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.