No Necessito Chicles

I seem to be a magnet for street urchins and local Chiclet sales representitives. The other day, the most adorable little girl with nothing on but a filthy Winnie the Pooh tank top and a pair of underwear (either that or very short shorts) and caked in dirt came racing down the sidewalk after me saying something too fast for me to catch. I asked her where her mother was and she pointed up the street. I was mightily impressed when, during a break in the conversation, she managed to get an index finger up each nostril simultaneously and pick like she was a county fair contestant in a Booger-Picking competition. If there had been such a competition, she would've won hands down (pun intended). I'm just really glad she wasn't selling any Chiclets.

Worship the Dear Leader

I don't know who took this picture, but it obviously wasn't me. I just found it on Yahoo images.

It seems like there should be a fiery furnace involved here somewhere. I thought this sort of thing went out with Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednigo (did I spell that right-- probably not). It seems silly to most of the free world to bow in front of a statue of a dead guy, but North Korea isn't the free world. I guess it doesn't seem silly to them, since they've been cut off from reality since about forever.

First Day of Freedom

Yay! Yesterday I finally was able to escape from my daily routine of going to the gym, eating, and watching Miami Vice and get off base. I went to the local mall. Back home, I wouldn't go to the mall just to kill time, but I'm not at home. I'm far, far away eating very bland food at the chow hall.

The local cab company came and picked up myself and my cohort. I was a little unsettled at the lack of usable seatbelts, but real fear didn't start setting in until we really got out on the road at which point the driver was continuously beeping, dodging, and weaving all the way to the mall. Kind of made me wish I'd brought a blindfold--or at least a change of underwear.

Everything at the mall cost like sin. I went to a couple of beauty shops asking for shampoo with sunscreen (in Spanish) and they kept handing me shampoo for frizzy/unruly hair. Not what I asked for, but I took it home and used it and now my hair is behaving a lot better. I don't look like The Flying Nun anymore.

Air Force Core Values

Integrity first.
Service before self.
Excellence in all we do.

Every person in the USAF knows what the AF Core Values are. However, knowing what they are and applying them to their daily lives are two different things.

I blogged earlier about the OTS roommate who was, well--truly awful. I also had a commander who had the attitude that rules and AFIs were for suckers and that people who followed them were uptight. The man also cheated on his fitness test and when sexual harrassment allegations were brought against a squadron member, he "fixed" the problem by moving the offender to another squadron. And this was from a squadron commander.

So why is senior leadership so floored when cadets are busted for sexual assault, drunken stupidity, or cheating on tests? When I was in tech school at Goodfellow, every time we had a commander's call, the CC would be beside himself because of Something Else That Happened.

The problem is that you're bringing cadets, OTs, and basic trainees from a world that tells them the end justifies the means. If concepts of right and wrong are all in the eye of the beholder, then the Core Values are nothing but a 2 hour lesson to kill time during training. Leadership can't expect that a few hours during ROTC or basic training will make up for 18 plus years of moral relativity, especially when airmen and lieutenants see the same behavior coming from their squadron commander.

I started thinking about this more last week after I met my new boss. I didn't have my M-9 card to deploy with because I wasn't told I needed it until the day before I left. Mobility was running around with their hair on fire trying to find a way to get around it. The boss asked later that day what Mobility was doing about the M-9 issue and asked me, "They're not doing anything wrong are they?"

He said they better not be doing anything illegal or immoral to get it done. I know I looked at him kind of weird because I didn't assume that they would. But maybe we'd all be better off if more people asked that question. By the way, I did get a waiver (all above board).

The jury's still out on the new boss--I haven't made up my mind yet. Maybe he's a good guy or maybe he just another patch-wearing, zipper-suited jerk that doesn't give a flying crap about the BDU wearers. Time will tell. But the fact that he took the time to think about whether something was right or wrong puts him well ahead of a lot of people.

Another Day in Paradise

Happy Fourth of July everybody! I'm on day 5 of my deployment--only some 55 odd more to go. They're breaking up the monotony with a BBQ.

I'm currently taking malaria pills and they're making me feel like crap. I asked about the other version of pills and was told by the flight doc that they can be worse due to the fact that they have hallucenogenic properties.

Right now I'm working with an airman who spends every second at work and every second of his free time padding his resume for the next 40 years. In the last year I've worked with him, he's openly stated how he expects to get BTZ and how all the stuff he's doing is fodder for his BTZ package. He's also constantly working on stuff to fill up quarterly awards and star performer packages. I finally told him to put a lid on it because he was overplaying his hand and it was obnoxious.

I don't have a problem with people who are true go-getters, but I wonder how much he'd be motivated to do if he thought he wasn't going to get something out of it.

The guy is very smart and knowledgable when it comes to retaining information. However, his assessments aren't always on target, offering constructive criticism sends him into a tailspin, and he tends to be condescending to people he perceives as less knowledgable than he.

The thing is, I'd rather have an airman that doesn't have a crapload of knowledge stored in his head, but doesn't treat other people like dirt and doesn't brief like he thinks his audience is stupid. I guess I'm a little biased though. In my OTS flight, we had a glut of prior enlisted individuals. Two in particular had a combined 20 years of experience between them and they didn't mind letting us non-priors know what a bunch of idiots they thought we were. One of them was my roommate--the Sluggo to my Mr. Bill. She was extremely good at telling the instructors what they wanted to hear. She would spout off the Core Values in class like she looked at them on a sticky note on her bathroom mirror everyday to make sure she memorized them. She also lied, backstabbed, sweet-talked FTOs in one breath and badmouthed them in the next, and was banging guys like a screen door in a hurricane (incidentally, she was married). And what do you suppose became of her? Well, she got Distinguished Graduate (DG) of course. Now she's attending AF Weapons School at Nellis, where she can hone her character flaws in a supportive and nurturing environment. I'd like to make it to the top as much as anybody, but I don't want to be the kind of O-6 that people avoid like the plague. Maybe it is lonely at the top, but I imagine it's a helluva lot lonelier if you treated people like crap to get there.

Deployment

For the first time in my four years in the Air Force, I finally get to deploy--and I'm bored as hell. Fortunately for me, I'm not in the desert, I'm at the beach. Unfortunately, it practically takes an executive order to get off base. We arrived at our location last Thursday night at 7pm. About a second later, the plane broke in addition to the other already broken jet, so...now I'm just sitting on my butt waiting for something to happen. My day goes something like this...

Wake up
Shower
Eat
Show up at work to find out we're not doing anything
Check e-mail
Go back and change into civvies
Go work out and play basketball
Shower again
Eat again
Watch Miami Vice Seasons 1 and 2
Eat yet again
Watch more Miami Vice
Go to bed

Wow! Sounds exciting, doesn't it? And I couldn't wait to leave in order to avoid the Unit Compliance Inspection (UCI).