Wednesday, February 3, 2010

The Mysterious Training Holiday...

We showed up to work today...unfortunately, the Iraqis were on a training holiday.  Seems as though they let the students go early for the weekend so they could celebrate one of their holidays.  Would have been nice if they let us know yesterday...

It was kind of funny watching all of the officers mill about at the dining facility.  You see, their commander is on leave, they gave all of the cadre off, and they were all kind of trying to be seen by each other before they, themselves, made the exodus.  Kind of reminds me of a normal workday for a FISTer back in my Lieutenant days.  To catch you all up, I spent my junior officer days on the shores of the Monterey Bay in California.  And I was also a Fire Support Officer (FISTer).  Basically we were officers with almost nothing to do on a daily basis. So we would show up in the morning and basically make sure we were seen, then put the feelers out to make sure that no one was looking for us, then disappear until after lunch, when we would just rinse and repeat only to find ourselves at the beach or golfing by 1400...ah, the life.  And, yes, that was EVERY DAY...at least until Manual Noriega f-ed it up for all of us.  But that is another story.

And now for today's lesson on life in a third world country:  Just because your workday is over by 0900, doesn't mean that you have to turn your reports in before they are due.  The guys at HQ are expecting those reports to start rolling in at 1600.  If we turn our daily SITREP in at 1000 when we have it done, we do two things.  The first is that we alert them that maybe we aren't working as hard as them (they are required to be at work from 0730 - 2000 including some food breaks).  And, two, it would just mess their daily routine up for gathering reports.  So, actually, we are doing them a favor.  Lesson over.

That is all I can think of for now.

Later.

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