Blather

In the morning, I got up, showered and went to chow a bit early. Inside the chow hall , Joshua said we’d be leaving at 0800 instead of 0830, so I had a single French toast and half a cup of coffee. That was enough to keep me from starving. I went with the Army guys to the port and observed pax screening as they came into the building. There was a full colonel observing an Iraqi Marine screen people entering the building. Not the best of all possible searches, but a lot better than before.

Came back, checked my emails at the spawar café. Coming back to my hooch, two maintenance guys were under my trailer, looking at a lake that had formed from the draining water. They put together the drain (which had separated) and wanted to check the inside of my bathroom for leaks, so I let ‘em in. One guy, really pretty capable at plumbing, found a leaky flap on the toilet. I left the two guys there and went to check my laundry and have a cigar. When I got back, he’d fixed it with silicone caulk and asked me not to use the toilet until tomorrow morning. I think if I use the bucket filled from the shower, I can still use my own toilet, though I went next door to the empty hooch and used that one. I put my laundry away and relaxed a bit until I dozed off a bit. It’s a bit after noon, so I’ll go get some chow.

I found another book to read in the library. But that’s for later. Chow now, try to stay busy in the afternoon. The sun makes the temperature more bearable, so maybe I can do something outside. My hooch is nice, but I’m beginning to get a case of cabin fever.

Had a good chat with the Brits at chow tonight. Talked about interesting things, like how in a political sense, we’re carpetbaggers here, trying to cram our style of doing things down their collective cultural throat. I’d never thought that I might be doing that, being the Northerner “in charge” of the Southerner’s culture. But by trying to get them to work like we do, that’s so. We don’t have to do what we’re doing, we could just let them do things their own way. Sure, they’d be excluded from the modern world but they’d be doing things the way they want to. I think what it boils down to is a basic lack of homogeneity in Iraq. Some people want to be modern, some don’t. So while we’re annoying (in a cultural sense) those who want to do things like Mohamed did, we are, indeed, accommodating those who want to be modern. I guess similar cultural dynamics exist back home, too, otherwise politicians and policymakers would be out of a job.

Been reading a British-authored book about Texas. Though Lee Child is a man from the industrial midlands, he seems to have gotten a feel for Texas. When I run across “tyre” or “colour,” I’m reminded that this isn’t an American writing. Otherwise, even the dialogue is very American. “Echo Burning” is a pretty gripping book. No movie tonight, just this book.