Life Lessons from the Chow Hall

Croutons do not belong in a Mexican Taco Salad.  Gyros tastes pretty good wrapped in a whole wheat tortilla.  Banana flavoured milk should be eliminated from the earth.  Polish sausage is 79% fat and considered a "low performance" food.  These are the important life lessons I've picked up from my compound's dining facility ("DFAC").

The Kuwaiti cow shouldn't be excited about banana milk

After a month, I'm consistently amazed by the variety of food that we get here--4 meals a day, all you can eat.  Recent options included: made-to-order omelets, salad bar, burgers, Eggplant Parmesan, steak/lobster (every Friday), grill items, you name it.  Sure, many people complain about the repetition (and, admittedly, the vegetables aren't sustainably grown on an organic farm)--but realistically, as the more forthright people will proclaim, "this IS Afghanistan!"

Supply chain consultants (Jordan) would have a field day mapping out how you consistently get fresh tomatoes on a daily basis to 25,000 people (on my compound alone) in one of the most far-flung locations on earth.  Earlier on, I suggested you look at a map--check again, and this time think supply-lines.  Do you use railroads, airplanes, trucks, or caulk the wagon and float it across (an Oregon Trail call-out for folks from my generation)? Factor in hostile neighbors.  Then add, oh, about 150,000 other foreigners to feed (outside our base); include all of the ammunition, weapons, and military equipment (we are fighting a war, people); don't forget about gasoline, furniture, mom's fresh baked cookies in care packages, etc, etc.  Yeah, pretty impressive.

Okay, now think at another level--virtually all of the pre-packaged goods are written in Arabic, meaning that they come from the Near East (mostly the Gulf states); but wait, reality check--how do they get mango sorbet, Coca-Cola syrup, and dairy products in small desert Emirates?  The reality is that even these supplies are simply shipped from elsewhere, packaged in the Middle East, then re-shipped to eventually land on my eager paper plate.

If you haven't given yourself a migraine developing a Microsoft Visio diagram yet, all I can tell you is this: somebody, somewhere is making a killing making sure that my buffalo chicken wings are crispy, my grapefruit is ripe, and my Iced Tea is properly sweetened.  I wish I were that guy.

Oh yeah, which brings me back to banana milk. Who decided it would be be a good idea to put banana flavouring in milk?  Probably the same dummy who invented banana flavoured candy, marshmallow Peeps, and black licorice.  In my democracy, I'm voting all of the aforementioned items off the island.

Come Fly With Me, Lets Fly, Lets Fly Away...

Coming home from blowin' stuff up.  The view from our perch.

"Oh dang, somebody's gonna get all blowed up!" exclaimed Gunny (Gunnery Sargent). Roaaaaaaaaar for 1 long minute as the afterburners fire up on the first jet as it speeds down the runway and flies a few times overhead.  Then the second one, as I practically go deaf.  Crack-crack-crack-crack as the helios (helicopters) launch upwards.  Then go the turbo props and UAV's (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles).   Oh yeah, something big is about to go down!

Despite the boredom that comes with being stuck 24/7 on a compound, being on an air force base has its ways of breaking up the motonony.  One bonus of our little nook is a "watchtower" (someone built a wooden platform on top of our metal trailers) that gives a clear sightline to the runway and mountains around us.  Of course, in some senses its torture--kind of like being the doggy in the window of a pet shop.  We get to admire the striking panoramas of the Hindu Kush mountains, covered in snow, and dream about the ski resorts we'd build if only this country got its act together.  We also get to see when major ops (operations) take off.  Of course, we never have any idea where they're going or what they're doing--but when you suddenly see a bunch of different types of aircraft take off in sequence, you know that somebody pissed somebody off!

It takes a few days to get used to sleeping through all the noise,  but I've been well trained by the melodious sonnets of DC's ambulances and police cars, so I think it'd be harder for me to sleep if I DIDN'T hear such a ruckus...

The (Hindu) Kush Life

Welcome to Club Fed.  All you can eat food, 24/7? Depends on which of the 5 dining halls do you feel like tonight.  Gym? Just stroll along the freshly shined concertina wire and take your pick of equipment.  Movies?  Which of the 10,000 on file do you want to watch tonight?  Beauty Salon, Taco Bell, Jewelry shop, University of Maryland classes, massage parlour....check, check, check, and check. Beautiful snow-capped mountains?  360 degree view.

"A" marks the spot.  Yeah, thats me, all itty bitty down there.

Hold on a second before you enlist in this all-inclusive wonderland, as every Yin has a Yang.  First, every second of your life occurs behind barbed wire and blast walls.  No running down the block to pickup a kebab at the corner stand. And these "buildings" I speak of are either tents, trailers, or metal shipping containers that have been converted into living spaces (and not in the posh way that the Crate & Barrell catalog describes "living spaces").  Thats right, Mom and Dad, I've finally worked my way out of the degenerate slums of Orange County, and after two degrees and 10 years of work experience, I'm finally getting my chance to "move on up" and live in a trailer park.

To generate heat in the cold winters, Afghans burn everything, and I mean everything (didn't you know that plastic and nylon make wonderful firewood?); this means that the whole valley is covered in a lingering toxic haze that makes me yearn for the comparatively pristine LA smog of my childhood. And I finally have some sympathy for my lawyer friends, now that my work schedule is 12 hours a day, every day.  Yeah, like I had to change the settings in my Outlook software to show my work week as Monday-Sunday rather than Monday-Friday. That kind of schedule. 

Anyway, week 1 is officially toast.  Here's to the next 23.

Military Airways: The Most Unique Way to Fly...

Military airports are simply off the hook. That's partially because they have a destination list that makes London Heathrow look provincial. Where else does your flight departure board read: Kirkuk, Bagram, Baghdad, Kuwait, Ramstein, Baltimore, Kandahar, Kunduz, Manas...okay, so maybe they're not all places I want to visit (especially B'more), but at least you can chalk up some exotic points. I'm still trying to interpret the blank stare I got from the lady checking boarding passes for my C-17 when I asked if they're part of Star Alliance--I guess its just something I'll have to investigate when I get home. Okay, so the flight itself is kind of uncomfortable (a cloth fold-down chair, turned sideways, with a metal bar "conveniently" placed under your legs), but I did have pallets of bombs and a gi-huge-ic propeller staring at me the entire flight. Not sure why that stuff excites me, especially considering I grew up so far from anything military in the CA burbs, but I guess it's part of being a guy. So in sum, I'm finally on the ground. A few more stops until my destination, but here nonetheless.

My new diet plan

Acai berries for weight loss are, like, so 2010.  Just go overseas and eat in the compound's cafeteria, and you're bound to quickly grab a nasty little bug that'll have you droppin pounds in no time.  I guess it serves me right for being the lazy guy who was looking forward to having all of his food shopping, preparation, and cleaning done for him.  Well, that and I chose to eat Mexican food that was prepared by Indonesians in the Middle East.  Assuming I recover soon, me and my svelte body will be on that plane and (finally) getting to my destination in the next few days....

Kickoff

As a kid, everyone knew that if you dig a hole deep enough, you'd end up in China.  Or at least that's what we said in CA, maybe East Coast kids were told other lies.  As it turns out, I would've ended up off the coast of Madagascar (http://map.talleye.com/bighole.php)....but they don't really teach kids about places like that in 1st grade.  I guess they were trying to get across the point that its really far away.  Kind of like Afghanistan.  No seriously--after you see how far away it is on a map, take a moment to check out its neighbors.  Besides the obvious friendlies like Iran and Pakistan, you've got all of the former Soviet republics that few people could list in a pub trivia quiz (though I'm proud to say that I can).  So apparently I decided that beautiful, bucolic DC wasn't giving me enough action and I needed to go to a faraway place most people are stoked not to think about.  Granted, its only 6 months, which is nothing compared to some of our military forces.  But who knows, maybe I'll fall in love with it's enchantment and stay longer?