Last Day Outside the US

I head to the "bag drag" at 10pm and then process to board at 1am. Our flight time isn't until after 5am. Gotta love military efficiency. We're "locked down" from 1am until boarding. The first leg is Manas to Turkey, then to Ramstein, and finally into BWI. It'll be about 22 hours from start to finish, but I think we get to stretch our legs during the two stops. I lucked out and got an aisle seat at least. No such thing as first class on these flights, but of course I did ask ...

Not much to blog about. I made a trip through all the local bazaar shops on Manas today and there was nothing I couldn't live without. I'd really like to come back to Kyrgyzstan some time as a tourist. I have a whole new appreciation for the countries and cultures in central Asia. It's an interesting mix here between the more recent Russian influence and the Kyrgyz/Turkic/Mongol traditional and cultural history. They are historically nomadic, and the yurt is a common site still, especially in the pictures I've seen of the mountainous regions.

Well, gotta go pack and get my bags together. Next stop Baltimore.

The Day After ?? - God Bless the Russians

I'm just killing time now. I hate just killing time. I spent today wandering around Manas Air Transport Station. That took about 10 minutes. The rest of the time was spent on skype with Gina, a bit of surfing, two crossword puzzles, a bit of sudoku, and eating enough to feel guilty in a country with a big chunk of the population below the poverty line.


I did have my first and second beers last night. I'm about to head over and try again. One of the local brews here is Russian. It is 8% alcohol and served a half litre at a time. Maybe that two beer limit every 20 hours is a good one. God bless those Russian brewers though. It doesn't even taste like malt liquor. It is actually a nice Pilsner with good flavor, but lots of foam if you pour too fast.

The Russians did some pretty awful things in central Asia, but so did the Brits, as well as the "fill in the imperial power or neighboring muslim country here." One thing they did do well though is pass along a pretty good brewing tradition. It reminds me of the great lagers in Mexico and central America that I think German missionaries must have passed along. I could be way off, but taste a good Dos Equis on tap side by side with say Stella (I know its Belgian) or a Bayerish lager, and you'll know where its origins are from.

Hopefully you're all getting over yesterdays post. I am, even though Gina gave me a pretty hard time about it. I did my laundry today and am eating well, so it is almost a distant memory. I start processing to leave tomorrow and catch a plane early on Friday. Should be back in the US by Friday night. Keep your fingers crossed.

Day ?? - I've honestly lost track for now

Tuesday evening, 13 July 2010 - My day tracking calendar is packed away, so I've lost track of the correct day. Sorry. The last few days have been a bit of a whirlwind. Here's the summary. I'll be candid in the following, but in the interest of decency I'll have to issue my second TMI alert.

We had a going away dessert at the local Thai restaurant on KIA Saturday night. All I had was the "chocolate monkey." By about 10pm that night, my stomach was churning and doing cartwheels. Turns out at least one other of our dinner party (and likely a few more) had similar symptoms, but it hit me the hardest for some reason. After several trips to the facilities that evening, I essentially spent all day Sunday in a diarrhea induced coma. Cold sweats, stomach in knots, and no ability to get more than five meters from a toilet. Needless to say, I didn't work that day. Especially considering that the only facilities on NMAA are eastern style toilets. They are not nearly as user friendly for us westerners as the sit down type.


I was able to hold it together long enough on Monday to go to work at NMAA. I finished up all the loose ends I could, had my last lunch with MGen Sharif, gave a bunch of going gifts, and attended a nice going away get together with COL Rahman and the CompSci faculty. My assigned translator (Mansoor) gave me a really nice "Karzai" robe, and the CompSci faculty gave me an embroidered traditional Afghan outfit. I'll pose for pictures when I get home and post them. It will likely be in my last post.

It is bitter sweet leaving. The people in Afghanistan are all great, but the history of war and devastation combined with the tribal traditions of division and nepotism are hard to accept. There is so much to do and so many ways we can help. Most of them are empowering, teaching, and mentoring the Afghans. It isn't really about money, and in a lot of cases, too much foreign aid hurts more than helps. Some level of outside funding is essential, but we are caught in the typical US spiral of excess by opening the checkbook. It's costing the US taxpayers untold amounts, and in a lot of cases doing more harm than good. I hope wiser minds prevail and we balance our fiscal commitments with well thought out personnel assistance. We're out of balance right now, and have been for several years.

Back to my enduro. I'd been checking the outgoing flights from Kabul to Manas for the last few days. For some strange reason, I'm manifested on a flight from Manas on the 16th of July, but I can't get a scheduled flight there. I actually understand why, but it is too much detail to delve into here. To make a long story somewhat shorter, I had to travel space available from Kabul to Manas and make it by the 15th in order to be in place for my flight home on the 16th. There were three flights to Manas from Kabul on Sunday, but I was fighting through my previously described ailments and didn't have everything wrapped up satisfactorily to leave. It turns out that two of those flights were canceled anyway. The schedule did have two flights leaving on Monday, so I targeted the one leaving at 2345.

I arrived at the Kabul passenger terminal about 2030 only to find out the flight had slipped a few hours, so I napped a bit outside the terminal, stomach still in knots and making frequent trips to the nearby facilities. My series of going away "chai's" didn't help my stomach any. They make all the chai here with the local water, and I'm sure they don't boil it long enough, if at all. They ended up getting us on the C-130 headed to Manas about midnight. I flew out with elements of an Army Brigade from Ft. Lewis Washington that did their deployment outside Kandahar. They were headed home with fewer soldiers than they deployed with. I had a grim discussion with a SFC from the unit.

We sat on the tarmac for about an hour and a half, and then did a lights out take off. Pretty cool actually, but when you're sitting in troop seats with full body armor and the load masters have to look out the back of the aircraft with night vision glasses on for the first 15 minutes of the flight, it gets your attention a little. No incidents as expected. The ride was a bit tough, owing to my stomach condition and the fact that I ended up straddling an aluminum support rod. If you've ever flown in troop seats, you'll know what I mean. If you haven't, count yourself lucky.

Two and a have hours of clenching later, we landed in Manas around 0530 local. After all the in processing, I grabbed what I could eat for breakfast, and found a room to crash in for a few hours. I ended up with my first, and probably only good deal of the trip. Since I'm an O-5, I qualified for a hard sided room in transient billeting. It beats the rows of bunk beds in the mass tents most folks get when they're flowing through Manas. After a few hours sleep I had to report and turn in my chem gear and body armor at 1100. Breakfast didn't sit well by that time, so I ended up finally heading over to see a doc about my food poisoning. It finally set in to me that this bout wasn't just going to pass.

I had to walk about a half mile from the supply warehouse to the clinic, and I think I hit four port-a-johns along the way. This is really brutal stuff. A hearty thanks to the people who put the packets of Kleenexes and handi-wipes in the care packages. If you've seen the movie "I hope the serve beer in hell", my experiences at this point were eerily similar. After filling out my symptoms on a form, the doc came to find me, and I of course had to make another trip to the loo. All the medical personnel got a real kick out of that. He gave me some industrial strength intestinal antibiotics. I'm a few pills in and they seem to be helping. I can't eat much yet, and still have pretty nice stomach cramps, but at least I can hold my own.

So, I'm hanging out in Manas now, awaiting my return flight. I report with my bags about 0100 on Friday morning with an in processing brief Thursday at 1000. It should be down hill from here. The meds are kicking in, the food looks and smells good (I haven't tried much yet), and internet access is everywhere, fast, and free. The one up side, if there is one, is that I have free laundry facilities in the room right next to my billeting room. I have to admit, I have some skivvies to launder. I'd hate to take that mess home to Gina...

Day 55 and 56 - Going Away Madness

(Post for 9 and 10 July) Based on all the going away formalities you would have thought I've been here for a significant portion of my adult life. Yesterday, on Jumah, we went to Camp Dogan for a going away given to us by the Turkish Officers that have a mentoring team here also. Then today we had chai with MGen Sharif, the Superintendent of NMAA, and he gave me a pair of nice stone flower vases as a going away. Finally, we met at the on base Thai restaurant and had dessert where we had a going away from all the mentors. Geez. I don't even leave until Wednesday.


I did turn in most of my ammo, 5.56 magazines, personal recover beacon, and my individual first aid kit today though. No more missions outside the wire for me. The next time I leave KAIA or NMAA will be on a C-17 (I hope). During work I finished up my after action report and recommendations to the team chief, senior mentor, and CompSci department head. I gave a few of the higher priority recommendations to the Superintendent during our chai at the end of the day, but mostly we just ate, had tea, and chatted.


I promised a few more pictures of Panjshir valley today, so here goes. These two are titled "Bear Attack", and swimming across the 50 degree, snow melt fed, Panjshir river in my skivvies. It was quite cold, but I think the water line obscures the shrinkage, so hopefully no one will be offended or make fun. The first picture is of me tackling Larry Walker, our team chief here. He was a bit reluctant to go any further into the river, so I helped him make up his mind. The second is me after having swam to the other side and lost about 20 yards down stream. The current was pretty vigorous.



This last picture is of the whole group of us having a picnic under a willow tree entwined with a grape vine on the banks of the river. We had fresh mulberries, which I'd never had before and now love, fresh apricots right off the tree, a spiced yogurt drink, which makes you nap big time, and nice conversation. Many people soaked there feet in the river. This was before the swim, and it didn't make anyone any wiser.


The Afghan with the gray hair and beard is the Commandant, BGen Hesim Udin. He grew up in a house only about 100 yards from this spot, which is still in the family. He is a very interesting man that has lived an amazing life. He was a generous and gracious host as well. I'll try and sprinkle in more of the Panjshir pictures over the next few days.

Day 54 - Star Spangled Banner

(Post for 8 July) Most of us attended the change of command for the Afghan Engineering District North today. Oddly enough, this was the first time I'd heard the Star Spangled Banner since I've been here. The 101st Airborne Division jazz band played the Afghan National Anthem, and then a locally deployed civilian sung the US National Anthem. I got a lump in my throat, but then I do every time I hear it, regardless of whether or not it is at a military formation or a sporting event.

"Oh, say, does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave, O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?" I really like our anthem for a variety of reasons. It is up beat, inspirational, has great lyrics, and it's not too long. The other anthem played today sounded a bit like a dirge. This is also the first time I've heard it, and it seemed somewhat repetitive.

I watch a lot of Formula 1 races, and there are always a variety of anthems played at the conclusion. One for the winning driver, and one for the winning team. For a long time it was the German and Italian national anthems. Go Schumi! He's back racing again, but not with a top tier team. He's my age, but I don't think he's lost any ability. By the way, if you're a Top Gear fan, rumor has it that he might be "The White Stig." He was revealed as such on the show, but many think that was just a hoax. Any way, the point really is, most national anthems are just too long. A lot of times when I hear them I'm left wondering about half way through, is this over yet? Little known fact, the shortest national anthem is Uganda's at only 9 bars (good choice folks). The longest is Uruguay's at 105 bars, and Greece's has 158 verses, but it's just Greek to me (it was too easy). I think ours is just right. After this whole diatribe though, I'm sure it's obvious that I'm more than a bit biased.

Not sure how I got from the Star Spangled Banner to the Stig, but that is just a glimpse into the random synaptic firings that make up my consciousness. Next post will have photos and details about our trip to Camp Dogan for a going away luncheon from the Turkish Officers we work with at NMAA. I also will post some of the Panjshir pictures as well when I have good upload speeds from work. Till then, here's just one of the representative photos from Panjshir.

Day 53 - FOSS Seminar

The bulk of my day was spent preparing for and giving a faculty development workshop on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). I mentioned in a previous blog that I've become the local FOSS evangelist. The CompSci instructors were very interested and interactive at this afternoon's session. I enjoyed it, and hopefully cleared up some myths and sowed some seeds of conversion. It is heavily frowned upon (and perhaps illegal) to proselytize here since it is officially an Islamic republic, but I think that only applies to religion and not software origins. At least I hope so.

Another spur of the moment project came up just before lunch. It seems the soldiers working in the main gate guard building don't have any network connection and would really like to access the internet. It all started when one of the local Afghan soldiers came to us with a translator asking for some spare networking parts. Rather than just cough up whatever hardware they ask for, we've learned to dig into the problem a bit and try and figure out what they are trying to accomplish. It's a good thing we did this time. They had it in their head that all they needed was to pull a network cable through the manholes from a nearby building and the internet would be theirs. We politely said "show us what you're doing."

With a bit of disdain that we didn't just hand over hardware, they walked us around and showed us the project. We spent some time tracing cables, opening up wire boxes and examining manhole covers. After about 15 minutes of searching, I located a newly installed 16 pair cable and punch down blocks with only two pair in use for the two building phones. I explained to them a reasonable solution for extending the network from the adjacent building to this one and they seemed happy for the help at last.

Then we walked over to the adjacent building which happened to be one of the three dormitories. It turns out the network has been down in that building for over a year. Really. After some more detective work we discovered that the main switch and fiber termination had been "vandalized" (broken open, fiber ends pulled off, stale bread left in the cabinet, etc.). The project started to grow. After a bit more time we located a hastily installed temporary network cobbled together with a few home switches, and no confirmation of external access. We talked them through a fix for this as well and reminded them that all the new fiber and networking equipment (that was torn apart) had only been installed two years earlier (with an accompanying US taxpayer bill consisting of seven figures).

There's no hope really of trying to reconstruct the demise of the previously installed network. Instead, we laid out a high level plan and course of action and left it to them to make right. Of course we offered as much help as possible, but no more money or equipment (for now). I guess this is a bit like "tough love." We provided a working solution in the past, but didn't teach them how to take care of it well enough, or they didn't value it enough to take care of it since it came too easily. They've been without for a while now, and they will continue to be until they figure out a way to fix things. Hmmm. I guess there's a much larger lesson in this whole experience. I hope at least some of our Afghan colleagues that took part in the trouble shooting today realize it.

Day 52 - Panjshir Valley

We took a trip up the Panjshir Valley today. All I can say is Awesome! We were invited by the Superintendent and Commandant of NMAA, but at the last minute the Superintendent had to cancel. We did go with the Commandant though, who is an Afghan Brigadier General that grew up in the village just down the hill from Massoud's tomb. We basically toured around the area with a local hero. Imagine, he grew up in the Panjshir Valley, fought alongside Massoud against the Taliban, and is now the Commandant at what is likely the most prestigious University in the country.

I highly recommend reading the two links above if you have time. Massoud is a national hero and martyr for Afghanistan. During his time with the Mujahideen, he led the defense of the Panjshir Valley against first the Soviets, and then the Taliban. This valley is the only region of Afghanistan to have never been conquered by either! Ever! Imagine standing up to and continually defeating the Soviet military with a group of volunteer insurgents. They were fighting for their homes though, which is powerful motivation.

The whole valley is beautiful. A raging river fed by the snow melt in the Hindu Kush rages through it. There is a lot of agriculture and amazing scenery. It really reminded me of Big Thompson Canyon and Estes Park. The surrounding mountains are a bit more shear and quite a bit higher though.

We were up at about 4:30 am, on the road by 5:15, and didn't return until 8:30 tonight, so I'm going to cut this a bit short. Lots more on the adventure with pictures tomorrow. By the way, we even swam in the Panjshir river in our skivvies! I'll have some unflattering pictures of all that next post.

Day 50 and 51-BBQ and KMTC

I took Independence Day off from blogging. We worked a bit that day since we had a meeting on Camp Eggers, but most of the day was spent relaxing. We were invited to a BBQ at the Afghan Engineering District compound next door to Eggers. It is a great little oasis in the middle of Kabul. My theory is that the Army Corps of Engineers picked the best spot for their compound when they got here. The tallest, and likely the oldest, trees are dotted throughout their outdoor space. Plus, they consistently have the best food around. I think I like their place better than the Alamo. However, I was at KMTC today finishing up their lab for them, and I got cheese sticks! I actually dipped deep fried cheese strips in cheese sauce at lunch time. I could feel my heart skip a beat each time I did it. Yum. I topped it off with a bowl of really good gumbo and pralines and cream ice cream for dessert.

Our trip to KMTC was uneventful, however we did get their lab totally done and turned over to the Afghans. They were happier with the outcome than I expected. I was told they plan to start using it right away, which is pretty satisfying. KMTC is a large basic training base for enlisted and officer recruits, and it is nice to be able to contribute to soldier training in addition to working with the cadets at NMAA.

GEN Petraeus took command of the coalition forces in Afghanistan today. After reading his confirmation hearing transcripts and his acceptance speech I'm encouraged. We have done a lot here, but really have a lot more to do. I'm starting to believe that the Taliban have infiltrated after regrouping in Pakistan far more than I did before. One of our team spent a week at a forward operating base south of Kabul helping with negotiation training. His stories of the interactions between the ANA, ANP, and the coalition mentors/trainers/soldiers are a bit disheartening. Basically, the population is scared to accept help from the government security forces and the coalition troops in many part of the country. We try and get out and about, but the fall back is to hole up in our secure compounds. When we're not out with the population, the Taliban is there threatening peoples families if they have anything to do with us. We've even seen it at NMAA, but that is a topic for another story.

Day 49 - Prelude to Independence Day

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

American Independence Day was a hot topic at work today. I spent a few hours with the Turkish mentors this morning and they asked me all about "the 4th of July." Questions like "what do you celebrate?", "what does the typical American family do on that holiday?", "why July 4th?", etc. I was a little surprised at the naiveté of the questions, but then I shouldn't have been. I had to look on Wikipedia to discover that the Turkish celebrate Republic day on October 29th commemorating the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923 after their war of independence.

Our Afghan interpreters and colleagues were equally as curious. I made it a point to all of them that the holiday is properly called Independence Day in America, and not really the "4th of July." This has always been a pet peeve of mine, but I digress.

This whole train of thinking did get me to wondering what day will Afghanistan celebrate as its Independence Day? According to Wikipedia, 19 August has been widely celebrated as Afghan Independence Day after the Treaty of Rawalpindi in 1919 that formally recognized Afghanistan and ended British influence here. However, after 30+ years of alternating war and destruction first by Russia and then by the Taliban, I wonder if this will continue to be the norm. I'm not arrogant enough to suggest the Afghans change their customs because of any US, NATO, or Coalition actions, I was just wondering. There has been a major civil war here since 1978 and didn't subside much when Russian forces were finally withdrawn in 1989. One could argue the country is still in the midst of a civil war. Things are far from decided by the looks of it.

So until tomorrow, have a very happy and enjoyable Independence Day weekend. Attend a parade, recite the Pledge of Allegiance, admire a flag, meet some new people, sing "America the Beautiful" (if you can't sing, listen to this Ray Charles version from 1991), watch some fireworks, and eat some BBQ. If you have time, thank a veteran, say a short prayer for the deployed soldiers, think about voting this fall, and take a few minutes to read the Declaration of Independence. To quote the primary author:

"Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion."

Thomas Jefferson

Day 47 and 48 - Open Source Evangelism

Yesterday was a short day since the Afghans all leave after lunch. We left a bit early as well knowing that we weren't going to be able to take Friday, our one off, as usual. I came back to the barracks and had a bit of a nap. I really wish the U.S. would consider instituting the siesta. A 60-90 minute nap around 2pm is just awesome. Although mine didn't start yesterday until about 4pm, and it went a bit longer :>).

This morning I had a meeting at 0900 to talk with the NTMA and IJC C-6's regarding the Afghan Mission Network. A bit of organizational and acronym definitions are in order. ISAF, or the International Security Assistance Force (this link also), is commanded by a US 4-star General. Now it is GEN David Petraeus. He has two 3-star commanders under him. One for NTMA, or the NATO Training Mission Afghanistan (NTMA), and one for the ISAF Joint Command (IJC). We fall under NTMA, which is commanded by LTG Caldwell. Our job is to train and equip the Afghan Security Forces (Army and Police). IJC is commanded by LTG Rodriguez and handles the tactical day to day fight. We met with both the Directors of Communication today to help work out the details of the emerging Afghan Mission Network. This will be the classified and unclassified computer networks for all the Afghan Security Forces.

Whew. All that being said, one big topic of discussion has become "how do we help set up the Afghans so they can sustain everything as we draw down forces and funding?" We're looking at everything from renewable energy to recycling. Recently, I've been aghast at what our plans are for the IT infrastructure support. Basically, we're imposing/modelling ourselves onto the Afghans. Our hard working IT folks are designing infrastructures that are totally Microsoft dependent. This is OK until two years from now when they have to pay the licensing fees and get locked into the never-ending upgrade juggernaut. We're basically saddling the Afghans with a multiple million dollar per year licensing burden. As an alternative, I've started evangelizing Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Those of you that know me know I'm a huge FOSS zealot. I've been doing my best to introduce the NMAA CompSci department to Linux, Open Office, Vayatta, MySQL, Java, and the like. In fact, I'm presenting a faculty development workshop on FOSS later this week.

In addition, I now have the job to develop an information paper for LTG Caldwell's Deputy on the pros/cons of Microsoft vs. FOSS. I pitched it to him today and he seemed to like the idea. All the European Officers that have been present in the last few meetings were highly supportive of the idea as well, in fact most of the people I've pitched have been really receptive. The biggest doubters are the legions of IT folks whose job it is to implement the solutions though, and Microsoft is the only answer they know. It looks like I have good top cover, but a steep up hill battle. How liberating would it be as a nation to be able to start from little to no automation and go straight to FOSS?



In between morning and afternoon meetings, we had a bit of time to kill in the green zone, so we decided to head over to the US Embassy and join the Tali banned Cigar Aficionado Club. I'm now a coin carrying life member. It's a group of mostly expatriate civilians contractors and Embassy employees that get together every other week. They have great support from some of the local cigar shops with donations and sponsorship. I even won the grand prize in the raffle, a nice humidor! It's funny what a bunch of guys will come up with when you take away their booze...

Day 46 - IPv6

I started the day getting my "ghost written" request for a laptop donation staffed. I drafted this request for the NMAA Superintendent some time last week and just got it back from the translators today. I've been in contact with a charitable non-profit in the US inquiring about raising some money to buy laptops for the next entering class. Once I had the translated version I went and spent a bit of time with the XO and put it into the "staff process." We'll see how it goes. There are a lot of hurdles to clear on this one, and invariably, someone will have to pick it up when I leave.

Later in the day I conducted a faculty development workshop on IPv6 and teaching networks. We had a really good time. It is a nice interchange. In addition to expanding the instructors' knowledge base, I get to step out of that role and talk to them about how I approach teaching various topics to students as well. I learn from them, I think they learn from me. It all works well. We joked a bit about an event in 2008 when Pakistan inadvertently took youtube down for several hours with a black hole route they let get into the greater internet. Things are pretty strained here between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's no secret that Pakistan has been hedging their bets and continuing to support the Taliban just in things don't work out here in Afghanistan. The degree to which they are doing this is in debate, bit it seems that it is even now still occurring.

It is interesting to talk to the Afghans about their Iranian and Pakistani neighbors. There isn't a lot of love lost with either. If you step back from the situation, it really is in both Iran and Pakistan's best interest to maintain a weak Afghanistan. I hope things continue to change over the next several years though.

Day 45 - English Class and just a bit of Controversy

Worked today on a seminar for the CompSci department this morning. I was supposed to have it in the afternoon, but it was postponed until tomorrow. Col Rahman decided to have another feedback session instead at the same time. This one was a bit more interesting than the last two. The previous sessions were with the juniors and seniors, so primarily all CompSci majors. This one was with the Sophomores, so they were asked to give feedback on the core course. Cadets at NMAA take two CompSci core courses. This feedback session was attended by the Dean since he really enjoyed the last one. However, the atmosphere was much different.

The students showed a lot of courage and hit the issues head on. It turns out that the CompSci majors get much better access to the labs and do a lot more hands on work in the upper level courses. The core courses on the other hand, while lending themselves very well to hands on activities, are very much taught in a lecture style without a lot of activities. When you consider the content (a lot of MS Office and Windows usage training), sitting through a lecture where an instructor demos how to do equations with Excel, but doesn't let you reinforce anything by trying it, can be extremely frustrating. I get the feeling that the CompSci instructors and upper class cadets are cautious or protective of their labs. They don't want the core courses to "mess up" their lab machines. Therefore, lots of demo/lecture, with very little practice.

Unfortunately, even though the students had the courage to politely challenge this practice, the instructors, department head, and even the Dean, pretty much shot them down. I had to bite my tongue pretty hard. This means I'll have a lot of chai to drink while doing as much behind closed doors mentoring as possible. I've been trying to persuade the department to open up the labs to all the students since my second week here. You've heard the old saying "give me a fish and I eat for a day, teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime." Well, the Freshmen and Sophomores are only getting daily rations.

I did have some fun before lunch. One of the other mentors grabbed a few of us and asked if we'd help with an English class. It is more effective if we can get the students in smaller groups for discussion and practice. It was a lot of fun. The cadets are very anxious to work on their English and talk about themselves, but in a large class they don't always get the opportunity. I had about six of them in a small break out group. We talked about where they were from, what the wanted to do after graduation, why they came to NMAA, etc. We also talked about food to increase their vocabulary. Turns out they all think tomatoes are a vegetable. I tried to reason with them, but to no avail...

Day 44 - ANATEC and Palaces

We drove down to ANATEC today for a meeting. ANATEC is the Afghan National Army Training and Education Command. It is at the southwest edge Kabul, and we conveniently are on the north edge of Kabul. I had never been south of the mountains that split Kabul in half from east to west. One of them is called TV Hill since it has most of the telecommunications antennas and facilities located on top of it. The basic route is due south, through the green zone, and then right through the middle of downtown, past the two big mosques (one has a light brown dome, the other a turquoise dome), and then southwest to the edge of town. The worst drive I've been on so far. The final several miles are riddled with the worst potholes I've experienced. The central part of the road is being repaved, so all traffic is limited to the access roads on the sides. In a space that we would put a two lane road with no shoulders, the inventive and aggressive Afghans manage to fit five cars wide, bouncing through two foot deep potholes, traveling faster than would seem possible. Tons of fun.

We left mid-morning, so heading down, traffic was quite moderate. Unfortunately, after our meetings, the return trip started at 4pm, so we came through downtown Kabul during the peak of rush hour. Brutal! At least it was interesting people watching while we crept along through the crowds and traffic. Needless to say, there are no freeways.

The purpose of our meeting was to discuss the entrance qualification testing for prospective NMAA cadets as well coordinating some of the cadet summer training at KMTC. In the past, all the interested high school students that aspired to attend NMAA would travel to Kabul to take a placement exam here. They all did this at their own expense. This really tended to limit our applicants to those geographically close males from higher income families. The government is really striving for ethnic and socio-economic diversity, and this wasn't supporting that goal. Many really qualified and intelligent kids just couldn't make the trip to Kabul to apply. Additionally, NMAA is trying hard to recruit more females. In Afghanistan, a single teenage girl can't travel alone. In order for her to get to Kabul for the entrance exam required significant time, risk, and her mother, brother, or father taking time to travel both ways with her. Clearly another approach was called for.

Currently, any eligible teenager can take the national concord. It is a test like the SAT to help rank high school students and aid in college acceptance. The NMAA entrance exam is the same test re-branded. Our going in position was to just start using the national concord as a first cut. This would allow NMAA to make attendance offers to kids of all backgrounds, regardless of geography and other factors. Well, I've discussed the wide spread corruption here before, so the leadership is reluctant to just accept the scores from the national concord. A good compromise was reached to create five regional testing centers around the country and have NMAA staff proctor entrance exams in a distributed fashion. This will help.

Of course we scheduled in time for lunch when we first arrived at Camp Dubs. The ribs there were some of the best I think I've had. Honestly. A few of the cooks are transplanted contractors, and must be from somewhere in the south. The meat just fell off the bone. I'm usually a pork rib fan because beef ribs tend to be over cooked and sometimes tough. We had beef ribs that fell off the bone and just melted in your mouth. It is the little things like this that can become the highlight of your day sometimes. I've put the chow hall at Camp Dubs right up there with the one at the Alamo on KMTC. Perhaps not worth enduring the brutal drive, but great none the less.


There are a few interesting things to see down at ANATEC as well. Darul Aman Palace, or "the king's palace" is adjacent to ANATEC. We drove by and took a few pictures, but weren't able to go in. The adjacent Tajbeg Palace, or "Queen's Palace" was accessible, and we did climb around it in a bit. This first picture is taken from the Queen's palace looking back at the King's palace and the southern part of the city.




Of course Ada came with us. This picture is of the Queen's palace in the background. Here's a bit better picture looking at the front as we were headed into Camp Dub's for lunch.


We climbed around inside the Queen's palace a bit. Here's an interior view looking up from the second floor ball room. It must have been quite opulent in its time, but of course in years of war and poverty, these are the types of buildings that fall into disrepair first.

We made it all the way into the attic of the palace (four floors up). Here's a few pictures of it, along with Ada posing for a shot.



The views from the palace windows of the southern part of the city were excellent and quite dramatic. Here's a few shots looking north. You can see TV Hill in some of them.





Our last bit of exploration was to a dilapidated Russian Officer's club that is on a much higher hill overlooking both of the palaces. The final four pictures are of the hill and Officers' Club, looking down on the two palaces. Finally, I decided to take a quick swim in the pool in the club compound.

Day 43 - Seminar Prep and Feedback

I spent part of the morning preparing my faculty development workshop materials. I'm going to do a series of three workshops before I leave. One will be on information and cyber warfare, one on IPv6, and I think the third one will be on establishing a student ACM chapter at NMAA. By the way, did you realize that we're going to run out of IPv4 addresses some time in 2011? Of course NAT will keep us going for a while, but I think it's finally time that we take IPv6 transition seriously. No offense intended to anyone that has already been taking it seriously, unfortunately, most of us haven't been.

I attended another feedback session with the CompSci faculty and students. This time we met with the NMAA Juniors. They are all taking networks and Java programming right now. I think I mentioned this before, but they start the whole session by reading the names of the failing cadets. Interesting approach. The NMAA Dean (BGen Hamdallah) was there with us today. He was upset that not all the Junior CS majors attended, and basically threatened to punish those that didn't come. They are reasonably strict, and very direct about some things. I noticed also that he was handed an attendance list on the way out, which I have no doubt he'll follow up on. I'm glad I was there ...

I got some good news today from the ACM. They've been negotiating with the Ministry of Culture already, and plan to have a deeply discounted access rate for the digital library in place by the end of the year. It looks like the US CDRF (Civlian Development and Research Foundation) is going to cover nationwide access for the first year to two. They did this in Iraq, and it got the ball rolling. I also worked a way with them to stand up a student chapter here for a much more reasonable cost than I had thought. I'm planning to be the faculty sponsor since I already pay annual dues for the ACM, so we should be able to get things going in the next week or two.

Our planned softball session with the cadets was postponed today until tomorrow. I'll try and get some pictures if possible. Like I said, we're working hard to ween them off cricket...

Day 41 and 42 - Sleeping In, Library, and Firing Range

No post yesterday sorry. It was Jumah, so a day off. I slept in, watched a video, worked on the course I'm teaching in the fall, did some IPv6 reading, wrote some cards to my girls, and capped off the day with a few chapters from "The Great Game" by Peter Hopkirk. I recommended this several weeks ago, and now that I'm about 3/4 of the way into it, my recommendation only gets stronger.

If only those imperial powers had let the borders develop along ethnic and traditional lines, we might all be better off than our current haphazard system of borders arbitrarily drawn to strengthen the positions of the few and the wealthy. Many of the modern problems we see today, from ethnic conflict to the challenge of governance in Afghanistan can be traced directly back to the arbitrary nature of modern nation state borders. I guess we all had to agree to recognize some borders at some point in time, but we didn't do very well. Oh, and we really didn't ask many of the people that it impacted at the time either. Yugoslavia, the recent ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan (which looks to have been started by the ousted regime by the way), the ongoing Afghanistan/Pakistan/Iran/India disputes, and oh yeah, all those problems on the African continent.

I'll cut this little rant short, but before I do, perhaps we should consider a city-state model again. It works for Monaco, Singapore, Hong Kong in the past, and even the Vatican. It would keep militaries necessarily small, encourage cooperation and trade, and even limit taxes to a much lower governmental level, which would appeal greatly to my libertarian ideals. Big governments, especially ours, have become way too distanced from and unaccountable to the people (Don't even get me started on the EU). But then, I'm a big fan of the 10th Amendment too, and think it may have even stopped a bit short. Maybe the founding fathers should have worded it "...are reserved to the People respectively, or to the States." This is a rich topic, but I'll move on for now.


Due to our influx in people, and a more security focused climate here in Afghanistan, we went to the firing range today at KMTC (Kabul Military Training Center). We had a few new M-16's we had to zero, and any excuse to shoot, er train, is usually good enough. The picture above is Larry (organizer of the girls' school assistance) making sure his reflex sights on his M4 are still on target. We all took turns with the new sights, and I'm hugely impressed. I've fired with them before and never cease to be amazed. Just put the red dot on the target, ignore the peep sites, and pull the trigger. The consistency is impressive. These sights are virtually parallax free, so your head and eye placement just don't matter. Red dot, target, exhale, squeeze, hit. Really nice. It is these types of technologies that soldiers really appreciate. I'd take a nice reflex sight on every soldiers' rifle over all our F-22's every day of the week, and twice on Sundays (Sorry Bob).

We left for KMTC about 1130, after the weekly staff meeting, morning coffee, email catch-up, and planning for the week. KMTC is an interesting place. You may notice that the big earthen feature we are shooting into is the same mountain I climbed a few weeks ago, the Gharib Ghar. This is the primary reason we had to be back off the mountain by 0800. It wouldn't be good for anyone to be on the trail after the firing ranges open.


Sorry for the blur on this picture, but if you look closely (click the picture for a large version), you can see two spent casing still in the air. We practiced a bit on our three round burst firing (boy does that short barrel heat up!). Contrary to popular opinion, it is quite possible to stay on target with every round while firing on burst. All of us were able to do it. Plus, it just feels better putting three rounds down range with every trigger pull. I wouldn't resort to it often, but it is comforting to know that it is only a thumb flip away. It is even more comforting to know that one can hit what they aim at (the classical definition of "gun control"). Even in burst.


I had to include just a few other pictures of KMTC. Like I said, it is an interesting place. Firing ranges on US bases don't have the same look. KMTC has piles and piles of tanks, APCs, and any other kind of blown up, burned, and mangled metal war machines you can think of, mostly old Soviet era stuff. It is sort of a bone yard for all the military equipment that has been destroyed in the country over the last 30 years. We are all hesitant to go and climb around on it, so I took some pictures from a ways off. You never know what kind of UXO could be lurking in these hulks.


This a closer view of the bombed out building in the background with a turret and APC closer to the foreground. Pretty dramatic images if you think about the background and stories that probably landed them here. Trust me, there are thousands and thousands of burned and blown up pieces of equipment littered all over KMTC. I have no idea how many other installations in Afghanistan exist with this much evidence of destruction, but just seeing this one sobers you more than a bit.

Back to a quick political commentary to end things off for the evening. That's how this blog entry started after all. While I was blathering on at the beginning I found a description of an interesting book titled "A Nation Among Nations: America's Place in World History" by Thomas Bender. It looks compelling after reading the authors essay and premises. However, it does argue against American Exceptionalism, which I still haven't decided upon one way or the other. I've had too many conflicting experiences so far in my life to take a firm stand on either side. As an American, it's comforting to think you are "Exceptional", and I'm deeply committed to the Constitutional foundations and principles that started the notion. However, I often come back to a profound piece of wisdom that my Father-In-Law shared with me. His Dad taught him "Never believe that you are better than anyone, but never believe that anyone is better than you either." This resonates with me often. Thanks for sharing it Jeep.

Day 40 - Library Ribbon Cutting

We returned to the local girls' school today for the library ribbon cutting ceremony. Overall we spent over an hour having fruit and chai with the village elders and teachers. All the older girls were assembled outside and some had written stories and poems that were read. All in Dari, and even one in English. Larry had gifts for several people, to include the school administrators, teachers, and one eight year old girl that is hard to see and not have your heart melt. Lieutenant General Sharif, the NMAA Superintendent, attended with us. One of the girls even expressed interest in attending NMAA as a medical student in a few years.

Larry also presented and laid the stone for the playground in honor of a family friend whose name many of the donations were made on behalf of. I have more pictures than words today, so I'll include them with minimal comment.

Day 39 - Decision Tendered

Gen McChrystal is out and Gen Petraeus is in. I'll comment in a day or two.

On a more important note, a buddy of mine in the UP found my vette. All it needs is a little armor, but it is surely battle tested. He was recently at the Corvette museum and took note of this beauty. I wonder if we could fit a gun turret. I never cease to be amazed at what automotive journalists will subject borrowed cars to. Here's a Car and Driver story about this one. Seems they drove it up the Dempster Highway and back. Tough duty for any car or SUV. Kabul would be a vacation. Now I need to talk GM into letting me borrow it...

Day 39 - Phoenix and CompSci Seminars

I'm going to refrain from commenting on all the politics of the situation regarding Gen McChrystal until the fall out settles down a bit. That said, things are interesting to watch as they unfold.

Today started with an early run to Camp Phoenix to drop off one of our team members to catch an MI-17. He's headed down south to Khost province for some research and liaison duties with a local unit there. As our expert on negotiation strategies, which he also teaches at Westpoint, his skills should come in handy. I'm just jealous he gets an MI-17 ride...

Later in the day I did some training in the language lab with the Afghan that leads the English training program here. Then, after lunch, I participated in one of our seminars that we're doing for the CompSci instructors. Since there are three CompSci mentors here, we've split up the duties. I'm focusing on information warfare, cyber warfare, and networks, and the other two are emphasizing programming, software engineering, and information technologies. Today Mark presented a nice technique for teaching debugging to 2nd year CompSci students. The instructors are really appreciative for any help and advice we provide.

Now to my "special topic of the day." You know that "sour" smell wash cloths get when you let them sit damp beside the sink too long? Well, that is the smell that slowly develops and creeps into almost every classroom and office here as the week progresses. Tomorrow is the end of the week for the Afghans since they have Fridays off. It's becoming painfully apparent that they only launder their uniforms once a week, at best. It's been extra hot this week, so today was brutal sitting in the offices and classrooms. I may avoid it tomorrow morning, but I already have some commitments.

Most of you that know me, know that I have a really good sense of smell. To make things worse, that sour smell is my least favorite of all time. I'm a bit phobic about it. Just ask Gina. Well, I have proven that I'm extremely diplomatic. Not one comment or joke about it since I arrived (yet). If I were going to be here any longer, I think my mission would be to introduce bleach to Afghanistan. I could go down in history. Imagine what it could do for the bathrooms here, which is another topic all together.

Day 38 - Addendum

The Rolling Stone profile of Gen McChrystal and the war in Afghanistan is now posted on the Rolling Stone site here. I'll refrain from documenting my reactions and opinions to it so I don't commit the same error that the story's subject has done.

Day 38 - Ambassador Eikenberry Visit

Very interesting day in Afghanistan today. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, the US Ambassador to Afghanistan, visited. He received the first ever honorary diploma from NMAA. As an Army General stationed here a few years ago he was instrumental in the creation and stand up of NMAA. He gave a good speech, but the auditorium was insufferably hot! Literally thought I might pass out. Not really, but there was lots of sweat.


Doing a bit of reading on the Ambassador before his visit I ran across a link from the January NY Times. I highly recommend reading it. Ambassador Eikenberry is extremely critical of the troop surge and President Karzai. He raises a number of excellent points. It turns out that the link above is an actual scan of the classified cables that were sent to Secretary Clinton by the Ambassador. Pretty heady stuff! One thing that resonates with me is his point about Karzai's motivation. As long as the international community is here dumping literally billions of dollars into the country, and Karzai, his family members, and friends are profiting substantially from it, what motivation is there to rock the boat and pursue stability. A 30,000 to 40,000 personnel troop surge only brings more money, more contracts, and more civilians in to support. Oh yeah, and more opportunities for bribes, corruption, and contracts, which seem to all be synonymous here.

This brings up another article I read today. Check out this Washington Post link. It seems there is good evidence that US taxpayer money is being used to fund warlords and even the Taliban to ensure the safety of supply convoys.

Lastly, late breaking news. Our Commander here, Gen Stanley McChrystal, has ticked off a number of people in an interview due to be released in a Rolling Stone article. He insulted a number of senior governmental civilians, to include Ambassador Eikenberry. Specifically he commented on his cables and assessment linked above. This Washington Post article has more details. Here's another good story on the topic from BBC.

Will the madness ever end? It is hard sometimes to reconcile enthusiastic support of the mission, and to your tasks in support of it, with all this madness going on around you.

Day 37 - Kabul Women's Garden

This is bit of a cop out, but in today's blog I'm going to refer you to another article. I was forwarded this today by our resident Human Geographer from Westpoint. She's trying to work out a way to visit the Kabul Women's Garden referenced in the NY Times article. If you have the time, I highly recommend reading this. Here are a couple quotes from the article just to tempt you into reading it:

“What would I do with a husband, especially an uneducated husband?” Zehia asked. “A job is much better.”

and

"Most of all, Ms. Salik would like to see a program that would take women on brief trips to other countries, perhaps for job training, but really, she said, just to see how women live in lands where there are no women’s gardens."

Quoted from: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/world/asia/21kabul.html?pagewanted=2&hp

This reminds me of a strong point Bernard Lewis makes in his excellent books "The Crisis of Islam" and "What Went Wrong." Traditional Islamic society is falling behind due in large part because they willingly squander half of their intellectual capital by not allowing women to gain an education and work. Things are turning around some in Afghanistan, but it is slower than many people realize. There are still a preponderance of women that wear Burka's in public, and virtually all of them wear conservative scarves over their heads pulled down low and tight. You can see how conservatively the NMAA female students dress in yesterday's post. I don't think this is overtly mandated, but there is certainly societal pressure that is nearly impossible to overcome.

I'm not arguing against any of the traditions of modesty, that is up to each society to decide. I just think women should be allowed and encouraged to go to school and work if they want. I sure hope my three daughters have the opportunity to attend the school of their choice and study whatever topic they are most interested in (as long as it is Computer Science or Mathematics :>)...

As for work today, I finally finished up my grunt work in NMAA's new language lab. It is now fully configured and ready to go. I'm giving it to the language instructors officially tomorrow, and will finish up the lab at KMTC in the next few days. It will be good to be finished with all that. I'm planning to send the details of what I've done back to the Tobyhanna Army Depot and DLI just in case they want to duplicate the effort. I managed to combine their two products (Tobyhanna hardware and software with DLI course content) in a way that makes use and maintenance significantly easier.

So, take some time over a cup of coffee while your boss isn't looking and read the NY Times article. Also, if you're extra motivated, provide some comments here on the blog. Too many lurkers and not enough contributors. Big day tomorrow. I'll have details and pictures in the next post.

Day 36 - Medical Students

I probably mentioned in a past post that NMAA has about 40 or so cadets each year that are pre-identified for medical school. I audited their CompSci core class today (CS-1). We discussed formatting in MS Word, which seems to basic for college Freshman, but when I asked them, only about 8-10 had ever touched a computer before coming to NMAA. The year is about 2/3 of the way done for them, and I must admit, they pick it up quickly.

The med school cadets come to NMAA for one year, then go on to medical school after that, usually Kabul University. Most of them speak English quite well, and they are the select few Freshman students at NMAA that are given laptop computers. This year, 12 of them are female. Currently, the only women at NMAA are tracked to become doctors, vets, or nurses. Interestingly, I've been told that many practicing human doctors in Afghanistan are actually trained as Veterinarians. It's more medical education than I have, but it still seems like not quite enough for me if I was their patient.


After class I asked if could take a picture of them and they all agreed enthusiastically. They do love to take photos. I tried to take one serious picture and one goofy picture. The students here always seem so serious. Well, you can see the result. This first picture is their "serious" one, and the second picture is their "goofy" one. Not much difference huh? I didn't think so either.


Later in the day, COL Rahman (the CompSci department head) invited us to a feedback session with the senior CompSci majors. We do this at USAFA too. It is a chance to provide an open forum for students and instructors to comment on how things are going. This one was a bit different than ours though. COL Rahman started things off by reading the names aloud of all the cadets that had failed their mid-terms. And I was warned many times before I came that they didn't take criticism well, especially public criticism. He softened the blow by encouraging them, and before the session I had privately told him that he should appeal to the other cadets doing well to be sure and help their classmates. I think they got the message.
After starting on the down note, the top students and instructors were then announced, and then things were opened up for question and discussion. I was impressed with the bearing and professionalism of the students. They asked some pretty tough questions. COL Rahman shot a few questions down though. He has a bit of a tough demeanor with the students. He reminds me of my department head at USAFA when I was a student (Col William Richardson). Tough, but fair. After the whole event we posed for a picture.

I made it a point to embed myself in the back with the cadets. I was expected to stand in front with all the other instructors, but I love doing the un-expected, especially here. I hope I didn't offend anyone, but the cadets seemed to love the idea, and COL Rahman is still my buddy.

Day 35 - Turnover is Killing Us

(post for Saturday, 19 Jun) Another virtual Monday (Saturday starts our new week). We have our weekly planning meeting every Saturday morning at 0830. This week looks to be a busy one. As always, I'll share everything after it happens. I figure it's not good to advertise our activities ahead of time to whoever might stumble across my blog.

Everyone here works really hard on their assigned tasks, but one thing that just kills our ability to complete things is the turnover of personnel. I can't complain too much since I'm here for such a short time, but it sure is frustrating. Just when you think you have all the right points of contact lined up to accomplish a task, half of them rotate back to the states or are gone on mid-tour R&R leave.

This isn't new to me. It is the same problem anywhere the US military deploys people to. It even impacts places we've been for a long time. One of our jokes while I was stationed in Korea is that we've fought the Korean war 50+ times, one year at a time. I was in Seoul for only 18 months and saw a lot of people come and go. It's even worse in Afghanistan.

We visited the CJ-6 (Director of Communications) staff today about the new cost estimate for the IT infrastructure and computing support at the new NMAA site near Qarghah, and of course, the key person was home on leave. Predictably, they didn't fill anyone else in on the project details before leaving. Two steps forward and one step back... We re-educated the existing folks in the office and at least one of them seemed involved enough to continue helping us. The coalition countries here are spending more than $200 million building the Afghan Air Defense University (ADU), and it turns out that nobody planned for phones, networks, and computers. I think they at least remembered electric power. The current estimate is that this will add another $5M or so to the price tag. They broke ground on the foundations months ago, so we're scrambling around to make sure the buildings have fiber and wires pulled in before the construction is too far along.

Speaking of electric power. The current estimate is that the new ADU site requires 16-20 Megawatts of power. The power generation capability in Kabul can't support that much added demand, so we're installing diesel generators to make it a stand alone site. I've learned that the cost rule of thumb for diesel power generation is about $2.1M per year per Megawatt. That's a $40M+ per year budget requirement just to keep the lights on. Additionally, our IT infrastructure cost goes way up because we have to put back up power supplies on everything since the generators go up and down periodically. Our current NMAA site suffers at least 3-5 short power outages every day. After a while you learn to just tune out the incessant beeping of UPSs in the background.

I was a bit under the weather yesterday, so I went back to my room and "took a short nap." This nap turned into me sleeping till about one in the morning, eating a bit, and going back to sleep until this morning. I'll try and get back on track with blog posts tonight.

Day 34 - Not a Lot of Excitement

Another Friday came and went. I spent the day reading, watching movies, working out, and doing a bit of coding. It's good to have a day off each week, but is sometimes hard when there is not a lot of choice to spend your time. The highlight of my day was sharing a fresh pot of Kona coffee. Our team chief had some mailed in, and it is quite good. Other than that, I'm going to make this a short post. More fun tomorrow.

Day 33 - Thursdays are Slow

Another Thursday. Things are quite slow on Thursdays. It is a mix between our Friday and our Saturday. Most Afghans, the NMAA folks included, only work until just after lunch (1330 or so) since tomorrow is their day off and 1400 is prayer time. I wrapped up my audit forms in the morning and did a bit of java API "research". Otherwise it was a quiet morning.

I spent a bit of time with the Dean's Executive Officer (Colonel Amin) before lunch as well. We're trying to get laptops for all the NMAA cadets. The normal approval process through MOD (Ministry of Defense) won't happen in time for the new class this fall, so in addition to the official process we're trying to find a non-profit that would be willing to donate 600 mid-range laptops. We have a good lead with "Spirit of America", but as US Military folks, we can't legally solicit donations of this sort. As a result, I'm ghost writing a request from the Superintendent (MGEN Sharif) to go directly to them. Things look promising. My visit with Colonel Amin was nice too. He has relatives coming to town for a picnic tomorrow.

Later in the day we got a short notice request for a meeting on Camp Eggers with an SES (civilian General Officer equivilant), LTG Caldwell's Deputy. Not something we can say no to or postpone, and they needed another driver. On the road again (the link is to the Willie Nelson version...Here's the link to the Canned Heat version. Turns out a bunch of people have recorded songs with this name. Who knew?). I've put in a fair number of miles now around Kabul and am getting the hang of the traffic. The thing that worries me most when I drive (or when we travel at all), is all the small children that dart in and out of the traffic. They don't seem to have the same regard for the lethality of a fast moving vehicle as most other places I've driven. Seoul included.

This was our second trip to Eggers in two days. Yesterday on the way home I was the lead vehicle and we had to get creative since our normal route and Massoud Circle were closed due to a VBIED threat. All went well, but I'm still hoping for that up armored convertible Z06...