I look around the workplace. I am really thankful that I am here. Glad that I didn’t get shot at so far, so far so good. But the work around here is repetitive and almost meaningless. There are times when I feel important, but I haven’t felt so for a while. Everyday people would come in, asking the same questions. It’s not like KFC or McDonald’s when everyone knows exactly what to buy. Besides the extraordinary questions some come with, every soldier is a new customer. You have to explain everything to everyone. And since no one gives a shit about the post office except when they receive and actually deliever the mail, they make the same mistakes. And instructions are written on the tables…
They come in wanting newspapers that we receive daily. Sometimes we run out very quickly, because all the newspapers we get we jack from units that don’t live in Kuwait anymore. They’d ask, do you have the paper? Stars and Stripes newspaper? Sometimes I just give it to them, but sometimes the only way I can keep myself sane is to entertain myself. Stars and Stripes? We have stars but not stripes. Hey buddy, that’s my personal copy. But don’t worry I have a lot of personal copies. Or, ‘and that’ll be 50 cents.’ Yeah right. All bluffs. Some people look and laugh amused, but others act like they got better things to do. And I look the same way at them, yeah I got better things to do, too.
Recently I made this thing called the jar of love. Basically, it’s a tip jar. But since in the Army that would be illegal to ‘exchange gifts and currrencies for services,’ I made it into a jar of love. What it was a give a penny, take a penny principle, except it became change instead of pennies. And I think it does do some good cuz sometimes the total comes up to some odd cents, 5, 10 or 20 cents they don’t have changes for. So I use the money from the jar of love to do that, which some people think is a great idea. And sometimes we get dollar bills in there. And since we can’t really freely give away dollar bills, I conveniently put that into my own cash box. People can’t just look at the jar and think it’s a scam or I’m going down hard. But most people are amused and I think it’s well worth it. Pretty much everyone understands.
I’d go back sometimes to operations. And I feel so foreign sometimes. Most of the people back there I don’t even know. The only people I can still recognize are the 3rd platoon members, Roberson, Contreras, Lopez, and Perez. That’s pretty much it. And about 18 other people are there, too, but I don’t know all of them by name yet, and I don’t feel like I should try to get to know them too well. They’re mostly good to say how you doing to while I pass back there. Sometimes I get the little carts they have and ride on them. You know, the ones you lift little crates off the ground with. I would grab the handle and start kicking away like it was a scooter. Of course it’s not much of a scooter but it’s still fun to ride around for a few seconds around the operations room just passing by people. Or sometimes I would just tell people to work harder. Work harder, I would point at them, work harder. Some people would laugh but a few people take it too seriously and tell ME to go find work. Because I’m back there so often for short periods of time I suppose it seems like Finance window has nothing to do. But that’s not really the case at all. We work our asses off all the time, constantly. I go back to grab a bottle of water, to go get the newspapers the trucks may have dropped off, to drop off some misplaced mail, or to go grab someone that people ask for at the counter. Meanwhile, the operations section is overloaded with people, so all they do after unloading a few trucks is sit back and talk, sleep, listen to radio, just chill. After 30 minutes to an hour of buy working, they’re done. And I don’t think finance has ever seen anything like that yet. We’re still always busy.
Just yesterday I heard the craziest story. Near Talil, Iraq, where they were holding a lot of POWs a few months back, the Psychological Operations guys were trying to get into everyone’s heads. And apparently there was this one guy that was really important, important enough to have been in the deck of most wanted playing cards. Well, no one really realized who he was. Anyway, the Psy Ops guys were doing their thing. They played hours and hours of Metallica music, then played hours and hours of the Barney music. You know, the “I love you, you love me” piece of shit. All day, all night. Can you imagine the things that they went through? Oh man, just thinking about it made me go insane. And this guy stuck to his story, saying that he was some farmer off west somewhere. And before the Military Intelligence guys were able to come up to clear names, the Psy Ops guys had already cleared guys off, including this peculiar ‘farmer.’ Of course I imagine the MI guys had a fit, but what can you do… If listening to Metallica and Barney music all day long doesn’t make you confess something, then maybe he deserved to escape.
Some things are so weird they just crack me up. At the dining facility, rightly called the D-FAC, they got hot sauce from Saudi Arabia called Rabeea. At first I paid no attention to it because I never needed to use hot sauce, not with the food they were serving. And one day I was sitting there, taking my sweet time, when I noticed this Rabeea hot sauce. Right in the middle of it, surrounded by thorns, was a picture of the most peculiar little kid you could think of, wearing a blue shirt and a white overalls, sporting a fake smile upon a frawning face. I burst out laughing hysterically. I had never seen anything like it before. And underneath it was written, Produced in the country of Saudi Arabian. I couldn’t believe it. I never laughed so hard ever since I had gotten deployed, and it was exactly what I needed to get some frustration out of my mind. Then the next day, while observing another Rabeea on another table, I noted that they had the spelling right on this one, Produced in the country of Saudi Arabia. Amazing. I made it my life’s mission from then on to find this boy. I wonder where he is now, is he a farmer? A rich man? Does he even know he’s the face of a hot sauce? Someone likened it to Aunt Jaima. But at least she looks like someone that would make delicious syrup.
In the same dining facility, they got some big screen televisions, over 60 inches in diameter I bet. I have no idea what they’re doing there. At first there were just television sets, then they got a stand. We joked that they would probably add flowers and surround sound speakers, because they never showed anything on those TVs. It’s been over a month and I still wonder who paid for those TVs because they’re just sitting there. I wonder if they know…
Then in one of the trailers filled with porter potties, there are writings on the wall. Some people would actually carry out decent conversations writing stuff on the walls with Sharpies. It’s really hilarious. They would write stuff about each others’ moms they never knew of, and different people would come in, revising their phrases and adding some stuff of their own. Some people just tell everyone else to shut up, but then others would come in telling him to shut up. Or some people actually try to conduct a decent survey of people’s opinions on things. Most people just want to get laid real bad and they let everyone know in the stalls. But one guy actually managed to write nothing but the word ‘yep’ on the walls. yep yep yep yep yep yep yep…. and it goes on and on, on the walls, on the floor, on the curtain that closes the stalls, even on the ceiling and the toilet seat itself. I never took a dump on that particular stall and I doubt anyone else really has…
Then there’s Jones. She’s married, but I have no idea who the crazy SOB was that asked her; maybe he’s freaken blind I don’t know. She’s barely 20 something but she looks like she’s about to tunr 40 real soon. She has the nastiest attitude about anything and everything and complains hell a lot more than I do. But that’s not all. She has a freaken beard. That’s right. She has white pieces of hair coming out of her chin, underneath, everything. I think she must shave her mustache that probably grows, too, but her beard is something else. Sometimes it’s hard not to stare at it but I try so hard not to. And I know I’m not the only one that’s trying, because everyone else I’ve talked to knows about it. Sometimes I just want to start a conversation with her and start stroking my chin. One day, though, it was gone. And there was a huge celebration. But I think we celebrated a little too early. It was back within few days. Right now, I’m not shaving. I remember back in basic training I shaved once a week, on Sundays. In AIT I shaved every 5 days. Same at Ft. McCoy, maybe 4 or 5 days. Now I can barely go 2 or 3 days without having someone notice that I haven’t shaved. It kind of sucks because it means I have to use more money and time into shaving. But right now I’m on strike. If they don’t tell Jones to shave, I’m not going to shave. And who cares about gender? Talk about discrimination. If you think discrimination against gender is a one way street, you are wrong. So right now I’m holding my own ground, but I don’t think I will for too long.
I don’t know. The women here aren’t too hot. I mean Army women, of course. There are exceptions to everything though. Just yesterday I saw one that struck me. I didn’t talk to her much because some guy was with her, but damn, she was pretty hot. Then one day in the D-Fac I saw this asian woman, a sergeant of all things, eating dinner. I’ve never seen such a fine asian lady in the army before. But then I work with a lot of other people that aren’t too great looking. But I give them all the attention because I just like to have fun. Plus it just makes them laugh, and I think cheering them up is a good thing. But I don’t know, it’s not even been full 4 weeks yet and some people are taking it wrong ways. I wear thick brown glasses and shave my head. I suppose I’m not very good looking to begin with, but I’m not here to impress anyone, so I decided to stick with the birth control glasses army issued. But damn, some people just take it the wrong way. I guess they try to be seducive and everything, blinking their eyes like that and looking at me all weird, and their entire tone of voice just changes. And I guess they’re trying to cheer me up but it’s kind of sickening for some girls that I didnt’ think were too fine to be doing that to me. So now I’m trying to stay away from them. But I did run into some others that came by once or twice to deliever some mail. I guess I was coming on to them or something, but one of them didn’t say a single word. I suppose she was pretty, but damn if we were back in the states I wouldn’t have even said a word to her. And I think them being here kind of bloats their heads or something, thinking they’re all that. And I just get sick at how people can get so fond of themselves, too good for a good natural conversation. I don’t even remember what that’s even like anymore. In fact I kind of fear that when I get back home. Would I be good with just talking with girls, or even just guys? It’s so hard on me that I don’t even talk to them anymore. Now I just talk to Windsor cuz I know she doesn’t take anything seriously and we think each other’s hilarious, Clarke because he keeps his cool and works the window and he knows what’s up, and SGT Figueroa, because he never complains but always listens. And I suppose he listens a lot because I complain a lot. He says I remind him of one of his friends who’s funny but complains all the time but always does the work. I told him it’s because it’s more fun to complain about things you do.
I have no idea how the weather is over in the states. Frankly, I’ve never seen anything like this place before. Everyday, it’s over 110 degrees. I haven’t seen a single day that they announced to be under 115. I can imagine the newscast here, “and today, again, it’s 115 degrees.” And the wind factor will probably add another 3 degrees because it just burns your skin and makes everything that much worse. The hottest it’s been was the first day here on Camp Arifjan. It was also the busiest and worst, because we came with all our gear on, 50 pounds on our backs, carrying two more duffel bags on top of that, and making a chain for water and misc supplies into the warehouses. Then there was the wind factor. And once we were done, we really weren’t. The worst part wasn’t that. We had just gotten started. I couldn’t stop sweating for 2 hours. Inside the wearhouse was an entire division of people, without air conditioning. All they had was 2 fans going off from each end of the warehouses that was home to at least 300 people. 126 degrees outside, hotter inside. During the night it dropped to 95 degrees if we were lucky. But that only lasted a month and a week. Thankfully after a month in that shithole, we’re in the tents now, which, ironically, has air conditioning. But the worst part about it is now they got air conditioning working in the warehouses we’re out of. And the wind blows fanatically against these tents, creating noise and ruckus that I haven’t seen an equal of. Sometimes I’m afraid it’s going to tip over and kill a lot of us. But I think I got it all figured out now. I’ve been at two extremes of the world in a short span of time. I went from -10 degrees at Fort McCoy in early April, to 126 degrees that day on the 16th or 17th or June here in Kuwait. I think that’s when I got sick. I went from one extreme to another, and it took me a while to figure that out, how I could have possibly gotten a sore throat from the heat here. And how is it that we’re so used to 100 degrees now? Looking at some papers claimig heat waves in California barely reaching 100s, I think I know now. We get acclimated, our body adjusts to the temperatures, from one extreme to another. I think it averages out the temperatures and gets itself more acclimated so that we’re comfortable for as much amount of time as possible. So if the hottest part of the day reaches 120 and it’s 95 degrees during the night, like it is here everyday, we got used to 100, 110 degree weather. And in Ft. McCoy, we were used to 10 degree weathers, when temperatures dropped to -10 but also reached 20 the same day. Now we think even 70 degrees in the tents is pretty cold.
So when this war is REALLY over, I hope to come back and be able to say a lot of things. I was sent to Kuwait involuntarily, under the commander in chief’s accord. I was put to work in 3 day’s time, as a postal clerk, and I worked under that job description for 2 months. I learned what real manual labor was, working under a converted minimum hourly wage for my salary. I gained the respect of the entire camp before I left for Iraq to see 4 different APOs. I visited at least 4 different countries, Afghanistan, Kuwait and Iraq amongst them, Syria, Jordan, Dijbouti and Qatar possibly. And I got paid to do all this, although I missed a year of school. But the experience and the adventure that not too many 19 year olds have that I can tell my friends back home. And what about all the things I could reflect on when I become older, knowing that I could get through another hard day because I’ve been through worse and lived to tell about it. I made it through months of life without a purpose in Ft. McCoy. I endured the unforgiving heat and the inhumane living conditions in 4 different countries. And I began to learn the real meaning of misery. I don’t believe that too many people can say that, having grown up in the states. We are, truly, all very spoiled. But I will always know that the only people that have actually seen it real bad in the Army, though, are the Vietnam, Korean and World War II veterans. This is skatewalk compared to what those veterans went through.
The other day, we read on the papers that Saddam’s sons are dead. And George Bush had declared that he hopes that their deaths justified the war. Maybe he’s still the freaken dumbass that took the office few years back. Yeah, and me having studied Physics justified me having a Subway sandwich last night. WTF? Damn, that was so stupid.