This weekend, I did a whole lot of nothing, and it was good.  For those who expected more pictures of Korean stuff, you’ll have to wait… sorry.  The only noteworthy event of the past three days was a fire-alarm in the barracks at 04:00, and to the sumbitch who pulled the alarm, you’d better hope nobody finds out who you are… the whole barracks was rather upset at having to evacuate the building and stand in formation in 38-degree weather at 04:00 in the flippin’ morning.

 So, I finally got internet access installed in my room, and aside from downloading necessary software (stuff from Army websites necessary for my job, a few key Freeware utilities, etc.) I also spent more-than-a-few hours this weekend surfing for pornography (hey, I’m a single soldier in a barracks, not a plaster saint… whaddya expect?).

You can find anything you want on the Internet… as long as what you want is pornography.

Actually, you can’t find everything you want via the internet here in Korea…. one of the sites I hit carried me on a referral link to someplace the Koreans have laws against… I got some kind of popup screen with writing in Hangul and the crest of the National Police.  Needless to say, I shut down the referring page.  Best to not cause a diplomatic incident just for looking for pictures of nekkid women.

So, I’m surfing along…. nah, don’t like that one…. nah, crummy photograph quality… nah, not into midgets… etc, and I hit a webpage with photos of  some amateur girl from Australia.  Some website called Abby Normal or something (actually, I do remember the name, but I’m not posting it here to avoid search-engine problems).  A series of shots of a brunette undressing in a kitchen, and I was smitten with the fact that she was probably the most real-looking girl I’d seen on the web all weekend.

The photo I’ve posted here is modified to comply with fair-usage rules.  Notice her, in terms of nudie photos… there’s no silicone, no heavy eyeliner, no superteased hair, and she’s got a fair healthy body-fat-percentage.  Most of the women on the planet would be happy to look this good, but most guys would just cruise right past her photos, looking for some peroxide blonde with 20k of cosmetic surgery.

To the anonymous girl from Australia, Right On!  As the highest true male chauvinistic complement, I’d Do You, And Not Only Would I Do You, I’d Even Call Back A Couple Of Times Over The Next Few Days Just To Talk And Try And Get A Second Date.

Other than that, nothing much happened this weekend.

Haven’t posted in a while… lotsa’  stuff happens in two weeks’ time.   Let’s see…

Wednesday, the 24th, we had a USO-tour come through Camp Hovey… some country band named ‘Bomshel’, though they were only marginally country (one of their set-numbers was a cover of No Doubt’s Just A Girl).   I got some good pictures.
Thursday the 25th was mandatory Cold Weather Safety Training all day… BO-RING!
Friday night of the 26th we had a Hail & Farewell for SGT Woods, one of our NCO’s who’s PCS-ing to Ft. Stewart.  I stuck around for the chicken wings, the ceremonial parts, and some of the toasts, but when it began turning into a drunk-fest, I had to leave.
 
Technically, I am now an actual Professional photographer.  Our company First Sergeant paid me for copies of the photos I took of the Bomshel concert… granted, it was only $1 to cover the cost of the CD-ROM I copied them to, but it’s my first dollar, dammit, and I’m getting it framed.  Annie Liebowitz, look out. 

This Friday, I go up to Brigade S-1 to get all my promotion points fixed, all my old records input on my ERB, and aside from that, the real excitement is enrolling for Tae Kwon Do classes here on-post (hey, the Koreans invented the artform… might as well learn it here).  The classes are free, but the uniform costs $160.00… thankfully they’ll let me pay for it after payday.  We tested for our Yellow Belts Friday morning, and I’m happy to say that I passed… I am now, officially, G.I. Joe with the Kung-Fu Grip.

This past weekend was a pretty good one for me; Saturday was another foray into Seoul with PFC Choi and PV2 Bernard, this time to visit Gyeongbokgung Palace and take Bernard to some music-store mall to shop for a guitar effects pedal.  The palace is impressive, even moreso considering that they had to rebuild much of it from 1949 on, to restore/replace what the Japanese had destroyed during their colonial occupation of the country (the second time the Japanese trashed the place… first time was in 1592).  The weather was gorgeous, many good pictures were taken, and the restaurant meal afterwards was only so-so.  Regardless, a good day.
 

Most Korean shopping malls are unlike American malls in-that they specialize in one variety of merchandise.  Dongdaemun was all about clothing, Yongsan was all about electronic devices, and Gyeongbokgung is all about musical instruments.  Next time I go to one of these places I’ll have to get pictures to post… imagine 60+ vendors inside a two-block-long building selling all manner of one thing.  It’s weird to see that many pianos in one location.

 
Otherwise, life is still going well for me… scuttlebutt today is that they’re looking to lateral-promote me to Corporal, and transfer me to Bravo “Blackfoot” Troop to take over as the medic NCO for that element.  It’s normally an E-6 position, which would look good on my NCOER, and it’s not like I’ve had a long time to get settled-in here in HHT… we’ll see what happens.  Hopefully, I’ll make the cutoff score for E-5 in December, and will have hard stripes soon.

And that’s pretty-much the story for now… gotta’ get some sleep; it’s 03:45 here.

Take ‘er easy, people.

Well, it was a long week, followed by an interesting weekend.  All last week I was in Field Sanitation Class, laughably easy since most of what is taught is part of 68W… other than the stuff about inspecting a Water Trailer, and how to chlorinate it for safe drinking.  High point of that class was having to give a 3-5min presentation on the health-hazard of your choosing.  Had to sit through five different briefings on frostbite, and then I got up and knocked ‘em off their seats with a briefing about Depleted Uranium munitions.  Even had a fun l’il slideshow with lotsa’ gross pictures of birth-defect cases.

Saturday I was supposed to have joined an MWR bus-trip down to Dongdaemun, a shopping district down in Seoul.  The trip got cancelled due to lack of interest, but as I was griping about it, PFC Choi, one of our KATUSAs (Korean Augmentee To United States Army), volunteered to act as a tour-guide/translator.  Sunday the two of us took off for Seoul, hitting Dongdaemun and Yongsan to shop.

Now, Dongdaemun’s all about clothing.  Three major malls, and about six square blocks of street-vendors.  Additionally, they’ve got a ton of street-food vendors, selling everything from normal ribs and chicken to various bits of seafood on skewers, to boiled silkworm pupae in gravy.  Needless to say, I passed on the silkworm… Choi agreed with me.  He may be Korean, but he’s not up for eating bugs either.  Only street-snack I partook of was some kind of fish, and I haven’t thrown up within the past 24, so I think I’m safe.

Funniest event of the day was walking around Dongdaemun… we find this street-art sculpture of this bronze cartoon-looking monkey wielding a box wrench.  I snap a few photos and then check the base of the sculpture.  There’s a plaque, but it’s written in Hangul, so I ask Choi, “Hey, can you translate for me, please?”

Choi looks at me askew and pauses before telling me, “It says ‘Please Don’t Throw Your Cigarette Butts Here.’”

All I could do was laugh.  It turns out that street-sculpture in Korea is kinda’ like decorating your living-room… they don’t care about what the sculpture’s called or the artist’s name, they just want something that looks cool.

I didn’t want to buy clothing that day, so we hopped a taxi to Yongsan, which is apparantly the electronic-wholesale-outlet-nerve-center of Korea.  Lotsa’ cool toys, but for me?  I finally found a decent desk lamp, which was followed by sushi for dinner and then a long train-ride back to Camp Hovey.

Choi’s an agreeable kid, speaks fluent English, and he’s willing to continue this schtick as a guide/translator as long as we’re up for it.  Next weekend will probably involve a mass-platoon trip to Seoul to some cool restaurant at the top of a tower overlooking the city.  All we have to do is split the costs of Choi’s train fare and food, since KATUSAs only make around $62.00/month.  No shit.

Other exciting news is that I’m now Promotable.  Yup, it’s SPC(P)  now… somewhere, in some DA computer, there’s a flag set showing that I passed the E-5 board, and since I didn’t lose the rank due to UCMJ action, I’m on the company’s Promotable Personnel roster.  Means I don’t have to go to the Board again… cool, huh?  What it does mean, though, is that I’ve got an appointment at Brigade S-1 to get my ERB updated… it don’t show any of my records from my previous service; none of my awards, no secondary MOS, no previous duty-stations, none of my schools, nothing.  Scuttlebutt this morning amongst the NCOs is that they’re looking to lateral me to Corporal, since we’re about to lose two of our E-5s.

Aside from that, I finally received my laptop yesterday, though I’m doing this on the library computer… I still don’t have an antivirus program installed yet, and I’m not taking her online until I do.

Major weirdness in Korean telecomms…

So, I’m sitting in my room last night, and I get this text-message on my cellphone… something like “Tonight I give all my love to you thise night, sealed with a kiss.” Complete with the misspelling.

I’m thinking that somebody’s Drinky-girl girlfriend has dialed my number by accident, so I text back “WHO IS THIS???”

Text comes back from that number, “I like to linger with you, but you want to be there,,,”
I respond “Who is this? Are you sure you dialed the right number?”

Response comes back, “Hit me baby one more time to my cold heart,” and that’s when I figure it out… I’m getting spammed. Apparantly cellphone spam is enough of a problem over here that there’s a function pre-programmed into cellphones to report the source to the phone company. I didn’t get any more texts from that number, but I’m dreading the possibility that the spammer may now have my number on a list that will be sold to another spammer. Here’s hoping that doesn’t happen.

So, I went shopping for a laptop computer at the PX when I arrived in-country, and their selection was really lame. Undeterred, I got online and checked the AAFES (Army & Air Force Exchange Service) website to see what they offered, and found the laptop I wanted… a Sony VAIO. Ordered the item on 19 SEP, the $1299.00 was debited from my account immediately, and I was sent two confirmation emails that the item would be shipped directly from the vendor on 03 OCT.

It comes around to 05 OCT and there’s no notification of shipping, nor a tracking number for UPS associated with the order on AAFES’ website, so I pop off an email to AAFES asking ‘What’s up?’

I get a response saying, “It was supposed to ship on 04 OCT… give it a few more days.” That’s like saying “the check’s in the mail.”

09 OCT rolls around, still no shipping info, so I email again, asking for a phone# I can call to see if they’ve even shipped it yet. I get a response within 24 hours, but it’s from some functionary saying “I forwarded your message to the person who works with that vendor, and asked them to email you.”

10 OCT I get an email from the next person, saying “I’ve contacted the vendor, and should have a response from them soon.”

11 OCT I get an email saying “I’m glad to say your order was processed yesterday, and they should be shipping it very soon.” I respond by asking whether the vendor is going to upgrade the shipping to priority to compensate for their delay in processing my order.

Today, the 13th, I get an email stating “the date of 3 Oct 07 you received when you placed the order was an expected ship date. That date was not guaranteed. Unfortunately the vendor will not be upgrading the shipping” with a pat apology.

The money was debited from my account within five minutes of my placing the order online. It’s now 25 days later, and they still haven’t even shipped it yet???

If there are any other US Servicemembers who read this thread, I highly advise that you avoid AAFES-dot-com and take your business elsewhere. They’re just like any other corporate entity… once they’ve gotten your money, they don’t give a flyin’ fig about you as a customer, and will happily stall you, give you the runaround, and tell you “oh, that wasn’t guaranteed” rather than try and be truly helpful.

Caveat-flippin’-Emptor.

(Update: 19 OCT – Finally get an email from some lady at AAFES’ Quality Assurance Dept. stating that the laptop was shipped on the 12th, but tracking is not available, since it went USPS.  Please allow 2-3 weeks for delivery.  Final verdict?  AAFES sux.)

Yesterday, I got to walk around the meagre shopping-district outside the gates of Camp Casey, here in Dongducheon. I was hoping to find a good desk-lamp, and maybe some wall-art for the room. (Since I’ve been here for less-than 30 days, I had to be escorted by an NCO… SGT Morton, whose off-post experience is barely more than mine).

By my observations, the bulk of what’s for-sale in the area just outside of the gate is Phone Cards, Used Electronics, Hip-hop Fashions, and Filipino Juicy-girls. (A “Juicy-girl” is one of those barflies who try to get GI’s to buy them overpriced drinks, usually as a prelude to prostitution. The term is a corruption of the Hangul words “joo say,” meaning ‘a drink.’ According to reports, most of the Juicys around Camp Casey are Filipino… at least the ones giving me and SGT Morton the come-on through the club doors were.)

It looks like if I want to get a decent desk-lamp, I’ll have to catch the train to Seoul.
(First one who gives me a ‘Seoul Train!’ pun gets slapped…)

The real amusement for today, though, is here at the CyberCafe on post, and requires a bit of understanding of hexadecimal math and simple computer programming to appreciate.

For all you non-geeks out there: Hexadecimal math is Base-16, a legacy of the old 16-bit operating systems that were used back-in-the-day (the last mainline 16-bit OS was Windows 3.11). Hex coding is still used by many less-than-stellar programmers to develop new apps, but it has its flaws, one of them being how to handle Negative Integers.

Now, normally there is no provision for negative numbers in Hexadecimal… the programmer will have to assign a switch prior to the numbers to be able to accomodate subtractions below zero, but it’s a complicated process. Too complicated, apparantly, for whoever wrote the app that controls login and credit time here at the CyberCafe.

I had a card account with less than one hour of time on it, and gave the girl at the counter $3.00 to add another hour. Instead of adding it to my credits, she subtracted it, and then subtracted it again, which rolled the Hexadecimal in the ‘hours’ block backwards into negative space. It seems there is no provision for negative numbers in their Timer/Credit subroutine, and thus, I now have credit for 944,365 hours on my account.

By my math, that means I could stay continuously online here at the CyberCafe for just a little over 107 years. I’d say this constitutes a glitch in their programming, don’t you?
I think I’ll be able to get away with it as long as I don’t attempt to cash the unused credit hours in… which would probably amount to controlling stock in the company.

Or, more-than-enough money to buy a schoolbus-full of Filipino Juicy-girls, complete with the schoolbus.
Or, at least a decent desk-lamp.

(Follow-up: 16 OCT 07 – Sometime today they must’ve run an audit on their User accounts, and corrected the error.  I’m back to paying for terminal-time at the CyberCafe… whatever… I should have a computer in my room soon-enough.)

I had a friend that I don’t think many of you knew about; a lady named Anna whom I worked with at BJC. She was the secretary to the radiologists, a bright, funny, bubbly blonde whom I traded jokes and links with by email… most of the “Tangent Light Link-o-rama” was material that I’d traded with her.

Anyways, just a few months after I was fired from my job at BJC, she was also dismissed from her job with WashU. Her story was similar to mine… personality conflict with a supervisor (layman’s terms, her boss decided she didn’t like her, and began looking for an excuse to fire her). Anna took it pretty hard, and unfortunately sank into a period of depression and heavy drinking that she never quite rebounded from. She spent several periods in rehab, but every time she’d return home she’d start drinking again and not eating right, and it finally cost her life.

Anna died Tuesday, Oct 2nd, the day before her 49th birthday.

I wish there was more that I could have done to help her… I wish there was someone I could easily assign blame to… I wish… I wish my friend was still alive, goddamn it.

Good night, AnnaBanana… I’ll miss you.

Fun with Justice!

AFN has been broadcasting commercials about UCMJ Article 88, one of the Punitive Articles of the UCMJ (meaning, you can get punished for violating it). Article 88 covers Contempt Toward Officials, and only applies to commissioned officers, making it punishable by up to one year imprisonment for “Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”

About a year-and-a-half ago, one of my former commanders, Maj. General Paul D. Eaton (ret.) was one of the former generals who spoke out against Donald Rumsfeld, offering astute opinions as to why he should resign. I kinda’ wondered why he hadn’t spoken out about this sooner, but now understanding Article 88, I see why.

A pity… Paul Eaton was probably the best goddamn officer I ever had the good fortune to serve under.

Anyhow, while Article 88 doesn’t apply to Enlisted personnel, we get the exact same coverage under DOD Directive 1344.10 which basically states the same restrictions. While I couldn’t be prosecuted under Article 88 for blogging (just as an example) “George Bush is a f***ing idiot,” I could instead be prosecuted under Article 92 – Disobeying a Direct Order or Regulation. So, for a while, I have to keep almost all of my political opinions to myself.

“…the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present…”

Hmmm… I don’t see the Attorney General on that list… hehehehe…

Alberto Gonzalez is still the antichrist, dammit!!!

Take ‘er easy, people.

Well, the week passed without much fanfare.

Friday night, here at Cp. Hovey, is Wing Night at the Iron Triangle Club on post, social gathering for the Medics of HHT 4/7. The wings aren’t bad, they’re cheap, bheer is limited to Miller Lite (draft), and it was a good measure of being accepted into the platoon by my attendence. Of course, I had to endure some good-natured ribbing about my age (yup, I’m the oldest guy in the platoon… older even than the platoon sergeant), but I dealt it right back with aplomb, and honestly, they’re not a bad crew to be stuck with. Good thing about medics – they tend to make smarter conversation than the average line grunt.

Aside from that, I’m getting saddled with a new roommate… guy’s been here in Korea for a while, but seems to have an addicition to WorldOfWarcrack. Friday morning, he missed PT formation, was reported ‘out-of-ranks’, and they found him crashed-out in his barracks room, victim of his own foolishness. He’d been playing online until 03:00, and had exhausted himself. Idjiit.

So, today he’s moving all his stuff down the hall, joining me in my room, at the direction of the Troop 1st Sergeant, who expect me to act as a stabilizer/babysitter for the guy (or at least to make sure he wakes up on-time). We’ll see how well this works out…

Happy Choseuk, everybody!

It’s kinda’ like Thanksgiving for Koreans… return to ye olde homesteade, and pay homage to your ancestors (both living and deceased). Important stuff in a society that has a strong basis in Confucianism. What it means to most of us, though, is that all the Korean nationals who work on post, along with nearly all the KATUSAs, have the day off, so we get tomorrow off as well. Nice deal, for us.

So, I’m pretty-well settled in, here, and my only real complaint for today is that I’ve got this annoying, red, itchy sore on my shoulder that I’m not allowed to touch (smallpox vaccination… yippie ). Aside from that, I’m doing alright.

Additional news: Looks like I’ll be staying here in Korea for the full year (meaning, no deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan in that time). 2nd ID is already considered to be Forward Deployed here in Korea, and thus we aren’t in the rotation to do time in the sandbox.