Far East Cynic

And so the year of our Lord, Two Thousand and Ten comes to an end tonight. I am not sure how I feel about it’s passing quite yet. The fact that it closes out the first decade of the 21′st Century and the advance in age that implies-perhaps puts a more somber reflection on my thoughts than might have been the case more than a few years ago.

For me, the first decade of the twenty first century was pretty good. I escaped from mind numbing , soul destroying,  drudgery of suburban existence-to enter a brave new world. One filled with excitement, travel, beautiful women, and a lot more adventure than I had ever thought possible. Regrettably, the end of this decade finds me back in the country where that drudgery was and continues to exist, and one of my deepest of regrets of this past year is that I have not been able to effectively change that.

However, when I made the decision to return to the Whining States of America, I actually did so with a pretty clear idea of the difficulties I would face. The simple truth was that I have to come face to face with the fact that my earning years are getting shorter than I would like to admit, there is no lottery payout or sugar daddy waiting in my future, and because of the outcome of choices made earlier in life, I have to play the cards I have been dealt.  When I made the decision some two years ago, there were a couple of opportunities to go to Korea at the time-but they would have been dead ends and I knew that at the time.

The consolation, if it can be called that, is that I do like the company I am working for-and they have been very good to me.  My company is a good company to work for, and I have been involved in a lot of interesting projects. There is churn on the horizon that is lurking just ahead as new contracts loom on the horizon-but I have hopes that we will at least win some of the work-and if we don’t, well-every black cloud has to have a silver lining. I am resolved not to worry about it. Shopping Mall?  It blows-but for all my complaining about it-I am very aware that things could be worse. A lot worse. That said, it sure is not Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, or Bangkok and I do miss those places so. ( Especially Tokyo).

It was because of my opportunities with my current company that I got to go Romania, which was among the highlights of this year for me. For all the ridiculous hours and the foolish requirements that were laid on by the project’s managers, the privilege of being in a foreign country’s capital, working on something important, much of it with my bosses 4000 miles away, made the whole thing worth it.

I returned to Japan this year, for the first time since leaving, and next year I hope to return to both Japan and Hong Kong-for at least some brief sojourns. ( Preferably solo). That was another big plus-as well as the overseas business travel I got to make. Can’t complain about any of that-and I won’t.

But in approaching the new year-I tend to be more than a little mindful of the Yom Kippur aspects of the end of one year and the arrival of another. Sure, New Year’s is a time for celebrations, but it is also a time that God balances the books, and makes decisions about who wins and who loses. I’ve always found it interesting that in the Jewish tradition the day of atonement is found in conjunction with the new year. Non-Jews actually do the same thing-even if we don’t realize it. After all, what is a new year’s resolution but a desire to change the things you feel you did not do right in the last year?

Maybe that too, is a function of getting older and recognizing the choices you stupidly make in youth, rise up later and box you in. And that the price of escape from that box goes up exponentially sometimes as time passes. We always hear about the person who re-invents themselves in middle age-but who tells the story of the other 9 or 10 folks who try the same thing and get their asses handed to them? No one does. Somebody should.

So on balance, I have a lot to be grateful for and I know it. I take comfort in that and will work hard in the coming year to make a well thought out plan to return to the place I wish to be. In the meantime, one has to enjoy the journey at whatever station the train is currently stopped at-because ( and I do believe this) joy and fun can be found anywhere, if you make yourself look for it.

As for greater events in the news and the direction of the country I am currently living in-I am less optimistic.  Quite simply, the spoiled children have taken center stage politically, and they are going cry and whine, and make life a living hell for the adults among us-who have recognized that the world has changed. And that this nation better change too-or it will be in real trouble, a lot more than an fictional fate that gets reiterated again and again by Fox News and its learning impaired viewership. I’m not sure what it will take to rectify the problem-short of loading every like minded village idiot at Pajamas Media or this place onto a bus and sending it careening into a deep gorge. With Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin strapped into kiddie seats in the front. Ahh,  that makes for a pleasant afternoons reverie-but seriously, I am not hopeful that the tone of our discourse will improve. Talk radio and the Tea Bag nation cannot afford to have the reasonable man return to the room.

So the net effect will be that the world will pass the US by-and we will have been too self absorbed about non-issues . The real thing to be concerned about, as Sir Robin of Locksley pointed out, will continue to be ignored.  As will the fact that 2011 will mark a decade that the US has been at war and there will be no end in sight-except for the victims of that war whose lives will be silenced.

Ah,  but twas always thus and will always be, you say.  You will forgive me if I reject that line of thinking-and getting back to the Yom Kippur idea- what does is say of us and the Deity we believe in,  if we cannot strive to see misery eliminated- sooner rather than later? Things can be better here-and by choosing to make it better the world will not end. But our fellow Americans will live better and longer. So too will the rest of the world-if we would only believe in it.

I’ll publish my own “lists” over the weekend-I’ve been consciously avoiding politics till today. There is a lot of 2010 to look back on-both personally and news wise.

So in balance, for me, I’m thankful for the year that has past and hopeful for the year that is to come. Hopefully,  things will get even better in 2011-for both me and the world.

Happy New Year.

The S.O. and I set out on a car trip today. We just arrived at our hotel. We spent the day looking for my Grandmother’s house that was located in a very small town in southwestern Georgia. ( About 3+ hours driving from Shopping Mall). We found the house-but the intervening of 40+ years had not been kind. For one thing, the trees that were once small saplings then-are huge now. Thus, what had once been a huge open space of land-is now an overgrown thicket.

Will post some pix tomorrow when I can get to a means of downloading from my camera. Only brought the I-Pad and forgot to bring the camera card adapter.

A couple of other quick observations. While life in Shopping Mall may be a downer many times-it is damn near rapturous compared to what we saw driving through Boaz, Gadsen, and Anniston Alabama. They are worlds apart from Shopping mall and not in a good way. And between the towns? Well-every stereotype has a slim basis in fact. The one about cars on jacks in redneck’s lawns I think was formed by observing the houses along US 431 heading south. One long junkyard.

Second, southwest Georgia, north of Columbus-has a lot of roads that don’t seem interconnected at all. Thank God for GPS!

Finally, a special thank you to the ladies at the county court house, who took time to help us, when we came in with less than an hour till they finished work, to find titie histories, marriages, births and deaths. The lady behind the counter even called the owner to see if she would mind me taking pictures of the outside from on the property. That’s a small town to be sure! ( I had taken some pictures from on the street-till the Sheriff came along and “suggested” I not do that. Guess he thought I was casing the place. He was nice about, and once I explained what I was doing and showed some ID, he explained that they had been having some “trouble” in this area, so they are trying to be very vigilant.

All in all an interesting day.

A great memory of mine was the opportunity to fly from a French Aircraft carrier-and get to experience the way they do business. Over at another blog, about three years ago, I wrote about the experience. I thought the story might use a retelling over here. The article was written with the presumption that the reader was familar with carrier aviation. If a term is unclear to you-ask away in the comments. I will do my best to explain.

During my seagoing days I had the opportunity to visit and stay aboard 3 French ships-two cruisers and the aircraft carrier Foch. ( I also got to see Clemanceau, inport in Toulon).  I am far from being an expert on such matters,  but I thought I would pass on a few of my observations from my time with the Francois.  I  am proud of the fact that I have one trap in my log book that was logged aboard a French CV.

The Foch was  2/3 as big as a Nimitz class, weighing  in at 45,000 tons.Take a look:

I visted her during the mid 90′s as the senior guy from the air wing with a herd of JO’s (7 to be precise). We had been invited by the French Navy in reciprocation for the fact that we were allowing the French Crusaders and Entendards to do touch and go’s on USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. There was a reason that we did not have them do traps-all of the bridle arrestors had long since been removed. The fighter guys got to do some ACM with them, and as I recall the boys from VA-75 led a combined US /French strike into one of the ranges somewhere. (Opposed by Mirage-3?s from the French Air Force…..remember the good old days when CV’s went some place else besides the gulf?).

Anyway. We had come over in the morning on board a helicopter from HS-7. We were greeted quite nicely and then brought straight to lunch. French ships have more messes than American ones do. They had two wardrooms, a chief’s mess, a petty officer’s mess and a seaman’s mess. I presume having more kitchens meant smaller meals to prepare-and better food. At least that was how it seemed. We opted for the JO wardroom since the Senior officer mess was a sit down meal and was not going to do so for over an hour. Plus , I don’t speak French.

The food, in my opinion was quite good and the bread was great. As Americans aboard a European ship, of course we tried the wine from the big bottle sitting in the middle of the table. I learned later that the French normally diluted it with water-they alway kept two big bottles on either side of the wine flask. However being freed prisoners from the world Josephus Daniels created-we drank our wine straight.

Afterwards,  we were given a quick tour of the ship. As we finished, an officer came up to me and asked me if I wanted to go flying with one of the late afternoon events. Now since I had had wine with lunch, the ghost of Grampa Pettibone was leering over me telling me no. However when in Rome-eh? I immediately said yes. O merciful God of 3710-please accept my humble apologies. But when was an opportunity like this ever going to come my way again? ( Besides the French put wine in their box lunches-must be something to that!)

As a poor, humble E-2 NFO there were not a lot of options to fly with the French-save one. The Alize.

Used for ASW and surface search, the Alize carried a crew of 3 and had room for 4 people aboard. I was given the great  privlege  of riding in the front right seat for the flight. Since I did not speak French and had no idea how to work the nav system, or the comms-it was a great honor for me. The right seat had a laptop built into the console. This, at a time when the E-2 community was still arguing about having one for the co-pilot. It displayed navigational data and they told me that with the right modifications it could display track data from the carrier.

After a brief that I did not understand much  of (in French), I was given a safety brief in English and off to the aircraft we went. Manup, start up,   and taxi to the waist were the same as one would expect on a  US  carrier. Except-the  canopy was open the whole time. It was like being in a  World War II aircraft.  The  Alize did not launch with the bridle as did the jets-it did a deck run.  Run-up  and the salute-we were off the brakes and rolling down the angled deck. Airborne with out the slighest hint of a settle off the deck.  Here is a graphic showing what the inside of the cockpit looked like:

We drove on out to station. I swapped places with the proper occupant of the right seat, Â so I could look over the shoulder of the radar operator. Who sat backwards staring at a HUGE PPI scope. He was down in the aircraft and really did not have a good view outside. I always wondered how he would have gotten out in a ditching situation. Having closed up the canopy during the climbout, the pilot advised us all to make sure we were strapped in.  Oh boy, I know where this is going to lead!

Next, these fine Frenchman proceeded to show me that the aircraft did have some aerobatic characteristics-albeit mild ones. We did a roll and some sharp turns.  A pass down close to the water followed by a steep climb till we ran out of airspeed. Kick on the rudder, and  over the nose went.   (Nothing like the fun one could ride through in the back of a Hornet!). They asked me please not to say anything about it when we got back to the ship. I can only presume that le NATOPS did not look fondly on such things.

A few more sweeps  with the radar-I really think we were launched as an airborne respot….(something that NEVER happens on a US carrier right?), back we purred into marshall.  EXCEPT, marshall was not at 4000 or 5000 feet over head the ship. No, we were parked at 800 feet off the bow at 10 o’clock relative-  at about a mile ahead of the ship. The Crusaders were in a similar place at the 7-8 oclock relative and the Entendards were off the starboard side. We all seemed to be at 800 feet waiting our turn to come aboard.

It was later explained to me that there  was a method to this. Because the Crusaders were usually lowest on gas,  it gave them a short straight shot to the break , downwind,   and the trap. Next came the Entendards.  Having plenty of gas, we came last. To my unedcuated brain it seemed as if  ”deck spotting” must not be such a great sin in the French Navy. Having been allowed to resume the right seat, the lens looked like we were half a ball low the whole way. And once we came across the round down the power came back, we sank like a rock. But we caught a wire.

This was cool. The sun was low in the sky, it now being about 6pm. Taxi out of the landing area-shutdown and I got out of the aircraft. Thanking my hosts again and again, since all I did was take up space, cost them gas,   and generally contribute nothing  to the mission. Down to the ready room and soon after to eat again.

Later that night I prowled the ship alone, after findng where my bunk was. I went to the bridge, to the tower,  then I got the damnfool idea to go out to the flight deck through the island.

As I exited the hatch, having borrowed a cranial from somewhere, I was shocked at how dark it was. No sodium lights at all. I had to literally stand still for a few minutes and let my eyes night adapt. I walked to the front of the island, found a place to stand out of  the way and watched the night operations. Only the Entendards were flying.

Because of the lack of illumination in general, all one could see was the wands of the flight directors. They taxied the aircraft up to the catapult and then the damndest thing happened. Once stopped over the shuttle, a white light on the bottom of the aircraft was turned on. I was astonished,  since it quickly killed my night vision, but did allow me to see the bridle hook up sequence. It was a bright light! I was stunned by how many people were on deck compared to what I thought were there,  all illuminated by this bright light. Then once the bridle was hooked up the light came off. Then, just like our carriers, tension signals were given, the power came up , a control wipe out was performed. Then, the damned light came on again-along with the aircraft running lights. The wand touched the deck, the cat fired,  and off Le Entendard went. Probably a half mile or so ahead of the bow, the white light went out. Really weird!

Returning inside the ship, I wandered into the French version of CATTC. (Air traffic control). French Controllers appeared to do business like US controllers-only in French, a language I do not speak. Went on up to the tower when the recovery started so I could watch the aircraft trap.

From looking at their grease boards, two things were apparent. The French did not fly a lot of aircraft at night, and those that did- came back with a lot less gas then I would have expected. On average the Entendrards were coming back with around 1200 pounds. For a US carrier guy-that was a shock.

Later, talking to the US exchange pilot, himself from A-6?s, in the ships “bar”-he told me that the French used a concept of designated night players and only the really experienced guys flew at night. He said that as an American, he was automatically in that category once his French mentors were satisfied that he knew his way around the aircraft. He flew Entendards. He said they no longer had exchange pilots with the Crusaders-sad I would think. I’ll bet there are more than a couple of Hornet pilots who would give a  lot of money to be able to fly a Crusader:

Once the last recovery was over, going to the bar that adjoined the wardroom seemed the right thing to do. In fact our French hosts seemed to have been anticipating that, because the exchange pilot told me that they normally did not leave it open as long as they did that night. Being Americans and away from our “dry” ship, we of course accepted their beer and hospitality. The US guy told me that it was kind of nice being able to have a beer after a night trap!

Soon there after, we “stumbled” off to bed. In the morning, the helo for some reason was late, so we were put aboard a French helicopter and flown back to the Eisenhower. For some strange reason it was very quiet among the crowd going back.

There are a lot of other things to tell. I’ve also spent time with the French Air Force-at both Hyres and Djoubuti. Those stories will have to wait for another time. Taken all together though-some great memories. And-its in my log book!

Which, if the world looked the way I wished it would:

Would be a global holiday!

Bad news from Hong Kong courtesy of Spike.

Wanchai disco Laguna will be closing. Their final night is tentatively January 9th. The building was sold and the new landlord has refused to renew their lease. The Philippines and Indonesian consulates both petitioned the new landlord to let the bar remain, as this will have major negative effects on their economies. (Okay, I made that last bit up.)

A revolting development to be sure-Laguna was a great place to show up at 3:45 on a Sunday afternoon. Lonely Indonesian and Filipina maids need company too!

With my favorite quote from Miracle on 34th Street ( 1994 edition).

Kris Kringle: You think I’m a fraud, don’t you?
Dorey Walker: Fraud is a bit too strong of a word.
Kris Kringle: But you don’t believe in me.
Dorey Walker: I believe that Christmas is for children.
Kris Kringle: Well your daughter doesn’t believe in me, either.
Dorey Walker: I don’t think that there’s any harm in not believing in a figure that many do acknowledge to be a fiction.
Kris Kringle: Oh, but there is. I’m not just a whimsical figure who wears a charming suit and affects a jolly demeanor. You know, I… I… I’m a symbol. I’m a symbol of the human ability to be able to suppress the selfish and hateful tendencies that rule the major part of our lives. If… you can’t believe, if you can’t accept anything on faith, then you’re doomed for a life dominated by doubt.

The happy couples were celebrating Christmas!

Go here to see the rest!

From a very snowy Shopping Mall USA! It wasn’t snowing on the way to Mass last night. But now?

Not to worry though-I’m ready for Christmas inside!

Merry Christmas!

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UPDATE! The snow did not stop till noon time. You can see the rest of the pix and how the grass ( and my footprints) got covered up here.

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As is my custom-I am declaring a moratorium on politics here till after the first of the year. ( I also declared a moratorium on wearing a tie to work till next year too, about a week a ago).

This video has been making the rounds, so I am sure many of you have seen it. But I think its fun, and it is Christmas Eve after all:

Like our cat:

He’s wearing his , “It sucks to be me” face.

As Ben Rothilensberger would say- let’s hear it for the Ho’s!

Steelers on TV tonight. Play well with the other children-I’ve got 55 inches of HD black and gold to watch.

It is time for the Airing of the Grievances!

Frank Costanza: “Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way.”
Cosmo Kramer: “What happened to the doll?”
Frank Costanza: “It was destroyed. But out of that a new holiday was born: a Festivus for the rest of us!”
Kramer: “That must have been some kind of doll.”
Frank Costanza: “She was.”

The most wonderful time of the year! What are your grievances?

In the true spirit of Festivus- I present to you on my favorite Christmas songs-somehow it never makes it on the “Christmas station”. (A blast from my punk rock loving past….).

This is an experiment into the world of computer assisted video making.

My Canadian counterpart has a post up about Lindsay Lohan today. It concerns this People magazine story about Lindsay Lohan. Since he is the most caustic blogger I know of-I decided to make an Xtra Normal movie of his post. So I simply served as the set designer and he served as the script writer. (I did make a few alterations for continuity).

So for a trip to bizarro land, behold:

Why you should be concerned about the upcoming Comcast NBC merger, and why Net Neutrality is important to you.

A free and open internet is the single greatest technology of our culture, and control should not be at the mercy of corporations.

• 2 .A free and open internet stimulates competition.
• 3. A free and open internet helps prevent unfair pricing practices.
• 4. A free and open internet promotes innovation.
• 5.  A free and open internet is more trustworthy and honest.
• 6.  A free and open internet drives businesses.
• 7. A free and open internet protects the freedom of speech.

Without network neutrality, big corporations can control what, where, and when we access the internet. Please do your part to help keep the internet a cornerstone of American freedom and potential.