Merry Christmas

Better than Charlie Brown's tree.

Christmas music was playing at the chow hall today.  You know, to make the holidays at least somewhat festive.  As we were standing in line to get our food, strains of "I'll be Home for Christmas" wafted through the air, which was a curious choice of song.  It was a little scratchy over the speakers, almost like it was being played on a gramophone player, like we were all in some kind of black and white movie, starring Humphery Bogart and Ingrid Magnussen.  You know, back when men were men, women were women, and chivalry wasn't dead.

The woman's voice on the recording sounded ghostly and a little ethereal.  All of us were dead silent, transfixed to the sounds coming out of the speakers, as the woman sang about snow and mistletoe; a wintry Christmas that was completely foreign to me.

Maybe a moment of self reflection was happening.  Maybe people were thinking about the wives, husbands, children, friends, and family that were left behind back at home.  People that are looking at their dinner table and seeing an empty spot where mom or dad, son or daughter used to be.

As the woman with the melancholy voice sang the familiar refrain "I'll be home for Christmas..." one of the guys in my unit said loudly and derisively "well, I won't."

And just like that, the spell was broken.  People in line, holding their trays, forks, knives, and spoons, chuckled, if only wistfully.  And life went on.  Just like it always does here.  Another day, another day. 

And as people started talking again, and the music was drowned out by the general bustle of the chow hall, the last lines of the song were barely heard, and largely ignored by the people in the building:

"I'll be home for Christmas,
If only in my dreams."

Adventures in Rules and Regulations

AIR FORCE INSTRUCTION 36-3103
1 May 1997
Personnel
IDENTIFICATION TAGS

COMPLIANCE WITH THIS PUBLICATION IS MANDATORY

This instruction outlines when and how identification (ID) tags are issued to Air Force members and when they are to be worn (or in the member’s possession).

"I be from Jamaica, mon.  Lord have mercy."

2. Issuance of ID Tags:

2.5.5. Fifth line - Designation of religious preference. Show religion or sect designated. If possible, spell out the preference. If member does not wish to designate a preference or make a statement, emboss NO RELIGIOUS PREF.

Gobble Gobble.

Just like mom used to make.

Another day, another day.  Get up.  Go to work.  Read emails from the command chief of the base and the commander about how they're "honored" to share this Thanksgiving with "warriors" such as ourselves.  In fact, the email from the General was the first time that I ever heard/read somebody use the phrase "fight the good fight" without trying to make fun of someone or without trying to intentionally sound like a douchebag.

Or maybe he was.  I don't know.

But the food was surprisingly good.  Except for the roast beef thing.  It was really dry, but hey, I'm not gonna complain.  It is what it is.

Eat it while you can, because tomorrow they're serving chili mac.

 The Services squadron really pulled out all the stops for Thanksgiving lunch/dinner.  They had a huge table loaded with a sculpture of two swans, a cornucopia, some really weird bust of a native american, complete with the feathers in the hair.  All the tables had white tablecloth on them and the TCNs that worked there (Third Country Nationals, basically the underpaid Bangladeshis and Filipinos who serve our food and clean our toilets) were dressed in white button-down shirts and vests as if we were at some classy eating establishment.  It actually felt like some kind of special occasion; a bit of holiday cheer in the middle of nowhere, in a "sunny undisclosed location in Southwest Asia."

Art in the Desert

Everything is the same here.  Uniformly flat.  Monochromatic.  All the buildings look exactly the same and are painted the exact same color.  The weather is exactly the same every single day.  Everybody dresses the same.  Walks the same.  Talks the same.  I get up in the morning at exactly the same time, 4 am.  I put on PT gear.  I walk to the gym.  I lift weights according to a set routine.  I eat breakfast at the chow hall: three eggs, over medium, with two sausage patties and some bacon, a toasted english muffin with strawberry cream cheese, a bowl of cereal (Total raisin bran or Kashi), two 8 oz bottles of whole milk and an apple juice box.

I put my tray away, I go to my room, change into my uniform: Airman Battle Uniform, desert boots, boonie hat, sunglasses.  I go to work.  I do the same shit.  12 to 14 hour shift.  Come back.  Eat.  Shower.  Turn on my laptop and hope someone back home is online for me to talk to.  Watch a few episodes of Freaks and Geeks.  I fall asleep by 9 or 10 pm.

Rinse and repeat.

There are spots on the base that aren't uniformly bland.  People tend to mark public spaces.  They put squadron stickers from back home on tables, chairs, and rocks.  By claiming the space and making it their own, maybe they are trying to assert their existence in a throng of people who dress, walk, talk, and look exactly the same in a rigidly structured grid of identical concrete structures whose only distinguishable features are the small brown signs by the doors marking the number of the buildings.

Maybe it's because of the fact that in deployed environments, people are inherently transient.  Air Force deployments usually last from six months to up to a year.  And although when you're here, it sounds like a very long time, in the grand scheme of things, it's really not.  The bootprints that you made will eventually be covered over by the marks of other people that come after you.  And as time goes by, this experience will become nothing more than a memory; a six month fantasy land in a place you will never see again.

So it's understandable why people would want to leave their mark on the base.  All the stickers and the murals and the signs are basically more evolved forms of the "Keoni wuz hea!" scrawlings that you see in public bathroom stalls and on desks in public schools.

Ferocious!

Surrounding much of the base, especially the dormitory areas at the Coalition Compound, are concrete barricades spaced a few feet apart from each other, presumably to prevent drivers (either US/Coalition or "hajji terrorists") from ramming into living areas.  The barricades are usually only a few feet tall but some of them are pretty high and different units that were deployed here have appropriated the barricades and left their marks on them.  Some of them range from looking like third grade finger paintings to works of art.

I'm assuming those tick marks on the bottom denote how many things they blew up or planes they shot down.  That's usually how it goes.  By the way, the American flag, to no one's surprise, is a common theme in most of the paintings.

The Grim Reaper is another common character in several of the murals.  This mural is for the ammo guys. I'm not exactly sure what unit they're in.  Something to think about is that, back at home, whenever I'm working at Hickam in the Air National Guard, when I see the F-22s take off, the pilots are pretty much just patrolling or training.  Over here, when a B-1B takes off, it's not going on a training run and it's not patrolling.  When it takes off, it's going out there to break things and hurt people.  Everything on this base is geared towards supporting that mission, from finance and military pay people, to the comm guys (me), to the ammo guys who actually load the bombs that get dropped on people in places not very far from here.

I'm not sure how I feel about that yet.

More Grim Reaper stuff.  This is from Security Forces.  You can tell by the "SF" armband on the figure in the painting. 

I thought this one was interesting.  And I can totally see some cultural studies people in the English department going apeshit over this.

I wanted to take the time to compose these pictures better, but I suck at photography, and I was taking these pictures standing in the middle of the road, and I didn't want to get flattened by a passing truck or an Army humvee.

A Postcard (badly composed).

For Erin.

The sand over here isn't the same as the sand back home.  It's not really sand, as in crunchy beach sand with little sea shells that kids would collect and take home.  There are no sand crabs crawling out of holes, skittering towards the shoreline and disappearing into the water. Curiously absent are the sounds of surf crashing on to the shore, kids laughing, barbecues, sand castles, and interaction with the land itself as a playground.  Bootprints instead of footprints.

It's all just dust and silt.

Hurry Up and Wait

Shannon Airport, Ireland

I hate flying.  I absolutely hate it.  Life is pretty tough when you're almost 6'2 and you're stuck in an airplane with 160 other people for over 12 hours total of traveling time from Virginia to Qatar (excluding the 11 hours it took from me to fly from Hawaii to Virginia to begin with).  A lot of the deployment process so far has just been waiting.  Go here to the AMC terminal on Naval Station Norfolk.  Do NOT be late.  Hurry and check in.  Hurry and do this.  Hurry and do that.  Sit there and wait.

Get on the plane.  Let's go, let's go!

Sit there and wait.

Two hour layover in Ireland.  Oh baby.  We go drink!

"Attention in the plane.  This is your captain  speaking.  I've just been informed by the colonel that there will be a zero tolerance policy for drinking alcohol.  So please, stretch out your legs, relax, and have fun, but do not consume any alcoholic beverages."

WHAT??  I'm in fucking Ireland and I can't drink a beer?

Presumably it's because they don't want us to get drunk and then fly into what technically is a war zone.  The Guiness was like 9 euros a cup though.  I'm not sure what that translates to in American dollars, but I'm sure that it's pretty damn outrageous. 

 A dialogue that actually happened in real life.

Person A:  What's those words above the English part of the sign?
Person B:  I dunno.  Must be some foreign language or something.
Person A:  Maybe it's dutch.
Person B:  Naw, man.  I think it's like French, or Spanish, or something.
Me:  I think it's Gaelic.

*brief pause.

Person B:  You sure it's not French or Spanish?  It looks like it to me.
Me:  Yeah, it's not.
Person B:  I think it is.
Me:  I took five semesters of French in college and two years of Spanish in high school.  It's not.
Person A:  What's Gaelic?
Me:  It's the language that the indigenous peoples of Ireland spoke before they got fucked by the English.
Person A:  The British fucked the Irish?
Me:  Yeah, like the Americans fucked the Hawaiians.

*brief pause

Person A:  How did they fuck 'em?
Me:  From behind.
Person A:  You Hawaiian, Sergeant Yi?
Person B:  Of course he's Hawaiian, stupid.  He told us earlier he's from Hawaii.

178 days left and counting