To those who don’t watch the news, there was quite the hub-bub recently about my ship’s recent involvement with multi-national exercises. While it’s nice to have an influx of emails, when most contain articles talking about Kim Jong Il’s promises to nuke us all back to God, it does cause some time for introspection.

Luckily, as always, threats were idle and hardly taken seriously, but the other bonus that the GW crew, including myself, got some well deserved shore leave. Being my second time in Busan, I knew a little of what to expect, but while we enjoyed many food options (Kim chi is a personal favorite of the local traditions), Busan is an unfortunate illustration of how travel really isn’t travel when it’s with the Navy.

In spite of the Navy’s best efforts on “operation security”, typically an upcoming port of call knows of our arrival well in advance. Advance enough to raise hotel prices, advance enough to set up many colorful (misspelled) welcome banners, but more than anything time to prepare for our drunken stupidity. While the days of being expected to raise hell are largely over (international news media largely to thank), those that want to find compensated companionship, or very cheap and terrible liquor, can find both in copious quantities.

A perfect example is Texas Street. This street is typically a local nightlife district with many small bootleg shops, restaurants, and drinkeries. Queue the influx of young men with bloated pockets, and you’ve got a recipe for more than a bit of nonsense. For starters, expect to pay triple the normal cost for just about everything. A great example is when we went to a small Chinese restaurant on Texas St. and ordered a modest meal for three people. Each of us paid equivalent of $30 U.S. While a nice meal at a nice restaurant in the states wouldn’t make this out of the question, for dinner the same day we went to a formal sit down Italian restaurant right on the beach, and paid $20 U.S. for a 4 course dinner. The difference is a simple and painful lesson in economics, but more than anything shows how ridiculous the experience can be for Sailors vs. travelers.

Another prime example is the classic cab driver scam. By law, all cabbies in Busan are required to use their meters to allow the passengers to know exactly when they have to stop the car and get out, if need be. This law exists in Japan, Singapore, and a handful of other countries our ship has visited over the past year. The beauty is, if you don’t start your meter, and your passengers are uninformed, drunk, or American, it means that your company thinks you are looking for a fare, and they get to pocket all of the cash themselves. For a 20 minute cab ride from an honest driver, we paid $11 US.  Two hours later, a cab driver tried to charge us $90. Opportunistic scams like this are so easy, but when you’re part of a huge collective of drunken apes, refusing to pay can cause more trouble than it solves.  Lets be frank here as well, no one wants to have legal troubles in Korea.

As expected, all drills following our port visit when by without any real threat to safety, and so we continue on our dizzied course through the Pacific through the Summer.

So I don’t know why, but every so often someone feels the need to inform me that I don’t write enough on my blog.  I struggle with this for several reasons.  Namely:

1. No one reads my blog, the fact that people know that I rarely write on my blog is probably just a lucky guess… or digital psychic ability.

2. Just because I spent most of my days doctoring photos of 1920s actors and putting them up on dating sites to get attention for alter egos does NOT mean I have amazing amounts of spare time.  I also have to consider pretending to read, thinking about working out and then not, and drinking red bull then complaining about being tired the next day.  My days are packed.

3.  I live on a boat right now… boats do the equivalent of one thing and one thing only… cookies.  When I say cookies I don’t mean chocolate chip… if it did it’d be the best thing ever invented.  People would run to the shore every time we pulled in like rabid kids running to the ice cream truck… except we have guns.  I’m talking about sea cookies, or “sookies”.  Imagine if you will you’re in a car with your friends and it’d the middle of winter and you’re outside Fred Meyer and your 1982 Carola that has the equivalent of a go-cart engine and you yank up on your e-brake going 40 mph for fun.  Got it?  OK now imagine your go-cart eingine is a nuclear reactor and your Carola is weighs 10 million pounds and your turning radius is about 3 miles.  Also, you’re not with your friends… you’re with zombies.  Repeat this process for 6 months at a time.

Every so often, your sookie spinning leaves the drunken frat boys (“navigators”) bored, so you decide to pull into an armpit.  Oh, wait, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say armpit.  I meant to say Asian country.  Before any of you go off on some rampage about how I’m some rabid jingo, understand that it’s not that I have anything against the people, the language, the food that kills my stomach, the knock-off Nike hats for sale, or the fact that everything smells like cat urine… I just really think that right guard would have a good market here.  That’s right, I’m commenting on economics… supply and demand. 

That last paragraph didn’t have a number… lets give this next one a name instead.

George.  Finally my last reason for not writing in my blog with frequency is because aside from a harassment from a zombie on the ship who is equally as bored as I am, or an random mentioning from an old co-worker I still have a huge crush on, I really just lack motivation. 

If you want me to post more… I require one of the following things:

1. A well drawn picture drawn in crayon, finger-paint, or MS Paint, reacting to this post.

2. Money

3.  A postcard.  Everyone loves postcards

George.  A comment on this post.  I grow tired of deleting Russian spam that isn’t even clever Russian spam.

Even as I look at the title for this blog it makes me uncomforatable.  Is “U” really a word?  I mean I hate it being used to abbrevieate in modern internet slang, but should I hypenate?  Can we really not think of a better way to describe a 180 in a moving vehicle?  A guy I knew named Patrick used to call it “Flipping a B*tch” but that really makes even less sense…

The past few months have done quite a bit lately in the way of coming back around.  To use an extremely cheesey metaphore, my Navy life truly has been in waves. 

At the beginning of this year, I had been working in a position I hated, for someone I liked most of the time, but remained very isolated from the rest of the ship.  This was further compounded when my boss was replaced by a man that I have nothing nice to say about.  His intentions were solely selfish, his methods hostile and demeaning, and his logic pathologically flawed.  If I were someone who kept a black book, he’d occupy a healthy chapter, scrawed with clever musings on how his name is markedly affeminate, or how he walks like a duck and speaks like a soundboard.  I seirously could fit this mans entire scope of conversation into a recording less than 5 minutes of length and draw upon it to fit any situation he finds himself in.  Most frequently used would probably be “god dammit” which apparently is both a confirmation, scold, and natural pause between phrases… similar to “but” or “and” to normal human types.

Working long days for this man had taken it’s toll, and as a matter of principle I kept myself from breaking solely to keep a notion of self worth for myself.  The last true straw of lunacy was being yelled at for missing a small notation of correction on a document after just reading an email telling me my grandfather had died.  Indeed I was “embarassing him” and my life was soon to be made miserable if I didn’t respect his masterful example of perfection.

This is what we’d call the low point of the wave.  This is after my macbook pro decided to stop turning on (out of warranty with a $800 repair), and when I found out I’d have to remain in my position until I transferred from the ship, working for the same lunatic.  Still out of the ashes I still managed to find some hope.  I was very lucky to be one of the few people I know granted permission to attend a funeral outside of “immediate” family.  The stars managed to align in a way that our ship’s schedule would allow me to come back to the ship, I had enough leave time to spend two weeks at home, and I managed to just barely scrounge together the airfare to come home.

And while I was home things started to get better.  Not having to work 17 hour days will do a lot for your morale to be sure, but realizing that five (now four) months really isn’t a terribly long time, and being able to spend time with the people that matter most to me managed to start things up again.

Upon my return to the ship, I was told to report to Reactor department, the same office I had originally reported to on the ship as a junior Sailor, now reporting to as an office manager.  Now no longer under the sphere of influence of he-who-must-not-be-named, and working with and around the few people I’ve managed to trust or respect in the military. 

Also, I bought an iPad… because heck… I deserved it. 

On a much more literal interpretation, our port calls keep being canceled.  Due to the indesicive nature of various levels of our chain of command, we basically (and quite literally today) are spinning cookies in the pacific.  We’ve gotten word we’d be going to X country, only to find out we have to turn around, only to find out we never were going in the first place.  Many chiefs and senior officers have commented that never have they seen so much money invested into so much indecision.  Usually moving a tens-of-billions dollar aircraft involves careful planning and an outlined specific destination.  Purpose. 

We however, are burning our nuculear power, jet fuel, sea salaries, satelite data lines, food stores, and patience, “until further notice”.  This however, doesn’t stress me much, as I only have 127 days left until I’m enjoying life on the Puget Sound, riding in Steven’s Pass, going to Sounders games, and being only a short flight from home should the whim arise.

The biggest U Turn in history would be the U.S. Making it to Semi’s.  I mean, at the way my luck has been improving, let’s just go crazy and hope they’ll win it all.