This last Saturday we were invited to have dinner at the farm of a local Iraqi contractor who does a lot of contract and sub-contract work for our base. His name is Sami and he is a wealthy and influential local businessman. If we need something from the local economy or if we need a particular job done, we just give him a call and he does it for us. Of course, all these contracts we send his way have made him a very wealthy man, so he often invites us over for meals or wants to throw parties for us. He knows where his bread is buttered and wants to make sure the contracts keep coming.

So that's what we did. About 15 of us drove out to his farm and Sami had a big meal prepared for us. Now, I have eaten authentic Iraqi food, so I wasn't surprised by what he served. It was the usual assortment of fish or chicken or some sort of meat served over a plate of rice. In this instance, he served a plate of chicken, a plate of fish, and a plate of lamb, all over a huge heaping mound of rice.

However, I was not quite prepared to watch the Iraqis eat this meal. They don't really use plates. Actually, they don't use plates or silverware. At all. They all stand around the large serving dishes and eat off the serving dishes. And they eat with their hands. Want some rice? Just grab a handful and put it in your mouth. Want some meat? Just pull a piece off with your hands and eat it! Sort of like a pot luck dinner without the plastic plates and serving ware.

I tried to cut a happy medium by taking a piece of flat bread and using that as a plate. However, before I could get to the table to serve myself, one of the Iraqis who was there "generously" decided to serve me. He grabbed two or three handfuls of lamb and heaped it on my bread, followed by two or three handfuls of rice and put that on top of the meat. (mmmmmmm, fresh from his hands. It doesn't get any more authentic than that!) Kind of like a Nick Tahoe's garbage plate but without the attention to cleanliness.

Oh god, I just had a thought as I'm writing this. Which hand did he serve me with? I hope it was his right hand. They wipe their asses with their left hand.

Anyway . . . what am I supposed to do? Not eat? I dug in and ate as much as I could. And all the while, I sat there watching the other local gentlemen eating from the serving dishes in that distinctive Iraqi manner.

Now, I know that my words just do not do justice to the experience, so I took some video so you can get the full effect. You can watch the video here. (4 MB)

All in all, it was a very good meal. The rice especially is very tasty. They put raisins in it and some sort of spice that turns it yellow. There was way more than we could possible eat.

As good as it was though, it may have been heaven going in but it's hell coming out. I woke up this morning with the raging shits. Something must have been undercooked or something, because I'm having to visit the bathroom every couple of hours. My colon is bubbling like a hot spring and going off like Old Faithful.

The lesson? Pay more attention to which hand they serve you with next time.

Graffiti seen on the wall of a port-a-pottie at Scania FOB in Iraq:

"Every time you masturbate in here, God kills a kitten."

We have pirated versions of the new Star Wars movie available on DVD here in Iraq (yes, they do move quickly, don't they?)

I walked into our TV room and saw some guys were watching it, so I figured I would sit down and see how it was. For those who have seen the movie, I came in at the beginning of the scene where Mace Windu tries to arrest the Emperor.

My impressions? The acting is terrible, and the dialogue is even worse. Just absolutely terrible. I mean, so bad that I just couldn't get past it. I was so dissapointed. This new Star Wars movie had gotten very good reviews. I was hoping maybe Lucas had overcome the shortcomings of the first two movies. But OH MY GOD!! The acting and dialogue were SOOOOO BAD!!

Now, I'm no film critic or movie elitist. I like stupid-funny movies. I don't limit myself to French art house films. But the acting was so absolutely abhorrent in the fifteen minutes I saw that it took my attention away from the story time and time again.

For example: the Emperor's face is terribly misfigured during his fight with Mace Windu, and Anakin walks in in the middle of it. I mean, it's the guy's face we're talking about. At the end of the fight, the Emperor and Anakin have a lengthy conversation. Does Anakin say anything about the Emperor's new appearance? Nope. The story just goes right on without ever even touching on it.

At the beginning of the scene the Emperor looks like a normal person, and by the end he's this horrid yellow eyed basset hound looking thing. AND NO ONE SAYS ANYTHING ABOUT IT!! Everyone is supposed to just accept that this guy goes through this massive transformation in his appearance and no one around him would bat an eye? Not even a "Hey, are you alright?" "Yeah, I'm ok. I just need to walk it off. I'll be fine." Nothing. One minute he's a handsome politician in an office, the next he's a jaundiced bag of pale, sagging skin. But hey, happens to the best of us, right?

At that point I decided that whatever Lucas had tapped with the original Star Wars movies was lost. The new ones will forever be a dissapointment. I mean, not just a dissapointment but plain bad. Not even passable. Ugh.

Too bad.

Well, I guess this just about sums it all up.

We seem to be having power problems here. The power has been going off and on all day long. They say it's because there's too much power load on the generators but we're not sure. Something says it has as much to do with the Iraqi base support personnel not maintaining the generators as much as with the increased power load.

Of course, more fundamentally this goes back to poor planning by the American contractors who decided during the winter months that we could tie several pods into a single generator, saving power and allowing the generator to run more efficiently. Previously, we had a single generator for each pod but those single generators weren't having enough of a load placed on them so they were running inefficiently. So, the theory was that if you placed several pods on one generator it would use up the capacity of that one generator, thereby saving fuel and maintenance expenses.

"But will the generator still handle the load once summer comes and people start running AC?" we asked. "Oh, yes yes. It'll be fine" the contactors assured us. Evidently they weren't quite right.

Oh, wait . . . the lights are starting to flicker again. Gotta go!

OK, so I'm gonna get a little sappy here.

But I was just thinking that I live a very blessed life. I have a wonderful family, a wonderful girlfriend, a supportive job, I'm healthy and I get to do neat things. I'm financially stable (though far from rich) and generally don't have much to complain about except other drivers *lol*

What made me think of this? Well, today I got an email from someone at Starbucks (my employer) who had done all sorts of research trying to track down the email addresses of all the Starbucks employees who are currently serving overseas with the military. She wanted to get my mailing address so she could put together a care package and distribute my address to anyone else at Starbucks who might want to send a package or write or something. Then, just a couple hours later, I received another email from a different person at Starbucks (again, whom I've never met) wanting my address to send a care package.

I have never met this woman in my life. I think she actually lives and works in Seattle. But here is this stranger making all this effort just to do her little part to support a fellow Starbucks employee. And it got me thinking about just how great Starbucks is to their people and how generally nice people are who work there. And that really is the best way to say it. They're just plain nice.

Yes, I do my fair share of griping about work just like we all do. But at the end of the day Starbucks treats their employees pretty darn well. I don't know if you've heard it, but there's a rumor circulating that someone came to Starbucks asking for a donation of coffee to send to the soldiers in Iraq and Starbucks said they did not support the war in Iraq so they wouldn't donate the coffee. Now, I know this urban legend started simply because Starbucks is supposed to be the big, soul-less corporation that takes over every where it goes. And to be quite frank with you all it bothers me that people have to hear this because the company has been nothing but wonderful to me. They have paid me the entire time I've been over here in Iraq. They allow me to maintain my full health benefits at normal prices if I chose to keep them. When I stopped home recently everyone at my store was excited to see me (or at least pretended to be *wink wink*). And most importantly, I have absolute confidence that I will have my job back without any hassles when I get home from Iraq. I know my boss will do everything in his power to make my return to work as simple as possible.

So anyway, getting back to my original point, it got me thinking how privilege I am to have had the opportunity to meet all these neat people in my life, from my family to co-workers to fellow soldiers to friends. I've got a wonderful circle of people around me and I'm thankful for it.

OK, enough sentimentality. I promise my next post will be sufficiently cynical ;-)

Well, I've been back in Numaniyah for about a week now and not too much has changed other than the weather (it's hotter).

How did I manage to get back here? Turned out that as I was making arrangements to find a flight home, a group of Americans from Numaniyah had driven up to Baghdad to drop off a couple of guys who were getting ready to go home on leave. So I just caught a ride with these guys back home. Worked out well.

However, it's been a busy time down here at Numaniyah. We have officially transferred daily operations to our Iraqi counterparts. What does that mean? Prior to now the base operations have been run by Americans. We managed everything that happened on post - from cooking to maintenance to cleaning - you name it we managed it. On May 5^th we turned over primary control to our Iraqi counterparts. However, the transfer has been far from smooth so we have been busy sticking fingers in the dike as the Iraqis fail to succeed at various portions of their job.

Now, it's not that the Iraqis are incompetent. It's more like they have a severe tendency to not prepare adequately. We'd been trying to work with them in the weeks leading up to the transition to get them ready to run the post, but they don't take our advice very seriously. So, now that the time has come and it is now their job to run things they are discovering that they are woefully unprepared to do their jobs.

I kind of think of it this way: You have a fourteen year old boy who has a test coming up at school. You tell him he needs to study, but he blows you off. You warn him of the consequences if he doesn't prepare, but he ignores you. Then, on test day, he finally gets his test and realizes he is completely unprepared to take it. Now that he has the test in front of him he realizes he is going to fail. This is where we are with the Iraqis. Now that they have the responsibility they realize just how big the job is and just how unprepared they are to do it. So there's a little chaos as systems and organizations begin to unravel without proper administration.

Now mind you, they aren't being allowed to fail completely. That's why we're here. We give them a task, show them how to do it, then watch them to see how well they do. If they show they are unable to complete the task then we step back in to keep things running and do a little remedial training until the Iraqis are able to do the work on their own. The idea being that hopefully the Iraqis will be able to run the base without us at all. Someday. Eventually. Hopefully.

The frustration comes in the complete lack of regard the Iraqis show for our advice to them. Why do the Iraqis always have to wait until they experience the pain of failure before they start taking things seriously? This is why I often compare working with the Iraqis with dealing with a 13 or 14 year old boy. They refuse to listen to anyone else until they realize they are completely over their head.

All I know is I'm glad there are no Iraqis here to run the computers. I don't have an Iraqi counterpart I have to train. I suspect this is why I am so much more relaxed than everyone else on post *lol*

What day is it now?

We finally managed to leave Camp Doha and drive out to the airfield (amid constant rumors the flight was being canceled again). We arrived at the airfield around 7 pm. Once we arrived we were told our flight was indeed leaving, but it had been pushed back to 3:00 am. No biggie, this is why god made iPods and paperback books, right?

The time to load up and head out to the airfield arrived and we all bundled onto the cramped little Korean made buses to drive out the plane. There it was! A real live C130 in the flesh! Certainly nothing can go wrong this time, right? All we have to do is get off the bus, walk the 20 yards over the plane, get in and take off!

3:00 am came and went, and we still weren't on a plane. "There's a problem with the hydraulic system on the plane, so we may end up sending you back to Doha." And as if on cue, a combination of heavy sighs and incredulous giggling rippled through the bus. You could hear the eyes rolling.

An hour later (still on the bus) they came around and told us we were switching planes. WOOHOO!! Lets get on and go!

Between the delays getting going and the time change (Iraq is an hour ahead of Kuwait) it was 7:00 am by the time we touched down in Iraq at BIAP. What do we do now? Why, we wait for a flight out of BIAP to take us to Numaniyah. And we waited, and we talked, and we made phone calls, and I had the following conversation several times:

Me: "We need to go to Numaniyah."
Them: "Huh?"
Me: "Numaniyah."
Them: "What? Numa-what?"
Me: "Numa . . . NI . . . yah. Numaniyah."
Them: "Where's that?"
Me: "Near Al Kut. South of Baghdad."
Them: "Oh. Never heard of that. We don't fly there."

So, long story short I worked out a plan with a Major I work with at Numaniyah to fly to Taji and catch a bird from there to Numaniyah. The BIAP people had helicopters flying to Taji later in the evening around 8:00 pm, so everything looked good. I went into the tent near the terminal and fell asleep since I had been up close to 24 hours.

At about 7:00 pm, the word sounded through the speakers surrounding the waiting area. "The flight to Taji has been cancelled because of weather." Ok, enough is enough. I'm done playing the game!

So now I'm back at Camp Victory, in the same tent I stayed in before I left to come home on leave. I'm jet lagged, I've been kept up and woken up and herded all over Kuwait. I smell and I probably need to shave. I'm getting some sleep and I'll find a trip home at my leisure.

Well, leave is over and I had a good time. I didn't write a single post while I was gone, but then again I had other things to do. I was able to see my friends and family a bit. Kelley and I took a road trip and visited a kindergarten class who had written to me here in Iraq. We also visited Howe Caverns (and Secret Caverns, which was far cooler), and ended our little trip at Cooperstown at a nice little bed and breakfast.

But, unfortunately, all good things must come to an end and I have since returned to the middle east. And I can report to you that the Army still runs the same way it did before I left.

I got into Kuwait on the 1^st, and have been sitting in Kuwait since then waiting for a plane to Baghdad. We got all the way to the air field where we fly out of (about an hours drive from Camp Doha, where we're staying) and were told an hour before our plane was scheduled to leave that the weather was bad in Baghdad and our flight was canceled. Back to Doha! WOOHOO!

So now I'm just killing time here in Kuwait. It's been warm, but nice. I haven't actually seen a thermometer, but people have told me it's been over 100 degrees. And that bit about it being a dry heat? It's true! Despite it being fairly hot, it's actually quite comfortable as long as there's a breeze. 80 in Rochester is much worse than 100 in the desert.

I'll try to drop a blog down when I finally hit Iraq. Knowing how things work, I imagine I'll spend a couple days in Baghdad as well before I finally find a ride back to An Numaniyah. Which is ok, as it gives me a chance to get through the jet lag before heading back to work.