12-21-09

I woke up so early this morning, about 2:30 am, I am not sure how many guys I woke up trying to find my stuff so I could go and take a shower. I went to the little shack that sells stuff and bought a towel and soap and these gnarly little shower flip flops last night but I still had it in the plastic bag this morning. After the shower I went and got online in the MWR. Then I sat and watched a movie for a while, and then got back on the internet for another 20 min. I felt bad about taking two turns because even at 4:00 in the morning there is still a line, so I watched some more of another movie to kill time. You don’t get to make requests about what to watch next and there is always a movie playing so sometimes it is a pretty stupid movie. Finally 5:30 rolled around and I could go to breakfast.
Most of the day was classes, at the end of the day we took a bus tour around the base. We went to the PX and I found a shop that sells cell phones and local sim cards. There is also a place to get your haircut, a burger king, a dairy queen and a pizza hut and about a dozen little shops selling polished rocks and flags and hookah’s and local apparel. There is a north face store where I got some pants, underwear and socks. I feel so much better knowing I can call home!

Pictures from Dubai

12-20-09

I packed my bags and went to the airport with Roy the other guy whose bag is lost. At the airport the guy behind the desk said that they don’t know where our bags are. They gave me 180 Durham for my inconvenience, that’s about 50 dollars. Then they said that when they found our bags they would forward them to us. We left that terminal and went to our outbound flight terminal, which is a $10 cab ride. At that one there were Indian guys in front of me who didn’t understand how the metal detector worked. They would go through and it would beep, so off comes the belt, beeps again and out comes the change from their pockets, beeps again and off comes there bracelets. All three of the guys in front of me did the same thing.
The airplane we took from Dubai to Bagrahm looked like one of those planes that get parked in the desert, one of those airplane junk yards. Well they dusted that old girl off and crammed it full of contractors. Hot, sweaty, unwashed guys (maybe four women) with no seating assignment. It was the greyhound of the sky’s.
Two and a half hours later with a crew that didn’t speak English, and a guy next to me that wouldn’t shut up about the lineage of modern guns that rivaled biblical accounts, we landed at Bahgrahm air field (BAF).
We were escorted to a holding area where they took our ID’s and had us wait for an hour and a half. They let us out (about 25 of us), from there we walked down the street and collected our luggage from a pallet in the dirt on got on a couple of busses headed to our camp. We had a 15 minute bus ride, no one was on the bus to tell us what we were looking at, and it was all a bunch of dirty containers and plywood buildings as far as I could tell. When we got to the camp we all had to dig out our CAC cards to show the guard. They let us through and stopped the bus in front of a plywood building next to a sand bag covered bunker and in between two rows of empty containers double stacked and clearly for housing. That plywood building was billeting, we met someone from HR who told us to head in there and get our bunk assignments and some bedding. My new home Tent 15 bunk 5 bottom, the furnishings for my new home are one garbage bag containing 1 pillow, 1pillow case, 1 set of twin sheets, 2 blankets. The HR lady was nice and smiled a lot, she showed us to our tent where we dropped off our stuff, and then she gave us a tour. It is a lot like summer camp but without the fun parts. There is a trailer with toilets and sinks, another with showers and sinks, a plywood hut to drop of your laundry another to pick it up. These guys are really particular about the laundry, you have to fill out your forms in duplicate and they have to done exactly the way they want or your bag will get left in the laundry shack. There is a big dining hall, and a ¼ mile from there is the billeting office and the moral welfare recreation (MWR) building. The MWR is great to have, there are 10 computers that you can sign up to use for 20 minutes at a time, there is a big TV that plays movies, there is a little break room that has coffee, tea and popcorn. Past all that is a weight room, all free weights but most of the lighter ones have been stolen so you have to be ready to lift heavy.
It is 7:30 but I am so tired I am going to bed.

12-19-09

I lost a day, I lost my bags I feel very sad.
Waiting in the lobby of this hotel, I just now noticed how many people are employed here. I must have seen at least a dozen people working at 3:30 in the morning. The labor must be super cheap.
Dubai is really interesting, my hotel is in a crumby part of town and all I seemed to see were Indian men. Very few women and they all seem to be Philippino. One guy I am with bought a cell phone, so that he can make calls when he in on base with sim cards that locals sell, when he turned the phone on it was in Arabic. He bought if from a pair of Pilipino girls selling them from purses. When we went back to the hotel no one working there spoke Arabic so he couldn’t get it switched over to English.
The other thing I don’t see is ice. I have been to two fast food places with the other guys and their sodas didn’t come with ice. Then we went to a starbucks so I could get an iced mocha and they only had hot drinks. I told the guy it was 85 I didn’t want a hot coffee and said “sorry sir” and that was that, he didn’t know who had cold coffee.
I went back to the hotel and headed to the bar, it was about 10 pm. I drank beers with the guys I am going to Bahgram with until about 1am. I had to leave for the airport at 4am so I went up to my room and got on the internet and sent some e-mails, took a shower and then a nap. I hadn’t meant to nap so I woke up scared that I had missed my plane.

12-18-2009

Manchester was not my favorite place to fly into, but after a kerfuffle at the transfer counter I got myself a full English breakfast. It was really good. I had a couple of pints at the airport, and then we got on Emirates Airlines. It is so very nice, there were drinks and a really good dinner, plus your choice of six newspapers and a dozen magazines all for no extra charge, plus they gave us headphones. They are so nice. I am so, so tired, I haven’t had more than a little nap since I got on that first plane.

I finally got to the Fortune Hotel in Dubai. Now I understand why I couldn’t find it when I Googled it. This place is a serious shit hole! I mean damn they couldn’t find us a motel 6 or something?

12-17-2009

The love shack was the closest place to get food from our hotel.

Woke up two hours after my wakeup call should have happened. Found my phone bill slipped under my door, good thing too because I was going to make a couple more calls! Went over to Starbucks and Radio Shack to get the wifey a last minute gift. I bought some comfy shoes too. I am not really looking forward to 33 hours of traveling!
I am getting to know a couple of guys and they are really nice. I think there is a comrodery between everyone. None of us are glad to be going, but we all want to make the best of it.

Plane travel kind of sucks, at least the boarding the plane part. They charge to check a bag so everybody tries to carry on and it’s such a log jam! Plus there is no fucking way a guitar is a carry on! The guy sitting next to me is from Malia Spain, he is cool. A good person to have next to you, interesting but not imposingly chatty. I got bulkhead seating, I love that!

When the pilot says winds out of the north, who does that actually mean anything to? I mean, I appreciate the heads up, but I can do shitall with that nugget of information. I wonder if I will be able to leave the airport in London. I hate that I will be there and can’t even look around. If I can I might get a cab to drive me around for an hour.
It was so nice to get to talk to the wifey for a little in Philadelphia. I really miss her already. I miss the kids too, so much! I don’t think it’s going to be possible to go see Buckingham on this trip, damn.

People will seriously eat almost anything as long as they didn’t pay for it. Really… that was the most disgusting chicken I have ever tasted. I am pretty sure there was sand in it, and everyone I could see cleaned their plates. What the eff?

12-16-2009

I had an early start today, I went down to grab a bite from the continental breakfast. I had a super gross muffin, which I ate really fast because I thought I was running late. Then they had to break us up into two groups to take the van to the base, I was on the second van. We drove to the base and when we got there our guy had already pulled numbers for us and I got the first one. I waited two and a half hours to get my military ID, as I sat there, this Scottish guy Gary who is a mechanic from Georgia, and I were talking. I had to keep asking him to repeat himself, he said “Whaa yeou canney undeertan me ahksent” and I told him it was pretty thick but it was more that he mumbles than the accent. He agreed that he mumbles and we kept chatting. He told me about his three and a half year old son. One night stand who is the bosses daughter, we exchanged phone pictures and he told me about how his son got his Christmas present early, a DS, and how he didn’t eat for two days because he was playing it. He told me that the boy would only eat McDonalds and that for those two days he only ate five fries.

Then it was my turn to go get my card. The fellow that took me back and made my card must have been in his late fifties, beer belly and was rocking the GAP homeless line of clothes; I think it really stuck out against the crispness of his military counterparts. As he was imputing all my info he only looked up from his belly to the keyboard and then reached over and grabbed one of two harmonicas. And whipped out short and quiet prison riffs in-between questions. I was trying to make polite conversation and said one of them was pretty good. He told me that he had to play quietly because someone in a nearby cubical had complained, but since he had a captive and clearly interested audience I got my very own Christmas concert.

Got my card and was the last one on the bus back, shotgun. The hotel driver took us by a house on the way back that was decorated with Miller lite cans, the effort that someone had taken to create a display like that was just unbelievable. When we got back we chatted a little with the others in my group.

The nurse was the first one of the people coming to talk to us to get there. I had five shots to get. The HR lady gave us the gist of what was going to happen. Nobody really seems to know the whole picture, they only know what their part is she told us that we are employees of an off-shore company and that she has nothing to do with them and that we should direct any questions to them. She also said that we should not get over there and forget about our wives and girlfriends because she hates getting those phone calls. She said it’s not fun to have to tell them that she doesn’t know where we are or had to reach us and that she doesn’t know why we haven’t called.

Then they gave us some cash for incidentals and food. And the last guy went over policies and procedures.

I was over about 3:45; I went back to the room and made some calls. Called a guy to make a dump run, called mom and the wife, I love her so much, and I called my brother.
In all I rang up $119 in phone calls.

After that I walked to a bar and had a burger and fries, because I figured it would be my last chance for a while. I had a couple of Blue Moons and chatted with the bartender. She was nice and mostly indifferent until I told her about my trip. She turned up the sincerity after that, she bought me a shot and I had another beer to smooth it out. I had a tipsy walk back to the hotel after that. Got back and made a few more calls. Went to bed kind of late, it’s so awkward to sleep alone when you’re used to your best friend and your son in bed with you.