Random thoughts.

These are just random thoughts so they'll probably jump around a lot, sorry.

A lot of the people in the Army are old. Really old (for the military). And low ranking for their age. I regularly notice Specialists and Privates (basically the same rank as me or lower) but they look like they are in their 40's easy. I think you can enlist in the Army up until 45 or so. Seems they are taking just about anyone they can right now including convicted felons. Some of the sergeants look like they are in their late 50's / early 60's at least.

I can see why no one wants to join the Army though. They are here for a year at a time and I'm already itching to leave after 3 months. Actually I was itching to leave after about a week of being here but I'm definitely ready to go now. Suicides are higher now than they have ever been in the Army. That's probably also because they have lowered their standards a lot because they need people. Some people that shouldn't have made it through boot camp are here now and can't handle it.

AFN (Armed Forces Network) is our TV and radio station. They port in all the US channels via satellite like CNN and MSNBC and some sitcoms from the networks, but they don't air any commercials from back home. Instead they create their own. They are mostly cheesy and ridiculous. Most are just reminders for us for things about OPSEC (Operations Security), drink lots of water, don't use hot plates in your room, etc. A surprising amount is basically propaganda trying to entice the Army members into re-enlisting and staying in the Army.

I really really miss fast Internet. I probably miss that more than anything other than my wife. It is extremely unreliable here as well. It is currently down in my room so I am typing this from the Hot Spot, our recreation area. The WiFi here is even slower than in my room. I spend basically all my free time on the Internet both here and at home so not having a fast connection is really frustrating to me.

There are some silly rules in deployed locations and some things that don't make sense. For instance we are told we can only take 3 - 5 minute showers and are supposed to turn the water off between lathering and rinsing, etc to conserve water, as it all has to be hauled in by truck. However, we waste hundreds of gallons a day making sure all of our vehicles are nice and washed and clean. We are in Iraq. It is a desert. Before you even get the truck back to the parking lot it has a layer of dust on it. Also we had a Combat Dining-in the other day which is a big event with food and games and things, basically a morale booster. But the main theme of the event was a giant water fight with water guns, water balloons, fire extinguishers, etc. If we can wash vehicles and have water fights why can't I take a longer shower or leave the water on while I brush my teeth? Silly.

Any of you that know me, know that I am generally very quiet and introverted. This almost always results in people thinking something is wrong with me or that I am angry or grumpy. It's a good sign that I am really quiet when even a young Iraqi who speaks maybe 10 words of English comes up and asks me what's wrong or why I don't talk. Iraqis seem to be very social, especially around meals, so maybe it stands out even more in their culture. I just thought it was interesting that even the Iraqis notice that I don't talk much.

Also being quiet has been a big challenge here, as I am regularly paired up with a new person every few days, usually sitting in a truck or standing in a building together for hours and hours at a time. I don't even know how many times I've heard "You don't say much, do ya'?" over the past three months. I have yet to come up with a good response to this that isn't insulting to the other person, so usually I just smile and nod.

Relatedly, anyone reading this should probably read this article, which does a great job of explaining how I work and why I'm sure some of you have thought I was angry or grumpy or rude at some point. Sure, I could have actually been angry or grumpy or rude I suppose, but normally it is due to the above. I am generally an extraordinarily laid-back person and don't get angry easily. One of the guys I hang out with here even jokingly blamed me for him almost getting in a fight with someone because I wasn't around, and my presence has a calming effect on him he says, as I don't react to anything. I couldn't even get into a fight with the trainer during my ASP baton training, as I kept talking him out of the fight instead.

The most combat I have seen in Iraq (other than the flies) has been playing Call of Duty 4 every day in the Hot Spot. We have a network of a dozen computers where we can all sit down on a network and shoot each other. It's great fun. Also it's funny to see a room in Iraq full of people wearing military fatigues armed with M16s and M9 handguns sitting at computers pretending to be at war in a computer game. There is probably a joke there about the Air Force being the "Chairforce" but I will not make it.

Easter

It is Easter, even in Iraq.

I went to the dining facility for lunch today and they had easter decorations hanging all over the place, from the ceilings, on the tables, the tablecloths, etc. There was candy on the tables and spread all over the building. At each little food station there was candy scattered around that you could take with you. By the soup there was a giant pile of it, enough to fill an entire folding table. They also had sparkling grape juice on the tables since we can't have alcohol.

Pretty cool that they make an effort to celebrate all of the holidays for us even over here.

Sorry I couldn't take any pictures, they don't allow photography in the dining facilities.

Flies and safety

The war with the flies continues. Today I was swatting some flies when one of the Iraqis came over and handed me a fly swatter. It was a nice gesture. Fly swatters are considerably better at killing flys than boonie hats. The picture above is a very very small sampling of the flies I killed today. I got two-in-one four times, and killed three with one shot once. Apparently the flys are mating or whatever flies do to reproduce, as I frequently see them on top of each other or flying around looking like they are fighting. This makes it easy to get the multiple kills with one shot. And if you think about it I'm really wiping out an entire family lineage of them, so my kill count should really be quite a bit higher.

Next we have some funny safety problems on the job site, like this cord laying on the ground which leads to...

This welding machine which apparently has lost its outer casing and is just laying on a piece of cardboard. I'm not an electrician or a welder, but I am pretty certain that these things generally come in a protective case for a reason and really aren't designed to have the scary looking coils and wires exposed laying on the ground. This is probably the same welder from an earlier post where one of the guys was holding the ground to a metal pole.

The Iraqis seem very generous. They share their "samoon" (not sure how to spell it) with us which is the bread I took a picture of earlier. Once they even gave me the last piece when they didn't have any left. I didn't know it was the last piece or I wouldn't have taken it, but they were nice about it. And on several occasions when an Air Force member has complimented an Iraqi on their watch or ring or hat or something, just trying to be nice, the Iraqi immediately takes it off and hands it to them. One guy I worked with was joking with one of the Iraqis and told him to give him his watch and ring and even wedding ring, which the Iraqi handed over almost immediately. My co-worker of course gave it all back, but it was interesting that they'd give up anything so freely.

On the other hand you have to watch them though, as I've seen them trying to trade people watches, where the Iraqi gives a $10 watch in exchange for a $60 watch. The Iraqi that gave me the fly swatter to use also came back later and jokingly said "I... two dollars" meaning he wanted me to pay him $2 for the use of his fly swatter.

Mud

We got a big rain storm a few days ago and it is just now drying out. When it rains here even a little bit it turns into a mud pit, and when it rains most of the night and next day, it's just an unbelievable mess. As I've said before, the mud is more like glue than traditional mud. Actually there are several types, the glue mud, and then the melted chocolate milk shake mud, which is mostly what covers the roads.

While working at one of the sites one of the bosses came to get us to help get a truck unstuck, so we went out thinking we'd just need to push/pull a little Nissan truck or something, but this 18-wheeler is what had gotten stuck. He tried to do a U-turn on a tiny road and went through the mud but didn't come out. So we found some folks with a huge front-end loader and got them to pull it out.

It's not that exciting, sorry. I was hoping the chain would break or the truck would somehow catch on fire inexplicably or the front axle would just fall off, but none of that happened. If it had though, I would have video taped it and you would be watching it now. So just imagine that happened.

I'm still here.

Hello. I'm still in Iraq. Sorry I haven't updated the blog in a long time. I was finishing up my two college classes and had a 10 page paper to write for each class, so that took up most of my non-working time. Plus I'm kind of running out of things to talk about. Things are very much the same day in and day out here. You go to work, get off, do whatever it is you do in your off time, then repeat. Of course it's the same back home, but you have a lot more options of what to do with your free time there. Here are some random photos. My photo taking has died down a lot too. Everything is just brown. Brown dirt, brown sky, brown people, brown rocks, brown brown brown.

This is the bootleg DVD store at the "Ur Market" which is a little building just outside the interior gate of the base where they sell such things. Sorry for the really blurry pictures, I didn't want to use the flash in case they didn't appreciate me taking pictures.

The production values are actually quite high, considering they are all downloaded off the internet or ripped from commercial DVDs. They come in nice cardboard boxes with gold embossed lettering. You can buy an entire series (series, not season) of a TV show for about $20. For instance, every X-files that ever aired, or every Everybody Loves Raymond, etc. I have not purchased any to see the quality but from what I hear it's pretty good.

They also sell collections, usually by actor. So you can buy "The best of Brad Pitt" or "The best of Angelina Jolie" or even "The best of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie" and each one will have about 30 of their movies on it, probably for $20 or less. They have some crazy collections like "The best 700 Disney cartoons", etc. They come in huge boxes with like 40 DVDs.

They also have brand new movies, usually as soon as they come out in theaters, as camera rips. It's the same stuff you can download online but they just charge you $2 for the individual movies.

The Ur Market sells other things as well, like electronics, knives, trinkets, etc. The main draw is the movies though. Some guys love to go up there and barter with them and get them lower their price to a fraction of what it was. I suck at bartering though.

This is a sign in one of the cadillacs warning us to wash our hands or face the runny poo. There's a little picture of Mr. Hanky on the bottom. For those that don't watch South Park, he's a little piece of talking poo that comes around Christmas time, bringing presents to good boys and girls that eat food with a lot of fiber. Wikipedia, of course, knows all about him. He is also pretty hilarious.

We had another dust storm storm bad enough to turn the world orange again the other day. Very very windy as well. Luckily the site I was working at that day was mostly inside. Again, those pictures are unedited, it really did look that orange when you stepped outside. That is of course if you could see at all because your eyes would be full of dust as soon as you stepped out the door.

More dust.

Here's the little kitty that hangs out by Ciano's, the Italian restaurant. The Iraqis I was working with today thought it was cute and motioned for me to take a picture of it.

Again if anyone has any questions about anything over here let me know. I'll answer if I can, though a lot of things are off limits for obvious reasons.

2 Years

Today is my 2nd Air Force anniversary. On this day two years ago I got on a plane, got off a plane, rounded a corner, met my first Military Training Instructor, thought "what the hell did I get myself into?", and started a new life, career and journey.

Here are some things I've done in the past two years:


Raised my hand and repeated the following:

I, Derek Rose, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

Completed basic training, received a small coin that represented my hard work from the past month and a half. Some people actually enjoy the experience, I did not. It is much easier to look back on it and only remember the easy or good times, and forget the bad. It's nice that memory frequently works that way. Some bad things at the time have become good memories though, like going through the gas chamber. Doing jumping jacks in a room full of tear gas doesn't sound fun, but looking back on it it's nice to remember.


Completed tech school. This is where I learned my actual job and transitioned from the insane environment of basic training back to real life. Was happy to learn that the Air Force doesn't make you fold your clothes that way forever.


Got re-married to my sweetie-face on the beach with three guests and a minister. Went out for french toast after. Good day.

Went back home and got to see family and friends and the recruiter that brought me into the military. On the way, in the airport, noticed a group of lost looking kids carrying a brown manila envelope much like the one I had taken to basic training a couple of months previously, and smiled to myself.

Arrived at my first duty station, met "real" Air Force people and breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn't going to be like basic training or tech school forever.

Found out I couldn't even enter the building where I would work until I got my full security clearance, was assigned to the Protocol office, which basically handles the events involving distinguished visitors such as Generals, high-ranking civilian government officials, etc.

Unfurled a giant American flag at a Colorado Rockies baseball game in uniform in front of thousands of people.

Provided security at a giant music festival and a Denver Broncos game to raise money for organizations on base. Got to sit right next to the field and watch the game, which was very cool even though I don't care about football.


Provided security and assistance with a visit from the then-President of the USA, George Bush. Saw Air Force One, hung out with Secret Service Agents, got one of their special pins, saw George Bush as he scurried from his car to the plane and gave a weak wave to the crowd of 300 military members standing outside freezing for a chance to shake his hand. Got a box of special Air Force One M&Ms candies.

Spent a week learning to be an income-tax preparer for military personnel, helped process almost a million dollars of tax returns for people at my base. Also manned a helpline for the local news station answering tax questions to represent the military. Learned that IRS agents have a weird sense of humor, if any at all.

Completed eight college classes and one CLEP, all completely free and paid for by the military.

Finally got my security clearance and went through a couple more months of training before finally doing my job.

Did my job.

During a timed test for my monthly job training, received a call asking me if I wanted to go to Iraq. Called my wife, got the go-ahead, called him back, accepted, finished my test.


And the rest has been written on this blog.

Busy day

Had a busy day today, a lot of combat and a lot of killing. Scored 82 confirmed kills, as you can see in the list above (Yes, I really did kill that many bugs today, and yes I really was bored enough to document each one. My partner killed about the same amount).

It is getting hotter here, up to 95 degrees today, so the bugs are coming out. Iraqi bugs are not like American bugs. Iraqi bugs are pissed off, apparently have radioactive super-strength, and do not die by traditional bug-killing methods.

Our truck of course does not have A/C, so we have the windows rolled all the way down or the doors open, just to survive, which makes a nice big entrance for the bugs to come through. The flies here are incredibly aggressive. A simple "shoo" normally doesn't work. They'll just sit on your hand while you wave it around, most likely laughing at you in a tiny fly laugh. If they do fly off, they immediately land somewhere else on your body, undeterred by the threatening waving going on above them. They are also apparently armor plated. The bigger flies have shiny blue/green armor on, so I assume they are the soldier flies. The smaller armor-less flies are likely scouts that report back to base and bring in the heavy fighters. The flies do seem to work together as well. When we'd move the truck to a new place, there wouldn't be any flies for the first few minutes. Then one or two would trickle in, but apparently they called for reinforcements, as soon we would be swatting at them constantly.

We began the day swatting with our hats, but we soon realized that wasn't a great idea for two reasons. First, we were getting fly guts on our hats from some of the more gruesome kills, which was gross. Second, the hat frequently did not kill the flies! We would smack them, and assume they were dead, as they would lay on their backs and not move, as a dead fly should. However a few minutes later, we'd notice a wounded fly walking around in circles, as if drunk or suffering from a minor concussion. The only way to kill an Iraqi fly is to squish it until it becomes small pieces of an Iraqi fly held together only by some smeared fly goo.

A couple of hours into the battle, we acquired new weaponry. Thanks to the heat we were drinking our bottled water, and upon emptying a bottle (they are pretty big 1 liter bottles), we began to use them as our weapons of choice in the battle against the winged insurgents. The bottle, being more rigid than a floppy boonie hat, provides better accuracy and speed, which is essential in aerial combat.

Once we calibrated our new munitions, the enemy began to fall in greater and greater numbers. The bottles allowed us to make more devastating in-air attacks, with solid hits making a satisfying "thwick" sound as it made contact with the target and sent it speeding into the ground. Having learned from combat earlier that day however, we had to finish them off once they were on the ground, as we did not want any surprise attacks from a stunned, but alive enemy.

The only bugs we spared were the lady bugs, as they are not gross looking and as far as I know their diet does not consist of poo and other disgusting things.

I originally planned to document each kill with a picture, but after I realized how many kills I would have, and that there are only so many ways to show a smear of goo as a successful kill, I decided against it and went with the written scorecard instead.

I may have to try to acquire even more advanced weaponry for tomorrow. I am not above chemical warfare or electrocution.

Halfway

Today is my halfway point for being in Iraq! Hopefully the last two months go by even faster than the first two.

Here's another nice sunset, there are a couple things that aren't brown in Iraq.

Ziggurat tour!

Just got back from the ziggurat tour and it was really interesting. Took 86 pictures but have narrowed them down to the ones below.

First let me get this out of the way. It's a little video of the Explosive Ordinance Disposal guys doing a controlled detonation on base. As soon as the video starts you can see the second mushroom cloud already forming (I couldn't get my camera out fast enough to catch all of them) and then 5 or 6 seconds later you actually hear the sound. It doesn't sound loud through my crappy camera microphone, but in person it shakes everything and sounds like one of the giant 4th of July fireworks went off 10 feet outside your car.

I'm going to post the pictures in the basic order of which they were taken, so sorry if I jump around a bit.

It's the ziggurat! I thought about only posting this picture and acting like that was the only picture I got, which I thought would be hilarious. But it seemed like too much trouble to make a second post a few days from now for the maximum comedic effect, so I just didn't do it.

This is Dife (no idea how to spell it, but it rhymes with "life"), he was our tour guide. His grandfather and father helped excavate the ziggurat and other buildings and helped with the reconstruction some. He's lived in the area his whole life. He speaks 5 languages, all of which he taught himself from reading a dictionary for that language. So, his grammar and pronunciation are not the best, but it's because he was just reading a dictionary to learn the languages. Pretty remarkable. I could understand him quite well after a couple of minutes.

Here is a short video of him speaking so you can hear how is accent sounds.

These are the ruins of the king's palace. Quite a large structure. What is left of all of these buildings is basically only the foundations. The upper levels of most of them were constructed of reeds and mud, which of course rotted away in the past few thousand years.

All of the walls in the picture above had been reconstructed, I think he said in the 1950s. They used tar to put between the bricks, but they used modern oil based tar, which is in the picture above.

This picture shows the original natural tar that came from a site west of Baghdad. Dife only pointed out this one wall that was still standing from the original building, or at least that still had the original tar.

This is a door hinge. It sits right next to a little opening in the walls and they think that a large wooden door had a little pivot point that stuck in the big hole on the rock to allow it to pivot easier.

More palace views. Sorry if this is boring, I know it's all just a bunch of brown bricks but it's pretty cool when you consider how old they are.

Another shot of the palace with ziggurat in the background. The ziggurat was the highest building in the city, and actually originally had another level on top plus a temple built with reeds and mud on top of that, so it was even taller than it is now.

These are the royal tombs. Unfortunately we were not allowed to go down in them for safety reasons they said, even though the tours from 3 weeks ago got to go. The tombs are where they found the kings and queen buried with all of their servants and guards, as well as all of their treasure like a golden harp and silver model ship. Apparently when the kings died all of their servants and guards drank poison so that they could be buried with the king.

Another shot of the tombs.

There are shards of pottery everywhere. When they were building the mud part of their buildings they put the broken pottery in the mixture to try to make it stronger, and now the mud has turned back to dust leaving only the shards of pottery behind.

It's me and the tombs! What do you do with your hands when you are in a picture?

Obviously my only idea was to hold them together in front of me.

Here's a much larger pile of broken pottery. Apparently some people tried to pick some up and put it in their pocket and so we got a little briefing from the chaplain's assistant half-way through the briefing that people needed to put them back before the end of the tour or the military police would be called, as we are not allowed to take them.

This is Dife in front of Abraham's house.

This is Abraham's house, or best guess that it is anyway. More correctly it is Terah's house I suppose, his father's. Like I said in previous post, this was rebuilt by Saddam so the Pope could come pray at the site, but he ended up not coming for security reasons.

The house has 27 or 29 rooms, I can't remember. It has three stairways which led to two rooms upstairs, which were made of reed and mud so they are obviously not there anymore.

This is one of the drainage holes I talked about in the last post. Basically the house had five courtyards in it, which were areas in the middle of the house that had no roof so that sunlight could come into some of the rooms from the courtyards and also so the water could drain into the courtyards and then down these drains.

In this shot you can see the holes where they stuck their fingers in the cement before it dried to create the holes.

These are shelves, the bottom of which is original, the others were rebuilt. They assume this was the kitchen, since it has the shelves and the original archaeologists found smoke residue on some stones nearby so they thought that's where they cooked.

The nice thing about Iraq not being as particular about their historic sites as America is that you can just walk all over them and they don't care.

The chaplain talking to Dife in a courtyard.

More wall walking.

Looks like some other buildings used to be around the house but they were not rebuilt or full excavated.

Dife walking around outside Abraham's house.

This is the largest courtyard, where we met to leave the house.

A little stairway leading upstairs. Very low archway. Either they were very short people or they just ducked a lot.

This is another drainage thing at another site. Kind of shows a cutaway view so you can see how it worked. There used to be houses built on top of these, but they were made out of mud so all that's left is the drainage pipes.

This was a temple and they believe it to be the first museum, as the archaeologist found artifacts from several different time periods and locations in the same room, as if they were being displayed in a museum. It was the largest building in the city but is only partially excavated.

Here's a really cool thing. This is the oldest known standing arch in the world. I took two pictures of it from basically the same place, but they were off enough that I could animate them together and they look 3D! I didn't do it on purpose at all but it worked out pretty well and actually looks 3D, to me at least.

Here you can see where the front bricks of the arch were put back on with cement, but the original arch still makes up most of the structure, which you can see with the bricks that are stuck together with tar still.

This is a view of the temple/museum from the top of the ziggurat.

Someone having their picture taken on the ziggurat.

This was inside one of the little holes on the side of the ziggurat that allows it to dry out, shift, swell with temperature and moisture, etc. Luckily there were no camel spiders or vipers in the hole to scare me to death.

This is the souvenir shop outside the ziggurat. It is hilarious looking.

Some real Iraqi rugs, not the kind they sell at the BX that are actually made in China and are probably Indian designs anyway.

This was a little Iraqi kid standing at the souvenir shop. I guess his dad ran the shop and his job was just to look cute. Surprisingly they didn't charge for people to get their picture taken with him. I think they are missing some money making opportunities.

I would have bought one of these collections of Iraqi money and stamps, but the BX wasn't giving any cash back and the finance office is closed so I couldn't get any cash. Maybe I'll see if the chaplain's assistant can buy it for me on the next tour or something.

Side of the ziggurat.

A sign in Arabic with a map of the layout of the area surrounding the ziggurat.

Overall it was a cool little tour. Not the most exciting tourist attraction ever, but considering it's the only one we have to choose from it isn't so bad. Apparently there are still miles of the city that have not been excavated. Even some areas right around the ziggurat have not been excavated yet, so who knows what else they will eventually find there. Could be more tombs full of treasure, who knows!

Hope you enjoyed the pictures. If I can get these others to stitch together right I'll post some panoramas from the top of the ziggurat.