8 day update after BIAP

For some real updates: I spent 8 days in Iraq, at Camp Victory and Liberty working on a site there, with all the thrills of bureaucracy and the return to the Cadillac (a shared shower and toilet facility that also gave me trench foot) and a new day waking in a CHU (containerized housing unit, [...]

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Size is no guarantor

The iconic C-17, looks ungainly, with its sheer size, its squat wheel wells low to the ground, and its above mid level wings. It seems destined for smooth flight, no small movements, only slow large ones. This is a lie. On takeoff it gets off the ground swiftly (when lifting flesh and bone at least), [...]

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Dusty trails

It’s not really dust, it’s very, very fine sand. The use of the words “particulate matter” is appropriate. It covers everything. The second you step out from washing your hands they quickly feel dusty and dry and you might as well not have bothered. We use the remainders of water bottles, the warm kind, with [...]

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Welcome to the Hotel CA

Mission accomplished. Mostly. A few hurdles can’t be leapt just because it would be useful but I’m closer to clearing them. Mostly the paperwork dragon giving me burns and cuts, but I’ll fight back once I get “home” to my emirate and my own room, armed with PDFs, certificates, and print outs. Now I just [...]

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Blood debt

Footnotes are fleshed out after the “continue reading” link. “You break it, you buy it.” – crude maxim explaining responsibility in simple terms. It also explains my sentiments towards the war in Iraq. It was a war prosecuted for the wrong reasons and it can’t be said that the dead would speak well of the [...]

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