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Ramadan Kareem

We are now pretty much in the middle of Ramadan out here and for all concerned it is fairly tedious. For the people fasting, (which means consuming no food or drink during daylight hours and then stuff yourself silly at nightime) I can see it must be particularly demanding this year as the event falls over the hotest time of the year. While pregnant ladies, the infirm and young children and a couple of special categories are exempt they are the few exceptions. Anyone of any background seen eating or drinking in public is liable for an instant £200 fine from the police. You have to feel a bit sorry for the building workers out in the heat all day though it is suspected they soak their face scarves in water at any opportunity to give a little respite.
For the rest of us it is difficult to find food and drink before darkness falls. All restaurants and cafes shut down and only in the Gulf hotel is there one rerstaurant open which is hidden away behind leather shutters to prevent any passing Muslim being offended or getting jealous. I had an 'All-Day' breakfast this morning just because I could. It is not served all-day but does take all day to consume - and why not as there is stuff all else to do in this period.
Even though the rules on clothing are more thoroughly enforced over Ramadan there is fortunately no ban on using the swimming pool so that is where I am heading next

Mid-tour home visit

Just off on my way shortly. Spending a few days at home which will be very exciting - just alittle bit excited!, really looking forward to it even though it is only a few days; just hope the transport plan all works.

All the King's Camels

Well, apart from my camel friend Sultan who I see on my occasional runs I had been quite disappointed that the old 'ships of the desert' do seem to be rather few and far between. However, all that changed last weekend. Having seen a postcard with the most tenuous lead of a location for where camels could be seen I set out on a hunt. After resolving the small oversight of nearly ending up in Saudi Arabia without a passport I evertually came upon the the King's uncle's camel farm. Noitwithstanding the somewhat unencouraging signs saying 'No Entry' 'Access Forbidden' they are actually quite happy to see visitors though perhaps because of the signs I was the only one there!

Having got chatting to one of the camel keepers he then proceeded to give me a tour of their stables and even took me down to meet the baby camels that were just 3 weeks old which was a lot of fun. They are all very friendly (Both camels and keepers!) but I was quite glad thatthe massively large male ones were chained to avoid them getting too friendly though all were up for a bit of a pat and nose scratch. Baby camel was quite keen to eat my camera which made filming a bit of a challenge but I was able to get quite a few shots and a video will be appearing shortly!

The camels, 400 of them in all, are kept as a hobby (don't feel quite so bad about just the two motorbikes now!) and keep about 27 chaps employed looking after them. All in all a very good visit and all for the price of a tip to the camel keeper.

Sand, and more sand!

I went for a drive down the East coast of the island the other day, partly as something to do and also with the idea of visiting the famous (?!) 'Tree of Life'. I managed to miss the Tree of Life so that is something for another day but thought you might nonetheless be amused by the fantastic views you get once out of the city!

Local Workers

There have been quite a few stories running in the local papers lately about employment of expat workers. While we normally think of that meaning Brits working abroad here it really means the Indians and Pakistanis who make up the vast majority of the manual labour force and about 50% of the population. It is a big issue as the locals are rapidly becoming outnumbered by the imported workers with the consequential impact on housing, resources and local traditions. The situation, though entirely self-produced, is worse because all the imported work force either have accommodation, food and clothes provided or else they spend minimal amounts on them with the vast majority of their meagre wages returned to their families abroad. The result is that the workers though not paid much individually, because of their numbers account for a massive drain on the finances (cash) of the Bahraini Kingdom as it losses money from its economy.

The workers rights are currently non-existent. Their contract which will pay for their transport over here means they are tied to that employer and whatever pay and conditions he imposes. (Companies going bust generate huge turmoil as their workers have no money to return home but cannot stay in the country as they have no work!). A proposed law to let workers change employer s has terrified the big companies who realise that giving employees freedom of movement creates competition between employers which will cost them money as workers shift to those companies with the best pay and conditions – just like they do in any free labour market!!

Certainly watching the building going on outside my window demonstrates all sorts of issues over health and safety (working at height without safety harnesses, travelling loose in the back of wagons etc) and all for extraordinarily little pay, perhaps £100 a month if they are lucky. (We are on abouit twice our normal pay to survive the high cost of living out here). Stories abound about the inhuman living conditions of many to a room and disasters narrowly averted when accommodation catches fire.

However, dreadful as it may seem these workers are all very happy to be here as the conditions from which they have come are considerably worse and with much less employment opportunity. On top of that, large numbers of those from Pakistan are avoiding a major and very nasty war. By our standards that justifies nothing but by theirs and their employers it explains everything.

Regional News

Bahrain, along with most of the rest of the Middle East is a two class society. A country separated by not just employment and money but by nationality and race as well. The manual workers are exclusively Pakistani and Indian with the white collar (white dish-dash) echelon all Western or Bahraini. Consequently the news that one sees in the local daily papers, while reflecting world stories has considerably more from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka than would be seen in the UK media.

The major conflict in Pakistan, following that government’s failed gamble by effectively abdicating responsibility for the Northern region and handing it over to the Taliban is widely reported. Judging from Sky news it would seem that this has not been that well covered. The proximity of forces to Islamabad, the security of nuclear weapons and influence on both Afghanistan and India seem to have passed people by who are outside the region.

Further South in Sri Lanka, while they have waited for far too long to have a concerted go at the Tamil tigers, they now appear to be slaughtering huge numbers of innocent locals who have been deliberately forced by the Tamil tigers to remain in the area as a dispersed human shield.

As if these humanitarian disasters were not enough rarely a day goes by without a dreadful story from India. To give you some idea there have been two appalling stories recently about school children. One girl died in an expensive private school from an asthma attack because no one knew what to do and even worse an 11 year old girl was punished for not doing her homework by making her stand in the sun – unsurprisingly she collapsed into a coma and subsequently died.

All in all there is much going on in the region which should make you glad you live in Europe.

Pigs

Middle Eastern countries have clearly always had a bit of a thing about pigs. One of the first pamphlets I was offered when I toured the Mosque was a curious piece of propaganda titled ‘Why Muslims reject pork”. It has a number of unlikely words of wisdom such as the fact that virtually every disease in the world stems from them and even Westerners dislike pig meat.
Anyway, all this swine flu nonsense is as manna from heaven you could say. The fact that poorly pig is unable to communicate his snivel once dead let alone roast, boiled or fried appears to be of no consequence. The Egyptians have elected to cull around quarter of a million pigs in one go though strangely a lot of these animals appear to be living amongst the poor of the country which is both odd and clearly bad. Bahrain has banned the import of all pig meat in an effort defend the kingdom. This has been a running debate in the Bahrain parliament for some time, along with banning alcohol, bringing in a Gulf wide currency and generally cutting off their noses to spite themselves. The only potential growth industry here is the import of residents and tourists along with expat financial business – why else build all these tower blocks of offices and accommodation? And making the place more Arab and less Western is not the way ahead.

Our local supermarket, the very satisfactory Al Jezeera, has worked out what it needs to sell. Consequently it has a non-Muslim section where you can get bacon pork and bacon/pork flavoured things like crisps, pizzas and filled pasta. Unsurprisingly it is very popular and has a steady flow of western types looking for the more normal lines of food. Hopefully supplies will not be expended before this rather draconian and unproductive move has been finished.

Now, must go and fix myself a bacon butty….

The Bahrain National Museum

I went here a week or so ago but didn't get round to putting a video together until now. It was quite interesting though I was hoping to see more stuff than there was inside. I may go back as I believe there is a special exhibition of gold and swords on this week which is the sort of thing I imagined would be there all the time. The building itself is very smart both on the outside and inside - have a look at the video and you will see what I mean.

Visit to the Mosque

As I have the biggest mosque in Bahrain visible out of my hotel window and I do not believe I have ever before been in to one it seemed a good idea to do a visit during one of my days off. The whole place is very tourist friendly and they were more than happy to answer questions and let you go wherever you wished. I have already posted some pictures on Facebook and so here is a short video of my visit.

Spring Cleaning

It is clear from a casual observation of life in Bahrain that for the average fellow cleanliness is next to godliness – well, this would appear to be true for objects if not people!

Within the hotel area there are a veritable army of people, all Pakistani of course, who are dedicated to cleaning things. The room services team hunt in packs of at least 3 and spend about 40minutes in the room frequently cleaning things that are already clean. Like the inside of draws and cabinets that are unused, toilets which have remained left in splendid isolation since I moved in (the apartment has 3 loos and only two occasional occupants!); even the bears got thoroughly dusted the other day judging from their rearranged positions on my return the other day.

However, all this pales into insignificance when you see chaps standing in the man-made waterfall and ponds, carefully avoiding treading on the massive goldfish, scrubbing away for fear that some algae may form and disfigure the water feature. Outside in the car park I regularly see two fellows working their way around the edge scrubbing the kerb stones – provides some inspiration that my job isn’t so bad after all.

Outside the hotel you frequently see platoons of yellow overalled fellows picking litter off the beach and sea defence walls or taking their life in their hands standing in the road to sweep it – an endless task given an area predisposed to much sand and wind but it keeps people busy. Car cleaning is another industry. I have my personal car cleaner, an ancient Indian chap called Feisal who asks me on an almost daily basis whether I need my car cleaned and is delighted on the highly rare occasions (normally at the stage when I can’t see out of the windows!) that I agree to let him wash it by hand for about 2Bd.

Once in a Lifetime

Well, one month done. Just five to go. Ha! I was thinking of writing some sort of stocktake - how I feel at the moment, but thought it might be a bit depressing to read and then decided it needs to be recorded. There is no point being miserable but equally there is no point denying the truth of the situation.

At the risk of paraphrasing the Talking Heads; so, where did my family, my daughters and my friends go? What happened to my nice car and motorbikes? Where is my pleasant house and familiar surroundings? Oh, I remember, I left them all back in the UK.

And why is my brain beginning to shrink? Why does no one ever ask my opinion or give me a job which is more complex than moving bits of Powerpoint slides around? Why can’t I eat real food or wear normal clothes? Why do I get up at 5.30am one day or have to sleep through the daylight the next day? Why do I spend 12hrs a day in a windowless office watching chat-rooms and answering the telephone? Oh, I remember, that’s because I have been ‘selected’ for this important role; no one else could do it, obviously.

Will I ever be asked, while I am here, to present information which the audience do not already know or be employed in some way which approaches even a quarter of the value or output of the job I enjoyed and have been taken from in the UK? Will I get a day off with other people to talk to or be permitted more than two meals a week which are not eaten alone? I suspect not.

When all is said and done, do I care? No, not really. I don’t care I’m here, I don’t care that much for what I am doing and I don’t even really care I cannot go home for ages. There is no point caring. It is a case of enduring until it is over. And when it is over, it is definitely - over.

Bahrain Highway Code

The Bahrain Highway Code

1. At any junction 1 in 4 cars must do a U-Turn.
2. Only Western drivers need to use indicators.
3. Local drivers will generally be in the wrong lane for where they are going.
3a. It is perfectly acceptable to turn right from the left hand lane on a 3carriageway road - and vice versa.
4. Bicycles must not be lit, can only travel in the opposite direction to the traffic on the carriageway they use, unless using the pavement.
5. Local women drivers are exempt from the need to park their car in a marked parking space, even assuming the vehicle is small enough to fit in to just one space in the first place.
6. Never, ever let anyone out into your lane or offer any acknowledgement if anyone should be foolish enough to let you into their lane.
6a. As a consequence of 6 it is expected that cars emerging into a lane will do so even if this space is too small and hence the car that is already on the main carriageway must brake hard and swerve into the spare lane - even if it isn't free.
7. Cement lorries can go whereever they like.
8. Taking driving lessons is a sign of weakness and taking a driving test is just foolish; after all if you crash it is evidently the 'Will of Allah'.
8a. You will be reminded of 8 by the fact that you will see a fairly major and avoidable road traffic accident almost every other day.
9. Don't even think of riding a motorbike unless it is after dark and maitains an average speed in excess of 100mph. Unless it is a pizza delivery moped in which case it assumes the rights of a Cement Lorry (see Rule 7) but with less sustained success.
10. Traffic Lights are only advisory.

Seef Mall

Being between shifts I had time to get down to one of the massive malls in Manama, called City Centre it is about 5 times as big as West Quay in Southampton. As if they did not have enough shops already - and most of them are empty - there was a story in the news today that there will be a Waitrose store opening up in Bahrain soon.

Anyway have a look at a short vid I put together to give you some idea what it is like. Despite the vast number of shops I only found the Carrefour to have anything that I wanted and that happened to be a French loaf!

Running

It is probably more to do with the temperature than anything else but you don't tend to see many runners in Manama! The only times to go running outdoors are really dawn or dusk, some fools are jogging around the HQ at midday but they are few and far between. The only people you see out running are are not local and i suspect that most of them are military types who work on the base.

The other issue is that the scenery isn't particularly stunning for running. There is no greenery, a bit of sand and so the only options are to run along quite wide pavements beside major roads. Having had the embarassment of falling off a kerb with disasterous effects on my foot I am now considerably more careful when crossing roads and more frequently when pavements just disintegrate to a stop.

The response from locals that you meet when out is varied to say the least. Often locals are somewhat wary but most are bemused and will give a smile, if going past the local Indian tourist shops you get a cheery Hello without the usual hardsell and invitations to enter their shops. I have seen small children openly gawping out of the window of passing cars that there is someone so foolish as to be outside taking exercise. Its not as though no one takes exercise as the open sandy areas are frequently the scene of enthusiastic football and indeed cricket matches first thing in the morning or in the evening.

The thing is that that rich Bahrainis exercise in gyms and health clubs and the poorer ones and the ubiquitous Indian and Pakistani labourers get plenty of exercise in their jobs and if they don't they have no time for the luxury of exercise.

The weather will soon be getting to hot and humid to permit much to happen outside so I had better make the most of the weather while I can.

Badges and uniforms

We always accuse all the Army and indeed RN aircrew of being a bit Boy Scoutish in their approach to collecting badges but I do feel as though I have now arrived as I am now in possession of not only my HQ and RN badges but also my name badge with rather natty Arabic script translation above - at least I presume it is a translation of my name, it could be saying 'Kick Me!' for all I know.

The real problem with desert camouflage is that it is so damn camouflagy that it is virtually impossible to identify someone else's rank, particularly if from a foreign country, at greater than about 6" from them. The US Forces insist on having Officer rank badges that are almost identical to their ratings badges and since you can get about 6 different varieties of Chief Petty Officer (we just have the one!) its hardly surprising no one gets saluted, at least they don't tend tomake too much of a fuss! Almost everyone has very smart desert gear apart from the US Marines who have the latest digitised pattern which is all pixellated greys - it looks very much like they have been standing under a very large seagull colony, which never ceases to amuse me.

Food

Food varies from the sublime to the ridiculous. During the day I work on a US Navy base and so to all intents and purposes we are living in America. This means that all drinks must be at least 30% sugar, vast amounts of sugar and salt just must be added to anything and meat and cheese (cheese must go in everything as well!) must of course\be as processed as possible. So beefburgers, 'Taco Bell', chips with everything type meals with pints of coke are the order of the day. This contrasts rather spectacularly with the 5 star food available from eight different restaurants within th ehotel complex. The truth is that you cannot live indefinitely on either - normal food is definitely required even though finding time to cook it is not trivial.
At work I have at least now found the 'Deli' counter within the NEX (a sort of worldwide US Forces supermarket) and though they need some encouragement to not throw all sorts of rubbish into their rolls they can produce a straight-forward common or garden beef, lettuce and tomato roll - you are of course looked upon as some sort of backward species for not wanting BBQ sauce, mayonaise, processed cheese and extra bacon but that is a small price to pay for preserving one's heart. Off base we have now started cooking and the saviour here is the fantastically normal (well, up to a point) Al Jazeera supermarket within walking distance of the hotel. The food options are a little strange but on the whole the things you can recognise are good quality and indeed good value - looks like my culinary skills will be sharpened up over the next few months!

Motorbiking in Bahrain

First of all, you would certainly not get me on two wheels of any form on the roads out here - driving on 4 is definitely exciting enough. It is the lack of signals, awareness or ability combined with an Arab view of any disasters being 'obviously' unavoidable as 'the will of Allah' that make driving such a high intensity task.
Nonetheless you do see a few bikes on the road and these vary between the classic pizza delivery boys through to the most powerful and flashy machines you can find. These of course have to be ridden at maximum speed. It is again a particularly Arab thing to be ostentatious in all possible ways to display your wealth, power or strength - hence ridiculous buildings, bright yellow MASSIVE Humvee cars with huge chrome wheels and watches which must have copious amounts on diamonds on display.
The video below shows a particularly good example of the sort of bling I'm talking about as well as a rather extraordinary 'sand bike' which looks lethal to ride on and two kids chopper style bikes all found in the one bike shop I have identified in Bahrain which is just around the back of the hotel.

Time Flies ....Not!

Being essentially chained to a desk for 12hrs a day definitely gives a warpped sense of time. It is already slightly odd to kick off at 7pm being completely wide awake - a process which requires a considered sleep pattern, a run of about 2 miles despite the heat which prevails at dusk and hot shower. That all done staying alert all night is not much of a problem despite the best efforts of BFBS broadcasting to send one to sleep. I also have the, shall we say - varied, conversational subjects of my fellow watchkeepers to keep me going. Both Leading Hands, one does communications and signals stuff while the other monitors the intelligence picture. Needless to say not a lot changes on the whole and unless we have a major drama which unfortunately (?) rarely happens we have quite a bit of time on our hands. This innevitably means that tasks that could be done in about 30mins get done slowly and then revisited several times just because you can. I also suspect that having more time to do stuff does not necessarily improve the accuracy to which it is done. As I have my first briefing to do this morning we shall probably find out as I'm sure there will be plenty of advice from various folk about how to do it better. I have already begun to suspect initiative is rather frowned upon around here despite protestations that the opposite is true.
I'm also sure there will soon be many keen (panicking?) staff officers descending on the office unnecessarily early to sort out their briefs and I am fairly confident that their problems will rapidly become my problems - oh, well, gives us something to do to accelerate time a little!

The Gulf Hotel

Although I am not seeing that much of it at the moment, other than the inside of my room and more particularly, my bed, the hotel I am staying in is one of the best in Bahrain. It has about 8 excellent restaurants, and I have tried one so far - not the slightest idea what I was eating but all very good indeed, there are also great sports facilities (untried so far) and a great pool and gardens - probably the only green bit of Bahrain.
Have a look at the video below and see what you think - I know I will get no sympathy at all now but trust me, compensation for this job is desperately needed and deserved!!

Area Tour

This is a changeover day between days and nights so having come off-watch at 7pm yesterday I will be on-watch at 7pm this evening giving me 24hrs between watches and so a little bit of time to have a look around. Consequently I had a drive around with one of my fellow watchkeepers to get a bit of local orientation and see where things are and where not to go - there are a few, literally 'Black Flagged' Palestinian areas to keep well clear of but the rest of the place is largely benign.
We went for a drive out to two of the big, and I mean really big, malls that are out here and encompass just about every shop name you have ever heard of including Marks and Spencers, Carrefour and Debenhams as well as endless rows of very upmarket clothes and jewellery shops. One which did catch my eye was a massive toy store where you could get stuffed animals that were only about half the size of the real thing – fair enough for your run of the mill cat or bunny but how about a half-size gorilla, or elephant! Or if it really takes your fancy and the room is large enough a half-size camel or giraffe for goodness sake. I'll try and get some photos the next time I'm out there so you can see I am not making this up.
We briefly visited the Souk area but due to difficulties in parking did not get out but the area looks very interesting with lots of little shops including tailors who will happily knock you up a hand made suit in any design you fancy for about £50 which has to be a bargain – I will definitely be looking into that. From the sublime to the ridiculous we came from the slightly tatty area of the Souk back past the Bahrain World Trade Centre which consists of two towers in a very point sail type shape joined by two propellers which are wind turbines to provide power to the building.
So all in all a quick but good introduction to the area and a few ideas for places to explore later.

Room Video Tour

Another amusement and a bit of a system test - a video tour of my room!

En Route!

The adventure has begun!

All fairly uneventful so far with the travel plan working from the off and even arriving in Heathrow much earlier than anticipated – which was a bit of a surprise as the driver, Bruce apparently and supposedly local, needed close direction to get himself out on the main road from my house, not a particularly promising start. This was made no more encouraging by his desire to talk, at some length, about his plans to holiday and to emigrate to Borneo. Interesting up to a point but when one has just woken up the family at 5.30am to say goodbye to them for 6 months, small talk is not really going distract the large number of emotions going through one's head. Dozing, both needed due to only intermittent sleep and as a diversion from conversation was the only answer which also seemed to have the effect of increasing Bruce's average speed as he clearly wished to seek a more promising captive to hear about his vacation history and plans.

I'm not sure that I have ever flown on a Boeing 747 before. Today's aircraft was a British Airways 747-400, a truly MASSIVE aircraft by any standards which was largely full but by good fortune I got an aisle seat with no one in either of the two seats beside me offering plenty of room to spread out. As I type now we are about 2hrs into the flight (6hr 30min total) at about 37000ft above Austria. I'm listening to The Starlight Mints, they did the 'Demons' theme tune if you saw any of that; anyway I'm using noise-canceling ear phones that I bought ages ago and have never used for any length of time – they are quite excellent and completely make you forget you are in an aircraft as the engine noise just gets magicked away.

It felt more than a bit weird this morning saying goodbye to everyone but I definitely feel a lot more composed now; hope it doesn't wear off too quickly.

Podcast 1

In addition to the traditional internet diary approach of the blog I will from time to time, largely depending on how quickly I can put them together and whether I have anything interesting to say, include verbal and video entries.  The first of these offerings is accessible below, it was done quite quickly so needs a bit of work on a bit less intro music and better quality of speech recording but its a test so take it as that, it lasts about 5 mins.  The best method of activating the link so thatyou do not navigate away from this page  is to right click on the link below and 'Open in New Tab'.

If you have an opinion, let me know what you think.

PODCAST 1  

Opportunity Costs

Quite apart from being away from home and missing friends and family one of the key annoyances is that there are many things I will simply not be able to do whilst out in Manama.  There is the seperation from vehicles mentioned previously which really means no biking to do or to help with as in Sarah's No Limitz antics, no travel to interesting places (doing so for a few days is a whole different world from 6 months! - France, Germany, Canada, and India would have been on the agenda), no going to sea, no outdoor running ( I suspect though acclimatisation and at night may offer some potential, no home cooking or indeed visits to homes, no lawn mowing or emptying the bins - now we're talking!

I will get used to a change of life, one always does but the more I think about it there are quite a few changes to get my head around.

Abandoned Vehicles

One of the most tedious consequences of my short notice departure has been the need to decide what I am going to do about my increasingly large fleet of motor vehicles.

The recently acquired CR-V will of course get plenty of use and as a relatively new and recently serviced vehicle hopefully will not need much attention.  Likewise it should not be difficult to get the S2000 driven now and again, especially as more sun emerges.  The slightly unloved, by everyone other than me (!), Peugeot 306 has now reached 130,000 mls and is proving occasionally dificult to start but has provided sterling service over the years. 

 So he doesn't just get abandoned I have found some friends that need a vehicle in which to train their son to drive so little blue peugeot may get quite an exciting few months in my absence.

Lorry will be looked after by Andy and Chris and so shouldn't need anything special happening to it, fingers crossed!

The real sadness is my two wheeled friends and I can unfortunately find no better plan than to sell Mr Ducati and so he has now been accommodated by Motorapido who will do their best to sell him for me to be replaced with something interesting when I return - more on that later.  The trusty Honda CBR600F has always been fairly bullet-proof and I am sure will withstand sitting in the garage for 6 months and there my be a chance Chris will take it out for a trashing from time to time in my absence.

It is a real shame to have all these toys though and not be able to play with them!

Podcast test

Podcast possibility is here

Preparations 3 - Visit to Northwood

I had rather forgotten how much I hate Northwood! At the moment the place is truly dreadful.
Arriving at night you are greeted with a wall of arc lights blinding progress in any direction. Behind the harsh lighting is a maze of massive building sites each surrounded by mud, building vehicles, miles of temporary metal fencing and an endless line of orange barriers and tape directing you in any direction other than where you need to go.
Since my last time up here they have opened the 'Visitors Centre', makes it sound like some historic sight on a holiday maker's tour of Britain. Far from it! It is possibly the largest police control building I have ever seen but is on the far side of the barrier at present so you are already in the establishment when they issue your pass. It is also the location of keys to the transit accommodation, though of course they don't tell you that until you have been to the other end of the site to discover for yourself that it is nothing at all to do with the Officer's Mess unlike the instruction given when booking the room in the first place. Oh, and there is no record of the booking with any of the duty staff; great.
And why am I here? To do a pointless and irrelevant briefing that starts at the ludicrously early time of 0800; which would be fine if the place was on the South Coast or even had a decent amount of accommodation on offer. I am not looking forward to this briefing already!

Preparations 2 - Gassing

One of many tedious aspects to going out to Bahrain is the need to get up to date in a whole load of areas which otherwise can happily be ignored.

Fortunately I am in date for my fitness test, had already booked a periodic health check and the dental check up was easy to fix.

One area that had been overlooked was the annual AGR (Anti-Gas Respirator or Gas Mask) check; er, this had actually been overlooked for about, ahem, 9 years! I was actually rather pleased I had remembered which bit of the garage roof the good old green bag was dangling from and glad to see that apart from a few spots of rust on the outside, a little bit of mold and quite a few cobwebs it was in quite good shape. There was some fear that I might find some fossilized remnant of an 'Action Snack' which I had been too busy to consume at the time and subsequently forgot about but fortunately there was nothing untoward in side.
Once I had found the NBCD training unit is was clear that this was all a bit out of date. So I gratefully handed over the ancient mess of an AGR that I brought with me and was issued a brand new one which now even comes with a camouflaged case. Only snag was that new AGR of course needs to be tested to make sure that it works and is the right size for ones face. This test incidentally no longer consists of being properly gassed with burning CS pellets but instead involves standing in a tent with a few candles and nodding your head – my times have changed. Actually, that was not the only snag as the second snag is that one can't get a seal and hence test the stupid gas mask if one has a beard – hence the recent re-exposure of chin to the world but at least I now know foolish AGR works if in the really very unlikely event of the worst coming to the worst and it is needed for real.

Preparations 1 - Gadgets

The whole going away to Bahrain business is not all bad I suppose. It has given me a sound excuse to top up on a few gadgets.

The first of these is the thing I am typing on now, a so called 'netbook' as it is smaller and lighter than a laptop and so supposedly ultra portable. This particular one is a thing called a Samsung NC10 which so far has proved very good indeed and has a phenomenal battery life which is always a rare thing. The only bit I was a unsure about was the small and slightly oddly shaped track pad but I have got around that by buying the world's smallest, sexiest and cleverest wireless mouse. It is about the same size as a lipstick tube and recharges itself by attaching itself to the wireless transmitter that plugs into a USB port on the computer. So far it works a treat and is impressively micro while still being entirely useable.

In terms of programmes I have loaded up Skype for VOIP chatting to all while I am away, Picassa for photo management and sharing via Picassa online site and then Open Office which is to all intents and purposes, Microsoft Office, except it is free, downloads quickly and installs with no problems at all (on second thoughts it is nothing like MS Office at all!).
The other gadget of which I am particularly proud is a new camera. A Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T2 to be precise and it is remarkably small (miniaturization is the way ahead when travelling!). It also has many more functions than I shall ever get to grips with but hopefully some of my efforts will be appearing here soon.

Assignment Order

Well, it has been on the cards for a few months now but I didn't think it was really going to happen! Having now had two Rear Admirals tell me that the job I am doing in the UK is considerably more important that a deployment I sort of thought that I might have at least been able to delay a deployment.

However, I am now in receipt of my assignment order to be the Deputy Staff Operations Officer to the UK Maritime Component Commander out in Manama, Bahrain for 6 months starting on the 16 Mar, ie just 4 weeks time. The job itself is both busy and interesting, is in a pleasant part of the world and with an very good infrastructure in that accommodation is in a decent hotel. It could of course be worse, ie Iraq or Afghanistan with people shooting at you, but equally it is not being at home and the deployment covers the hotest part of the year.

I'm still thinking about it all and don't really have a clear feeling one way or another. I would frankly rather not go for both personal and professional reasons but if it gets it out of the way and gives me longer in MWC I can cope with that. I am always sorry to disappoint Lucy and Sarah and they will be most affected by me being away but will reluctantly get on with it and put up with a rather unsatisfactory situation.

At the end of the day it is a classic life in a blue suit situation and once out there might even be quite fun for me at least. How it turns out will emerge on these pages.