third night of work.

Ya know, it's funny what a person can get used to and live with. A lot of people sitting in a comfortable or complacent point in their life say things like "I would never tolerate such and such" or "what was that person thinking" or "why didn't so & so know better/demand more". Tolerating inequities around you, knowing that you can't change certain things and existing in a life than perfect world is not a sign of weakness or low self esteem. Quite the opposite. A person who toils with the daily struggle to achieve a goal they have set, take care of their families, or simply exist without perishing has achieved the greatest possible level of self evolution and understanding of their own existance.
Many of you have asked why I would come here and subject myself to the harsh conditions, hard work, and possibly danger. I have begun to feel a bit of the pain this week as I start working the night shift. The first night was easy, everything was new and fresh so the stimulus kept you going. Second night, the drag from the lack of sleep and food starts to catch you. The newness is gone, the routine begins. Third night, hmm, might be ok. I am starting to develop a routine. So here it is:
2pm wake up, eat breakfast, check e-mail, check bank account, brush teeth, wash face, stretch, push-ups, sit-ups, put my hair up, clean out my bag, prepare food and protein drink for ride, put on uniform, double check everything I just did, and head out to the bus 2 hours later. Ride to work with a bunch of other smelly tired people wearing the same uniform they had on yesterday, covered in the same sand, having the same conversations. When we get to work, we have about an hour and some to draw our weapons from the armory, put our gear up, bathroom, admin, supply check, text message the new man, formation, orders, post assignments, ass chewing, and then we are sent to work.
We rotate positions to keep things fresh. On of the assignments is checking ID's at the gate as people come in. Apparently the new people are always assigned there. So every 2 weeks, the "customers" coming on post are checking out the new meat. I have already been asked to handcuff some guy. Some of the guys are going to get whiplash looking at me. It's really funny. I am wearing a baggy tan uniform, a safety vest, hat, etc, nothing to get excited about. Yeah, I have a nice smile, but not nice enough to warrant the overt and ridiculous behaviour of the deprived men coming through my lane. Oops, I digress from my topic of suffering. So I am standing out front for several hours before my shift ends. The sun is just coming up high enough to need sunglasses as we move out to the buses. I keep my sunglasses in a pocket in my shirt, behind velcro, and under the safety vest. When I take them out in the morning, it looks like saw dust covering them. This stuff is on my clothes, in my nose, on my bags laying on the pallet by the guard shack. I'm tired, been on my feet for most of the shift, been harassed, put up with bullshit company politics that would make for a really good movie if I wasn't in it, and haven't eaten very well. The night shift gets to eat chow at 11:15 pm and the menu is limited. I am juggling my menu around trying to figure out what to eat when to keep my energy up. The night time temperature right is nice, mid 80's but humid. The effective temperature on our bodies is much higher. I need to my final prep for arrival at work. The bus has cleared the first gate. see you in the morning :-)
I haven't forgotten the topic at hand, I can't, the sacrifices are on going and I am surrounded by other foreign nationals making the same choices, much harder than mine as they have spouses and children they left behind.

work hard, play hard

I now know what that means, well again, I knew it before but that was mental hard at my last job. This is physical down and dirty hard. Bring it on! I will only get 5 hours sleep today. good night. it's 08:30

omg I have to go to work

Today is my first full day on the night shift. We've worked a few 11 hour days before but I am anxious today. Did I get enough sleep, did I get up early enough, do I have all my equipment ready to go, what was I supposed to do at the cleaners today?, .... I did a lot of running around this weekend and not much preparation. But it's the same thing everyday. Same pair of pants, shirt, socks, shirt, bag, same protein bar, same apple, same pear, what I am freaking about? Ack, a little preparation would have been good. But there are some things here you can't control. Like what time of day the english speaking guy is at the cleaners because even though I went twice, he wasn't there either time. Or how long it takes the cabs to come get you and it takes hours to go anywhere. I really should have gone to the grocery store last night on the way home. My food supply is low and we only get one trip to the dining facility on shift. Unlike training where we usually had 2 trips - breakfast and lunch. I also can't control when my roommates use the washer. One of them turned on the water heater and it was on max. I don't think either one of them know to adjust it, so I turned it down. The water comes out of the faucet slighter hotter than luke warm. We don't need to heat the water people! Because at the end of the shower, you could turn the handle from cold (which is luke warm) to hot and get about 10 seconds of cold water from the pipes from the hot water heater before the water got hot again. It was just enough to feel refreshed. And the paper towels are all gone, and my first roommate "cleaned up" one day last week and threw out the napkins I had saved from the restaurants. She's a real treat.
ok, all I need to do in the 1.5 hours is shower, eat a pear, pack my bag, and get dressed, maybe stop at the cleaners down stairs. I should be able to do that in 1.5 hours. And work shouldn't be too rough. I keep forgetting I've got an easy job. I keep forgetting I have a job. It's time to stop running so much and learn to be at home here. Take care of business and remember my purpose for coming - to make money, not spend it all on sushi and sheesha. I am sure things will settle into a routine this week. Up until now my schedule changed daily and that is very unsettling. I wish I knew how to spell discombobulating. That word correctly expresses my feeling right now.
the spell check is still not working. I don't know, something about java script...

It's been a wild couple of days!

we had to get up Thursday morning at 2 am to take the PT test. Of course, when you have to get up that early, you worry about not getting up on time, and you end up sleeping poorly. We were trying to get to the running track before it got too hot. But by 6:30 am it was hot and the dust was blowing. I busted out my sit-ups and push-ups to standard which was noticed by many. Even some of the men and most of the women were sagging in the middle or not going down all the way for the push-ups. lame. We ran the test and a bunch of us had so much dust in our lungs we were coughing and basicly having an allergy attack to sand. We were bused to the gym to shower and change. Then we took our test to graduate from training. I got a 100% on that and was trying to focus on recovering from the run. My face was flushed and I was still coughing hours later. By the time I got back to my apartment in the mid-afternoon, I was exhausted from lack of sleep, heat, and having a major allergy/sand attack. My eyes were swollen, nose running, wishing there was a way to "throw up" out of your lungs. I sat in the tub with the shower running for a long time. soaking, deep breathing. For some reason, I don't think about wasting water here because they "produce" the water by desalinization. Anyways, I finally took an allergy pill and was thinking about going to sleep around 6 for a nap. But then a new roommate showed up in the apartment and that took some considerable time saying hello and helping her settle in as I weezed all over the place. Then I ended up on IM with a friend, I called Mom to let her know I graduated, and then Dad, and then hours had passed at this point. So I got back on IM until finally around 9:30 pm I was truly wiped out and went to sleep.
I woke up Friday morning around 8 so that was a nice night of sleep. I felt a lot better. I had plans to go to spend the day with 2 of my classmates. We went to the Avenues Mall and a fancy lunch at a steak place. They are both weight lifters and huge guys (so of course they are hanging out with the little girl) so they had steak. I had a delicious vegatable platter and tiramisu for dessert. The guy from Honduras has never had tiramisu so that was a treat to see him enjoy something new. I had to fight them off for my share though! just kidding. There was some sword play with the spoons. They needed bathing suits so we went shopping. The guys are very sweet and make sure they walk on both sides of me. One is 5'11", 200 pounds, and the other is 6'4", 260 pounds. I'm 5'3". HeeHee. It's a sight.
We came back to my building and went swimming. We played volleyball in the water for a long time with some other people. Of course the females got more of a work out then the guys. Their arms are long and strong. They were having a good time hitting the ball out of the pool and watching me go get it. bastards. I gave them the evil eye. When I had swallowed enough water, we called the game, showered, and headed to another friends' apartment. How lucky is this - one guy likes to cook and the other guy likes to clean? the perfect pair. So we all had a cook out with steak, sausages, chicken (for me), homemade salsa by the Mexican in the group, and rice. At this point it's like 9 o'clock. We're still ready to go. Half of the group is 25 or 26 years old and the other half, 3 of us, are all 39 years old. It keeps things fresh.
You're not going to believe this but I smoked sheesha at the hooka house! We piled in 2 taxis and headed to the happening area in Fahaheel. It's not the nicest area in Kuwait but it's pretty nice and the closest hooka house to our location. Sheesha is flavored tobacco that perculates through water making the inhalation very smooth. It's legal and a traditional social custom for Arab males. It's not like a cigarette or anything else. The contraption looks like a bong and makes a gurgling noise when you suck on it. We had lemon and strawberry flavored sheesha. Lemon was better for me. You get a little light headed but the effect is short lived. However we combined the sheesha with an accelerant. The guys like redbull and monster. I had 2 cups of Turkish coffee. wowzers. We were all silly. We finally all came home about 1 am. This was actually a good thing because I wanted to stay up late, sleep in, and start adjusting to the night shift.
But my stomach didn't know this plan and woke me up at 6 am with an urgent bathroom visit. After a few trips to the head and and hour later I popped half an anti-diahrea pill. It could be the water in the form of ice cubes in the drinks, the chicken, the coffee, the dining facilities on post,... take your pick of the source, the pill still works!

the heat

Ok, everyone wants to know how I'm handling the heat. It's not that bad, yet,... I like to think I'm coping well. so here's how it goes...
It's 80 or so when you wake up but it feels nice because the sun isn't up. I don't know why the sun comes up early here and sets earlier than Florida. Dad said he looked at his globe and we were the same longitude (?) as northern Florida. The sun is coming up at 4:45 am today and setting at 6:44 pm. It's strange. It's a challenge, since being in the Army, we're supposed to do more before sunrise than what you do all day long.
I was swollen and bloated the first few days here, it completely went away within a week. I have lost a few pounds from sweating and burning calories to keep my body cool. I think I already mentioned that I was standing in the shade at 7am last week and sweat was running down my back. The highest it's gotten has been around 110. That is also tolerable. What makes it difficult is that when the wind blows, it actually makes you hotter because it's like standing in front of a giant blow dryer on high. And throw in a little microderm abrasion treatment on top of it. My sunscreen is working and don't have much of a tan and no burns. However, I get flushed with heat. It's freaked a few people out. It looks like I'm wearing a red mask because my face is perfectly outlined along the jaw line and the edge of my hair. I told them as long as I am red it means the blood is flowing. If I turn white, let me know, then we got a problem.
In the evening around sunset, things get a little nicer. The wind comes in off the water and the sun is behind a building on it's way down. The concrete and the streets continue to give off ambient heat for hours. Your still sweating, still drinking water.
I drink one rehydration drink a day, a juice or two, and water the rest of the time. My skin is doing ok. I put moisterizer on once a day like I always do. My hands - well I do them all the time as always. They are starting to dry though because we are required to wash our hands at a hand washing station before we enter the dining facility. The soap is viscious and removes all forms of life or any hope of life from your skin. I am going to order a gallon of jojoba oil and coat myself it every night to make sure I leave Kuwait with some skin intact.
So you sweat, your clothes are drenched, the wind blows, you dry, you sweat,... it never ends. If you are wearing cotton and not the under armor heat gear, you feel like a giant spit ball somebody's been working on for 5 minutes to get it good and juicy before launch.
The instructors try to scare us and tell us that it gets up to 150 degrees and this was the hottest place on earth. There was some scuttlebutt about that since people were saying Death Valley and somewhere in Africa hold the record. But when you realize what goes on around here it may be true. The Kuwait government controls everything, including the weather, or at least how it gets reported. They have labor laws that restrict work above 120 degrees. So guess what, it never officially gets above 120 degrees. I have a little hand held thermometer but it too only goes to 120 degrees. hmm...
I came over here with the attitude that I wasn't going to discuss the temperature or complain one time about how hot it is. That's the way it is. You could complain about it every second of every day. But I prefer to spend my time talking about something other than the obvious and uncontrollable. So I'm done with the temperature topic.

dirty dirty dirty

the spell check isn't working... please forgive any errors, I'm on a moving bus at 4am and working on 6 hours sleep which is actually a decent amount of time.
I didn't write on the way home from work yesterday because I was covered in sand and grime. I didn't want to get my computer gunkified. I think I pretty much need to plan on using things that I don't want a year from now because the conditions here are so harsh. I back up my computer once or twice a week on an external hard drive. I can see the dust sitting on the vents and it freaks me out. I love my laptop. My one true love in my life right now! ha-ha
So I need to add hand wipes and that little bottle of spray air for cleaning computers to my shopping list.
So what has been hard to get used to? The dirt, sand, and sand dust - everywhere.
The first morning here we got up at 2am and departed at 2:45am for work. The wind was strong and the sand was blowing around. I have now learned that if it is sandy in the city than there is a sand storm in the dessert. Realize of course there is nothing between the dessert and the "city". There are no tree groves, no hills, no walls, or barriers of any kind. So we were on the highway to work and we could only see 20 or 30 feet in any direction. The sargeant in charge pulled over and we had to wait on the side of the road for about 30 minutes. It eased up eventually but the whole day was hellatious. Sand in your hair, ears, nose, eyes, the seams of your clothes. But when all that sand blows around, it breaks down into sand dust. That gets even more places. Inside your house the dust covers everything. It's just like the black soot in Florida or California, or the pollen in North Carolina, or the coal used to be in Pennslyvania. The workers in the buidling are constantly hosing and squeegi-ing the common areas and the stair wells. I thought what a waste of time, it will blow away. Kind of like how the leaves in the fall eventually blow away and dissintegrate. But no, this is the sand's home, we abide in it's domain, it's not going any where unless we make move.

it's the little things

It's funny the things you come to miss. I miss the aerator on my bathroom sink faucet. They don't use aerators here. You know, it's that little mesh covering that the water passes through. Well, without that, the water stream splashes around in all different directions. So every time I go to rinse my mouth out, my whole chin gets wet. Don't think it's a big deal? Try it. Remove your aerator and brush your teeth. Then I have to reapply whatever moisterizer or sunblock I already applied. A waste of precious expensive sunblock. I could use a cup to rinse with but theres' no room on the back of the pedestal sink for it to sit. Hmm, maybe I'll look for some self space inside the cabinet. What to do with all those other bottles? I brought a 90 day supply of cosmetics and toiletries with me.
I miss a top loading washing machine. The front loader apartment size washer locks the door so you don't accidentally open it during the cycle. This has the effect of holding your clothes hostage. You can't throw in the last minute sock you dropped in the hall on the way there. You can't end the spin cycle early when you are standing there right before bedtime and all you want to do is put the crap in the dryer and go to sleep. You must wait. It stops and then it thinks about maybe giving you your clothes. You have to wait for the light to blink. Time is passing, your loosing sleep, give me my clothes you piece of shit.
oh, and the dryer vent. Ha Ha. I actually got a flexible dryer vent hose but no where to stick it. My friends didn't even get the hose in their apartment. Their dust blows all over the kitchen. I tried putting in the window and then blocking the open space with cardboard but the wind blew the cardboard out. I also think my roommate is noncompliant in the proper technique for venting a dryer out the window.
The building manager is called a haras. Hair-ous. He was supposed to send somebody one day to put a vent in the window itself but the guy never showed up. I have to catch him my next day off and try again.
I miss carpet and I miss a vacuum. Each room in my apartment has a throw rug. You have to sweep it with a broom or squeegie it. Brooms are not very effective against sand so most people in these climates use a squeegie. It works really well on the tile floor but requires a good bit of elbow grease for the carpet.
I should mention at this point how lucky I got with the apartment. I have all new appliances, tile, linens, etc. I have heard about the the crappy conditions in some other apartments.
And the view, wow, I have a very nice view of the water from a double window looking out over the Persian Gulf. Back home I had a very nice view from my third floor bedroom window so I very much enjoy my little piece of sky. Just a few minutes a day looking out over the water can really help clear your head.