Wednesday, April 06, 2005
OK, so I arrived at BIAP...And I'm still at BIAP (which is Baghdad International Airport for those of you who don't pay attention to previous posts where I explain the terminology, and then accuse me of using opaque vocabulary. You know who you are.)
My tale of woe? Myself and the other guys from ANTB (An Numaniyah Training Base, again for the attention span-challenged among you) who had left to go on leave caught a bird (flying device) out of LZ (Landing Zone - where a helicopter lands) Washington to go to BIAP and hopefully catch a plane to Kuwait.
When I arrived at the terminal, I showed them my leave form and told them my leave starts on the 12th. "When do I fly?" I asked the person behind the counter. And the person there politely informed me to be back at the terminal the morning of the 12th, which is when I will fly.
The 12th?? But my leave starts on the 12th! I'm supposed to already be at home on the 12th! Well, a few phone calls later and it turns out the beginning date on your leave request is the day you fly out of BIAP (see above if you've forgotten what it means already). However, your actual chargeable leave does not start until you arrive in the United States. With all the travel delays and processing bureaucracy crap you have to go through to get back to the States, God knows when that may be. 16 days later, your leave is over and you start working on getting back to Iraq.
So what does this all mean? Well, for one, I have six days of sitting around Baghdad with nothing to do. So myself and the other guys here with me decided to head over to Camp Victory and chill out for a while until our flight dates arrive. And to be honest, it's not really that bad. It's essentially six free days off with no one supervising me. Read, go running, hop on the internet. Whatever.
Secondly, it means I probably won't be home until the 14th or so. So if you were making plans, adjust accordingly. The flip side is that I will be staying beyond the 26th, which is cool.
My prediction? By the time I get done with all the travel time and paperwork and in/out processing, I will have been away from my job here for at least a month. Don't you love the efficiency? It takes a month (at least) to send a person home on 2 weeks vacation.
Stuff like this is why I love being in the Army. Seriously. Once you learn the system, oh baby! You can work it for all it's worth.
My tale of woe? Myself and the other guys from ANTB (An Numaniyah Training Base, again for the attention span-challenged among you) who had left to go on leave caught a bird (flying device) out of LZ (Landing Zone - where a helicopter lands) Washington to go to BIAP and hopefully catch a plane to Kuwait.
When I arrived at the terminal, I showed them my leave form and told them my leave starts on the 12th. "When do I fly?" I asked the person behind the counter. And the person there politely informed me to be back at the terminal the morning of the 12th, which is when I will fly.
The 12th?? But my leave starts on the 12th! I'm supposed to already be at home on the 12th! Well, a few phone calls later and it turns out the beginning date on your leave request is the day you fly out of BIAP (see above if you've forgotten what it means already). However, your actual chargeable leave does not start until you arrive in the United States. With all the travel delays and processing bureaucracy crap you have to go through to get back to the States, God knows when that may be. 16 days later, your leave is over and you start working on getting back to Iraq.
So what does this all mean? Well, for one, I have six days of sitting around Baghdad with nothing to do. So myself and the other guys here with me decided to head over to Camp Victory and chill out for a while until our flight dates arrive. And to be honest, it's not really that bad. It's essentially six free days off with no one supervising me. Read, go running, hop on the internet. Whatever.
Secondly, it means I probably won't be home until the 14th or so. So if you were making plans, adjust accordingly. The flip side is that I will be staying beyond the 26th, which is cool.
My prediction? By the time I get done with all the travel time and paperwork and in/out processing, I will have been away from my job here for at least a month. Don't you love the efficiency? It takes a month (at least) to send a person home on 2 weeks vacation.
Stuff like this is why I love being in the Army. Seriously. Once you learn the system, oh baby! You can work it for all it's worth.
[Posted by Mark @ 6:26 PM]
Comments:
Well first off, some people feel that it should not be necessary to have a military terms dictionary beside the computer in order to understand a blog. Unless you use ones we know, like SNAFU...(ROTFL) Secondly some of your readers are OTD so are lucky to be able to read at all, talk about understand deep inner meanings!!
Finally, if you have access to email during this transition which address should we use? Drop me an email from it so I know please :-)
.:: Post a Comment ::.
Well first off, some people feel that it should not be necessary to have a military terms dictionary beside the computer in order to understand a blog. Unless you use ones we know, like SNAFU...(ROTFL) Secondly some of your readers are OTD so are lucky to be able to read at all, talk about understand deep inner meanings!!
Finally, if you have access to email during this transition which address should we use? Drop me an email from it so I know please :-)
.:: Post a Comment ::.