Thursday, April 7, 2011

In a State of Flux

And where is this State of Flux, you ask?  Just north of the State of Transition.
I’m moving again.  There’s an impending leadership gap at Bagram, so I’m being transferred to take on those C4ISR Planner duties I originally deployed to do.  The upside?  Nicer digs, better chow.  The downside?  I found out on Wednesday afternoon, and I’m supposed to be on a flight on Saturday.  A whopping 72 hours notice.  Oh well, they said to be flexible.
Another aspect to the downside … I rather enjoyed the multi-national aspect here at NKAIA.  Just this morning, I saw a batch of troops from Bosnia & Herzegovina.  In addition to the usual NATO cast of characters, I’ve seen Albanians, Lithuanians, Finns, Mongolians (no, I didn’t ask them about their barbecue!), and Jordanians.  Yeah, finally we’re seeing some of the Muslim countries ponying up troops to help out a fellow Islamic state.
So much for moving on.  I took a trip downtown yesterday to meet with some folks at the US Embassy about an IT project they need help on.  Although the travel back and forth was uneventful, it was the most tension-filled drive I’ve had here.  There’s still a lot of concern over threats related to the Quran burning episode.  The Afghans, in their ultimate hypocrisy, have yet to let it go, and we remain in a high state of alert.  We had to take a number of detours getting into the Green Zone because of gate closures and route changes.
We ate lunch at the ISAF DFAC, then went back to the embassy, where our POC hadn’t eaten yet and invited us to join her.  So we ended up sitting outdoors, next to a pool, while she ate and we talked.  A pool!!!  With State Department (or maybe USAID) pukes swimming laps.  They’re living in the lap of luxury down there, while we do 12-14 hour days and live in tents.
On the drive back, we stopped at NKC (New Kabul Complex) for dinner.  Another eye-opener.  Their DFAC is run by the US side of KBR, and the food was good and plentiful.  Didn’t even need a knife to cut my pork loin roast, it was that tender.  The more I see, the more it seems to be true … our base has the worst food in the theater.  Guess I shouldn’t complain, though … I’ve already lost 15 pounds.
Tonight is the Thursday night Cigar Shura, will be my last one here at NKAIA.  I just got a pack of cigars from Bruce at the Annapolis Davidus shop, so I’ll have some to share tonight.  Hope I can find a new Cigar Shura at Bagram.

1 comment:

  1. "Didn’t even need a knife to cut my pork loin roast, it was that tender. "

    That wasn't pork.

    (With apologies to my favorite fortune cookie fortune.)

    ReplyDelete