Jun 07 2008
Qayyara Site Visit
On Friday, I headed down to Qayyara, about 1 1/2 hours south of Mosul. I went with Mike Miller, aka mikem, to visit a couple of project sites. The trip was pretty uneventful, the day was warm, and mikem was fighting the Z monster. Actually, I don’t think he was trying to put up much of a fight!
Our first stop was at a drinking water treatment plant. This project has been in construction since October 2006 and is still not even 50% complete. The Iraqi contractor working the project doesn’t seem to mind that it is taking forever to finish. It’s very confusing because he’s working on a fixed price contract, which means that no matter how long it takes to complete, he gets paid the same amount. It seems to me you would want to finish very quickly under those circumstances. That way you could move onto another project and make more profit. One of the local leaders came to visit us while we were inspecting the project. He wanted to know when the contractor would begin working on the project again. I told our interpreter that we were considering canceling the project and starting over with a new contractor. I’m not sure exactly what the interpreter said, but I did hear “inshallah” quite a bit!
On the way out from this project site, I snapped a picture of this flowering bush. I have no idea what it is.
The next project we inspected was a road paving project that runs from the main North-South road to the al Mustantiq village. This is another of my headache projects. And it’s managed by the same Iraqi contractor as the drinking water treatment plant project! There was nothing interesting to see on that road, so I didn’t take any pictures. On the way back to Mosul, we did a little cross-country driving. It made riding in the back of the REVA that much more uncomfortable. But the armor is thick (as Phil would say). This 3ACR patrol had to eat our dust while we were heading back to the main road. The first vehicle is my trail REVA re-entering the dirt road. The 3ACR vehicles are the ones with their headlights on. Their patrol consisted of 2 MRAPs and 2 up-armored HMMWVs (humvees).
Yes nothing like an Organizational...
Oleander
“Inshallah,” Arabic for “God Be Willing,” though more accurately translated as “Why in God’s name would you be expecting Northern European Urgency?”
Of Pops and Omar’s and receding hair:
1.Never underestimate the importance of a good barber. I am a married man today thanks in large part to Sal in WB-4, bless his suave Italian-American heart. When Elena sees a picture of me in my 89th Div Greens (still in high school as a Reservist), she shakes her head and simply says “it was the hair.”
2. My Polish Grandpa had a head of Eastern European Ted Koppel steel wool hair until he was 82. So which is worse, receding hair or Ted Koppel hair?
Oleander is one of the most poisonous plants. Good thing you didn’t cut any flowers for a bouquet.