If you really want to call it that anyway. Everyone wants to leave a stamp on the place they worked or had an effect, I suppose. I think mine will be trees. There's all this construction going on, expanding the student and staff areas of this base and even though I've oversaw it happening from the start, the project was really started last year, before I got here. So it's not really mine.
I got an idea from an Afghan National Army (ANA) Lieutenant Colonel today. He said we should plant trees around the base. I'm gonna make it my mission to plant fruit trees around this base before I leave. Something nice to look at, provide some shade, and make some fruit for everyone here as well.
I've sponsored an Afghan for citizenship. He's 21 and he's probably the hardest worker I know. And respectful but man is he smart. This kid is amazing. He should be getting his Visa before too long and I'm proud to be his sponsor. My plan is to really mentor him and help him get situated, especially considering the culture shock he's bound to have. His brother, who he will go stay with, lives in New York right now, but they may move south since he has a young child and they are concerned about the cold weather. That would work out well for my plans. I really see this kid as a positive addition to our country. He's bound to make up for a few of the turds in the states.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Return of the Ching
Well, I'm back off leave now and freezing my nether regions off. Good news is, I will be getting paid as an O-3 starting the 15th. It sort of eases the pain of having to buy my second laptop while here.
The one I brought with, an HP, had heat management issues and I suppose the GPU became 'solder-adverse' as I prefer to call it. So I bought another one while here which promptly (as in 3 months, which to me is promptly) had hard-drive functionality problems. I called it 'operating system-adverse.' In any case, I'm here and not having a blazing fast laptop allows me to focus more on my work. And as we all know, that makes a happy Riley. So does speaking of myself in the 3rd person.
Noticed a big change in how I view the world while I was home. For one, it was difficult for me to relax at first. Partly because I knew that I would have to come back here for 4 more months. It keeps you from being able to enjoy it to the fullest knowing your trip back will suck (it made baby Jesus cry). Then add into that the fact that you're coming from a war zone where you're basically looking at every car you see as "this might be the big one."
I mean, what do I care if I get blown up, right? If it happens, it's over...done, finit. The only reason I care is because I don't want everyone to be upset and sad. I don't want to leave Lisa without me, wondering what could have been. I know when I get back this will fade with time, the traffic scanning I mean. But truthfully, I can say now that it will always be there, under the surface. Part of me figures it's ridiculous since I've never even been in combat and probably won't be, but I know that's not the point, now is it? It's the knowing that that big one is out there, lurking. It's all about that possibility of the big boom (which, by the way, I can feel them go off if they're within a few miles).
But anyway, enough doom and gloom. The advantage of being on a small base is that you stay so busy you don't have time to wonder about that crap until you're in the car driving around. And at that point you're just cracking jokes. It's a weird sense of calm interlaced with that knowing what could happen any moment. And going back to my view of the world, my message to everyone back home:
Don't sweat the stupid crap...and I'll talk more about that later.
The one I brought with, an HP, had heat management issues and I suppose the GPU became 'solder-adverse' as I prefer to call it. So I bought another one while here which promptly (as in 3 months, which to me is promptly) had hard-drive functionality problems. I called it 'operating system-adverse.' In any case, I'm here and not having a blazing fast laptop allows me to focus more on my work. And as we all know, that makes a happy Riley. So does speaking of myself in the 3rd person.
Noticed a big change in how I view the world while I was home. For one, it was difficult for me to relax at first. Partly because I knew that I would have to come back here for 4 more months. It keeps you from being able to enjoy it to the fullest knowing your trip back will suck (it made baby Jesus cry). Then add into that the fact that you're coming from a war zone where you're basically looking at every car you see as "this might be the big one."
I mean, what do I care if I get blown up, right? If it happens, it's over...done, finit. The only reason I care is because I don't want everyone to be upset and sad. I don't want to leave Lisa without me, wondering what could have been. I know when I get back this will fade with time, the traffic scanning I mean. But truthfully, I can say now that it will always be there, under the surface. Part of me figures it's ridiculous since I've never even been in combat and probably won't be, but I know that's not the point, now is it? It's the knowing that that big one is out there, lurking. It's all about that possibility of the big boom (which, by the way, I can feel them go off if they're within a few miles).
But anyway, enough doom and gloom. The advantage of being on a small base is that you stay so busy you don't have time to wonder about that crap until you're in the car driving around. And at that point you're just cracking jokes. It's a weird sense of calm interlaced with that knowing what could happen any moment. And going back to my view of the world, my message to everyone back home:
Don't sweat the stupid crap...and I'll talk more about that later.
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