Fare Thee Well - (Germany) Day 226

SPC Matrix showing off his parting gift

PT this morning was a run off post in civilian clothes for the normal folks, I headed to the gym with the other profiles where we all chose a cardio machine. I picked the stationary bicycle as usual and had a good no impact workout.

I headed into the office and checked my email, then surfed the web a bit. I had to go over to the bank and pay the speeding ticket that I received yesterday. Since these come in quite a bit, they have set up a system where you can take your money in and pay the ticket right there on the spot. The bank makes the direct deposit and gives you a receipt. I then had to take the receipt back to the office and show our platoon sergeant that I actually paid the ticket, like a little kid. I then had to help my boss inventory two of the safes for the CIP inspection. The difference with this inventory was that we had to take everything out and show it to the inspector who studied each item, which of course made the process take quite a bit longer.

Lunch was at a Chinese restaurant where we had a farewell for SPC Matrix and SPC DubYa. They were each given a little token of appreciation that we all put in a little money for. These are both pretty good guys and I'll be sad to see them go. I had to leave a bit early in order to make my physical therapy appointment. All went well until my spinal manipulation by the doctor, I'm not sure what he did, but I ended up with a bad headache for the rest of the day which sucks…usually I'm feeling pretty good for the rest of the day after leaving.

Back at the office I surfed the web and passed the time chatting with SGT Mex. I did find out a little bit of good news…I don't have to go to the sergeant's time training tomorrow which is up in Landstuhl. They have to do CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radioactive, Nuclear) training…i.e. wear the gas mask and all the full body gear. There were rumors that there was going to be a gas chamber as well. Because of the CIP Inspection, I do not have to attend…for that I'm thankful, it would be a crappy day all around doing that all day.

I headed home and spent some quality time with the family. Our time is running short…we spent a lot of time just watching my screensaver on the TV which just goes through random photos I've selected…so it's a lot of fun to watch.

The Big Dog - (Korea) Day 224

Work call this morning was at 0830. First thing in the morning I got called into our new colonel's office to meet him and help him get setup on his computer for the first time. He's quite a bit older than I was expecting. (I'll call him the big dog). Once he was setup I turned him loose and headed up to my office and did SkillPorts as usual. Since it's the first day of the work week I checked my status once again with my promotion points.

Military Education:

Max 260 Points

Army Correspondence Course Program (ACCP): 537 Hours - 107 Points

So I'm almost half way there. Once I finish this class I'm doing, I'll be taking a short break before my next class. I will not start my next class until after I come back from leave. During this period I plan on doing even more SkillPorts in my room during the time I'd normally use for schoolwork. I want to max this out, so I don't have to worry about it any more.

I check my email daily for word from my branch manager to see where my next assignment is. I have that same feeling of anticipation that I had back in AIT before I knew I was coming to Korea. I am excited and scared at the same time. I am hoping I'll get sent somewhere I'll like, but not knowing is stressful.

I got a call from my roommate once again today asking if I can come back early for lunch, he doesn't have his room key. The funny thing was that I asked him if he had it this morning, he said he did…but it turned out to be the wrong key! I may have to duct tape it to him or something pretty soon. I ate lunch and video chatted with my wife.

When I arrived back at the office, I went to our conference room to setup for another farewell ceremony for the general. Once that was finished, I worked on the army SSDL1 training. I was able to finish module 2, so I have 2 more to go. I'd like to finish that this week if possible. The sergeants came up (our sergeant and our NCOIC) and were checking off inventory. Our sergeant had signed a hand receipt for a lot of the equipment in the conference room and our NCOIC will be signing for it all before he leaves. As any wise person will do, they check all the equipment and serial numbers to make sure everything that is on the receipt is actually there. I helped them find a few things, with the limited descriptions it can be a bit tough, but we found everything they were looking for.

By this time it was getting pretty late. I updated the upcoming events calendar and we all took off. That was after our sergeant said we needed to do some good training tomorrow morning. This means we'll be going for another ruck march. Special K said that it will be raining and our sergeant said "if it ain't raining…it ain't training". He then called it "rain pt", so we'll be getting a little wet tomorrow it seems.

The rest of the night was full of the usual…schoolwork and then TV shows.

4-Star Farewell - (Korea) Day 219

The front and back of the 4-Star General's coin I received during the farewell ceremony

Work call this morning was at 0830. We setup for our normal Wednesday meeting in the secret conference room, but we didn't actually have to run it or attend. We had our own meeting we had to setup and prepare for. The commander of USFK, the four star general had a meeting scheduled to say farewell to our office. It was quick and short, he gave out some coins first and at the last second I found out I was going to get one. Very cool! Now I have a four star general's coin. Our KATUSA also got one which was well deserved, he works his butt off. The General then said a few words and we all took our picture with him. A short and sweet meeting.

We then cleaned up both our conference room and then later on the secret conference room. I received a list of openings for my job position from my NCOIC. I then sent an email to my branch manager requesting some of the cooler locations. I should be finding out pretty soon where I'll be heading. I would think that if I request a place that has an opening at the time I'm leaving Korea, that it would be a no brainer. I'm actually making the branch manager's job easier right? LOL…I guess we'll see where they think I belong "based on the needs of the army".

I then did SkillPorts until lunch time. I figured I would give a status update on my progress each week. Since this is the first day of the work week, it will be a Wednesday this time. Here is what my promotion point worksheet shows for Military Education:

Max 260 Points:

Army Correspondence Course Program (ACCP): 472 Hours = 94 Points

Slowly getting closer. I got a call at 1130 from my roommate, he locked himself out of our room and asked if I could take lunch early and let him in…no problem. I headed out and had lunch in my room while video chatting with my wife. When I headed back to the office I did the army SSD  Level 1 computer based training. This is the other training I found last week that I'm checking out. I finished the first module today. When I finish all the modules it's supposed to be worth 80 hours. I think I also get a certificate as well. We'll see.

I helped out Seaman bring in all the mail. Because of the holiday weekend he had the entire car filled with boxes! We had to make a few trips back and forth to get them all in with help from our KATUSA and SPC Mick. We then cleaned up and left at 1700 today.

Back in my room I ate dinner and watched TV shows. I then heard from my roommate that he broke up with his American girlfriend. It's probably for the better based on what I've heard so far with their relationship, but he's still pretty bummed. So bummed in fact that he had a few friends over to console him for quite a while. Even our KATUSA heard about it and came over "to feel bad for him".

Another day over…another day closer to going home. Now I'm going to sleep. I bought a fan that I placed next to my bed for the noise at night. Last night I slept with that on and my "white noise" from my iPhone playing. It worked out great…I didn't hear anything and slept like a rock.

Fare Thee Well - (Korea) Day 211

During the farewell gathering a couple of ROKs along with Seaman on the left and
the air force master sergeant and major on the right.

Work call this morning was at 0800, we had to setup for a meeting in our conference room. This meeting had a DVD that they wanted to play. We've watched DVDs in the past in the conference room as a group for fun, but we always had to turn off one of the projectors because there was a constant flicker. Maybe a better word would be scrolling. The screen would scroll constantly making it useless to try and watch a show. I never really thought too much about it, it was just standard operating procedure for us to turn that particular projector off when we watched a DVD. CPT Hooah! saw it and told us to fix it right away. I fiddled with it a little without success, so I went back to my computer and downloaded the manual to take a look. Another officer from the command group came in and told CPT Hooah! that we should have a tech guy take a look at it. CPT Hooah! said I was his tech guy…lol. The officer from the command group then asked me what my MOS was. When I told him I was a 25B he said I better get that fixed! I had it fixed within a few minutes…just needed to check out the manual.

The rest of the day was pretty standard as of late, a lot of working on SkillPorts and not much else. I was asked yesterday if I wanted to attend a farewell party for our air force master sergeant that our ROK sister office was throwing him. I said sure, I think he's a pretty swell guy and it sounded better than sitting in my room all night. After work at 1700 I was told to meet back at the office in civilian clothes at 1800. I wasn't even sure where we were going, I just knew it was a farewell party.

So I headed to my room and changed, then headed back to the office before too long. We all gathered up and walked off post a few blocks until we came upon a restaurant. I was happy to see they had normal tables and chairs. We were guided to the back where I saw we had a special room reserved for us. Unfortunately this special room was traditional style where we sit on the floor…ugh my legs! I quickly chose the side next to a wall so at least I could rest my back.

There was a lot of Korean beer and soju brought in and the drinks started flowing long before the food even started cooking on the tables. There were a number of toasts given and everyone was having a good time. I was well aware of the fact that this was indeed still a weekday and I had to go to work tomorrow. I had planned on staying away from the soju all together and just sip some beer. That all changed as we were about to toast and the head ROK officer saw my beer as everyone else was holding up their soju shot glasses. In accented English I hear "What the fuck is that?". I soon ended up taking a few shots of soju. We cooked some meat at the tables, but before it was done I tried raw cow liver. It was set out as one of the appetizers and I was told it was very good. It actually wasn't too bad except like the raw fish I tried before, the texture was kind of gross.

Everyone had quite a bit to drink. The air force master sergeant made several trips to the bathroom, and he wasn't going in there to go pee or poop. The ROK camera guy could barely stand straight as he was attempting to take photos. Our air force major who is usually pretty conservative at one point was in the bathroom going pee without shoes on. Everyone was feeling pretty good.

As we were all leaving my NCOIC told us about a really cool bar next to her house and asked if anyone wanted to see it. Always looking to see something new, I volunteered as did the head ROK officer. The three of us took a short subway ride to this bar, and as advertised it was pretty amazing. Like in the movie Cocktail with Tom Cruise, the bar tenders had a lot of flair throwing bottles around and making drinks. If that wasn't enough, at midnight they put on a bit of a show complete with spitting fire out of their mouth which lit up some fireworks…all inside this little bar. At one point a Korean dude next to me asked me if I could come over to his house on the weekends so his kids could meet an American. I told him I was pretty busy on the weekends…lol.

When we left there my NCOIC was pretty drunk. The head ROK officer headed home and my NCOIC insisted that I stay at her place. I'm kind of glad because I had no idea how to get back to my room. She took me to her place which was only a block away. I slept in the spare room and was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. At one point in the middle of the night I had to go pee really bad. The bathroom was right across the hall so I had no problem getting there. I did run into a problem when I tried figuring out how to flush her toilet. I looked everywhere and there was no handle or anything that remotely looked like it would do the job. I eventually gave up and went back to bed. When my NCOIC woke me up in the morning I had to go again. Thinking things may be different in the morning I went, but could not find the stinking handle…oh well.

One of the many toasts that went on during the dinner.

A couple of the younger ROK soldiers from our sister office.

A ROK cutting the meat into smaller bit size pieces to cook. We would then use
chopsticks to grab it from the grill and wrap it up in some lettuce before eating.

Me and one of the ROK soldiers...he was feeling pretty good at this point.

Some of the entertainment at the bar we headed to after the farewell party.

More of the entertainment at the bar we headed to after the farewell party

Change is Coming - (Korea) Day 50

A view of the conference room control center. This is where I watch basketball

and control the PowerPoint slides for the meetings.

 Work call this morning was at 0830. I had to setup for a meeting in our conference room that was at 1000. I could barely stay awake during it. There was a major in the control room with me flipping the slides for the presentation that was going on. If he wasn't in there I don't know if I would have been able to stay awake. It's starting to make sense why I saw SPC Short with a can on Monster energy drink in his hand constantly. I just sat there in case there was a technical emergency and watched some college basketball which was on mute.

After the meeting I went to lunch in my barracks room. I was looking forward to video chatting with my wife, but when I got to the room I found my roommate asleep. So much for video chatting…I just ate in silence and went on Facebook while listening to music on my headphones.

After lunch we received some bad news. I saw it coming a while ago and actually I'm surprised it took this long. Because of the two guys in our office who failed their PT tests at times, we now have to do PT with the company in the morning instead of doing it ourselves in the afternoon. I guess we have lost that privilege. Personally I think only the ones who are having difficulty staying in shape on their own should have to do the company PT at the crack of dawn.

I then headed up to my office in the conference room planning on doing some SkillPorts, but to my surprise some people followed me up and said they were having a meeting. Our KATUSA had just told me he thought it was cancelled…I guess not. I got the system up and running and had to sit in the control room with an air force chick who was flipping the slides…I watched some more basketball.

After the meeting we had our office and our sister offices come up to the conference room. Our colonel presented an award to SPC Short. The award has been waiting for him for a few months, but he couldn't have it until he passed his PT test. Nothing like waiting until the last minute! SPC Short accepted it and we all shook his hand and then he took off to catch a ride off to the plane to take him back to his family…lucky guy. After the presentation our colonel asked everyone to stay. He had great things to say about SPC Short, but he gave us all the "PT is very important" speech. Then we also got to hear our sergeant major give another little "PT is very important" speech. She spoke about how SPC Short did a lot of things that are normally done by higher ranking individuals. She went on to talk about all the experience they usually have in the office…then she looked right at me and said….. "now we have someone straight out of AIT". WTF? Nothing I can do about that. I didn't choose this assignment and if I was actually working on computers, I would have more experience than most.

Speaking of doing my job…later on my job was to hold the door open for a meeting that was coming up. As I'm standing there another PFC from the dungeon asks me what my MOS is. Turns out he's a 25C and he doesn't do his job either. He says what I'm thinking "Good thing they sent us to all that schooling so we can stand here and hold doors open for officers".

I got out of work about 1530 and headed to the gym for PT. I rode a bicycle and then did some abs work with SPC Lee who was doing "fat boy" PT with our sergeant. Me and our KATUSA joined him to give him a little support. We did a lot of variations of leg lifts. 6 inches off the ground…spread 'em…to the right…to the left…..all the way up…back down - 6 inches. A great workout form my abs.

My KATUSA roommate just brought over a cell phone hot spot for us to try. We really get ripped off using the only provider of internet for our barracks. $59 a month is a lot and the speed isn't that great. We pay it because it's the only option we have. Turns out that outside of base internet is much much cheaper. In fact the hot spot that we are testing is only about $20 a month. Everything seems to be working fine with it, so I may be switching and saving quite a bit.

Weekend Wrap-Up (4-Day) - (Korea) Days 46 - 49

The going away get together for SPC Short on the right,
SPC Roy in the middle and our KATUSA on the left

Saturday: A normal Saturday during the day (sleeping in, laundry, video chat with my wife). I did a little shopping for cleaning supplies as well. Around 1700 SPC Roy came by and picked me up with an already tipsy SPC Short with him. We headed back to SPC Roy's apartment off post where we met our KATUSA from the office. We were here for a little going away party for SPC Short since it's his last weekend here. SPC Roy cooked an awesome dinner of short ribs and spam, tuna & kimchi soup. It was all very good. We had some drinks and played poker. We hung out until about 0200 when SPC Short and I went back to our barracks. It was a good time and I think SPC Short loved it…he just may not love the next morning.

Sunday: I ended up having to sleep in a little extra long and then take it easy in the morning. I had a wee bit of a hangover…nothing that a lot of water and some aspirin didn't fix. I video chatted with my wife and my mother, then cleaned my room. I swept and mopped the floors. I scrubbed the bathroom floor pretty good with the brushes on my mop, but I think I'm going to have to get down and dirty on my hands and knees to get the edges…I'll do that next weekend. I did a little school work and then watched "She's Out of My League". A typical romantic comedy with some funny parts and the happy ending. It's about a young guy (who's friends rate him a 5) ends up going out with a girl who is a 10. It was a pretty decent movie. Other than that it was a pretty mellow day.

Monday: I woke up around 0500 this morning even though it's a holiday. I decided to go on a trip with my office to the Hyundai Sung Woo Resort. They were going for a ski trip and it's the cheapest prices I've seen here including full rental of everything including clothes. Even with the cheap prices I wasn't going to go because I still didn't have much money left to spare. I did decide to go with everyone though after taking a look at the website for this place. It looked like I would be pretty entertained even without actually skiing. So I had the young hawaiian meet up with me and we departed on the bus around 0630.

The bus trip was about 2 hours and once there our first goal was to get something to eat. We went to the closest restaurant and found that there were no pictures and no explanations in English for any of the menu items. Bummer…we left our KATUSA downstairs getting his equipment. We sat down to go over our options and out of the blue a worker came up to us and showed me her smart phone. She used a translation program to show me in English what they had! We both chose and ate a nice meal of beef and rice with soup.

We spent the rest of the day playing video games, we rode the gondola up the mountain and back, played ping pong, and also a game called pit pat. Pit Pat is kind of a cross between putt putt golf and billiards. It was a lot of fun and it was nice to get off post and do something a little different even if we did have to get up pretty early.

We got back at around 1900 and after watching some shows on my computer I called it a night.

Tuesday: Slept in and was looking forward to a nice relaxing day. I had plans to go with the young hawaiian to the mall or at least a movie. I was video chatting with my wife when I got a call from my sergeant. When the call starts off "I've got some bad news for you" you know it's not going to be good. I ended up having to go into work and get the conference room equipment all going for a ROK (Republic of Korea - AKA Korean Army) meeting. I ended up working from about 12:30 until a little after 1700. My sergeant says he'll make it up to me later this week…we'll see if that works out. Everything went fine except one of the microphones on the table was causing all sorts of problems and feedback, so I unplugged it and let them know.

After work I did some school work. It's been kind of hard to keep straight what I need done when because of the time difference. I think I'm just going to use my dates and time for everything. This way everything will be in early since I'm a day ahead of everyone there.

I watched a few episodes of "The I.T. Crowd" (season 4). It's a British comedy about a couple of guys who work in the I.T. department of a big company. The show is hilarious (words of caution…you may have to be a geek or married to a geek to get all the jokes).

A photo of the Hyundai Sung Woo Resort from the main building

A photo of the Hyundai Sung Woo Resort while traveling on the gondola

Keith

What do use to watch these movies? Is it online or from other....sources?

Thursday, January 20, 2011 - 10:19 AM

Brandon

I would love to say I watch them all from netflix or the major network websites such as CBS or NBC, but since I'm outside of the US I can't stream any of it because it's not allowed from their websites. There are a lot of folks in the barracks willing to share movies though.

I can neither confirm or deny that torrents are also a great way to get TV shows and movies.

Sites such as The Pirate Bay or Kickass Torrents are great tools to find a specific torrent.

Thursday, March 3, 2011 - 10:05 PM

Now that’s a big Hummer! (Pre-Basic Training) 8 Days until Basic

The Hummer limo that arrived to pick us up for the wine tasting. 

Me and my wife in front with the rest of my co-workers.

Wow… all I have to say is that I have some great friends and co-workers here. I was told we were going to have a get together to say farewell to me since this will be the last weekend I will be in town. The details were all a surprise, I only knew that it was indoors and to be ready on Sunday around 11 AM.

Shortly after 11 a Hummer limo pulls up at my house and picks me and my wife up. Wow! Once in the limo we were treated to mimosas and doughnuts. We took off to Lake Chelan and visited a number of the local wineries for wine tasting. After the first winery I think I can say that I was feeling pretty good. Each winery had some amazing wines (we ended up purchasing quite a few). The entire trip was a blast. My co-workers are a lot of fun and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. The last winery’s owner asked what the occasion was, and when he was told that I would be joining the army he quickly grabbed a bottle of wine. He then signed the bottle and thanked me for my service and gave it to me. It was a very nice gesture and it was a perfect ending to the tour. The drive back involved more champagne in the limo and then back home for some much needed rest.