because they did the same event the year before and the year before that and now its just expected.

2010-01-14T11:20:00.001-08:00

The following is a collection of stories, gossip that is running around about the people here. None am I author to.

A tool crib is ware the tool of the mechanics are stored. Like many shop there a young fellow hired to do the running around jobs. Well some tools that are quite expensive and are tracked other that are not. The young fellow was not described as the brightest of fellows decided that these items that the military decided not to track were gifts from the government and filled a tool box full of such bounties and mailed them back home. Not being the most brightest of fellows he mail his box at the same time his supervisor was send stuff home too. He asked the post office for the box back but they have to refuse so he contacted the MP who intercepted the box when it got home. The news was sent back here and he was told that he was being sent home. Now not wanting to arrive to a cold home he called to the attendant at the trailer park to turn on the water and gas to his trailer before he leaves KAF. So when he got home he found that his trailer had burn to the ground.

Company higher up have decided to have a Calender made for us to put on the wall with pics of the people around. It has been printed and ready to be handed out but sadly delayed as February has 29 days. Before you check 2010 is not a leap year.

A Manger and his girlfriend who also works here went on vacation together. On there return by random chance there flight was chosen to have a detailed inspection as part of a on going attempt to curb the bootleg material coming on to base. The man in front of him in line had all his stuff pulled out of his luggage by a US MP and then got chastised for having a pocket knife in his checked luggage. Fortunate for him the Next MP was a fellow Canadian but then came the problem as he was travailing with his girl friend back from vacation. You see not to promote a stereotype he had less to pack then his love and so volunteered some of his luggage space to her. So when the MP open his bag the first things he pulled out was a pare of nee high boots and three lovely summer dresses.

Oh and the linesmen with the pinched nerve in his spine is still in a hospital in Dubai considered unfit to fly.

2010-01-11T11:04:00.001-08:00

The work is quite here, spend half my time on make work projects. I Have eight weeks left till I am home and the feeling they will be slow weeks. I'm trying to fill my spare time at work doing research but the internet there is slower yet then what I have in my tent space.

Speaking of research. I've got spit jacks on the brain. Yes this is like the third or fourth posting i've mentioned this but like a said, on the brain. I asked Kes if she mind reviewing my research, when she said yes I went digging threw the material I've collected, dig is the right word. It's a mess of over a hundred image and dozen of random text files cut and pasted from all over the web. Much of it overlaps and repeats and its not organized at all.

Now I'm spending my evenings combing threw it condensing all the key points down to a single point form document. I feel bad about this as I should have been done this before asking Kes to review it as I dare not send it to here in its current state. It has Help as it pointed out some major gaps that needed filling and motivated me to send out a wave of emails to museums and experts. Today one answered, Ivan Day is a well know food historian in England. He also collects and restores clock work spit jacks. He seems to be the only expert on the subject I have found.

In his email he mentioned that if I keep a good eye out on ebay France i can get one cheep. Even gave me 4 links for ones that are on sale now that are from the late 17th to early 18th century and mentioned that the odd 16th century ones come up every so often. It may be cheaper to buy a 400 year old original then make a new one. Don't get me wrong I'm going to make one so I can say I did and it not practical to take and use an original at camping events. It makes me think how common were they? When I started I thought they be a novelty but it seems by the beginning of the 17th century they were a must for any large kitchen, at least in France.

Today caught sight of my poke-a-roo in the form of a US Marine Osprey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-22_Osprey) lot's of people keep telling me they have seen the air craft but no one gotten a picture of it, a picture of it in the air is considered the holy grail shot for the local plane spotters. I was beginning to think it was just a rumor that they were flying them here at all. Walking back from work today saw one taking off, of course I didn't have a camera with me. I'll have to start carrying it around again.

Warning: The first half is dark again

2010-01-07T10:48:00.000-08:00

Well we lost another person from my department, a linesmen this time and they were short two from vacation and end of contracts. He pulled his back a bit last week and turns out he pinch a nerve in his spine and so his leg went numb over a period of a week. There is a little bit of worries on the status of the insurance as he did not fill out an incident report with in the required 24 hours of it happening.

Speaking of needing replacements. The replacement for the reporter killed has arrived. I have yet to meet him but the rumor is he is in his 60's chain smokes and meets the criteria for the cliche 70's cynical war zone vet reporter. Not to sound too dark and cynical my self but we theorize he was sent as no one would care if he got killed.

Spending my spare time fencing, board games, and researching SCA projects for when I'm home. Yesterday sent out a bunch of emails to place that have possible 16th century spit jacks. One is in Austria and another in Switzerland, I am hopeful for a answer but know that with out scholastic “cred” that my chance are low. The news now is there may be English examples and a expert in York on the subject, I'll email him tomorrow.

The fencing group here put a huge order with zen warrior armories and for my part pick up a sword and dagger. So its official I'm both a heavy and light fighter. I'll be fine as long as I don't miss a battle at Pennsic to go wire swishing, then my knight may have something to say...

New Year

2010-01-01T10:53:00.000-08:00

It's a new year here, seems the LJ tradition is to cover what the plan for the year to come. To be honest not sure if I have the energy, at this point I should warn everyone now the first half of this post is going to be a bit dark.

Those who have not been keeping up with the news we lost 5 people the day before new year eve by a road side bomb not far from the base. One of the five was a civilian reporter from Calgary. She been here just two weeks and I feel a bit guilty as she worked in the same compound and I hardly recognized her pictures when they were flashed on the news. I'd probably walked by her a few times, just another face in the crowd here.

The place has not been feeling as safe as it was, not that anything tactical has changes. Steph one of my co-works that I mentioned before had his kidneys shut down here, well they finally sent him home today, more then a week from when he had his close call. The talk was him staying longer, they only told him he was leaving yesterday. We suspect the sudden change in plan corresponds to the return of Jack the department manager from his vacations. He is one of the few here willing to stick his neck out to get things done and such is one of the few that does get stuff done. It's made a lot of people worried here that it took so long to send him home, the long timers here just tell you “Don't Get Sick Here”. Its one of the mantras that you hear here too often.

Its not all doom and gloom, we have a dairy queen open here, well a very minimal one that only serves blizzards, shakes, sundays, and of coarse soft ice cream cones. I look forward to getting home It's only 60 days till the contract is up and I am on a plane out of here. I'll probably stop off at London for a few days to see some of the sights that I missed on the trip here. What I do when I get home? Whats my plan for the new year?

Hmm the first month will be lounge around a bit and visit friends, get my head back into Ottawa. Then get started on my SCA projects starting with the clock work spit.

I have enough research to produce a good reproduction example I think. The little research I have is pictures of the few surviving 16th and 17th century examples. It's not going to be an exact copy of any given example as I can't get my hands on one to dissect it to figure out all the details. What worries me and excites me at the same time is that I can't find much research in them at all, well not on the web anyway. And when I do find research by anyone what I find is a sentence in history book that states they existed and nothing more. The only reproduction I can find is a wooden example at a US museum about “Medieval Technology” and it has a number of things wrong with it that make it impossible to work. Have I actual stumbled on a Original SCA Project. So my goal this year is to Get one built by Baronial Muster for testing and working by Pennsic.

Xmas in KAF part 2

2009-12-25T11:34:00.000-08:00

Well its after Midnight here in KAF and Xmas is done for me. We have been told we can come in late tomorrow if we like as a last gift. Speaking of gifts I was sitting on my bread last night about this time when a one of the decorative Xmas stockings was flung into my tent space by a passing manger in a hat. Turns out its full of swag from the different parent companies. One more little thing to try to make xmas here a little better. I can't fault them for the attempts.

We did get to have a turkey dinner on the customary paper plate and plastic utensils. It was surprisingly good, turns out they brought out one of the Canadian cooks from the FOBs to cook for us. It had all the fixings like cranberry sauce.

Did turn out I spent a good chunk of the day sitting around and taking pictures of aircraft going by. The big show was some US warthogs doing fly-bys and dropping flairs, kind of air force fireworks display. Warthogs are know to be one of the uglier air plans on the ground but in the air they are graceful like none of the other aircraft here.

Any way here are a bunch of pictures from today including a bunch of KAF Santas.

A Xmas on Afghan Land

2009-12-24T10:51:00.000-08:00

Well its Xmas-eve, we called it a day early with a lunch for the department made up of food horded from the snack food orders and stuff from families and friend care packages. Some of us went down to the little concert down at the board walk, nothing too special, recorded it on the camera. Then back to the tents

As much as we try to make xmas special here and distract our selves this place likes to remind us in cruel ways. We lost a solder yesterday and had the ramp ceremony this afternoon. One of they guys in my office will have to be sent home as his kidneys decided to stop for a while, I'll talk more about that later.

There was a barbeque and I made it my best to literally miss the bus. It was not at the Oasis as usual but some large storage building at the south side of the base, so people going had to be bused. Content with my microwave Kraft dinner and cake sat down to watch a few BBC documentaries downloaded last week. Tomorrow Xmas day we have the day off, think I'll spend most of it sitting on the second floor oasis patio taking pictures of the aircraft going by.

The the night before we had fencing and the English fellow was out one last time before he head back home. Did quite well ageist him this time and held my own. It did help I spent the last week and half practicing two of the master strokes and there displacements, as well trying to clean up my basic guards. Hate to see him go as we the only good long swordsmen here. Quest that means I have to bite the bullet and start teaching.

As part of this prepping I had a little 2 by 3 inch notebook picked up in London. So I been making little Cole Notes of the two Christian Tobler books I have here. The notebook original use was to write out little notes on how to find different places in London. After my return the original purpose done and only a few pages used it needed a new purpose. Menken had told me once how one of the better fighters in Ealdormere had written out and diagram a mass of fighting moves and this was a contributing factors at his advance level of skill.

My office will be short for a few weeks. Stephan been suffering head aches for a few weeks and went to the Canadian medical role here. The first time he went they gave him some unknown shot that cured the head aches for a few days. When they returned they did more test then sent him to the larger NATO role. Turned out his kidneys were shutting down and had stopped working. Some more drugs and they were working again. He is to be sent home so a specialist so to fine tune the medications. Repeated dehydration, high levels of salt used in the food, and his high blood pressure before even coming here combined to take beating on his kidneys.

2009-12-21T11:02:00.001-08:00

Another week had started... Had one of my more better days off. Spent most of it sitting on the deck of the oasis taking pictures of the air craft flying by.

The day ended with staying up to the wee hours trying my best to get a chat going with Will laptop at Kes and Menkens household Party... It was so Frustrating... I get little 2 minute snippets of audio from there end, my end would not send at all. It was truly nice to here there voices even for those little windows. The internet limitation here did not favor a real connection and had to give up … Beginning to worry I was greatly damaging Wills ability to enjoy the party. It's only 2 and half months.

There is a little voice of insecurity in my head when I'm here that when returning that some permanent damage will have been done to my personality that cause other to cringe at my presents. The voice is easily gagged with past experience from my vacations that this darkness shakes off like the dust. It only exists as a temporary adaption to my surroundings.

Tonight was a hour lesson with the maestro with saber. That went well but going to have problem remembering the positions by the terms they use and the funky scoring system used in competitive fencing.

2009-12-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

When ordering things from the military it wise to remember not to expect any thing specific. That the short description line you get to chose from can be interpreted many ways by the repurchasing agent and that this interpretation can and will change from order to order. Lets take two case studies. And before any one asks i'm not complaining as this is one of the little things that makes the sand box entertainer.

In case study A we have description ”Salad, Fruit preserves”. We have learned that this will get you Fruit Cocktail and most often come in small little individual containers of six, not unlike found in any cafeteria fridge. Some time we get name brand cups that a bit larger and come with little folding spoons. And once we got 2L Cans. Don't Worry we are saving the cans for the xmas party.

In case study B we have description “Air Compressor, with Tank”. We have two air compressors we use to blow dust out of computers that are more or less the same size. One we kept at the office and one we take with us in the gator. Well on vacation the office one blew a seal, and a new compressor was ordered. Looking at the inventory two viable description for air compressor, one with the word “portable” and one with out. The person knowing the one being replace was going to stay at the office choose the one with out the word “portable”. I'll let the picture speak for itself and the wood structure is to hold the tin roof for it

Its xmas in KAF So every one having little xmas parties the best they can. The Americans like to have music and this will yield little surprises like having a brass band in the defac or as in today having the air board quire on the stage for 30 min just as I was getting off of work. Just one of those little surreal moments. Record about 20 min of it to play when I get back to show people the eclectic nature of this base. The files a little too big to post on the site today.

We have the little health clinic built at the tents. Its empty now but will get filled we have a nurse coming some time soon.

2009-12-15T09:26:00.000-08:00

Warning, If you are not schooled in the combat arts the following post may not make all that much sense.

Well we had a fight practice last night and one of the English brought a pair of bamboo wasters normally used for kendo but had been adapted with hardwood cross guards for long sword. So the two of use decided we give them a try starting slow…

Turns out he had formal training in Italian long sword so started what I considered one of the best fights I had. AS you can tell the “slow” didn’t last long. Everyone else starred as they had not seen anything like this before as we mostly do rapier and saber at this point. What long sword that’s been done were by people who watched too many movies and swung too many sticks in their back yard.

The fight consisted of each taking a formal guard then the other would change guard to counter and then repeat over and over till one of use did not counter and bang there be some swing of swords and one of us ended up getting hit… Turned out to be mostly me. I got schooled, he used some counter attacks that I’m not familiar with and as I’m still just starting to research the master swings I have little for counter attacks experience …

Like I said it was one of the best fights I’ve been in and has motivated me into research. I have my copy of Christian Tobler thick book here and throw myself back into it. The English chap is only staying a few more weeks so this is going to be a limited window.

The rest in the group were puzzled, to their eyes it was somewhat boring. The two of us just standing there every so often moving our swords from one positions to another for unknown reason, and after a few min of that a sudden furry of swords motion that lasted at best a few seconds.

So I conclude that I will see little long sword after this as most seem to be intimated by this chess game ware you have to guest the other persons stroke and such pick a counter guard/stroke knowing he will do the same to that and so on.

The Night was also made interesting as this older British officer walked up with this big smile on his face. Asking about the swords we were using and the styles. He could not get over the weight of the Schlager. I explained the SCA and concept of rapier reproducing 16th/17th century styles and techniques; he looked at me like I was some young child with some quaint idea picked up at the school yard. Turns out he was the officer in charge of the British inter-service fencing and such his experience was mostly in the foil.

At the time I didn’t know fellows rank, and I sort of notice our British fencer who is a corporal, trying to be invisible. I have yet figure out the European ranks insignias as its quite different than ours and varies between countries and branches. Turns out he was an Air Vice Marshal, aka a general. You never know who you’re going to meet here.

2009-12-13T07:35:00.000-08:00

I need to get back into the habit of writing these little adventures. But like before I have follen back into a rut of living here. Get up, go to work, go to the DiFac (Dinning Facility) find something to do after dinner and then go back to bed.

I know a lot of people have offered to send things to me for xmas but I am doing really well. Between Kes and Laura I am well supplied for the winter here.

Turns out the van halen concert was a hoax, just another example of KAF’s rumor information system at work. But I won’t gripe too much about that. I have 80 Days left in my contract. And I have officially said “no I’m not staying after that”.

One of the Lines men came up with a brilliant plan. He asked if one of the Stone merchants if they would cut a stone block into thin slabs and polish one side to make marble tiles. The merchant said sure 1$ a tile 1 foot square. We are all curious if this will actually work or just work. If it does he will have a marble floor Kitchen at a 2$ a square foot after he ships them back. It just seems too good to be true situations.

Been back at the Shutter Bug, took some good pictures of the camel herds that wonder by the camp every so often. There is a move to tighten up the rules on the camp. The reason we are told is trying to deal with the additional Americans moving in.
Any way that’s my Life in a Nutshell.

It's December

2009-12-03T09:00:00.001-08:00

Oh to Money as we don’t have any. The “rumor” is the Afghanistan national bank office on base that has the only two bank machines has forgotten to renew their employees ID badges to get on base. This process for Afghans can take over a month, until that is done there is no one who can come and refill the bank machines. Not a big deal as we can eat at the mess and such but no buying extras. Now some have brook down and are sending western union to themselves and eating the quite large service fees. I can wait as I done most of my shopping already.

The fencing is going well. We have one who is a baronial champion back home from the out lands here but he’s only here once in a while. Its nice taking on some one of that skill level as Eric and Fred are now rotated out. Most of the people at fencing have done little to no sword practice before coming here other then on their D&D character sheets or swinging sticks with friends in the back yard.

Well December is looking good any way. There is a poster being sent around proclaiming we will have Van Halen here sometime this month. Most are a bit worried as the poster looks a little bit too amateur to be real. The Rumor got strength when we got a Email from the company in which it listed it as “Van Halen the Magician”. We are going to get a double ration of beer this month as well and a few extra barbecues. As this is cheap beer I don’t actually drink I’m not too excited about that but others are.

The other rumor of the day is that one of our competitors may lose the NATO contract for the base. They have a habit of bringing in top experts from N. America and Europe when they first get a contract then about one third of the way in they replace them with untrained personal they recruit from third world nations paying them about 1/5 the amount. From what I can see this is actually a common practice among the industry. Before anyone asks my company and other Canadian Forces contractors don’t for most part do this as CF is quite anal on contract quality assurance. Not to be confused with Canadian Companies that do contracts for other nations and NATO who do this practice all the time.

The example of this is the FOOD; yes I’m back at the food thing as its less disgusting then the bathroom cleaning example. The NATO mess here is staffed mostly from India and South Asian countries. Originally they had people from England and the US but after six months of getting the contract they were phased out. That’s why we say you get better food from the small Canadian base camps out in the war zone then you do here at a camp the size of a small city.

Oh on a final thought I been told from a friend sending me stuff that you get free shipping to military personal for December. SO PLEASE send things if you know anyone in the sand box as it does make a big difference getting stuff from home.

2009-12-01T08:31:00.000-08:00

Well back at afghan land. I found out when I got here that well I was gone we had a bit of a swine flu outbreak… An outbreak being one person… But it meant my first day consisted of getting a flu shot in each shoulder while I was replacing a video card in one of the hospitals machines

Another addition is that they are building a small health clinic here. The company has decided to hire a doctor and a nurse so they can have more than 300 people on the ground. The forces have told them no more than 300 till we do. My only surprise is that the clinic is right ware we had our little outdoor movie theater. That’s been replaced with a big screen TV in the top floor room of the Oasis. (the companies little club house) You can sigh out the room for two hours at a time in the evening to watch moves. It didn’t take long for people to notice that you can lock the upstairs door from the inside so it’s now the “Choice” spot. And remember fraternization is forbidden.

The poor Oasis, it was packed on Sunday night to watch the Grey Cup. For us that started around 4 am Monday morning and its surprising how many went, you could tell who stayed up to see it at 8 am by the number of people with bags under their eyes and muttering or cheering “too many players” depending on what side of the country they were from.

I got told that we are now actually planning to shut down the place in 2011 with the understanding that the military may change their mines at any time as it has a tendency to do so. You can tell on the faces of lots of the long term people are now a little lost trying to figure out what they will do next. Many of them are in denial and just say things like some will have to stay or that the U.S. will start another war. For me it gives a natural breaking off point where I have to stop playing in the surreal sand box and get back to the real world. It really sank in when they asked us to look for things we don’t use much as things that can be sent back early.

If you’re a bit confused I may have said this in the past but this place is very much like a very large prison except the guards looks out not in. And like they say in Shawshank redemption some people become institutionalized. But you get vacations and your bank account gets bigger every two weeks. Some people have been working here for years and worked in Kabul before this and Bosnia before that. Yes Institutionalized to this life style. (WARNNING the following sentence may break your brain just a bit) That reminds me, the London underground has lots of posters on the walls for the live stage performances in London and one poster was advertising the soon coming “Shawshank Redemption” the stage musical… That broke my brain a bit too.

4 days in London

2009-11-27T08:48:00.000-08:00

For those who are curious I am back in afghan land. I arrived in an Afghan winter, its cold here and yes colder then Ottawa. To compound the issues almost none of the buildings here have isolation so it’s time to throw on the winter jackets. Other then the winter not much has changed from when I left.

For those don’t know I spent 4 days in London on my way back in. This was adventures with its ups and downs. The flight in was ok and I stayed at a little hotel near Paddington station called the Royal Norfolk. The room was small, It’s was a small bedroom with a small single bed and a shower stall that someone left a toilet in it, I think this was the bathroom. I really didn’t care as I wasn’t there for the hotel.

London Day One: the Tower of London. This got bumped up to the top of my list when I found out they were hosting an exhibit of all of Henry VIII surviving armor. It was amazing to see the Cloth of Gold harness in person. The only frustration was not able to take pictures. The rest of the tower I was free to take pictures. This almost got me in trouble as I set off a hidden security alarm trying to get a picture of the underside of an Edward I Hutch Chest.

London Day Two: Portsmouth. I have to admit the transit system in England is amazing. So down to Portsmouth I went to go and see the Mary Rose exhibit. This is part of the Portsmouth Harbor Museum that also has the HMS Victory and HMS Warrior. The Mary Rose is worth seeing and I can see why they are going to expand it in 2012. Now they’re showing about 6% of the artifacts and the new building will show about 65%. Best part was I could take pictures so I walked away with about 300 pics. Not all came out as no flash was allowed and I was taking pictures threw glass and dependent on the display case lighting. When I got to the harbor my ticket has a time for a tour of the HMS Victory, well I spent so much time at the Rose that I was two min late. So I was refused to go on the tour that time or any others that are run every 10 min. You can defiantly tell what was run by the Royal Navy nostalgic on 19th century glories verses the civilian archaeologists and historians at the Rose.

London Day Three: British Museum. This was just a day of me drooling over the collections. You read and see photos of the peaces but to get to see it in person is totally different. It’s left me with lots to think about as for Art projects to work on when I get home. I may try my hand at boxwood or Ivory carving. Again I was allowed to take pictures so tack on almost another thousand images. Same issues I was having at the Mary Rose so only about half are worth using. I had to limit myself to photos of the medieval and dark age items as the total collection is huge. Not to say I didn’t spend the day wondering around to them all.

London Day Four: Wallace Collection, St Paul’s, and the Globe Theater. The Wallace collection is a massive arts collection that includes 16th and 17th century art, Armor, and Weaponry. It’s amazing collection and I was drooling the whole time, but this is frustrating as no pictures allowed. Worst still the only book with good images was over prices and limited to a few chose items from this very large collection. Then over to the Globe Theater and the closes underground station had me appear in front of St Paul’s Cathedral so I decided to take a look. The size of the great cathedrals to ones perception is awesome. Just the amount of space they hold and the detail that was put into every inch. The only thing my experience can compare is to aircraft hangers which are larger but give the impression of flimsiness compared to the stone of the Cathedral. The Globe was a reminder of why I like that ambience of Tudor architecture. It’s Warm and friendly, cozy.

I’ve made it a point if I can to go back to London for a few days on my return trip and see some of the sites I missed like Victoria and Albert Museum and the Templar Temple. I’ll have another long list when I get back.

2009-10-22T11:56:00.001-07:00

Tonight was busy. We had SCA social night and with in half hour we got a rocket attack so back to the tents. To make the tent area interesting we have a water main break earlier today. This made a pond in the tent line that needs to be navigated around, this also shut down the showers. This is not a real problem as the rule is no one really cares till your smell can be sensed above the poo pond background odor.

The last 24 hours has been good. My balloon project is done but for some documentation. Last night I was fighting one of the fencing maestro that is here with the us navy. I did well but that had more to do with my experience with a shield ware he had none using anything in his left hand. With a single sword I know he would have had me for lunch.

Wednesday and I'll be in Ottawa.... Others are leaving around some on vacation others contracts are done... Pat the Settlers of Catanistan addict, he heading back a few days ago to his new wife for vacation... Mel the very cute petite red head travel agent is done her contract and is back to BC for snow boarding season... She friends to Mike one of my tent mates here and hes leaving as well for a few weeks. With so much people coming and going I don't recognize half the faces around me.

The cool breeze of the desert fall

2009-10-18T12:55:00.000-07:00

Falls in so it's cool with a breeze, its actually nice to get out and get a bit of sun.

Had dinner with a few people that I did the training with. They were in a deep conversation about relationships. It stuck me that lots of the civilians here are motivated more then just the money or sense of service, many here have failed or failing relationships back home. I'm beginning to think of this as a Foreign Legion for the 21st century. Puts me on heal to wonder what I am running from. The answer for me is the same as it was when I started, pay off dept to give my self a bit of financial freedom, not to sound like a bad retirement fund commercial.

I am down to single digits to get out of here for vacation. All the little things are annoying me.. With the ever growing numbers of Americans here the lines are nuts... there a 45 min wait to use the bank machine … and that's nothing to getting dinner. There is a line to get in that leads to a line to get your plate. another line to get a salad and a line to get desert and if you want fries theirs another line for that too... The only ones that don't seem to mind are the British, they treat Queuing as a form of social activity.

OK so I'm not a shop-holic...much.... I've been going to market for the last 6 weeks getting things for hare and always coming back with stuff. Now its too late to go as I won't have time to send it back but It's now gotten to the point ware I go to market for every one else in the shop. Many of the merchants here recognize me on sight and some have been fighting to get me to buy from them. People in the company are coming to me on buying advice for carpets. I wonder if there is a way to put on my resume the ability to research and become a expert on a subject in only weeks with the help of Google. That leads to the obvious question, can you get a laurel in “Google-Fu” or “Wiki-file”, I guest that falls under research.

2009-10-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

Today I stopped by the board walk on my way to work and picked up about a dozen post cards. Flipping threw them most of them are pictures taken in the 70's the countries best architecture and landscapes. The disappointing part is knowing that I am in the country but cut off from it and it's sights.

It was fencing night and the people are getting better, the nature of this base very few people here are the same as when we started. Reminds me that I will soon have to make some long term decisions on what I want to do. Well I have a bit of time.

Mike in IT supplies has too much time. He was to leave today as his contract is up. He discovered he does not know ware his pass port is about one hour before he had to get on the plane. There was lots of people leaving today including the self proclaimed drug lord that lived in my tent. People were getting ready to leave and I did not know it at the time I took a picture at the very moment mike relied his situation. He will be trapped here for one to two months as a new passport is processed, made, and sent to him, most of which he will not get a wage other then still having a food card. He has yet to tell his wife who is pregnant with there first child.

That's life in KAF.

Home T – 13 days

PS I know ware my passport is

2009-10-09T11:36:00.001-07:00

How not to make perfect fitting torso armor as described by the Bad Baron: Take one oil drum, cut arm holes and run out into a Penssic field battle unarmed but a sign proclaiming the superiority of r fencing, returned with form fitting torso armor, all that's left is to cut seams along the sides and a quick trip to the hospital. Eric has headed home for his vacation a little over a week ago, the place has be come a bit more sedate.

The vacation papers are here so hare I will be. Now what shell I do? Do I want to help out in the kitchen or do I want to be out fighting. The plan is that I provide snack food for the household and friends at hare. It be fun to go a bit nuts and and have a platter of food every hour and have each platter be a bit grander then the last. If I time it right the possibility is to get fighting and cooking in.

I took Strappy along when I went to look at the carpets. The problem is now that the merchants are bringing in the finest silk carpets from Iran. I started to take pictures so he started pulling them all out to show. Thoe the merchant was a little confused why the little hare with me kept asking questions like “how fast does it go?”, “Does it have it's FAA papers?”, “How many women can ride on it at a time?”

Its been confirmed I will be in England for 5 days on my way back... Ya I got a good list of places I want to see … Kes is sending my games … THANK YOU … hopefully this will keep the Catan junkies happy while I'm gone ... Oh and on the new memberships. A old high school friend is here and between Eric and myself he is all gun ho to join the SCA when he gets home... There is also a young guy here that blacksmiths on the side. He lives just out side Perth when not here and has a charcoal forge back home made from a up turned truck drum break. There is a third who plays casually in rising water who looks to be interesting to get back into it.

I am sooo counting the days till I leave. My only grief is that the balloon project mentioned in past posts needs to be done before I go.

Help !!!

2009-10-01T11:05:00.000-07:00

HELP !!!

I have mentioned in the past that a few of use started playing risk. Well we played risk to death and when I saw one of the PX store here had Settlers of Catan I picked it up.. After some nagging I got the group to play little over a week ago. For any one who has played knows how addictive this game can be.. The box is the basic box for up to 4 players and now I have more then 4 people wanting to play to the point that we had a little argument who would get the fourth seat.

So can some one please send me the 6 player add-on and if possible the 4 player Seafarers + 6 player add-on. I have ways of getting money back to Ottawa...

2009-09-29T10:29:00.000-07:00

The market here has huge sections of chines copies of movies and TV shows.. To purchase one is a gamble, and so here is my confessions of getting stung not once but twice. Ghost in the Shell: This is a 28 disk collection for a well know Amine series. Turns out that the collection they downloaded does not have English subtitles or dubbing. I see friends of mine that know a bit of Japanese getting a present this Xmas. Farscape: This was a eight disk collection that was to have all the episode, now I would think it would take more then that, ether way seven of the disk were blank.

Its been an eventful few days. Lets start with losing my internet for four days as they try to make changes to the network. As I am quite addicted to internet access this left me twitchy. The engineering compound had a little fire and lost one of the storage tents. Its a little scary as it was the same type of tent we use for sleeping and it went up quick with huge flames. All that was left was a smothering pile of melted plastic. On the company's barbecue day, the linemen decided they wanted a toga party, and strappy joined in. Don't worry there is picture but he wanted to put them on his own blog. He seems to look good in a toga so I expect to see some roman garb from him in the near future. The picture of the crane gives a idea of what night is like in the camp, as there is tones of big lights every ware they reflect on the dust and smoke in the air. The net effect is a pretty techno-color glow to the base.

As it seem in this post it's confession time, I have a problem. It seems that I'm developing a Person rug addiction. With my first silk rug purchase in hand I want more... They are gorgeous things and and it would be amazing to decorate with for both for sca and mundanely. The problem is there very expensive and I need to pay dept and save money to survive on for the six month at home next year. The plan now is just get a few got hare, that's if I get there?

My vacation is in doubt. This is frustration. I requested when I first got back to have my leave in November, but the request is in the air, apparently someone in the company or DND wants the extra week I took off back. This was the unpaid week I took to go to my brother funeral back. Arrrg. This last month has been much frustration. A little project on my spare time to get a four tent network going has ballooned over and over again.

Balloon One was getting asked by the IT manager To expand this to eight tents that IT people are at. Balloon Two was getting asked by the site assistant manager to do all 40 and add a movie library. Balloon Three was yesterday when the VIP told every one that he was going to offer this tent network with free internet.This situation has been made more complex as there is a history of two past attempts and the remains from them. The remains include more then just physical equipment but the emotional issues of past work and money showing no return.

Wine and Women

2009-09-20T11:45:00.000-07:00

Strappy has been on my case that I should elaborate on the state of drink and debauchery that is at the camp or the lack of. It would be a lie to say there was none. Make note that some of what follows is based on “rumor” and may or may not be true. There is alcohol to be had here if you know who to ask and there is a dozen different scams to get drink here

The primary one is the mouth wash. This is to carefully cut the seal on the top then replace the contents with usually vodka and a little bit of food coloring so it matched the original contents. Close and reseal using a bit of scotch tape and a hair dryer. Then have this mailed to you with other items. If any one finds a honey flavored mouth wash, a bottle of Moniack Mead would hit the spot ;)

The other main trick is to just load up at the duty free store in Dubai airport and hope the MP don't check your luggage on the way in. Now there is more creative matters like wrapping beer cans in aluminum foil then send them with other food good also wrapped in foil. One person pulled this off, he had 24 cans sent to him for his last month, we were eating his grandmothers home made cookies washed down with beer for a week..

Most attempts do get caught officially and so they open your parcel take out said items and send the rest to you with a letter to you and the sender saying that its not allowed in KAF. There is the other rought of playing the system here. You are allowed 2 beer at the monthly unit BBQ. You can sign the beer list using the names of people on vacation, or go to other units BBQ, or just buy other people beer who you know are not drinkers. This can be gotten away for a few extra cans but done so to intoxication will have you waking up at the MP office the next morning. intoxication is easily done after a few months of rationing and you become a cheep date.

AS for what to mix with your mouth wash the military here run on caffeine so there's lots of Tim's Coffee, Coke, and Red bull. All this provided to us by the military more or less free threw different well being programs the Canadian forces has here. CFPSA I'm looking at you.

CFPSA is a group that the forces created to provide services to help the troops. They do things like run the Tim Hortons, the canteens, gyms, bike rentals and other odd jobs. I mention them as they have a habit of hiring college age girls who are looking for a bit of an adventure. Now there not technically allowed to date Canadian personal but they are allowed to date Americans openly and do date the Canadians under the grues of “Just Friend's”

Most of the NATO forces have women members. Now remember there military so there required to go to the gym and other “personal training” multiple times a week. Some of the European countries seem to stand out in this. I have this metal image of an army recruiter in Paris: The recruiter leans over a table to a perspective female recruit. (bad french accent) You see you will be a representative of the French people internationally and that France has to keep its reputation as having the most beautiful people in the world, that's why all the female recruits have to be at least this attractive. Holding up a picture of Juliette Binoche

Now it may sound like this is a feast of women but the odds are agents us guys as there is probably 4 or 5 men for every woman here. I may have mentioned in past post that I suspect a lot of the women that sign up with civilian firms here are hear to fine temporally or permanently a man in a uniform. For them its a buyers market they can pick service men from a dozen different countries from every service. What I said about the women and the gym requirement is also true for the men.

Let the time go by

2009-09-13T10:25:00.000-07:00

The days are going quick; I’m making sure to keep myself busy so the time does go fast. There’s a few new thing like how the base is almost twice the population it was when I first came to KAF. This means that you need to fight hard to get prices that they use to start at in the market. The other is that there is huge lines you have to wait in to get anything.

It’s not summer any more, the weather changes fast here. I have mentioned that when the sun goes down here the temperature drops fast, the same can be said about the seasons, it’s not summer anymore and it’s getting cooler here. That still means 40 degrees in the afternoon but that’s not 63 degrees like it was a month ago. Good thing I was on vacation for the worst of that.

We been getting a bit of a light show every so often, some of the harriers have been firing off unused rounds near here at night. I have some movies to show when I get home. ( sorry not suitable for the internet )

Strappy is doing well and flirts it up with the girls here. I should have lots of new pictures for his binder including one of him hanging out with Bruce Cockburn and his brother who’s a military doctor here.

Another batch or recruits arrived last week; we got one new person in the office and five in the department. What gets interesting is one of the new guys here we discovered has an attitude issue I never ran into so bad. He openly curses and insults his new bosses and belligerent to everyone he meets including calling one of the girls at help desk a blond bimbo. So as anything else here we started a betting pool on how long before he gets sent home, my bets 24 days.

I believe the British call it Bogging, It’s the ability to take a few item with a one purpose and to adapt it for a completely different purpose. In Canada and the US it’s referred as “MacGyvering”. Here as a tech we have to do it all the time as supplies can take time and the right tools may not be at hand, this is especially true if it’s not for the military. You really can’t just go down to the local IKEA. One of my co-workers just did up a shelve unit using line racks and Velcro tape. I can’t say much as I have similar rig that I hang from my tents roof rafters using para cord.

Attack of the Birds! There is a small grove of trees near my tents but as its fall here the young birds are now in flight. The grove of a half dozen small trees is home for ten to twenty thousand small birds that come in from hunting in the desert at dusk. What makes it creepy here is that the dust in the air makes it so you can only see small objects so far so these birds as they approach from the observer on the ground it seem that a huge flocks of birds appear out of thin air. A kind of “Field of dreams” effect.

PS It looks like I'll be home for Feast of the Hare

Back to the Sand Box

2009-09-02T09:44:00.000-07:00

For those who maybe be wondering I am back in Afghanistan and have been for a week, I would of posted earlier but I just got my internet in my tent up and running and found the time to sit down and write.

My vacation is over and now I am back. What to tell, there’s a lot that happened during my vacation, some good some bad. I try to keep it short. The high light of the vacation was Pennsic as planned. It was truly my best to date, I hung around friends for a bit, took a few classes, and fought a few battles. Now for the bad, for those who have read this blog or journal will know I have two brothers suffering from cancer. Soon after Pennsic one of them passed away. So I had to hurry to Nova Scotia for a funeral, I will try not to bore you with the details.

Back to Afghanistan as that is what this blog is about. Kes and Menkin have seen to let me take strappy along this time. He seems to be very covetable in Air ports. I did lose his new hat when I was loading onto the courier flight to the base. I few days after getting here the company had the monthly BBQ and he was able to chat it up with all the girls that work here. So I have a number of pictures of him flerting it up.

When I arrived to my little tent space a layer of dust had settled over everything, I will have to remember lay down sheets before going on vacation again. Lucky this time I brought a tiny shop-vac with me, it is nice to get the place clean, well clean for Afghan standards.

This time around I am starting my second contract here. The problem with this second contract is a feeling a bit of regret for taking it. I landed here with a somewhat depressed mood and this place doesn’t do it for getting it back up. Not to sound like a snob but for most part my fellow contractors talk about are the places they go to get drunk when they are not here and the activities there after. I few will even go in to details about their misadventures in East Asian countries and the active sex trade there. I have a few windows were I get to sit down and talk about thinks intellectually stimulating like at the SCA chats but there rare and far between.

The big activity now is watching ultra armature boxing show at lunch and placing one dollar bets on the fights. The other options of sitting and reading internet articles online are very much hindered by the slow bandwidth. But it does look like
I will get November off so feast of the hare is in my future to look forward to. Speaking of SCA activities I was able to bring three fencing blades that were donated by Giovanni and Sir Menken. Well we brook one of the blades the first night using them, Opps.

That’s all for tonight and I try to get the pictures ready and posted as soon as I can.

2009-07-19T12:37:00.000-07:00

Today was my last day off before my trip home…. OMG was it long… Normally my day off goes way too quickly as I fill it with things I wanted to get done. Not today. Today I got trapped in the bank machine line here three times as the machine kept turning my card down and telling me to try again in a few hours. To fill in the time wondered the boardwalk looking for little gifts to give to people back home.

I hate to admit it I am a total snob at gift giving, as I hate the idea of giving things to people that just going to site on a shelf. It’s my rebellion to parents that like to collect knick-knacks that filled a house full of stuff that sat on shelves like an upper middle class Victorian. To compound this deep down I am the same as my parents and so I have this internal conflict of this collectors bug.

My solution for the current gift is to focus my search on collecting items you can’t really get back home, if any one likes a particular item I’ll give it to them. But what do I get? What I’ve focused on is the local handmade arts and craft style jewelry and small textiles like the cashmere scarves. Some of this was sent ahead in the mail and some I take with me. I hope people like it.

Good News

2009-07-17T13:10:00.000-07:00

I spent the evening chatting it up with some of the people here. The main subject was how most of the rules here are broken like how to ship alcohol here or comparing porn collections. My plan is defiantly going to start making Mead here when I get back.

Another subject was practical jokes here. One of the new lines men decided to strike one of the IT Guys in my office with the classic of turning the stereo up to max on your car when your park and away from it, so when you come back and start it your hit by a wave of noise. So as revenge we did the same to him but raised it a notch and added the heater too. You may ask well so what the big deal about the car heater, in 50 degree a car heater set to max is a death ray. What we didn’t know was that the lines men bongo A/C doesn’t work so they never used the cars air in literally years. You also have to remember the bongos are from Japan so they right hand drive with everything labeled in Japanese so it takes a while to learn ware all the buttons are. Did I mention he was new? We even convinced one of the veteran linesmen to make sure he was next to use the bongo.

How to describe what happened when he started it. The cars heater fan started for the first time in 3 years and lifted all the dust that had accumulated in the air ducts from 2006 till now and flushed it all out into the cab. All we saw was a dust storm localized to the inside of the lines men cab with the exception of a pair of flailing arms desperately trying to feel around and fine random switched and leavers to get it to stop. The Wipers started, the odd turn signal turned on and off, we even heard the horn go off. He told us afterwards he could not see anything, not even the door leaver to free himself.

In other news did some calling home and both my brothers are doing well. The one from Nova Scotia, Don was put on kemo only a few days after he got back. And Brant is doing better than expected; I was even talking to him on the phone. Good News is always good here. The plan is I’ll visit him on my way down to Pennsic, which brings up my ride. The Porsche is fixed up and ready so I’ll take that to Pennsic. It’s not totally restored but now mechanically sound. It’s still needs lots of work but almost all that is cosmetic. Yaaa

2009-07-15T11:45:00.000-07:00

One week to go. The days are talking way too long. Trying to get stuff ready to speed up time but there’s not all that much to do. It’s been really quite at the office, I am almost to the point of calling up Eric and having him run over a computer with a truck so I can spend the next week putting it back to gather.

The manager informed me I have to choose a holiday time for my next contract soon. What I think I will do is to take most of November off and go home for two weeks and then on the way back have a two week layaway in London. I may pull off going to hare. Then at the end of the contract next spring do the same long layaway on the way back to hit the places I had missed.

As for news from home I have gotten very little as how my brothers are doing, I guess I’ll find out when I get home. Hate to say it but all I can think about is what to do when I get home. Being here long enough to se others go thru this state, and everyone just accepts its. People are half useless the week before leaving.

I have mailed some stuff back and hope its waiting for me when I get there. Some gifts and the riot shield that had to cut in half to get it back. As its transparent the plan is to make it folding, paint it masking off a small hole to allow a video camera to be mounted on the back. Let’s see if I can pull off a Shield Cam.

Speaking of mail got my last care package from a college friend and now I have more craft dinner then I know what to do with.

2009-07-12T12:33:00.000-07:00

Well the weekend is here and I am down to single digits till a plane takes me out of here. Which remind me, if anyone interested I’d love to get picked up. My flight arrives at 4:05 Thursday the 23rd, flight AC839. If not no worries I been told that there are these things called taxies.

Saturday Night was movie night, well sort of. Not movies but two Jeff Dunham HBO TV Specials, Well sort of. I could not get the second one done as in the middle of the dead terrorist we got hit by a rocket attack. I could not make this up if I tried. Literally as he was saying “I’ll Kill You” the alarms went off.

As my day off I did some shopping picking up a few items to give out as gifts when I get home. The question is if I can mail them in time to get back while I am still home. The tracking numbers say that two of my four parcels have been delivered and the other two are about to be. I gave even odds that Wilhelm engineering’s side take over and he tries to put them together before I get back.

2009-07-09T11:23:00.000-07:00

For who that had read my last post, I’m doing fine; I hope I didn’t freak any one out. Thank you for all the replies, Thank you.

That was posted only an hour after finding out. I had a few days to call family since then. I am more or less keeping it a secret here so the only people that know at this end is my manager and Eric who reads my post. This might not sound good but there are people who use that kind of info here. This was a bit of a challenge as instinctually wanted to destroy the first person to cross me on Wednesday out of a raw frustration.

There is not much I can do from here; my leave is set more or less in stone. As you can imagine getting time off for family emergencies is not as easy as back home. On the other side of the coin is there’s not much I can do if I did go home other then stand around and get in the way.

As for my plans for my leave they will not change all that much other than some of the specific days may change as I going to spend some time before and/or after Pennsic in Strafford and Mitchell to see my brother. My London England Plans are on hold till I know more.

Other plan changes are that I’m going to one of the three large markets in Dubai during my 14 hour layover. Each has a specialty one is gold and gems, another is Spices and the third is textiles, as I am traveling with three others I’m not sure which I find myself at. Each has possibilities

We had another SCA Meeting here tonight and we are a growing group. And we are getting free fencing kit in the mail from one of the Groups back home. Add two more daggers and two bucklers to the castles armories.

Too Much

2009-07-07T11:02:00.001-07:00

The last two days have been described as a bit of an overload. Monday started with a 7am alarm when awaken by what I describe as the loudest rocket impact I heard followed by the alarm. Turns out the blast was not a rocket but a suicide bomber at the front gate. He had tried to sneak into the base with the local day labor. He failed to kill any NATO personel but killed two locals.

As it was Monday went to our fight practice. The game of the day was two sword using padded plastic sticks. We had a number of new people and a few were going at it. I even went into it, forgot that here if you over do it and start sucking in lots of air that you suck in lots of dust too. I spent the next hour coughing it all back up.
Got back to the tents ware an email from a family friend was waiting that said that I needed to call my mother about my brother planed operation. I tried but I got no answer that night. I tried again tonight after a ramp ceremony for two that got killed in a helicopter crash.

For those who don’t read this very often I’ll get you up to speed. I have two half brothers and one, Brant has leukemia that is in late stages and need a bone marrow transplant. Now I did some blood test before I left as well as my other brother Don. I’m not even close but Don’s a perfect match. The plan was the transplant was to take place in the next few weeks.

I was able to reach my mother tonight and she informed me that it turns out when they did some more blood work on Don as a prep for the operation they detected leukemia in his blood too. It’s in the most early of stages but it’s there. He flew back to his home in Nova Scotia to look into treatment. Brant’s doctors are now rushing to find a donor in the next ten days so they can still do a transplant.

I will be in Ottawa on the 24th, I had planned out my vacation and inform some of you out there when and where I was going to be during my 3 weeks’ vacation home. Those plans are now on hold till I know whats happening.

My three older brothers who I looked up to when I was a child, came with a genetic “blade runner” like end date. For those who don’t know I lost the oldest of the three, Raymond, about five years ago to abdominal Cancer. My only hope is that my mother was somehow exaggerated the situation. And now I find myself out of words….

It's Done!

2009-07-05T12:13:00.000-07:00

Good Weekend for me, I got the Mary Rose Jerkin done. YAAAA. It could do with more buttons but I can make those without feeling the dead line breathing down my neck. A few things came up with it in that it’s a bit too big, this is due to giving the leather a seam allowance when it didn’t need one and I have lost a few ponds here. It will fill out once I have a puffy linen shirt under it. Trying my best to avoid thinking that people are at Trillium war or KWDS this weekend, I feel that I turn neon green when I think about it.

It helps that yesterday at work I got a little bit of a bust. There was a day time ramp ceremony and I got picked at random to stay and hold the fort. So I was in the office doing nothing for over an hour with only the job of formatting 10 external hard drives. It struck me that I had the kit that I could do it all at once. I have to do something weird and partially if not totally unnecessary with computers every so often to keep my sense of enthusiasm going and that fit the bill.

A lot of people in my office are running with less sleep than normal. The reason is someone in the company and in my tent line woke up with half his face swelled up. So he was rushed over to the medical tents and after a few tests that he had been bitten by a camel spider when he was sleeping. So some people were freaked out for a few days, compounded that the rumor spread was the he had woken up with the spider still on his face. Camel spiders are the boogie monster of the camp, every one freaked out about them but there bite is not that dangerous, the guy bit took some pills and put his face on ice and was back to normal other then two tiny read spots.

Speaking of things running around in the dark did the three original Star Wars this weekend one each night. The last one was tonight but while playing it I watched as the local hedge hog ran zig-zag threw the still audience that were entranced on the movie. I don’t think the little guy knew that the mounds in the chairs were even living. What was funnier was people started to look around after he passed to figure out what the little spiky shadow they saw in there peripheral vision was.

Just a little over 2 weeks till I am out of here. My only worry now is that my car won’t be ready to take to pennsic. I may have to rent one to go.

Um Hows Roasted Crow in Rumor Grape Sauce ?

2009-07-01T10:25:00.000-07:00

Oh ya Rumors can be wrong
I mentioned in the last post how we civilians get to know lots due to our grape vine. Only problem is that it’s a grape vine so a lot of the info on its wrong. Well most of the info is wrong or heavily distorted. In receiving a second care packaged from Kes and Menkin in about two weeks proving that mail delay was totally false… Um… So does anyone know a good period recipe for crow? I’m thinking in a pie or maybe a roasted with a grape sauce. Well in any case I have enough Kraft dinner to last me till I get home … THANK YOU

The mail is running normally is very much good news for me and maybe mixed news for others at the other end as I have send four large boxes with the bits for making 4 very nice folding chairs. With luck they will get there in time to put one or two back together for Pennsic.

Today was force myself to say good bye to a hobby day. Some would know that I have collected and painted miniatures like “Warhammer”. One of the lines I followed was a series of Babylon 5 ships. The line and the game that went with it never did well so it bounced around from manufacture to manufacture. The last official manufacture announced a few months that June 30 was the last day they were allowed to make figures under the license and was the last day to order them and guarantee you get them. I have the money but I never play anymore and almost never have time to paint as SCA and computer stuff takes most of my spare time. So no space ships for me. I will keep what I have now to decorate a shelf and that’s it.

Canada Day in KAF was most of the Canadians getting together and having a big barbeque. Fun, the food was good for a change and got to hang out with some pretty girls that I can’t date. Most of the company and troops were given a half day off which was used by most to sleep. The news likes to say the troops need a rest, which is very much true. And to finish the day a rocket attack to remind everyone not to have too much fun.

Oh and this place can be a bit dangerous

2009-06-28T11:24:00.000-07:00

Oh and this place can be a bit dangerous but no more then back home. That’s what they told me when I first got the job; sometimes it doesn’t give that impression. I don’t mean the stuff you expect like the air planes taking off and landing full of bombs or the leopard tanks that share the roads here or even the occasional rocket attack. I mean the avoidable stuff.

Went down to the British area for dinner and a parking area in the middle of the camp was roped off as if it was one of the land mines fields on the edge of the camp. Turns out that the parking area every one used and I have walked across a number of times had never been cleared. Someone digging thru the camps papers looking for more land for the US troops had noticed that as no building was built there or even planned for the area that no one had ordered it to be demined.

Another fun around here is the safety glasses for the open gators. We have been told that we are required by the military to have them. If we go and ask for some from the company we are told that those are for the troops and we can’t have any. Oh and if your require prescription eye ware like myself no chance as that would require a special pare made up in Dubai. When I did ask someone pulled out something from a shop class that goes over my glasses and half my head. It doesn’t matter now as the engine in our gator well died and is only coughing black smoke and I mean more than normal for a diesel.

It’s one thing about being a support civilian here is we have no rank and so for many of the military we don’t exist on till we are needed or get in the way. I have the feeling how servants in Victorian houses use to feel. This does have some advantages as we get to hear the talk about the goings on and as we chat among our selves we are often in the know more than the military around us on the day to day stuff around the camp. As this is a rumor mill much of the information is slanted or wrong but much of it has truth to it. The one being passed around today is that we have seen very little mail come in; rumor says there is around a dozen Hercules full of mail is waiting in Trenton to be sent. For those who not been around the military Hercules is the most common transport plane in NATO and there what can fit in it in one trip is an unofficial standard unit of measure for cargo.

I’m going to have to start writing down a list of things to ask Menken when I get back home. Most are about SCA history but one not. One here who’s a huge Canadian aviation buff had given me a copy of his air craft images and one of the CF-18 caught my eye. Now you need to understand that the air force every so often will pain a CF-18 in some theme pain job for a bit for one reason or another and he has a picture of one in chequey. Any way I posted a copy of the picture on the blog.

T - 31 Days

2009-06-21T11:57:00.000-07:00

This week ran into some hiccups like how my glovers needles will no longer hold enough of an edge to do the decretive edge without making a mess of it so I will have to do the arm holes on the jerkin without the fancy edge. The jerkin will be done soon, the arm holes are half done with only the back skirt flaps and the button holes all need to be done after that …Ya
There have been other interesting things like one of the “Canadian houses” burn down yesterday. That sucks for me as it was the equivalent to me as a local corner store as you could get pop, chips and sign out movies there. I went over there today and they have all the remains dismantled and they are looking at rebuilding it.
For me now is counting down the days till I can go home. The worst part is I get to hear people talk online about the events I so wanted to go to. 31 days till I get on a plane home.
Called my mother tonight and dates are set. On July 8th my brother Brant will go into the hospital and start a radical level of kemo. My brother Don turned out to be a perfect match so they will start taking T cell from him on the 15th and will transplant them on the 17th. All I can do is cross my fingers.
No new pictures of interest. I have seen three good size dust devils/tornadoes go through camp but I never have my camera with me when this happens.
Well that’s my life in a nutshell.

A Bit behind

2009-06-16T11:15:00.000-07:00

My apologies to all that read this as I have not posted in some two or more weeks, but I will like everyone to know I am still here. I have found myself with little spare time. My evenings have been taken up by SCA meetings and Movie Nights.

That’s right we have a little unofficial SCA Group going here with fight practices and meetings. The fight practice mostly consists of a bit of rapier as one from midrealm has brought two SCA legal rapiers and matching daggers. Sadly for me none of the suits or masks will fit me. I do still go as it’s nice to discuss history and I help out as acting as a list marshal. We have five SCA members and a hand full of new people that may join when they get home. The funny part is no one is from the same kingdom and no ones from the official kingdom we are in.

One Girl from the out lands who is relatively new and still working on her persona was telling me she wanted to play a gypsy so she could have the colorful outfits. I looked at her and said that you know that’s a lot of the costume you’re thinking of is a romantic idea of them from after period like the pirates. She grew a bit of a frond when I said that as I’m not the first to tell her this but I have a secret weapon up my sleeve. You say you want to have loud flamboyant costume, let me tell you about the Landsknechts….

The other activity that’s been eating up my time has been “Movie Night” we have the kit to put together a little driving-in like cinema. I was helping the last person who was running it and now that his contracted ended a few weeks ago it’s fallen on me to keep it going. That mostly picking the movies from the requests and setting up and packing up the kit each night we do this and that’s about two to three times a week. We are now getting a good turnout; the problem with this is that I’ve had people try to take credit for it by dictating what movies we are going to play and other politics. This in turn has annoyed many people helping me out and I have found myself setting up and packing alone. Just got to love office politics when we can never leave the office. I have found the fix in keeping these people out of the loop and posting the movies with no one including myself taking credit.

Any way I should not complain it’s keeping me busy and this is making the time go by faster and that makes pennsic come closer. The jerkin project is moving along quite nicely the body is done with the exception of the arm holes as they need a fancy trim to be added as there sewed up, right now I am on the skirts tails and should have that done within a week. Someone can put that down on the A&S report :)

Any way I am thinking of home and counting the days till July 22 when I get on the plain. What’s going to make that sound hollow is today I signed a paper saying I will do another contract so its means I won’t be home for good till March as the soonest. But I will get 2 vacations of two weeks each one I will go home the other I decided is to visit London England, I writing up a list of places I want to go and see. I have to remember to thank Menken and Erec for giving me lots of good ideas.

Any way I will end this post with thoughts of home.

2009-05-31T13:43:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

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….

2009-05-17T12:55:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-12T12:54:00.000-07:00

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!!!!

2009-05-07T12:00:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-04-30T12:32:00.000-07:00

It’s late on a Thursday night and I just finished a chain of events that left me thing “I am really proud of the SCA and that I am part of that group of people” The reason you may ask, the answer is I got to experience the flip side today.

The company here has a barbeque at the end each month. To get people to help they have the managers from each department volunteer 3 people. This is usually a voluntold process as almost no one volunteers and most of the managers are ex-military and are use to ordering people to volunteer for thing. When they said they needed three cooks I jumped in, anyone who knows me can easily understand my eagerness to cook for 300 again. What surprised me was at the end of the night I found myself sitting alone on a bench in the dark eating some of the few leftovers being told I need to stay and clean all three grills as the other two cooks had left.

At that moment I thought wow this would never happen in the SCA. At the end of SCA events I’m surrounded fighting off people who want to help me clean the kitchen. During the dinner they had a announcements where they give out small cash bonus to manager’s pets and ask you to donate to this charity or another but at no point did anyone say thank you to volunteers. Now I don’t expected a herald to call us in and a Kingly or Baronly figure to proclaim their thanks but there was no mention at all of the people it took to make this little piece of home possible. Most just got up dumped their paper plate and walked away like they were at the mess. Now don’t get me wrong but a few people did come on and thank me in person but they were the exceptions. It’s the fact that almost no one stayed to help clean up, and of the people who did stay most did so because some manager told them to.

At that point I was proud to be part of the SCA on the fact how much we go out of our way to say thank you from pelicans to the simple gift of a token, to just being called up to court. I been called up dozens of times related to being a cook and in the past I often took it as a bit of a nuisance talking me away from the important work in the kitchen. Tonight I was enlightened on how important those ceremonies we have are and that I do cherish the little coins I've gotten from Kes or the tiny clay pot from Xristina.

I will still volunteer for the barbeque come next month as it gives me a chance to do something I enjoy. Either way next time I think I will be bold, raise my voice and ask that a hand be given to the volunteers that make the event possible.

Good night from a some what home sick John.

2009-04-26T11:41:00.000-07:00

It’s been a busy week for reason I can’t talk about here. Ran into Vlod as he does what he does. It’s nice to meet SCA people once in a while here. Speaking of SCA I am trying to get a SCA name for the camp among other things. I’ll tell more once I have confirmed it, I may need a web designer in the near future. Due to security changes I haven’t been carrying my camera so no new pick. This has had other effects, I started carrying my pocket knife that I‘ve had for a very long time around in my pocket and not in the camera case. Now sadly the said knife as gone missing for a few days and I fear it has been pocketed by someone else. That’s a big issue in the camp, tools are the prime target. I will just have to be more careful.

The Dutch brought in a show ban Wednesday night. It quite fun to head over to the Dutch corner, it’s the only club, and I mean it’s the only club in the camp. It’s a Dutch only club and is only open to everyone else on special occasions such as when they bring in a ban. The place was quite packed. They done it up well you never know it was in a circus style tent, it’s got a stage and a bar. Before anyone asks they don’t sell alcoholic beverages when other nations are allowed in. The camp has strict rules around that sort of thing and this is how the Dutch deal with it. On the other side the Americans had some country singer in on Friday, I say who but I don’t know, apparently this person said some unkind things about Canada when US invaded Irag about the fact we did not join them. So no one in this camp went to that concert.

Saw one of the hedge hogs that live in the camp for the first time. They only come out at night and they appear as this spiking ball that darts around in the shadows. People around here seem to collect pets. The linesmen have their new found gecko, the help desk have two frogs. One of the women in my office feeds the birds. The mechanics have their cat. But the hedge hog seems to have been over looked. There has been a boom of wild life as there are more and more moths. The Moths are a big annoyance at night. They get into things and so you pick up a shirt and a moth flies out. If you are the last one in the tent to turn off your light your sleeping area gets flooded with a half dozen. But there is no shortage of things here that eat them. You can sit back and watch the bats hunt them in the big spot lights.

The last few days I have been working on one job but it’s been hindered by the fact that this base is a mish mash of infrastructure standards. As there are so many countries in the camp and all their equipment are built to different standards. It’s a perpetual night mare of adaptors and transformers. To compound this there is an urban legend in camp how some guys got electrocuted while taking a shower in a camp in Iraq. The joke now is to use the showers the electricians use.

2009-04-19T10:47:00.000-07:00

Well it’s been dull for the last few days… The rain is gone for now and it’s more or less dried up. The last few days the suns been out and we had 40+ degree heat in the day. It will reach 60 by the summer. I had plans to go down to the wood shop here and work on a shield spine as a way to parallel the A&S back in Ottawa, Sadly the wood shop was closed but I was able to get some sewing done. Thinking of Home, John.

PS: This place is changing my threshold on what catches my attention as unusual, example: I almost forgot to post that I got trapped in a shower facility today. It’s my day off so I slept in and then went for a shower, when I got there realized I had forgotten something and tried to go back out. The problem is the door handle is in disrepair and so it seized up and would not open. Well I spent a few minutes trying to free the handle then trying to force the door open. Someone else who wished to use the shower facility discovered the situation, went over to a nearby truck, picked up a big screw driver and forced the lock mechanism while I kicked the door open. For those trying to play this out in their minds eye both of us are in bath robes with towels and shaving kits in hand. Any way once we had got the door open we went on our business as if this was common place. For this place the weird like that is common.

Rain Rain Go Away

2009-04-15T11:20:00.000-07:00

It has rained three days in a row; it’s starting to get on my nerves. The place is all mud ware there is not gravel. Delilah, the smaller of the two bongos likes to slide on both gravel and mud so driving her is entertaining. I have gotten use to the fact that she right hand drive but its easy here as the top speed is 16 kmh. The low speeds is a bit annoying until you get here and your sharing roads with Heavy Transporters, Sea Can Movers, and tanks.

I have been told that this is the end of a 50 year drought in the region. There is more life around from birds to insects and even frogs. The locus here are biblical, the one in the picture is sitting on three inch mesh, easily twice the size of any grass hopper I have seen back home. The lack of green is getting to me coming from northern Ontario, there are only a few trees and even they have a dusty tan colour from dust on the leaves.

My tent picked up a leak, the last good wind storm shifted the tent slightly opening a gap on the bottom edge and some water got in, not so bad as the floor is raised, but has given the tent a funk smell. One of my tent mates has put down bleach to keep it from getting worst so the tent space has an Ode de Over Used Pool.

As much as you want to curse the rain the alternative is 35 to 45 degree heat. There is plenty of time for that to come; I should try to enjoy it as I can. The rain does clear the dust from the air and I can see the mountains ranges that rise from the desert dust. The region once was a bed of a great river some 10 thousand years ago that was fed from ice age glaciers that have long melted away. I find myself curious what the landscape looked like then. A great river with jutting mountain islands covered in trees. How this place is an Eden lost.

I'm Back

2009-04-12T11:31:00.000-07:00

I’m back online and blogging, before any one comes to any conclusions I did not put any one in danger, or joined the Taliban. It had to do with public image of the company. With that said I did skirt what I am allowed to say. Three quarters of what I have seen is off limits when it comes to the blog. This place is a 24 hour a day air and military show, fighters, tanks, you name it. Alas I must be silent, but make note that Canada is not playing the little brother role to the Americans or the British here.

Ok when I left off I was having fun with the bongos, well the fun continued. I added a picture on the blog of some of the CE guys trying to rescue there after a night of rain. They’re very front heavy as the engine is under the cab between the front wheels, and you can’t park them on a downhill slope and expect to back up. Most if not all the roads here are gravel and can be like driving on ball bearings. I had to learn this the hard way yesterday when I got the office bongo stuck facing a ditch.

The cab was ever so slightly too close to the ditch and pitched the bongo the few degrees it takes. Well I tried all the tricks I knew like rocking it, no go as all this did was threw up more gravel and inch me closer to the ditch. Well a captain and a major were walking by and I asked them if I knew where I could get some help. For those asking there is no CAA chapter in Afghanistan. The captain said he could get one of the fork lift guys to help and started walking towards the garage. The Major without saying a word got in the cab started the bongo as I had left the keys in, and gun the gas. The bongo rocketed threw the ditch and half way up the other side till it had no more traction. Then he flipped it in reverse and rocketed back when I had to jump out of the way as the major came thru the parking spot, missing both SUV on either side. He then slid to a stop after performing a perfect reverse “J” turn leaving it in the perfect spot to leave the parking area. At which point he got out and walked on as if nothing had happened …

Another Part of Bongos is that there owned and fixed by locals. Spare parts are for most parts recovered from other vehicles. The supply people finally got a replacement tire for theirs and well I had to take a picture as it bald, cracking, and has chucks of rubber missing. The important part is that it holds air unlike the previous one.

AS time goes on this camp becomes more civilized. The British PX store called the Naafi has brand hard ice cream with flavors like rum and resin. I also picked up a small British bear to act as Strappy’s body guard if he comes.

As a tech in KAF the problem can be different as there is multiple NATO country that built this base there is multiple power connecters. This includes a mix of 110 and 220 volt. I already blew up a power supply here that had a manual selector. Most our tents here are North American standard but when I get to the sites it can be anything depending who built the building. The little travel adaptors here are standard issue as any time you buy electrical appliances at the PX’s they can be anything under the sun.

The ever present dust, the picture is my computer after 5 weeks of being in my tent. It would have been worst but I keep the lid down at night and when I am at work.

Any way I am fine and back, got some shopping done so I should be sending some silk and cashmere scarfs back soon. Soon if anyone is asking is 4 to 6 weeks.

Sorry have to stop

2009-04-07T07:52:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed that some items on my blog had to be pulled. The company here is having security issues and so I been asked to stop posting on the blog for a while. Can’t go into details other then I don’t know if and when I be able to post again.

Rain in the desert

2009-04-05T09:57:00.000-07:00

Last night and today it mostly rained, it even hailed for a bit. Lucky for me it was my day off so I could hide out in my tent. this land wants to rain it can, most rain here last a few seconds and you get a few drops of mud from the sky. But once in a while it lets it all out, the hail on the tent was loud enough to drown out any conversation or audio that was playing. When it did stop the landscape was all mud and puddles. With the ground unable to absorb the water it will probably take a week for it to dry. I don’t mind, I like it here when it rains, it pulls all the dust out of the air and I get a blue sky, a real blue sky for a few days. At night you can see details on the moon, it’s not just a glowing blob in the dark.

Like I said it was my day off so its lunch on the board walk and day to lay back and get my own projects done. I decided to complete my make shift futon. Its 4 fluffy blankets tied together with buttons made from cut up water bottles. It turned out really well. When the tent space is just right I do up some pictures and post them.

Surreal TV

2009-04-04T11:27:00.000-07:00

Another surreal moment today to remind me where I am … two weeks ago we got a small 22” LCD TV to put in the office, today it was tuned into CTV 24 hours news. The big thing in Afghanistan is the new law here that allows rape in marriage. Well they had a live interview with an afghan women’s rights activist, during which we argued about why Canada is in Afghanistan etc. as if it was on the other side of the world just like 99% of the people watching the same. After a few minutes we noticed some of the details in the background were familiar. So I popped my head out my office door and there she was with camera crew and sound man.

2009-04-03T08:44:00.000-07:00

This place is doing what I thought was impossible, making me religious. For those who know me know I am a hard core atheist. Hear in KAF I have found a desperate need for faith. I find myself saying a little pray twice a day. Oh god, gods, spirits, or demons, who looks over the D-fac of KAF(*) I ask you this meal that:
The lowest bidder who got the contract to feed us did not bid too low.
That the country they are buying the food from has health inspectors.
May that health Inspector does not take bribes, well not too often.
May the air- conditioned shipping container the food was sent here with, may it be plane or truck have a working air-conditioner.
May the box of fresh vegetables in that container not have been stacked under the box of frozen meat.
May the cook have used some form of soapy substance when cleaning the kitchen, and that cleaning was resent.
May the meat not be cooked till it loses all organic characteristics.
May the serving tray not been used as a trash compactor the meal before, and the previous person not just come from the medical rows.
May the guy standing at the salad bar who just sneezed have a stuffy nose from the dust.
May the Dust that falls on all surfaces including the uncovered food have a low concentration of dung, human camel, or any other animal.
May the half dozen people sitting around me who just returned from some south asian country not bring something with him that can be transmitted through the air.
(*)D-fac = Dinning facility, KAF = Kandahar Air Field

A few questions have come up .. First how to send stuff here. The following web site covers it . http://www.trentonmfrc.cfbtrenton.com/index.php?www_id=68 If you are sending it to me use my real name and my unit is : KAF, Can-Cap, CIS, Tech-Shop
The other question was what a bongo, well in terms of KAF it’s a small Japanese made truck. We have a bunch here and they are uncomfortable if not impossible to be driven by anyone over 5’10”. See the picture at the top of a old and new one side by side

One of the Cats from New Canada House area had decided to come around to my section.

free stuff day

2009-04-01T11:18:00.000-07:00

Today the charter flight came in and out. It brought back both my boss and my supervisor from vacation and it took out one guy that was in training with me and was in the same tent. He quit on Monday after a disagreement with his boss. Another left my tent as it was end of contract, E.O.D. for short. For the rest it was vulture time, I hate to admit it but I got into it today. Every one collects what they can to make their little part of the tent better. Every one heads over to their tent spots and sees what they had collected and if they want any. My haul was two ammo style boxes, 2 more blanks towards my futon project, and the crown jewel a new office chair. I didn’t have room for the very nice desk that came with it, but I already have a mini desk I made from bits of a larger desk that fell out of a bongo.

Middle Eastern Sat-TV

2009-03-31T10:55:00.000-07:00

Sorry but i had to remove part of this post due to security issues

Something else that the socially aware may frown on is the use of bottled water here. There was an article in the CBC web site about how Ottawa school boards wanted to cut down on bottle water. This base lives on bottle water; the local water is undrinkable, either too biologically contaminated or too full of chlorine. Taking showers here give off a smell similar to a swimming pool with too much chemical added. I myself may go thru 4 or 5 a day and we have not reached the heat of the summer. That reminds me if anyone wants to send me anything please pad with crystal lite packages.

2009-03-30T11:47:00.000-07:00

The new mattresses… Last week one of the managers went around asking if anyone wanted their mattress replaced, the military had a thousand coming in and wanted to know if cancan wanted some. At the time mine was doing well enough so I passed, that was a lucky decision. The following Sunday a few supply clerks came to the camp with a list of tent spots and a truck full of what appeared to be sixty mattress. Thirty can-cap people came to the tent after a long day of work to discover their old mattress had been replaced with a brand new box spring.

The snoring … I have some one new that is across from me in the tent and he snores… I have gotten use to the person next to my space that snores, learning to fall asleep between his bouts of snoring. The new guy has an uncanny ability to snore when the other is not, as one rolls over and quiets down the other start…

Sorry but i had to remove part of this post due to security issues

Bath room connoisseur… As no one has privet bathrooms it becomes a game to know where all the bathrooms are in a given area that you spend a lot of time in. I have found myself no less than three times in the last week having conversations comparing one public rest room facility to another, how clean are they, how covetable the seats, what has better graffiti.

Dumpster Diving Warrant… Lexmark laser printers come with a code that says what part of the world they are from. Well they brought the printers in Canada, the problem is that the toner cartages are from europ and have a miss match code. Solution is to pull the chips from the spent cartages from Canada. Well had a warrant office call in at the end of the day after replacing the cartage getting the region error. When informed he needs the old one we got the statement over the phone “ F***, it’s in the dumpster and I already sent the privets home, F*** !!!”…

SCA News… Found out about the new Baron and Baroness, I be honest not my choice, but that’s SCA life. At the same time I have found out that the company’s contract has been extended till December 2011. I am getting use to the place to the point where it’s coming natural to be here, that may change once summer and rocket seasons starts to roll in. If the company keeps me there is a good chance I will miss most of this baronial cycle.

2009-03-26T12:29:00.000-07:00

A tragedy of timing recently occurred here at the camp and at the time I decided not to write about it, I thought that my journal for the week had gotten a little too dark and this would have taken it too far. With the news of a resent death, I reconsidered.

Last week we had a new team arrive for a new office in my department. One of the girls there with a look of quite dismay at the situation she found herself in, which is not uncommon for people here for the first day. She is fresh from college and this was going to be the fastest way to pay the student loans. She knew she was not going to be here alone; a friend from high school was part of this new office and had arrived with her. The other person in KAF was a boyfriend of one of her friends from home. He was a trooper based in the area. The tragedy was that boyfriend of a girlfriend was one of the four killed soldiers we sent home at a ramp ceremony only a few days after she got here. She decided that she could not stay and went back home on Wednesday being her only one week.

What ties this event to the event I find myself now is this is the same ramp ceremony that I found myself somewhat annoyed at the pastor giving the eulogy that it sounded too much like the ones given before. As if he had a script and was filling in the blanks. And yet I knew this girl was in pain and I was “lost for words”, I could do no better. Recently with Sandra death I had read kes_zone LJ and sent an email to Menken, the reply and the Journal made it clear they knew her very well and are hurt deeply with her loss. I have been struggling between sadness and frustration for a day to find words to console from 10 thousand miles away but it would make no difference if I was one mile away. Like many I am lost for words falling back in times of pain to well used scripts wishing to say the right thing. How do I say anything truly consoling when the man who job here to say the right thing can do no better.

I only knew Etaoin in passing at sca events and that she had been very important to the society going back quite far to midrealm days, but I know little about her beyond that. The only truly honest words I can find to pass on to those who knew her is that be the best of story tellers and know that we are all truly sadden at her loss.

2009-03-25T09:34:00.000-07:00

Well it rained Monday, the first proper rain storm since I have gotten here. It got the place wet with puddles every ware you never know you were in the desert. There was even hail the size of small marbles, the linesmen next door had a short hail ball fight. Two days later and there is some water still on the ground, which is why there is so few tree as the ground here holds very little water when it does rain. Makes me thinks that NATO needs to drop a few million tones of peat moss would make a big difference.

Wish I could of enjoyed the rain but I been more or less out due to a stumic bug. Illness is common here; we have people coming from all the NATO countries and at the same time people going on vacation to the four corners of the planet. The result is there is colds and flu running around the camp continually. People try their best to keep it to a minimum with hospital style alcohol dispensers at the bathrooms and hand washing stations into the messes. It only a matter of time before you get one of the bugs running around, well it was my turn. Result was I spent Tuesday in bed, but its Wednesday evening and I feeling better.

Tonight in the back ground can-cap have the oasis sound system cranked playing music and having a big barbeque. The company has one every month and this is my first as I just got here less than month ago, every one enjoying there ration of two cans of beer, it’s the only time you’re allowed to drink here. Hand full of people wondering around asking anyone that looks sober if they had their second and if they could have it.

The tech shops gatter has been converted to a DJ booth which is being run on a portable with a big amp strapped in the back bucket. As people come around they plug there mp3 players into the portable to add songs to the play list as a form high tech red neck request hour. As the night runs down and people start going to bed the music starts to change and reflect the people still standing. It started with mostly 60’s and 70’s like mama & papa’s to fit the managers taste but as they gone to the tents the music slowly moves forward to like 80 big hair and now starting to move into 90’s dance music. As there is almost no one here less than 30 I dough there will be anything from the last ten years.

2009-03-22T10:50:00.000-07:00

This journal going to be short. You may have heard in the press that a civilian was killed Friday. http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/606234 Just letting you know I am fine and still kicking… Spent my day off rewiring me tent area, I am still spending a lot of time trying to organize my tent space. The space is about 6 feet by 8 feet and it’s a challenge to make it my little own home away from home. I tell myself its good practice of volume management for sca camping. It stormed most of the day with a large wind gust that forced people inside. There’s been more rain on and off but it never gets this place wet or even cleans off the dust. That’s about it here from there very alive John

2009-03-19T10:04:00.000-07:00

March 17th

I am currently writing this journal laying on the floor of my weather heaven. We had another rocket attack. As a civilian I need to take on a bunch of precautions such as putting on a flack vest and helmet to meet up with the companies insurance. This is the second time threw a rocket attack, and this time it was different as it was in the relative quiet of night and I could hear more going on around me. I talk more but very serious people said in a very serious manner I should not talk about the very serious details. What surprised me was how little emotional effect this had on me or the people around me. To repeat a cliché “it’s not like it is in the movies”.

St. Patrick day at a place with no alcohol…. Ya, people are grumbling, mostly by taking about favorite brands of beer or mixed drink they will have when they get home. There is talk of rain tonight, Not much it never rains too much here but the rain is muddy. Yes it rains mud here. The drops pick up dust on the way down and so by the time it hits the ground it can range from just a slight tan tone color to grey chowder.

March 18^th

Emotionally the lost of internet a few night ago had much more effect on me then the rocket attacks. I became angry enough to march down to the little sea container office and had my voice know. Not my normal emotional response to things for those who know me. The lost of connection was mostly due to another band-aid patch on the network, problem with being a professional geek is you become judgmental on other peoples work especially the inept examples . The internet connection is one of my main ties to home, the other being a book Kes and Menken gave me on the send off party, “A Distant Mirror” by Barbara W. Tuchman. It’s set in the 14^th century and is heavy on historical placement; each few pages will have something that reminds me of conversations spoken, classes taken, garb seen or some other SCA memory. Taking my time threw it, only about 160 pages in.

Many of my co workers take the rule about fraternization as more of a guide line, they know the company will slap them on the wrist as to avoid the cost of sending them home is quite high. And I can understand the appeal as there is some very attractive women in the ranks here. But as one of my younger co-workers found out, the look women have to inform men that “you are a jerk and buzz off“ has a little more impact when they got an M-16 assault rifle slung over their shoulder.

March 19^th

Got reminded by the Bad Baron that I haven’t posted in a bit. It’s been about 25 to 30 degree in the day and 10 at night. To be honest I like the weather here, well now, I know it will change. We’ve been getting a few thunder storms but nothing to write home about. The storms up to now have been tiny. The Long term people here tell that the storms come in two sizes here. Tiny things that pull up a bit of wind and a bit of rain and the hand of god that rush in like a wave of dust and will tear up tents and antenna.

I took pictures of the "MASH" post soon after getting here but decided to post them now, had a converstaion online chat yesterday and the person commented that the blog and the LJ makes her think that I had never left... The statement struck me and reminded me how far and the need for me to write these to stay in touch.

2009-03-15T09:32:00.000-07:00

Picture of one of the rodent control inspector hanging out with the linemen for coffee and milk.

My Internet has been good enough in the last few days to see some of the winter war picks… I am quite jealous I could not have been there for TSivia pelicaning, It looks to have been a grand ceremony. Everyone I ask that when you read this by LJ or Blog you send me messages telling me how it was and all that happened.

Went to market yesterday with Erec the Bad Baron, and the women in his life a very lucky, that enough said on that. I have collected some more pictures of the market, not too much is new there but it does break up the week to go to the hustle and bustle of the market. I am collecting a large wish list of items I like to bring back. I may have to stay here some time to pay for it all. I have to make a second request and ask people to get on the blog and tell me what they see in the pictures of the market and tell me what they want me to try to bring back. With this market image I added a few obvious fakes like the Chinese made movie sections, the designer purses, and the glass gems. There is many real gems bouncing around some of very good quality it’s a question of telling them from the fakes.

*Warning the following paragraph may contain some geekyness* One of linesmen from my training group has rewired their tent the correct way for the eight people there, with punch-down board and a proper 12 port switch. Most of the tents here have Ethernet strung around the top of the tents tied wrapped to anything that may come close to their desired path. The result has the appearance that it was laid out by a great network spider trying to catch the poor sods that wonder around below.

March 12th and 13th

2009-03-13T11:02:00.000-07:00

The last few days have been quite uneventful. Got my first pay check and discovered that I not going to make quite as much as I thought, there is quite a bit of mandatory insurance on me and guest who pays for it.

I had a DVC twitch moment yesterday. I had a co working going how great a researcher Brown is and how “the da vinci code” really shows how useless most historians are. I sat in the corner of the office twitching at the sound of that. Tried to break in and refute some of the claims of Brown but was ignored on the grounds that she had been to some of these places on vacation tours and that her and her husband watch discovery channel all the time. On the grounds of getting along with my co-works decided to let it be as there is no sign that I change her mind.

The Canadian civilians here if I had to guest the demographics are three quarters of them are middle aged and that most of them are retired military or related to the military somehow. There is a smattering of 20 and 30 something’s like myself who to be honest are here for the pay. Many are related with two father and suns, a mother and son and a mother and daughter here.

Well Friday the 13^th is done for me as I type these last words some 8 hours ahead and I had good luck this week from getting a bike to winning a Afghanistan Tim Horton’s hat, So I hope I pass this luck to who may be reading this.

March 11th

2009-03-11T11:57:00.001-07:00

Well my pack rat character flaw is an asset here; I was able to get myself a bike and a small desk for my tent area today. The bike was put together by a young mechanic here who got himself another one and sold me his old one. There both Frankenstein made from a dozen other bikes but they work. It’s a little small for me but it will do the job.

After work and after dinner some of my people I went to training with had a game of “Risk” at the company’s common house “The Oasis”. It was quite surreal playing while in the back ground you could hear machine gun fire at the small arms range, armored vehicles rolling down the road nearby, and the sound of a jet fighter taking off over head.

Someone one from my training class was put in “row 1” what we call the hospital here. A few days ago he got a bit lost coming out of the mess after dark and ran into a large pile of gravel and put a small cut in his knee. Well by the next day it got blood poisoning and was swelling and turn read. So they put an iv in him and put him in the hospital for a few days. There were worries they have to fly him out and worst case amputated but that was very much over blown.

2009-03-10T07:21:00.000-07:00

10 second exposure of the moon... The moon is blanched out but the picture to show the effect of the dust in the air. The ring you see around the moon is not a lens effect. My theory is it’s similar to a rainbow but a reflection not refraction for you science geeks.

*** Sadly uploading it to blogger has a high jpeg compression and very much distorts night sky images so you can't see the ring in the image... But the Moon here often has a white halo around it.

Collection of market pictures, if you see anything that catches your attention ask and i can email you a more detailed image and i try to get it for you in the coming months.

Oh and the very bottom right is a 8' x 11' handmade all silk carpet. He wants 3500 US but i think i can talk him down over the next 3 or 4 months.

The illumination flairs seen over the camp

Gator: A small two person six wheeled john deer used as the mai n trasportation for my department.

March 10^th

My supervisor and manger are going on holidays today, but I got a good by gift, they were able to get me a winter jack for here. Now that may sound strange but it gets quite cold here at night. Bad Baron was around the office today. He was looking for tech stuff, it be handy for him with me in the tech shop.

2009-03-09T08:30:00.000-07:00

March 7^th

Well Today was market day and I don’t have the day off… Went during lunch and spent the hour taking pictures and drooling over the stuff … Problem is I need to pay some bills first so I can’t really by anything till May … But I can still go and get to know the merchants… I am getting use to the place I not sure I have much to write about in the coming days. The work is slow now but will probably pick up in the next few months…

Started into the book Kes and Menkin gave me one the “see you off” party. Can’t start work on the jerkin as the linen liner is not cut yet, I may take it to the common area and hijack the poker table long enough to get that done so I can start the hand sewing. Another project has come up I think. They gave me an extra blanket as an apology for not giving me one the first nite, I have brought my 3” needle, If I can get enough extra blankets there is a possibility to make a futon if I can find enough button like objects.

March 8^th

First day off … what to do, what to do,… Well got laundry done. Played on the internet till it went down and by the time its up we are under another comms lock. Had to sneak into work for a while to get my gator training in, this is a small 6 wheel tractor that john deer makes. They’re very common around the camp and my office has a few we use to get around with. I really don’t have a choice as I don’t fit into the small Mazda truck we call bongos. The day ended watching from my tent the illuminate flairs.

March 9^th

Monday morning, and yes it’s the same every ware... We had another ram ceremony after work… Called my brother thought my mother might be staying there, no luck so I’ll try again latter… Had a few quick words with him, find out how he is doing. Asked him if he wanted pictures of aircraft for his models but forgot to tell him there going to be a mile or more away and only when the air craft are in the air. There are tons or rules about what we can take pictures of and you can’t play rules layer here. My problem is I have become a bit of a shutter bug with the new camera so I have to keep reminding myself the rules. The whole cloak and dagger thing is not coming naturally to me and my curios nature; I will just have to become more self disciplined if I want to keep my job.

My part of town

2009-03-07T07:00:00.001-08:00

Home Sweet Home.. This is the tent area that Cancap stays As you can see each tent has its own little padio with a few lawn chairs. The Little Hut on the left is ware there is a unlimited supply of water bottles are kept. You may also notice the large number of bikes and the SUVs.. these are the main ways to get around the camp... With a speed limit of 16 km/h its actualy faster to get around with the bikes if your legs are up to it ...

2009-03-07T06:50:00.000-08:00

This is the Air Bus A380 I took from London To Dubai

March 4th to 6th

2009-03-07T06:15:00.000-08:00

Please note that this journal was posted late as due to multiple communication lock outs. Lets hope this is not the case in the future.

March 4^th

Today started with some apprehension, the flags were half mass the night before and we were under comms lock down. This is done when someone is killed or seriously injured so that the military can inform the families before the press does. Started my second day of work and spent assisting in an office move. This was one part moving computers, 1 part checking the paper work was correct, one part discussing with military personal what the paper work actually says and means, one part waiting around as so that systems can be moved in such a way not to lose units capability. This will be the normal recipe for what I will be doing for the next 6+ months

Lunch was in the euro mess with a live musical ambiance as one of the American military brass quartet were practicing. The sound echoed thru the hall and made normal conversation somewhat difficult but no one really mind as they were very good.

After work we were told that we had lost 3 men and that night we would have a ramp ceremony. I had some supper at the American mess and soon after went to the glass tiger concert at the board walk… It started with the local military rock band that best described as the local house band. Then a Ottawa singer who I don’t know and wasn’t very good, but she made up with this by having a very minimalist outfit and having a very good backup band. Then the big name glass tiger and all the 40 something’s were up front crowding around trying to get t-shirts. I took the opportunity to take lots of pictures as a way to get practice with shutter speeds and apertures settings. They started the concert one hour early so that not to overlap the ramp ceremony later that night. I went the ramp ceremony as part of the can-cap contingent.

March 5^th

Today was quite and was spent around the shop getting odd jobs done. I finally got to try the burger king here for supper and I was surprised how close there whopper was to home, the menu is much smaller then home but still it’s nice to have. Internet to my tent went down again but I can’t send messages out any way as we are under another communication lock down.

The weather here is staying a bit on the cool side making it quite pleasant even for the dust, With this clear cool wind I can see the mountains around the base clearly for the first time. If I was not locked to the base it might have been interesting to hike to the top of one and see what I could, alas that is but day dreaming.

March 6^th

Quite average day here, I am starting to get use to life here and I guest this is the state of “settled in”. Tried to call bad baron but after calling the number got a military office. I only have his first name and for those who know the military how useless that is. I will have to go back and try to get a last name and rank. But not tonight, as my tent internet is down once again. This is becoming my main pet peeve about this place. There are a few others like Google thinks that you’re in the country that your satellite links to, for example my tent internet bounces to Hong Kong so my default is google.hk. All the pop cans here have the tear drop pull tabs. It’s the little things that remind you that home is 10563 km away give or take a few klicks.

I have meet two of the three resident cats that live on the base. There are from when the Americans first took the base and are kept here to keep the mouse population in check. In Afghanistan ware there is mice there soon is snakes and all the snake species here are venomous.

Food, food, and more food. With free mess and free snacks, free drinks, and the hand full of stores on the board walk it will be a challenge not to gain weight other than none of it is particularly that good.

I am Alive and in Afghanistan

2009-03-07T06:11:00.000-08:00

*** Originaly Posted on Live Journal March 3rd

Just posting to let every one know I am alive and I have made it to the base. The internet here is patchy at best. I am working on getting my internet set up at my tent.

I wanted to compare this place to pennsic but the only comparison is that there both tent cities. I shell never complain about getting lost at pennsic again. Every thing here is the same dusty tan, even if they started off green or white the dust that in the air eventually cakes on to every thing and turns everything to the same color of tan...

My flight here was quite standard, I got lucky and was on a new A380 from London toDubai. I did have a stop over in London and it was hard to think that my first time in

England

and would have to leave just 2 hours later.

March 1st

After landing I had to wait in line to get an id then was bussed over to supply and given my very own flack jacket and helmet, both fit badly. On the way back got my first rocket attack alarm so dived for cover in a bunker and waited for an hour till the all "clear".

Got introduced to the mess cafeteria food I will be living on for the next 6 months. There is 4 different mess here each having different specialties, the euro mess is next to ware I work with the

one close to the tents I sleep at... there is also a British and Asian mess I bit farther out. If I feel like spending some money there is a half dozen places I can buy food here like the timmies, burger king, and a French pastries shop. The Dutch have an eatery and is the only place that servers there food on china with metal forks… I have time to go to all these places for now its back to my tents. Ahh the tents, I have an 8 by 6 foot space for my self in a tent I share with 7 others. My first night was a hard night as my mattress had seen better days and I had not been issued a blanket yet. I was able to get it traded to a better one the next day. On top of that there is the sound of a very active military base that runs 24 hours, like every thing else I will get use to it. The sounds of the pennsic drums sound so sweet in my memories now.

March 2nd

This is the day of rest to allow you to get use to the camp, in reality its the day to get last min paper work done and get driven around from some one in my team. The camp is a blur of C-Cans (Sea Containers), tents, tin buildings, military vehicles and Toyota SUVs. There is very few real land marks to a new person to grasp on to. The dust in the air prevents any one seeing to far on most days I have been told. I had internet set up in the tents but it failed with in a hour, and the connection that’s costing me 70

/month Is 128 kb down, and 32 kb up. The reality of it is that I be lucky to get that. Went to bed early and skipped dinner as I had lost my appetite after the wind changed and the camp got flooded with Ode of sewer from the Russian treatment plant that the base uses.

March 3rd

Did not get as much sleep as I like as the camp got hit by a wind storm during the night. I thought the tent would have been blown away but it’s just made allot of noise. The weather havens tents I am in are quite over built. I work in a small it office that now with the new people is way over crowded and it was a quite day so it gave me a chance to settle in and get use to the place. Got to ride around in the gatters we use to move equipment around. Still have a bit of a cough from the dust but its not as bad as it was on my first day so I am starting to acclimatize to this place. They are right and the time will go quickly.... What we do for money.

P.S. I have been taking pictures But i forgot to upgrade my account on my way out so i probley going to email them someone once i have better idea my internt limitations.

Started Training

2009-03-07T06:05:00.000-08:00

*** Originaly Posted on Live Journal Feb 17th ***

Well For those who have forgotten who nofixedlj is, I am called by Paul by some of my friends but most call me John Moran. This is the start of my journal about my travels to the war lands of the Middle East, aka Kandahar NATO base Afghanistan…

Finished the first two days of pre deployment training including the medical, apparently I am not to stop this “heavy fencing” as my blood pressure has gone down from when I started and is now found in a healthy range.

Lavalin is a night and day from my last employer, its most grounded organization I have been employed by and I actually feel that they are looking out for me, well considering that all of the managers have been out there at one time or another and are not scared to be very blunt about what we are getting into. I love to go into details but now I have to live under the military rules on security, which means that some of the pictures I was hoping to take over there are going to be out of reach, that’s life…

Tomorrow is the gas hut, for those not in the military that’s running around in a very confined space filled with tear gas sporting a gas mask and a bunny suit. The managers who are also our trainers sneak when they say this is a team building exercise … now I have to decide if I want to trim the beard as it may allow some of the gas in … I’ll try to get some pictures to post …

J Moran