“Staring at the Sun…”

September 5th 2005, 2015B

Damn, but it’s been hot today. It looked like it may rain at one point this afternoon, which would have been a welcome relief, but my suspicion that the clouds were just teasing us proved well founded. Bastards.

Anyway, it’s been a decent enough day, other than the weather. I even had a little work this morning, & got out of the base for a few hours. One of the tasks given to the infantry battalion is escorting the civilian UN personnel when they drive out of the city proper, which is what happened this morning. The change of pace & scenery were nice, but the heat made it something of a trial otherwise, especially when you’re wearing body armour & sitting in the back of an armoured vehicle – I sweated like a cheap ho on pay day, & it wasn’t very pleasant.
I can live with that though, but something that did piss me off was the local kids. We were static in the one spot for must have been an hour or so while the civvy UN personnel had a meeting or something, and we ended up with about 20 of the local kids hanging around the vehicle, shouting at us & demanding money or food. By all means, English may not be their first language, but what is one of the first words you learn in any foreign language? Bloody “please”, shortly followed by “thank you”. And these little shits don’t even ask in their own language either, according to the troops who can speak it. And the adults are not much better I assure you. Nope, a ruder bunch of people you have to go a long way to find, & it gets right on my tits.
You know that itchy sensation you get on your palm when you feel the need to haul off & give someone a good bitch slap across the ear? I live with that sensation these days. The problem is that while there are probably quicker ways to get fired than teaching some local kid manners they desperately need, I just can’t think of any right now. I’m heartily sick & fucking tired of the locals demanding shit from me I can tell you, & it’s going to be a long 8 months till I get home, at least in this regard.

I got to take some photos though. Only about ten, as I’ve given up on trying to take photos from a moving vehicle on these roads, but some of them came out quite well, & that’s something I always enjoy. I’d hate to have spent so much money on cameras & gear for them in the last year, & then suck at taking photographs :P
I’m still trying to make a plan to upload some photos, but until such time as I either have at least an uninterrupted hour at the pc here on the base, or access to a broadband connection somewhere else, it’s a hopeless cause. Something I may end up doing is sending a disc home with images & asking someone nicely to upload the good ones for me. I’d ask Rob, but for someone who’s fairly computer literate he’s bloody clueless where the net is concerned. Then again, I left the I-Burst running when I left home, so he’s had the best part of two months of surfing for porn in which to pick a few things up :P

Otherwise it’s been a quiet day. I had a nap when I got back from the escort mission, & then spent a few hours going through the Ctrl-Alt-Del & AppleGeeks comics I’ve got saved on a disc here & having a good laugh. I miss being able to get the new ones off the net every few days – there’s just not been chance yet – but at least they both have all their material archived on the sites so I can get hold of them when I get home if I don’t manage before then.
Speaking of comics, I had chance to look at Noelles’ blog a little earlier, & saw the latest strip she’d done. That young lady has a nasty imagination & sense of humour in addition to being bloody smart, and it’s brilliant. I’ve not been able to get hold of her on the phone yet, so I was happy for the chance to catch up on what’s been going on in her life, & I have to extend a belated Happy Anniversary to her & Paul – well done guys :D
Reading that her car was broken into wasn’t so nice though, & I’m glad that it was only the cd player that went AWOL, & not the whole car. And even happier that it was a break in and not a hijacking, & that nobody was hurt. It’s the first time I’ve read her blog actually, & I’ll have to make a point to keep up with it whenever possible.

That’s it for now though as it’s nearly time for evening roll-call, but I’ll catch up again soon ;)