Turing To The Dark Side

Welcome back and greetings from Islamabad. Regretably this will probably be another short post. Things have continued to settle in. I have received all my personal property, which is nice because the cable is not working yet. It is supposed to be functional, but such is not the case. Fortunately I brought my movies so I have something to put on the TV. It was rather quiet here by myself. When I first got here there were a couple of others in the house as well (the guy I was releaving and another dude from the office). Since then they have both moved out (one to go back home and the other to a different house). So I am in this big house by myself. I don't mind too much (since I do have my movies) but since we are not supposed to drive by ourselves I have to coordinate rides to work all the time. The powers that be have decided to re-arrange the housing situation which is kind of annoying. They are giving me an assistant in the office and he gets here on the 1st and was supposed to move in here. This was going to be advantages since we would probably be on similar schedules so rides would work and he was actually born here in Pakistan so having him in the house could help with other issues if the arrive. Under the new plan though he will move in with someone else because they don't want two guys from the same shop in the same house and I will get some Army dude. I hope he is cool. Otherwise this could get old.

I have finally given in and turned to the dark side. I have resisted and resited but I just couldn't take it any more. I have finally joined Facebook. As a general principle I find all the social networking sights to be evil. I'm not exactly sure why; it's just an irrasional avertion I guess. I don't like those supermarket club things either. Perhaps it's the hermit in me. I just don't think that everyone necessarily needs to know everything about you all the time. There are just too many of my friends that are on it. I've already had the pleasure of IMing a couple of them and considering how bad I am at e-mailing maybe I will do a better job of staying in touch on a personal level this way. So if you have not already been invited to be a freind on the network it's because I didn't find you and you are cordialy invited to look me up. The big thing for me is going to be making sure I don't waist too much time on it.

The other big news (aside from selling my soul to the internet) is that I will be coming back to the States for a couple visits in February. I go to Jacksonville, Fl the second week and Oxnard, Ca the last week. The bad thing is that I will be coming back here in between the trips and my internal clock is going to he all screwed up after going, literally around the world twice in three weeks. I look forward to seeing all of you that live in those areas. Hopefully I will be able to make it down to San Diego for the weekend after Oxnard. I will be in touch with the details as I get closer.

Well that is about all for me for the moment. I know I still owe you the pictures of Bahrain and I am going to try to take some of Islamabad here soon. It's just that work takes up a lot of the day. I will try to get those to you as soon as I can. Until then feel free to look me up on Facebook and be good. If you can't be good, then be good at it.

Home Sweet Home

Assalamu alaikum (which means "Peace be unto you" in Urdu) and welcome back to my rousing adventures. Well I am slowly getting setled in. As I mentioned in my last post I managed to get here without my baggage, but I managed to get that squared away in a couple days. The only thing left was the couple boxes I shipped with some clothes. After talking to the Personal Property guys they said I could wait a few weeks for them to get a customs waiver or I could go down to the airport and talk to the customs guys in person and get it in that day. As you might expect I chose the latter. The only problem was I would have to drive to the airport.

I mentioned a bit in my last post about the strange situation that is driving in Islamabad. I haven't done too much driving myself; I have been a passanger more times than not, but I have seen a few strange things. I was going back to the airport here to fill out some paperwork so I could get the few boxes I shipped out here and there was a bit of a back up due to a traffic light being out. We were in the righ turn lane (which crosses traffic since they drive on the left side of the road here) and amid the trucks and cars was a flat bed cart being pulled by a donkey. Another morning we were going down one of the roads in town and there was a couple guys leading a camel. I've also seen horses and cows on the road. And just today I was again going to the airport, this time to fly myself, and I saw, and I'm not kidding, a guy walking a small bear. Not a shaggy dog, but a bear. I don't know where he got it but there it was. But as odd as the menagery on the road can be it is nothing compared to the people driving. The guy I releaved here said he got a call from the States from a friend who said he was feeling very low and considering suicide so he called a suicide prevention hotline. The call got out-sourced to Pakistan. When the guy told the operator he felt suicidal they got really excited and asked if he could drive a truck. It's kind of like a strage game of "Frogger". Pedestrians refuse to walk on the sidewalk (which they do actually have in places) and instead insit on walking in the streets, or worse, crossing the street right as you are coming. They will step into the road right in front of you without considering looking first. It's amazing to me that there aren't more people run over then there are. Traffic lanes here are strickly advisory in nature. Drivers often don't bother to even pick a lane and instead use them all. And if there is enough room for a car to fit it becomes a lane. We joke you have to be able to use all four lanes of a two lane road to drive. The Pakistanis are also very big proponents of car pooling You will regularly see 6-8 people in a car or a family of five on a motorcycle (dad driving, a kid on the handle bars in front, a kid behind dad, mom behind that kid sitting side-saddle and holding the baby). On the same trip as the bear sighting I saw a bus filled to over-flowing (literally). There were about 25 school kids riding on top of the bus. Personally I always wanted to ride home from school like that but they kept telling me to keep my arms and legs inside the bus. It would actually be quite impressive if they weren't trying desperately to either run you over or get run over themselves. On second thought it is less like Frogger and more like Burnout.

As I mentioned before, I got in country on the 1st and it took me about sumer and the weather was actually very nice. One thing about being a Gulf State two days to get my internal clock ajusted, so you can imagine that the last thing I really wanted to do was to take another trip. Regretably they didn't ask me and instead scheduled talks between Naval Central Command and the Pakistan Navy on the 9th in the Kindom of Bahrain. It was actually a nice trip (aside from the 6 am flight there and the 12 am flight back). Bahrain is a very small country on the Arabian Gulf and can get very hot in the summer. Fortunately it was not is that they have a good deal of oil and are by and large a very rich country. As a result they have some great building project and some wonderful architecture. Unfortunately, I suck and failed to bring my camera (I should have it sew to my sleave like a pair of mittens). I did get a disposable camera and take some pictures, but have not been able to get them developed. Hopefully I will have them for the next post.

Well that is all for the moment. Sorry there isn't more, but what can I say, there isn't much going on. Perhaps things will get more interesting (in a good way) soon. Until then, be good, and if you can't be good, be good at it.

Happy New Year!!!

Greetings from the “Land Of The Pure” which is what Pakistan means, in case you didn’t know. It’s been an interesting week or so since my last post. As you may recall, I was supposed to fly out the day after Christmas. I was all packed up and ready to go. I put my car in the storage facility and rolled to the airport. My dad drops me off, I walking to the terminal, up to the desk and tell the nice person behind the counter I am going to Islamabad with Chicago as my first stop. He comes bake to me saying probably not. For those of you who weren’t looking at the weather report for Chicago, they had a nasty ice storm on the 25th and were still crawling out from under that and were further going to be beset with fog in the evening. So I called my military travel folks and they told me that with the delays through Chicago there was no way I was going to make any of my connecting flights and the next available flight was on Tuesday the 30th. The good news thus was I got to spend a few more days in America with the folks. The bad news was I had to get a hold of the folks in Pakistan and explain why I was not going to make it. It wasn’t too big a deal since no matter how cool I am I still can’t control the weather and they understood this. The only big deal actually was that when I forwarded my new itinerary I misspelled “delayed” and the program I was using didn’t have a spell check function. The folks here found it great fun in ribbing me for this when I got here; but I am jumping ahead.

The flight, when I finally did get going, was not too bad considering I was flying half way around the world. My new itinerary allowed me to by-pass Chicago and head straight to Dullas International Airport in DC where I proceeded to have a 6 hour layover. Then there was the 13 hour flight to Dubai which is in the United Arab Emirates. I was all the way in the back which for anyone who has flown across an ocean knows is where they put all the families with small children. It actually was not too bad. I had a window seat with no one in the seat next to me, and the kids didn’t scream too much (and I got to see Wall-E three times and read most of “Odd Hours” by Dean Koontz). I was supposed to have a couple hours before flying on to Islamabad, but the plane was 40 minutes late in landing. Also, you don’t get off the plane directly into the terminal in Dubai; they bus you what seemed like a mile to the terminal. This of course took just this side of forever. Next you have to go through security again to get to the ticket counter to get your boarding pass (assuming you can find the ticket counter). The end result was that when I got to the ticket counter there only 40 minutes until the flight was supposed to take off and apparently they close boarding before that time. The guy behind the counter was very helpful in talking with his counterparts to basically hold the plane so I could get on it (he even escorted me to the gate to make sure I got there), but there was no way that my luggage was going to make it. One of the benefits of working at the embassy is that they send an “Expediter” to the airport to help you by-pass the lines at customs and get out more quickly. When I got off the plane and found the nice man holding a list with my name on it I told him that my luggage didn’t make it on to the flight and his response was, “That’s not good” which of course filled me with confidence. Ultimately I arrived in Islamabad three days later on the 1st (the other nice thing about the flight was celebrating the New Year on a plane over the Arabian Gulf) at 2 in the morning with only my coat and carry-on bag in which I had some shirts, but no underwear or socks (a tactical blunder I do not plan on repeating). It only took me two days for the rest of my bags to make it.

I am starting to get settled in. The house I’m in is nice, but there are issues with the hot water and the cable isn’t working. Also, Pakistan is having a serious shortfall in power production resulting in routine power outages. Fortunately we have a generator that kicks on automatically when the power fails. The city itself is interesting for lack of a better word. If you’ve been in a third world country before you would recognize the trash alongside the roads, the buildings that should be torn down except there are still people living there and the general brown tone that permeates everything. It’s kind of strange to see a four lane divided highway with both modern cars and donkey driven carts. It is a city living both in the 18th and 20th century (I wouldn’t say the 21st century).

Regrettably I have not been able to get out and see much of the city. All I have seen has been during the rides to work and the trip back to the airport to get my luggage and unfortunately due to force protection issues I don’t know if/when I will be able to go see anything resembling a sight. Some of you have told me you wanted me to take pictures of the house and car I am using to see the great digs I have here, but again due to force protection issues the powers that be do not want me to do this (and I kind of have to listen to them although I can tell you it is a Toyota Camry). Obviously my first concern is being safe and I do not want to jeopardize my or my roommate’s security by posting something the bad guys can use. Hopefully things will calm down here enough to be able to do at least structured excursions. I will be sure to pass along anything I get to do.

That pretty much brings you up to speed with me. I am still trying to get my internal clock reset to this new time zone (as you can see from the cool clock to the right the States are 10 – 13 hours behind Pakistan). As always, I look forward o any comments you may like to post or if you prefer you can shoot me an e-mail; it remains the same as when I was in the States. Until next time be sure to be good, and if you can’t be good, be good at it.