Line of Departure

Lessons learned as a construction foreman

2012-01-28T22:06:00.001-05:00

Happy Chinese New Year's everyone!

For the past week, I've been soaking in the sun in the beach in Thailand, and amazingly, the phone has rung only a few times (I ignored it). In China, during the New Year's holiday, business really does come to a standstill and for that I'm so grateful.

In the previous 3 weeks, though, we've been working 7 days a week -- because of one mega project. The project is removing asbestos material from a pharmaceutical plant for a German pharma company. The way we landed this deal was kind of cool. The overall head honcho on the project for the general contractor was a former residential client of ours and when they discovered asbestos in the air ducts, he gave me a call. Initially, my response was, "You sure you have the right guy? I have no experience with asbestos" But, I offered to at least ask around and quickly found that there was no one in China who did asbestos removal professionally. Asbestos is not even prohibited in the way it is in many other countries. So, I did some homework, and brought in a colleague from HK who had some experience, and next thing I knew, we were doing the assessment. Learning on the fly is always scary, but the best advice a manager gave me once was to learn or prototype off the back of a customer.

So, only a couple weeks after the first phone call, I was pitching a project for the total removal of the asbestos material, replacement, cleanup, and testing. My contact with the general contractor advised me that the client had deep pockets, so I ended up charging about 3x more than I originally estimated (looking back, it's a good thing I did). The single project had a value of more than our entire first year's revenue. Now it was time to make it happen. I traded my computer for a hard hat, safety vest, and work boots and have been putting most everything else on hold to get this job done right over the past few weeks.

It's been only a month since we kicked off the project, but I've already learned a lot of lessons the hard way and took advantage of the holidays to jot some of them down. I thought I'd share them with you all -- they probably won't make sense to you, but if you're curious, or ever have to do construction in China or manage subcontractors, give me a shout.

Lessons learned:

1. Do not plan to get anything done around CNY holidays. Chinese manual laborers are accustomed to working long hours – 12 hrs a day, 7 days a week. But CNY is sacred and there is almost no money you can pay them to stay and work instead of going home to their province. Even if the holiday officially starts on the 22^nd and ends on the 29^th , laborers start vanishing by the 16^th and don't return until the 2^nd. Us management ended up having to finish off a phase of work ourselves, turning wrenches, removing gaskets, and lifting steel scaffolding because we didn't plan correctly

2. Managing Chinese laborers is like managing a class of junior high schoolers on a field trip. Assume that they will not listen to the uniform requirements and insist on removing their masks while doing asbestos work. Assume that they will not be doing what you expect them to do. Assume that they will smoke where they want and pee on the side of the building. The key to managing them is having positive control – having one reliable person with each team, NOT a site manager managing multiple teams.

3. What you don't check doesn't get done to standard. We were embarrassed when the general contractor pointed out to us that one team was not removing asbestos material – they had simply shoved in the replacement material. They also damaged the existing ductwork unnecessarily. It looked like someone entirely untrained had been working there. Insist that the specialist manager has checked the work before your subcontractor manager has checked it and then do spot checks yourself. Show everyone exactly how you are inspecting but then do the checks at unexpected locations. Hold everyone responsible and make one single example (both positive and negative). We ended up firing the entire ductwork team.

4. German clients suck. They are exacting (do not recognize the difficulties of working to European standards in China), difficult to work with, and will ask for more when you bust ass to go the extra mile. To get them to compromise, you have to build in padding, cite a lot of standards, and then also create pain on their side – otherwise, if you just complain that it will be a lot of work on your end, they won't care. It's your problem.

5. Site managers must be bilingual. Our subcontractor prided themselves on European management. What this meant though was that they sent a young Swedish guy to manage a team. He couldn't speak a word of Chinese and confusion ensued. A foreign manager is a good idea but he must have a translator and have authority.

6. Chinese workers can either work tremendously fast or horribly slow. One Sat, I got a call from our site manager that workers were barely moving. A scaffolding tower that normally would take one hour to construct had taken five hours and we were way behind in the schedule. It was a combination of having worked late the night before, fatigue, but mostly, that the workers had just been told that they were going to have to stay several days late for Chinese New Year's and their morale was low. We bought them lunch, promised them a bonus, but that didn't do much. But the next day, Lao Yang, the grizzled old Chinese team manager, came to me and proposed that the workers were going to skip dinner and just get all the gaskets removed and replaced in two rooms we had targeted. They would get it done and when it was done, they would go home. This was what we had wanted. Instead of reaching for more, I agreed, and was dumbfounded to watch absolute silence as these guys started working like machines. Not only that, the work quality was still up to par. So, give these guys a realistic goal, insist on quality, and let them go when they achieve it to break the "work to the clock" mentality.

7. Work weekends and after-hours. Seems like this would suck, but we were most productive when the client and the general contractor weren't hovering overhead to pounce on every uniform violation or distract us with meetings and requests for updates.

8. Good practice is morning briefing and end of day site hygiene and cleanup. This keeps safety and the day's tasks fresh in everyone's minds, and also keeps the work site looking tidy. Although it has little to do with work progress, if the site looks like doodoo, the client will assume it's reflective of your work. Also, it's a good chance to inventory equipment and supplies and replenish overnight before it pops up and stops up work the next day.

9. In the contract, be very specific about roles and responsibilities. Limit your scope precisely. We procured some material that turned out to have a significant defect. Although all we did was to order the material that the general contractor had specified, we shouldered a good amount of the blame and ate a lot of costs. Fortunately, in the contract, I had included a matrix that spelled out specifically that it was the GC's duty, not ours, to purchase this.

10. Document every change and agreement. I thought it was excessive, but unfortunately, covering your ass is a big part of this game. I thought it was strange that the GC always put down every complaint in an email to us, when I would just mention their shortfalls in person, but I've since learned that they are keeping ammunition in case they ever need to terminate us.

11. Pad the contract time and cost big. The more risk and uncertainty, the more you should pad. My subcontractor's initial proposal was to be done in 21 days. We'll be lucky to do it in 60 days, with delays and the holidays. Also, I would propose a bonus for the sub to finish on time and a penalty if they are late. Our subcontractor did not have much skin in the game to bear the costs of screwing up or finishing late and I found that I was driving a lot harder and picking up the pieces a lot more than if I had built in a carrot and stick into the arrangement.

12. Plan for worksite basics before the project even starts: PPE, access badges and building keys, workspace, work order and overtime paperwork requirements, secure storage area, how to get paid, and any communications/status update rhythms.

13. Demand a project advance – we incurred easily 100k in costs without seeing a dime from the client. This is both risky (if things went south and the client terminated the engagement) and a cash-flow burden. Testing fees, equipment, gear, labor costs, rental fees, all add up. I built in a 25% advance to be paid within 7 days of the project start and they agreed, but procedurally, this was a nutroll, so push hard on this before signing to make sure they do carry through. The GC should help support you on this, not be an obstacle.

14. During an assessment phase, the GC is your buddy. Once you get into execution/remediation, the GC becomes a slavedriver. For this project, the GC was super supportive in bringing us into the project so we could help them provide a way forward for the client and look good. Once we moved into execution, however, they were all about appearances and cracked the whip frequently without helping much to fix joint problems.

15. Beware the phrase, "We're all in this together." It usually means – I might have screwed up, but you're going to be picking up the pieces for my fault. We pulled long hours and extra costs for a week for the GC's fault, but they kept coming back to this phrase and everytime I wanted to discuss cost recovery, I kept getting pushed off.

Techniques for motivating vendors or subcontractor partners?

2011-12-13T16:58:00.001-05:00

We have consistently had problems managing quality with our test lab partners. Sometimes they screw up the sampling at the client's house. Or, they cut corners on analyzing the results. We've caught problems on both ends. The root of the problem is that the people who do the work (sampling or lab analysis) just don't care. They are not paid enough to really value their jobs and they don't get any reward for doing better. If we pay the company extra, they do not see this money so actually are more likely to have worse results when we have a rush fee. So our only way to ensure quality is to micromanage and we can't be everywhere at one time.

One suggestion one of our staffers had was to give certain people some money under the table. But, this is not really based on any standards and I worry that they may start expecting it.

What do you think about this idea: every month, we nominate 3 best performing staff -- can be sampling staff or lab staff or even customer service, and let them know that they were selected. We state very clearly what the criteria is and also have a little citation on why that person was nominated. Then, we pick one to win a cash award -- doesn't have to be much (maybe 200-300rmb?), maybe a gift card, but the idea is that it is appreciated, unexpected, and very visible -- and it doesn't just motivate one person, but all three and hopefully anyone else who sees this. We want to tie performance to results.

Do you think this idea would work? Any modifications? Should we pick 3 best across both labs so maybe they even feel some pride in their own lab and some healthy competition?

What have you guys done that's worked, either with your own staff or subcontractor/partner companies?

Day 5 & 6 - Chasing Mandarinfish & Mola Mola!

2011-11-06T00:20:00.002-04:00

10/4/11 – Day 5 – Mandarin fish: Much ado about nothing

Decided to join the mandarin fish hunt tonight and amazingly, Sarah agreed to come along. She rarely goes night diving so I can only assume that the promise of really pretty fish convinced her. The idea is that the mandarin fish, a garishly hued species that does a mating dance at dusk, can be seen at certain places on the reef. I didn’t know anymore than this, but got ready for it like I would any other night dive.

Turns out that they do not want you to use white light lamps (only red light, which the fish can’t see) because this disturbs the mandarin fish. Also, we are to sit in a circle in about 3m of water waiting for the fish to come out. The good news is that the fish were plentiful here – I saw about 6-8 alone. I wasn’t cool with sitting in the dark with no light, and then losing my night vision repeatedly from high-powered strobe flashes by the photographers on the other side of the circle. All just to see some fish chase each other (supposedly they also “kissed” later on). I eventually (after 15 min), got bored, and wandered the reef with Sarah. She seemed to like it and found it “not scary” though I was plenty scared by how many sea urchins came out in the area we were in. All in all, I think it’s a unique diver who likes mandarinfish dives and it won’t be on my list of repeat to-do’s in the future.

10/5/11 – Day 6 – Nearing the end

The days have settled into a rhythm:

7am Wake up & get breakfast

8am In the boat for two morning dives

1:30pm Return to the resort for lunch

1-5pm Lunch, relax, nap, work on photos, work emails, read for 4 straight hours (if you are Sarah)

5pm Night dive – house reef or mandarinfish hunt

7:30pm Dinner

8:30-11pm Chat with other guests, share photos, update logs, work emails, read for 3 hours (if Sarah)

11pm Bedtime

It’s really quite relaxing – though the dives are by far longer here than anyplace I’ve been to before, they’re not tiring (no strong currents, sites are nearby, and the staff handles just about all your equipment transfer for you). The weather has been perfect, about mid-70s, light breeze, no humidity, and dry with only a couple episodes of rain. The staff is lovely, there’s tons of places to lounge around and you can be as social or introverted as you want. Best of all, no outside hawkers or vendors or random people, so it’s quiet and you can leave your rooms unlocked. We had originally planned to do some sightseeing or land trips, but never felt the need or really had the energy to do so. This is a perfect vacation site and resort for busy people who want to unwind, but also stay connected if they want (there’s wi-fi with enough bandwidth for email, but not enough for VOiP, so don’t plan on making calls)

This morning, we had a nice treat. We were originally supposed to dive at Leaning Rock I, but when we got there, there were too many divers (there is a 15 diver max, incl guides) rule in Lembeh, so we diverted to a site called Angel’s Window. We dropped in, went through a swimthrough (hence the site name), and then I heard Marnez uncharacteristically making signaling noises. I looked up to see the last thing I expected at a macro site: the huge, slow-moving, and unmistakable silhouette of a mola-mola (oceanic sunfish). The solitary animal was about 10m away, moving at a relatively shallow 5-10m. Several of us swam with it for awhile and it didn’t seem to be spooked, though it started moving away from the reef. I got a short video and a single photo. We finished the rest of the dive, then Simon, the resort owner, who had joined us to check out his new camera and housing, linked back with us near our surface interval. I showed him (while still underwater) the shot of the mola mola, and to my surprise, he gave me the one-finger salute. When we were back on the boat, he explained, saying that in all his time here, many thousands of dives, he’s never seen one either when he worked in Bali or here in Sulawesi. Paulus, a local guide, was also surprised, saying that in his 20 years diving here, he’s never seen one. Sometimes Lady Luck shows up at the most unexpected times.

Day 3 – Another day in paradise & Day 4 - Trouble in Paradise

2011-10-11T15:18:00.001-04:00

Got a little more sleep last night and came to breakfast with more energy. It's funny how quickly you get to know other guests and staff and how comfortable you can feel sitting down with someone new. A large group of 14 guests arrived last night and they were still doing their own thing. Serge was running around busy organizing everything and I felt bad hitting him up with a request to rent a computer. My Oceanic VT6 wireless air-integrated wrist-mounted computer that is pretty new and had just been repaired at the shop was malfunctioning after the first dive. Really annoying when you pay good money for something that should be top notch and it performs worse than rental gear. Especially when it's critical life-support systems. I got a computer and an SPG and started the second dive. Sarah stopped me early on to signal I had a leak. I looked at my SPG and the hose was leaking from half a dozen spots. The dive guide signaled that I should go up, so I did. The two boat guys really were pretty clueless and tried to fix it by wrapping it with masking tape which obviously didn't work. I came back up and just removed the hose and replaced it with my original transmitter as a plug. Got back to the group and still got about 40 min dive. Unspectacular, but ok reef dive.

I learned that some hoses are designed to rupture in multiple places when they fail in order to dissipate the pressure and allow you to finish the dive as opposed to a single catastrophic fail point in the hose. Serge later said that he had dove for like 2 weeks with a hose like that and it only lost about 10 bar (5%) during a dive. Good to know for later. Still, having a failed computer and SPG in less than 24 hrs is no fun.

Our second dive was also a reef dive. No major finds, but still nice to just float along and look for little things casually with good visibility and very pleasant topside weather. Another 70+ min dive.

No one was up for a night boat dive, or even a shore dive, so I went on my own. We're in sort of a bay, and max depth is probably around 20m so it's really hard to get lost. I went looking for the wreck again, and although I didn't find it, I did get to take my time figuring out camera controls and taking some shots of shrimps, crabs, and nudibranchs. I really enjoy the house reef – in a small area, it's got a little of every environment – muck, black sand, coral, and even eelgrass – sort of a mangrove. At these shallow depths, you can literally go as long as you want. My longest dive this week was over 100 min and I only came in when I started worrying that dinner was getting put away !

Day 4 – Trouble in paradise

Little bit of drama today. There is one big group from Europe – they are a sort of dive club of people that all work at the European Space Agency. Major egghead and rocket scientists, but as you might expect, some funky personalities and egos. Apparently, some in the group were unhappy with the constant muck and black sand diving and wanted more coral reefs. As a result, the groups were broken up into a group that was mainly muck diving, one that was mainly coral diving and one that was in between (or maybe mainly photographers). We asked to be counted in the muck dive group and was put onto a new boat with new divers, which was fine. We met a nice Dutch couple – Peter and Karim, Luis from Portgual (who now lived in Spain), and Wim, a slightly eccentric older gentleman. Was still diving with Marnez, who has a quirk – he rarely signals with audible sounds, unlike just about all dive guides I've ever come across. He just sits there and when you check over at him, he's waiting patiently with something to show you. I suppose that's one way of making sure that you don't wander off and keep tabs on him, but I wonder what I'm missing and it doesn't seem the most efficient use of his time.

After we came in from the second dive, there was a group arguing loudly with it seemed other group members and either Simon or Serge. I guess the boat came back to refill some of the large 15L tanks and some divers felt this was an inconvenience. I think that's pretty crazy because a 15L tank is a privilege, not a right, and at most other resorts, you'd just have to suck it up and finish your dives early if you were an air hog.

At night we had a special treat. Bent gave a presentation on marine life symbiosis and it was really educational and entertaining. Among other things, we learned that some jawfishes live their lives in the anuses of sea cucumbers, eating their gonads and gaining nourishment through their excrement. If any anenomefish (clownfish) appear to be ventilating a lot or opening and closing their mouths rapidly, they could be carrying a parasite (some sort of 10 footed decapod) that lives in their mouth, eats their tongue away and then digs its feet into the stump of the tongue and stays there. Sometimes even two can occupy the mouth, which really seems to bother the fish. The fish sometimes will even suck on anemone tentacles to try to remove the parasite. The image of this apparently grinning demon face peering out of a clownfish's mouth is the stuff of nightmares. No need to make up monsters when they exist in real life!

Day 2: Hit the water running

2011-10-10T17:08:00.000-04:00

We were up at 7am, and groggily rolled into breakfast by 7:15am. Chow was buffet style, simple fruits, cereal, bread, and you could request eggs. We set up and were ready to go onto the boat by 8am. There were 8 guests with about 3 guides. The boat was really spacious with plenty of space for divers to get setup without being in each others' way and backroll entry and ladder re-entry. The distance out to the first site was longer than I expected – about 20 min. Sarah and I were paired up with local guide Johan, who was a terrific spotter and always cheerful.

I had high expectations and they were surpassed by the very first dive. Muck diving is just about the only place in the world where trashing the environment actually has a positive upside. The area around Lembeh Straits has mostly either a silty or a black sand bottom with some spots of coral reef or coral rubble. For the most part, however, it's a barren, inhospitable environment that offers little shelter. As a result, the marine life that survives is tiny, often cleverly camouflaged to blend in, and there's a lot of symbiosis. Anenomefish living in stinging anenomes is a good example. So is the gobies that stand guard while their blind partner shrimp ceaselessly dig safety holes and push sand and rocks out of the way. When there's any sign of danger, the goby communicates this to its partner through the link provided from the shrimp's antenna on its dorsal fin and they retreat to the hole in the blink of an eye. So how does trash fit into this? It gives the animals an extra place to hide. Tires, shoes, coconut shells, all become highlights of a dive because of what you can find in them. You can't pick up a bottle without finding something peeping out from inside its neck.

The first site was silt giving way to black sand, and surprises were everywhere. Cuttlefish of all sizes, two mimic octopuses (by first encounter with them), nudibranchs (but not the huge variety I've seen elsewhere), a bizarre two-foot buried crab that shot out like an arrow when disturbed, many different shrimp, and best of all, warm temperatures (81F/28C), shallow depths, and a 70 min pleasant dive. I came up thinking, "This is going to be an awesome week!" The only downside was due to my own fault. I had a new camera, a CanonS95 point and shoot in an Ikelite housing, but the strobe and macro lens I ordered arrived too late for me to bring it along, rendering the camera virtually unusable for anything but shallow, well-lit subjects. So frustrating, because you come to this area to hunt bizarre creatures you won't find anywhere else and it's ideal to claim photos as trophies.

We did two dives, the second at a reef and not nearly as nice as the first and then returned around noon. The crew was awesome, took care of everything and we just took our cameras, lights, etc. Annoyingly, my Oceanic hoseless dive computer crapped out again on the second dive. I just had it fixed earlier this year after it died about 100' down on a wreck.

The resort has dedicated wet and dry camera rooms. Lunch was served and as soon as you sat, plates were brought out to you. Delicious and healthy local food. Basic water, coffee, tea, and Milo are free and sodas/beers/smoothies are pay as you go. There was a third boat dive after lunch around 2:30pm, but we were on the 2 boat dives a day plan and were pooped anyhow. We caught a nap and then around 4:30pm, when the boat came back, a group of about 5 of us went for a twilight dive in the house reef. The "house reef" is a bit misleading, because it's not really a reef, but just the area in front of the resort. Still, I managed to see two octopus, a stingray, a Harlequin shrimp, leaffish, banded pipefish, sea snake, and a variety of crabs during the 70 min dive. Came back, took a quick shower, and it was dinner time.

The guests are from all over. We have Bent, Swedish university ecology professor who takes and sells photographs on the side; Liz, also a university teacher from Newcastle, Australia; Olaf, a single photo enthusiast from Germany, a couple from Germany, and Godfried and Micky, an older but really energetic and fun couple from Denmark. Everyone is a competent diver, considerate, and pleasant. We spent the evening just chatting with each other and the owners, Simon and Zee, who bought the resort in 2010 after managing it for two years. It really is a labor of love and the remarkable thing – the one thing every well-run place has in common that I've stayed at – is that you can tell the staff is happy, empowered, and genuinely happy to be here. A lot of laughing and smiles, though they clearly work hard in the background so the guests can chill out.

Chinese National Day Holidays in Indonesia

2011-10-06T07:52:00.001-04:00

It's annual holidays in China (happens twice a year) and this year, we planned early enough that we could have our choice of dive destinations we hadn't yet visited. The short list included: Fiji, Manado/Lembeh, Sipadan, Palau, and the Philippines (again). The only criteria was that we needed to be able to use award miles. Fiji and Palau just didn't have good connections and we were pretty indifferent to Manado/Lembeh or Mabul/Sipadan. Both are renowned for muck diving, which is finding bizarre, tiny aquatic creatures in silty or black sand.

I found award tickets to Jakarta via Singapore and then we purchased domestic tickets to complete the trip to Manado. There are about 10 resorts in the area, all that essentially package accommodations, full board, and diving (either 2 or 3 boat dives a day). We settled on NAD, which seemed like a reasonable price but with nice bungalows. Simon, the owner, was very responsive and we got a 7 nt package with upgraded bungalow, full board, and 2 dives per day (and unlimited house reef diving) for around 800 USD total. Like I said, very reasonable.

We had a midnight flight out of Shanghai. Sarah and I had both been so busy that we didn't have a good chance to pack and we threw everything together in about half an hour and jetted to the airport at about 9:30pm. It was 24 hrs later before we finally arrived at our destination.

Our first leg was to Singapore via Singapore Airlines, my favorite airline. Uneventful 4-5 hrs – I napped a bit. Then we were in Singapore for about 3 hours waiting for our hop to Jakarta. Of course Sarah made a beeline for the La Perla shop. I took care of a few work emails and then did the male La Perla equivalent and hung out at one of the many technology/photo/audio/computer shops in the airport. Singapore is truly a nation of geeks, but I'm thankful for that. I picked up a wireless signal repeater that you supposedly can just plug in to increase the strength of the signal. From experience, wireless signals don't go very far in resorts and I can't count the number of times I've literally dangled my laptop out of a window or been crouched in some courtyard getting bitten by mosquitoes to take that IP call or get that important email out. It was only $70 too, so if it works, will be money well spent.

We got onto the Jakarta flight, also on SQ, and landed in Jakarta a couple hours later. First step was getting a visa on arrival (most countries can do this). This was painless and quick and cost USD 25 per person. We paid in RMB, which was a bad idea because the exchange rate was much worse. I always forget that the international arrivals terminal is quite a way from the domestic terminals. You have to go upstairs and then take a taxi or free yellow shuttle bus (better) to T1 or T2 (starting from T3 Intl). The transit easily takes about 30 min, so it's good to leave plenty of time. We were lugging a good amount of dive equipment, but still made it under the weight limit. For future info, the check-in limit is 20kg per person. If you're traveling together, the limit can be combined. We came in at about 34kg. We had another 3 hrs to kill and first hit the ATM (usually a good idea to do this in Jakarta because a lot of the smaller places don't have ATMs or they are not the right network). We found ATMs that would take Unionpay and also a Citibank. Actually, in Manado we also saw several ATMs at the airport, but not sure if they would have worked.

My experience with flights from Jakarta is that they are usually late and this time was no exception. We were about an hour late. One nice thing is that a middle-aged distinguished man stopped us and introduced himself out of the blue at the terminal. Asked us where we were from and told us that he had lived in the US for a little bit. Turned out he had been in San Bernadino, which is not a big county, and near LA. I was surprised to find out that San Bernadino is a sort of community heartland for immigrants to the US from Manado! Youke works in public health and we exchanged info. Genuinely nice guy.

The flight was fine though Sarah remarked that the seats were more cramped than any flight she's taken in a long time. Being a budget airline, food and drinks are not provided but can be purchased. It was a 3-4 hr flight, and by the time we touched down, we were pretty tired and hungry. Manado was a small airport, and the thing which stood out the most was that there were touts and taxi drivers everywhere. Worth getting someone right away to drive the other touts from swarming you. We found our driver from the resort and were on our way. The drive from Manado to Bintang was about an hour through tiny roads where we were continuously swerving to dodge roadside traffic. But the van was really comfy and we just fell asleep. Arrived at the port, transferred onto a boat and took another 20-30 min to arrive at the resort. So glad that we did not decide to stay in the town (which you can do for cheap, diving during the days). It was quiet once we left the port.

Zee and Surge met us and greeted us by name as we stepped off the boat, which was a nice gracious touch. We dropped our bags and were invited to have dinner and a welcome drink right away which was great. The first impression of NAD, our home for the next week, was a quiet haven, well-kept, with most activities centered around a homey, but open eating and community lodge area. There are little housing units on the ground floor, steps from the eating area, and then three bungalows about 50m away. Our bungalow was really nice. Not glamorous or mint-on-the-pillows luxurious, but clean, dry, attractive, big firm bed, working & quiet A/C, and a bathroom that didn't stink and had actual working hot water instead of the cold water in a basin ("mandi") that I was used to in Indonesia. Really the perfect type of place that Sarah and I like.

I was ready to crash, but had a bunch of work stuff like payments, customers, and a paid webinar, etc I had to take care of, and with the poor wireless Internet coverage (we're on the edge), it took about 5 hrs before I could sleep and got about 3 hrs before I was up for our first full day.

My first Chinese radio interview

2011-09-05T15:23:00.000-04:00

Last week (well, the week before I was sick), I did one of those things I would have never thought possible a year ago. I gave an hour-long radio interview entirely in Chinese.

Maybe it was that adage, "No publicity is bad publicity." Or, that we're on a ghetto guerrilla PR & marketing budget and this was free. But, when an acquaintance in the LOHAS (lifestyles of health and sustainability) asked me if I'd be willing to talk about air & water on the on the daily radio program "LOHAS Everyday," I thought, "why not"? After all, I do it all the time with clients.

I started worrying the night before. I was supposed to show up at the station in 12 hrs and still didn't know where it was, hadn't seen any questions, didn't even know how long the show was, and suddenly started doubting my ability to speak in complete sentences in Mandarin. Finally, my liaison called me with some info and a read-ahead on the questions. They were actually the sort of questions I normally field, so I jotted down some notes in English and then got some rest. The next day, I got to the station. There was a surprising amount of security to get in. I met Lisa, my intermediary, and then she brought me into the studio. I met the two hosts, two nice, young Chinese radio DJs. Wu Bing was an upbeat, energetic guy in his mid-twenties from Beijing. Ruan Jing was a little older and more thoughtful -- a nice counterpart to Wu Bing. Kind of the way Jackie was for Howard Stern. They were both very nice and went over the process with me. We'd go through the entire show, complete with fade in's and outs, and then they would make edits later to piece the show together. If I made any huge mistakes, they could edit out later.

We started -- I thought it was pretty funny that their intro music was Ludakris. They must have kept their questions especially basic, because I didn't have any problems understanding and not a whole lot of problems speaking, though I'm sure my Chinese teacher would have had a few choice words for me for some of the mistakes I made. But all in all, it was really like just having a chat with interested friends. Lot of fun.

Afterwards, we took a few photos, I got a little tour of the station and their offices. The show played a couple days later and Lisa was nice enough to send me a CD of the audio. I'm not sure how to leverage this interview, but just wanted to share with y'all.

My body is a mystery

2011-09-03T14:52:00.004-04:00

Some (and I believe the smartest) Christians use the mystery of life to prove the existence of a higher power. I definitely believe that. After a topsy turvy week of health ups and downs, I know that the body is so incredibly complex that either God or aliens had to have put us together.

So, a couple months ago, I blogged about coming down with Scarlet Fever. 5 days ago, on Monday, I woke up fine. Went to the new office, participated in Monday morning show and tell, and got through a long day. As i do every Mon, I went to brazilian jiujitsu. Once there, I started feeling a little out of it. I didn't grapple very well, felt tired and hot, but kept going. Afterwards, when I rode back, I felt so exhausted and almost lightheaded that I was afraid I wouldn't make it back. My temp was about 102, and I was still feeling chilled. I tossed and turned for most of the night and then worked from home, mostly laying in bed. For most of that day and night, I continued to have a fever and a steady, heavy headache.

On day 3, I finally went to the doc, when i realized i had a large patch of itchy raised welts on my chest. This doctor diagnosed what I had as non-bacterial, viral infection. I was given Tylenol and sent home.

Day 4 was fine -- I had less appetite, my throat was raw and I wasn't drinking much - but I could still function. The patch of raised welts that had been just in patch areas were now covering 70% of my body, less my face, thank goodness. Nights were bad, as body temp goes up and your body becomes more sensitive to itches.

On Day 5, I went into the office to organize some things, and spent half the day there. Sadly, I wasn't even thinking so straight anymore. I was hardly eating or drinking, and my nights were hours of tossing and turning. I was still doing okay. Until about 3pm, when I realized I was sort of wheezing fluid into my lungs and my lips were so puffy they looked like Angelina Jolie's. I had one more important planning meeting and actually had to have my marketing person talk to me while I typed to her in a chat window. It was strange, but it worked. I went to the hospital and actually was sort of pissed at the doctor who let me leave the hospital with Tylenol only and didn't warn me about any of this. She said it was very unusual for adults to get the same type of virus twice so close together. Then she wanted to admit me overnight. I ended up not doing that, but agreed to walk through a battery of blood samples at a different location.

The doc was great and said:

1. I have a viral infection

2. My liver bloodwork is way off, about 6x

3. He recommended steroid injections to reduce the swelling. Apparently, my body is fighting the virus so hard that my immune system haywire and is super sensitive. Everything is now a threat so my body reacts by getting inflamed, itchy, wheezing, swollen. And that makes me miserable not talking, eating, or drinking.

I took the steroid through an IV drip. I was very worried because the very next day, we were due to host a BBQ and pool party that might draw between 10-40 people. The day rolled around and I woke up and could swallow, talk, and my face was mostly back to normal.

Day went by great, my chest returned totally back to normal. but I have to say that I have never swung between such highs and lows. The worst was feeling like you have a mouth full of ulcers and not being even able to talk without feeling all cut up.

Takeaways?

* Next time you get sick, main thing you can get tested is if you have a viral or bacterial infection. Antibiotics work only for bacterial. Nothing (western) is known to solve viral infections so all you can do is reduce the symptoms and ride it out

* Normal cycle is 5-7 days. After 4 days, get on steroids (last about 24 hrs)

* You are contagious through droplets of moisture you release, but after the first night, i didn't have time to put on the mask

* I feel so sympathetic now for people who have bad allergies. Right now my back is so itchy that if i rub up against sometihing a few seconds later I was to sleep on top of it.

You know you've been married too long when...

2011-08-24T11:02:00.000-04:00

So what's the only case in which you can live down forgetting your wedding anniversary?

... when your spouse also forgets!

Sad, but true. I came back from jiujitsu practice as usual, pretty late, and Sarah greeted me with a smile and a "Happy Anniversary, Dear". My mouth dropped open, a few choice words came to mind, and since I can keep no secrets from her after over 15 years together, I admitted that I had totally forgotten. Normally, this would have sent me to matrimonial purgatory, but she cheerfully admitted that she only remembered that afternoon when her mother emailed her to wish her well. That's how I know I married the right woman -- who else would have let me off that easily??

These days, I put everything in my calendar. If it's not there, I forget it. It's a modern day crutch that helps me to function by letting me only remember what I have to (hence the Far Side cartoon). Anyone else do this?

When it rains it pours

2011-07-31T13:05:00.001-04:00

I think you're supposed to say that when bad things are happening. Is there a saying for when good things happen?

Last week was a good week. A very good week. The amount we brought in last week (no cash yet, but deal value) was nearly 50% of our total revenue to date. True, much of this was from one project alone (a big deal with a bank covering nearly 6000m2), but this was actually 6 different projects. On average, we've been doing maybe 2 projects a week. The best part? They were all commercial projects -- the direction I've been wanting us to go. Doing homes is fun, satisfying, tangible, but in no way scalable.

The other interesting thing is that our business is growing into a relationship role. In many of these projects, we were the general contractor, bringing subcontractor(s) to do some work that we billed for, coordinated, managed, and took responsibility for (and a sizeable cut). In one project, however, we were contacted by a HK services provider to be their subcontractor. They took almost the same size cut but did very little value add besides landing the deal. But, it's worth doing because we aren't at that point where we can find business like that and we are learning about how to be a general contractor by being on the other side of the fence. Pretty fascinating and really learning on the job.

Keeping fingers crossed, last week was really the first week where I felt like there was really promise beyond just feeling like we were doing a good thing, being professional, and meeting a market need. I felt excited that this could actually make some money and be a real business venture. Maybe not a coincidence that I averaged about 3-4 hrs of sleep too...

Oh, forgot to mention that at the end of the previous week, I gave a talk to a community of builders, architects, designers, and property managers on how indoor air quality is important to green building. Way more people showed up than we expected. Normally, 50-80 people have gone to the events I've attended. The organizer estimated about 130-150 at this one. After some scares with the audio not working and then a challenge of all the pictures in my presentation not being displayed, I still went ahead and gave it. Got some decent questions and then chatted with about a dozen people after the talk. I'm pretty sure I should follow up with the opportunities and business cards a little better, but I'd like to think that this week's amazing uptick might have something to do with that talk.

Thanks for letting me share my bit of happiness!

Inc magazine...mmm good

2011-07-17T03:25:00.001-04:00

For my birthday, my big bro L got me a subscription to Inc. Magazine. He probably saw me browsing his back issues when during a visit. Like probably most entrepreneurs or small business owners, there's so much we don't know and learning from other people or reading real case studies is immensely important. I started receiving the issues a couple months back and I really enjoy the magazine and wanted to give a shout out of appreciate to my bro. The best gifts are the ones you wouldn't go out of your way to buy yourself, but can use and appreciate.

And, I hate reading online, so the added expense of print magazines was so much nicer. It's weird. I like and do all my research online. But, reading newspapers and magazines online totally ruin the experience for me. It may be generational. Sitting back on a lazy Sunday morning with a Wall St Journal is really a relaxing time.

Inc does a great job being relevant to the brand new one-person startup baking cupcakes out of their apartment kitchen to the $50M tech company with 30 employees. I suspect larger companies probably find it less interesting, but that's the nature of the beast. There's probably a graduate-level Inc. out there somewhere.

But for the moment, I really enjoy reading stories and different approaches, whether how someone dealt with trademark infringement, libelous claims by competitors, decisions on whether to expand into franchises, etc. The best part is that reading these things, even how someone dealt with failure (always the best lessons) fire me up.

In other news....

Next week, I've been invited to give a talk ambitiously titled: "Managing Indoor Environmental Quality for Green Building Success" to a group of mostly builders, architects, interior designers, facilities managers, and people in the green and sustainable industries. It'll draw on a few real project case studies we've done to highlight why indoor air testing and paying attention to indoor environmental quality can impact green building, from marketability to cost savings to productivity to health and safety to minimizing legal liability. This is going to be big in helping us strengthen recognition as thought leaders in this space. If you have any ideas (other than an email to a bunch of acquaintances inviting them to attend) on how we can market this or use it to increase our SEO or credibility, please post your comments!

Who got fever? I got fever. Scarlet Fever

2011-07-06T05:54:00.002-04:00

This Saturday I woke up with a bad sore throat. It happens in China. I didn't think much of it, but then was chilled, and when I took my temp it was over 102F. Sarah suggested helpfully that I had the flu.

No biggie, but thought it was weird because I just had a flu shot (I always think those things are useless).

That night and the next day, my temperature hovered around 102-103 F and I got to enjoy a cold bath and other fun home remedies.

Then on Sun, the fever broke. But instead, I started feeling tingles in one foot -- how it feels when your foot falls asleep. My feet are pretty beat up, cracked, and always itching from being on the jiujitsu mats, so I didn't think too much of it. But during the night, the itching got intense -- I actually dreamed about it. And, the spots and itching spread to both feet.

On Monday, after a quick websearch suggested I might have anything from strep throat to foot and mouth disease, I decided I'd just get down to the doc's and get antibiotics started.

Good thing I did. The French doc diagnosed the strep throat immediately when she looked into my throat, but then when she saw my feet, she said, "Hmm....very interesting". That is not something you want a examining medical professional to say. She believes I have come down with either scarlet fever or hand and mouth disease. (Actually I just looked it up and I my symptoms match the classic symptoms of foot and hand disease 100%, but I'm just an amateur doctor) Doesn't really matter because both are related to streptococcus bacteria and both are treated with penicillin. It's often transmitted by children and according to PubMed, "Coxsackie virus is transmitted by contamination with feces". WHAT? Coxsackie? Feces? Now that I think about it, I went to a Chinese hospital on Friday and probably encountered about 500 people in two hours or so. Next time I'm wearing a mask and gloves.

Although I didn't even know scarlet fever still existed, apparently I have it and should be better after a week or so. In the meanwhile, it really sucks because I'm hungry all the time but can't eat much because I have these big white ulcers in the back of my throat and it hurts like heck to swallow. If you're trying to lose weight, I highly recommend this.

If you're in Shanghai, look me up and I can pass it on to you personally :)

Hope everyone had a more fun Fourth of July wherever you are...

Blogger's block?

2011-06-07T12:26:00.000-04:00

I have been stricken by a weird sort of writer's block over the past several months. Growing up, I kept a journal (dozens of these stashed in my parents' homes). I write trip reports whenever I travel. I blogged every few days when I was deployed on Line of D. And up until recently, I regularly blogged on my company's website. But strangely, I have been unable to blog lately. I think it's that the idea of catching up seems overwhelming, so I don't know where to start and then I don't want to.

So, even though it's midnight and I'm jetlagged, I'm going to quit putting it off (at least on my personal blog) and update with what's gone on in the past couple months. Forgive me for being so mechanical and bullet-like, but this is after all, also a personal record of eventful moments, so I'd rather be cryptic than forget to record something down at all.

1. I became an uncle again! CEC or "He Who Is Powerful In Battle" was born a big baby on May to my big bro. He actually was born unnamed and L asked us to weigh in on the options. The shortlist was: Callan, Cory, Toby, and Milo. It was an easy choice for me, especially when I found out it was a Gaellic name with some serious badass meaning. This was made more fun when my dad declared in an enthusiastic email that his grandson was "well endowed". Anyhow, his sister loves him and I got to see this on Skype recently when I called in for her birthday and got to see her holding him.

2. I went to Germany to do my annual military duty. My reserve unit has been on Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. But before I went to Iraq, my slot was eliminated and I had to find a new one. I put off finding a new unit because the Iraq tour covered me for 2 years, but eventually I had to look and I ended up finding a unit in Germany. It had been 10 years since I had been back to continental Europe and I really enjoyed being in Southern Germany. On the other hand, my job sucked because no one really knew I was coming, so I had to make work for myself and it was tough to get people to just give me stuff to do. On the positive note, the light workload meant that I could actually continue to keep the business chugging along back in China. A special treat was meeting up with and hanging out with my buddy Sven, whom I knew (and lived with for a short while) when I lived here 10 years ago. I visited him and his girlfriend Meike in Munich and they really took me out to see this beautiful city. The downside of Germany was getting 6, yes, count 'em, 6 speeding tickets in 3 weeks.

3. Came back to Shanghai for 2 days and then went to the US for my 15th yr college reunion and good friend's bachelor party. The reunion was nice -- like last time's (the 10th), but with fewer classmates and lots of rugrats running around. People still cool. I got to see Candice and catch up. Also found out that our year is still famous as the year of the murder-suicide at Dunster. Then after the reunion weekend, old college pals Jaime and Joe and I went for our annual road trip. This was pretend to be a bachelor party, but actually was a mellow guy's weekend out. We went up to NH, where Joe charmed my in-laws and we made a blood donation to the mosquito gods, hiked around, and then went back to Boston. There we took in a Sox game (they lost). It was good fun.

4. My business issue of the week is dealing with a trademark claim. Rather, someone has "my" trademark and is now trying to take over my website legally. Fortunately, my stepbro is a lawyer in Beijing and is guiding me through the response. Still, now we have to file defensively and it's still a pain in the ass to jump through all the hoops.

Human resources -- The China Problem

2011-04-02T06:34:00.001-04:00

So the good news is that this past week was focused on filling two key positions: a marketing person and a client advisor and I made some headway.

These two positions are so key because I've reached the realization that I'm not going to be able to build the business by doing everything myself. Plus, at least in the case of marketing, I'm not the best person to do this. Finally, I leave for 3 weeks for my annual military reserves duty at the end of this month, so the business has to be able to keep moving forward. So, I finally quit my bitching, forced myself to write job descriptions, talked to a bunch of people and sent them out through a small local network of expat and local Chinese friends.

Here's what I've been looking for:

1. Expat marketing/PR person. This person probably needs to be a member of our target market (expat families with children) to be effective because he or she would know the ins and outs of the community -- what media parents go to, what appeal is most effective, and most importantly, have a big network themselves. I am looking for someone who used to do marketing, advertising, or PR work, but now is either taking a break, is a trailing spouse, or is a full-time mother with time on her hands.

2. A client advisor to interact with the clients during testing and take some limited samples. The ideal person would probably be local Chinese, because they need to give some directions to the non-English speaking lab techs and also to be in a position to build the Chinese market later. But, they would need to be strong English speakers, and more importantly, have experience with accommodating foreigner and knowing how they think, etc.

I got a call from one woman earlier this week who was interested in the marketing position. On paper, she sounds perfect -- former small business owner, currently building a business around advice for expat families, looking for part-time work, has a background in public health and policy, and has worked in sales and marketing. I'm meeting her on Monday, but unless she's really off or pay requirements are out of whack, I'd like to get her started asap.

As expected, the client advisor is a tougher find. I considered many sources: relocation agencies, bank client advisors, post-doc students (who have more time than money), and even expat compound concierges. Talking to my local friends, I found that estimates for hourly wages ranged from 20rmb - 250rmb. I don't know where my JD has been posted, but in the past several days, I've gotten about 4 emails from Chinese students. Holy cow, career offices here are bad. 3 of the 4 had no useful subject line, not even a description, just a resume. The JD even says to send a CV and cover letter. I think there could really be a business teaching students how to find jobs and that students would pay to get a decent intership, one that's carefully managed and vetted by the business placement agency.

Fortunately, I also have a front-runner here: my Chinese teacher. About 6 months ago, not long after I started the business, I decided that since I would be needing to conduct my business discussions in Chinese, I needed to start Chinese lessons again. So, I found this teacher online -- no spring chicken (maybe late 30s, early 40s), but a really nice person, and as we talked, I realized that she knew quite a bit about my business because she has a background in interior design and used to work for a renovation company. So, I approached her about filling more of her time with some project-based work and she seemed quite interested. This would be good because I feel I can trust her, I know she's smart, and I'd be able to afford her while still increasing her per hour fee by about 50%.

Keep fingers crossed....

Japan continues to struggle after being struck with the most powerful earthquake in its history

2011-03-13T01:57:00.002-05:00

For those of you who have been following the news or have Japanese friends, Japan's woes continue to worsen.

Quake survivors forage for supplies
(UKPA) – 10 minutes ago
Millions of Japanese are without drinking water or electricity, surviving on instant noodles and rice balls, two days after a powerful earthquake and tsunami hammered the north eastern coast, killing at least 1,000 people.
Although the government doubled the number of soldiers deployed in the aid effort to 100,000, it seemed overwhelmed by what is turning out to be a triple disaster.
Friday's quake and tsunami damaged two nuclear reactors at a power plant on the coast, and at least one of them appeared to be going through a partial meltdown, raising fears of a radiation leak.
"First I was worried about the quake, now I'm worried about radiation. I live near the plants, so I came here to find out if I'm OK. I tested negative, but I don't know what to do next," said Kenji Koshiba, a construction worker, at an emergency centre in Koriyama.
According to officials, at least 1,000 people were killed - including 200 bodies found today along the coast - and 678 were missing in the earthquake and the ensuing tsunami that hit with breathtaking force and speed, sweeping away everything in its path.
The US Geological Survey calculated the quake to have a magnitude of 8.9, while Japanese officials raised their estimate to 9.0.
Either way it is the strongest quake ever recorded in Japan.
Teams searched for the missing along hundreds of miles of the Japanese coast, and thousands of hungry survivors huddled in darkened emergency centres that were cut off from rescuers and aid.
At least 1.4 million households had gone without water since the quake struck and some 2.5 million households were without electricity.
Large areas of the countryside were surrounded by water and unreachable. Fuel stations were closed and people were running out of petrol for their cars.

Baby's first step: First corporate contract signed

2011-02-23T21:49:00.000-05:00

Ok, for those of you who grew up in the 80s, you should get the reference....

I'm riding on a high right now -- just inked our first corporate deal! It sounds more glamorous than it is. There's no long-term relationship going or recurring ongoing services, but for a new company that's trying to get credibility, this will be big and will be a great reference case if we do a good job. We're doing testing and advisory consulting to a big multinational company here in Shanghai as they renovate two floors. We'll be testing the before and after and helping project manage the vendors through auditing the air quality (and therefore the work that they do and the materials selected). The value of the contract is small -- around $6k, but it's quite a step up from residential projects and I'd like to see more of them.

Lately, I've also been looking at two new segments. The first is the upstream architecture/design/interior renovation space. I was introduced to a boutique design firm that built the first LEED Gold certified retail store in China and also did the Urbn Hotel in Shanghai. We hit it off and the owner/partner thought that we could have a pretty strong offering if he added my knowledge of indoor air quality to his green building. We could help each other and create a stronger total package for clients. So, we have started on several projects and last week, he brought up the idea of me formally starting up a company that merged these two concepts: building fit-out/interior design and indoor environmental testing and consulting. He would offer up the part of his company that was dedicated to interior design and I would do the air testing/consulting part. Since he's busy expanding the architecture piece and doing other things, he asked if I would consider heading it up as its own company -- when I explained that I wanted independence, he said he'd be amenable to me keeping it under my company's brand-name if that's what I wanted. Little premature to think this is a done deal, but it certainly is an unexpected direction this early in the game but also an interesting idea to scale up and add some revenue pretty fast. It would be a little scary and really turn this whole venture into much more of a managerial role (instead of the satisfying solo expert that it's been).

Also, I am going to start expanding into the Japanese market. To date, the vast majority of my clients have actually been American or Brits. But there are 200,000 Japanese in Shanghai and only 30,000 Americans. The Japanese are almost always here on contract, are very health-oriented and used to high levels of hygiene and environmental health, and expect a high service level. These are all well-suited to my business model. The key will be to get someone who is Japanese and can help me localize my materials and offerings and then be the Japanese face of my business. I think I may have found someone who can at least start part-time and then later, I can look for someone who is able to do this full-time if it is promising.

Hope you're all having a great week -- Shanghai is finally warming up and the sun on your face when you go outside really does pick you up. Looking forward to Sarah's brother Tris and my mom coming to visit in two weeks.

"Punisher" gives enemy no place to hide

2011-02-08T19:46:00.002-05:00

Thought I'd share two cool little pieces of news I got about military equipment soldiers are starting to get on the frontlines.... The new helmets that are lighter and 70% stronger are a huge benefit. I wore the old ones two generations prior in Ranger School and remember them being so heavy that I had problems keeping my head up near the end. Love the quote, "We're going to have to get more powerful test guns to see how strong they really are"!

New Helmet Blocks Rifle Shots

February 04, 2011

Military.com|by Christian Lowe

The Army and Marine Corps may soon field a lighter combat helmet with nearly double the bullet and blast protection of the current Advanced Combat Helmet.

Army officials said that recent tests of the so-called "Enhanced Combat Helmet" showed the helmets were so strong that engineers didn't have equipment powerful enough to penetrate them with simulated IED fragments.

"The test lab we sent it to couldn't calculate an [average ballistic rating] because … the test guns they had couldn't shoot fragments fast enough to penetrate the helmet," said the Army's top protective equipment buyer, Col. Bill Cole. "We don't know exactly what the [average strength] is, but it's better than we've ever seen before."

"We're going to have to build stronger test guns to figure out how good it is," he added.

Testers hoped to get about a 40 percent increase in ballistic resistance over the ACH. But Cole said in some tests, the new ECH was 70 percent stronger than the helmets worn by Soldiers and Marines today. Additionally the new helmet weighs about four ounces less than the ACH.

"It's really a huge leap forward in terms of head protection capability," Cole added. "The data that we were getting from prototypes is even better than we'd hoped."

Marine Corps Systems Command in Quantico, Va. runs the ECH program for both services. Officials with the command were unable to comment on this story by post time.

In 2007, the Army and Marine Corps began looking into how to make current helmets -- the Army's ACH and Corps' Lightweight Helmet -- stronger without increasing weight. Both could withstand a direct hit from a 9mm pistol round and some bomb fragments, but senior officials in both services wanted improved protection against rifle shots.

At the time, military helmets were generally made from layers of Kevlar or Twaron material -- both of which get heavy when the layers pile up. In recent years armor makers have developed technology to shape ultra-strong materials akin to plastic sheets that are lighter than Kevlar and have similar ballistic resistance.

After a first round of test failures in 2009, the Army has finally found a design made by Ceradyne, Inc. that works -- so well, officials say, that some types of 7.62 rifle rounds can be fired point-blank at the helmet without going through.

The service plans to purchase 200,000 ECHs beginning in the fall of 2011, with Soldiers in Afghanistan or deploying there getting the rifle-stopping helmet first. Officials say the new helmet costs about $600 each, double the price of the current ACH.

"We're very excited about this and we're going to try to take this revolutionary capability in head protection to the field as quickly as we can," Cole said. "This is like stepping up from an up-armored Humvee to an MRAP in the head protection arena."

‘Punisher’ Gives Enemy No Place to Hide

February 03, 2011

Military.com|by Christian Lowe

A new Army weapon designed to target the enemy hiding behind barriers is being affectionately called "The Punisher" by Soldiers fighting in Afghanistan.

And by all accounts, the futuristic XM-25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System has been quite a rude surprise for the bad guys.

"I don't know what we're eventually going to call this product, but it seems to be game changing," said the commander of the Army's Program Executive Office Soldier, Brig. Gen. Peter Fuller, during a Feb. 2 briefing with reporters at the Pentagon. "You no longer can shoot at American forces and hide behind something. We're going to reach out and touch you."

After years of XM-25 development, last fall the 101st Airborne submitted an urgent request to field the weapon for troops on patrol in Afghanistan. In response the Army took the five weapons it had been testing at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Md., added 1,000 hand-made explosive rounds and shipped them to the war zone in October of 2010.

On arrival the XM-25 gave infantry squads the capability to precisely target bad guys hiding behind walls, in irrigation ditches, or among rocky escarpments. The Heckler & Koch-made XM-25 pairs a barrel-mounted targeting computer and a 25mm programmable air-bursting round that's fed precise range information just before being fired. A Soldier can simply push a button to range an enemy firing position, dial in one more meter, and the round will explode precisely where the bad guy is sitting.

"I had one lieutenant tell me that normally these engagements take us 15 or 20 minutes to get through, [but it's] several minutes when the XM-25 is involved. It's that quick," said the Army's top weapons buyer, Col. Doug Tamilio. "One major told me every time the XM-25 was involved in engaging enemy positions, firing stopped immediately."

So far the still-experimental XM-25 has stood up to the harsh combat environment of Afghanistan with "no maintenance issues," Tamilio said.

"To me that means we've got the ruggedness part of it right," he said.

Tamilio admitted that they need to make some tweaks to the weapon, including finding a new power source for the targeting computer that currently uses rechargeable batteries.

"We are learning some features that we do have to enhance," he added.

The five hand-made weapons have been field tested by two Army units so far and a third unit will get "The Punisher" next if the Army can find the money to buy more ammo, officials added, declining to be specific about which units will get the weapon.

"The kids are naming it ‘the punisher' because … a person can't hide anymore," PEO Soldier Fuller added. "Now I can go punish them for trying to engage me."

Officials say Soldiers aren't complaining about the nearly 13 pound weight of the XM-25 since it's been so effective. Gunners wielding "The Punisher" often opt for an M4 or a pistol for personal defense, but some carry no other weapon at all.

The Army wants to buy 36 more XM-25s -- which run about $35,000 each -- but the buy isn't fully funded. And the air bursting ammunition costs about $1,000 per round, but Tamilio claims that full rate production will drop the price to $35 per round.

Even in a tight fiscal environment with many high-dollar programs competing for scarce resources, many top Army officials say "The Punisher" is worth the investment.

"We're giving Soldiers a capability down range that's making a difference in terms of lethality," Tamilio said. "There are many times that weapon has disrupted attacks."

Home Sweet Home

2011-02-08T09:17:00.001-05:00

After 3 days of basically living out of airports looking for flights, Sarah and I made it back home. I thought that this poster was pure irony.

Few lessons learned on dealing with a situation like this in the future that I thought I'd pass on:

Always monitor flight status -- Don't assume the carrier will notify you or rebook. We never were, even after repeatedly giving our contact info. They didn't protect us either, by putting us on another flight until we pushed the issue.
Have a contingency plan for alternate routing in case flights get cancelled. Know the next flight going, alternate connections, seating availability
Often, it's really hard to get through on the phone, so use travel agent or hotel staff to help you get through. EgyptAir staff often just ignore the phone. Usually, the most effective way to get something done is to go directly to the airport or airline company sales office.
First try to rebook through United or whoever booked the original ticket. If they did this, the local company often cannot make changes. The good thing about working with the local company directly is that they are not bound to award travel only, but may put you in a regular seat if they feel like it.
Be polite but persistent and talk with different people and departments. Don't give too much info and clearly state what you want – usually a rebooking, upgrade, compensation, or hotel accommodations. Often, we have been told no on the phone, then a different story at the airport or sales office. Or, a counter agent will deny us seats, but a conversation escalated to the supervisor gets us there. Document everyone's name and last name (and ideally a phone number) – don't be shy because if someone tells you something and you don't have their info documented, it's useless. If possible, if someone promises that someone else will do something, rebook you, set you up with hotel, etc, have that person call over to their counterpart where you're going to make sure someone on the opposite end knows.
If this doesn't work, tell them you would like to formally lodge a complaint. Do this in writing, make a copy or take a photo, tell them you will follow this up with Star Alliance (or whatever mother network), and add their own name and why this was unsatisfactory. Ask for a receipt or other formal acknowledgement. Pushing it to this will often be enough. A different person came out, all smiles, and said that they would put us up (despite everyone earlier telling us this could not happen) with full board. He asked if this was satisfactory and if it would still be necessary to file the complaint.

We're safe in Egypt

2011-02-03T04:09:00.000-05:00

Thanks for the emails and SMSs of concern. We've been on the open sea for most of the past week and since the Egyptian government cut internet and SMS service early on in the unrest, we weren't able to get word out.

Our weeklong liveaboard dive trip was interrupted as governments started pulling their citizens out of the country. We had Polish, Dutch, and Greek divers onboard that had to leave early. We decided that the safest place was on the open water, so decided to stay put and then take our chances. Turned out to be a good idea, as the local port that we're in now, Hurghada, is actually quiet. Unfortunately, we had planned to spend 4 days in Cairo, seeing the Giza Pyramids, the Sphinx, etc, but we just happened to pick the first time since 1953 that there's been civil unrest.

If you've been watching the news (we're only just catching up ourselves), you may know that Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, who has held power for over 50 years, has agreed to step down in September. Against him is a large group of the people who believe that the government is no longer for the people and want him ousted and a fresh change. So far, the demonstrations have been peaceful and non-violent. Mubarak, after mobilizing the Army, installed martial law and curfews as well as cutting internet and SMS. Most countries, including the US, sided with the protesters and are urging Mubarak to let go.

Depending on who you talk to, it was either a way for him to save face (instead of getting forced out right away) or a ploy by which he managed to stay in power. Regardless, order has been restored, international flights are back on time, and the internet is back up. There were up to a million people demonstrating on the streets (even in Hurghada) and it was by and large peaceful. Tonight, when Sarah and I walked around Hurghada, we saw signs that there was still some concern – we saw military APCs, lots of police and security on corners, and groups of people holding banners and dancing through the street. The most striking thing was that everyone we asked seemed to be pro-Mubarak and the atmosphere in town seemed to be pretty celebratory, although by many accounts, Mubarak had lost and the protesters had won concessions. According to one shopkeeper we spoke with, in Hurghada, the government worked with the people and they gained from working through the government and with tourism, whereas in Cairo and some of the larger cities, there was a big gap between the haves and have-nots, and a perception (deserved or otherwise) that the government was corrupt and not helping the people.

Cairo still seems to be a hotspot -- apparently pro-Mubarak forces are now shooting, throwing rocks and bombs, and otherwise inciting direct violence. Hopefully, the anti-Mubarak side can turn the other cheek and allow the media to report what's going on and pressure the government to let the Army intervene and restore order.

We'll be spending two days in Hurghada where it's peaceful and then transit through Cairo to Instanbul for a night before returning to Shanghai.

Happy New Year's! Lady luck starting to smile?

2011-01-22T13:35:00.001-05:00

Happy 2011 to everyone! I'm late for the calendar new year, but in time for the Chinese (lunar) New Year!

This year, unlike the past 5 or 6 Xmas' I've been in China, I did not send an update out, nor cards. The original plan was that I'd call everyone, but things got busy in the end, I snuck away to the Philippines, and well, you know how it is. If the company every goes public, I'll buy you all ranch houses :)

Small business owners frequently say that they didn't take vacations for years in the early, lean times. That probably means that they didn't have something like the Philippines nearby and they were really busy, which is a good thing. Because: (a) my customers all went away for holidays in December or weren't thinking about testing, I didn't have much demand; (b) I don't run a retail store or other business that requires a regular working day presence; and (c) was able to get a roundtrip ticket to Manila for about 1000rmb (~$160), I escaped to go diving for about 5 days with a couple of buddies. Sarah couldn't work, but went to HK for NY's, where I joined up with her to celebrate a friend's birthday.

As soon as the New Year's holidays were over, I expected things to get hot and heavy, as I caught up with unfinished conversations and sales leads from before the break. Things were frankly, slower than I had anticipated, and honestly, I started questioning the business model and asking myself if we had fooled ourselves into thinking the market was ready. Or was it the wrong marketing approach? Wrong segment? Wrong pricing?

For the past month or so, I've been thinking hard about the scalability of the business. The sales process of an average residential air/water assessment is long and the execution and followup is as well:

1. Once I get contacted, I need to introduce the company. I could probably use the website to introduce this more, but right now, I type out emails or have calls.

2. I then conduct an interview with the client to understand their background, health sensitivities, building structure, occupant activities, and any other concerns. All of this background info is used to recommend the appropriate test panel and come up with potential hypotheses about any potential problems (ie. think there is mold, humidity is or a source of water is usually the primary cause, need to confirm that this exists or not)

3. Send a project scope and cost quote

4. Wait, wait, follow up, convince, wait some more until client finally agrees

5. Schedule event & coordinate with relevant staff/partners

6. Conduct site visit, sampling, and investigate the building, which may take 1-3 hours

7. Wait about a week for lab results to come in. Translate results and do analysis to complete detailed graphical assessment report for client

8. Schedule followup debrief with customer and wait for them to pay me before debriefing

9. Debrief with customer to review any problems found, impact, severity, root cause analysis, and recommended solutions -- usually a 60-90 min session, since I answer their questions and also discuss remediation

10. Follow up with them on solutions -- air filter sales, mold remediation, VOC elimination, plant sales, etc.

As you can see, this is a pretty painful process to make the small amount of money I am each time I do this. I have to keep reminding myself that right now, this is worth doing because I learn from each client, gain good baseline data, create good word of mouth, can use the testing as an intro into the higher margin remediation work, and most of all, to get reference clients. But, long-term, there has to be a way to make this more automated, easier, or to not have to do this all by myself.

In recent days, I've been looking at two things. One is certification -- it's a set number of parameters and pricing, and only two packages, so it streamlines most of the pre-sales and sales. Plus, by working with relocation companies, I can actually incent them to push my services because they get a markup themselves.

The other is getting into the upstream green or sustainable design space. When a building is designed, the architects need to consider indoor environmental quality. To get certified as a LEED project, there are specific rules and credits gained through testing that the air, sound, electricity, etc meets certain standards. This means that I don't need to do the selling -- my services are needed to get LEED certified. I only started exploring this maybe 3 weeks ago, attending a couple events, getting a couple introductions. The book is still out on whether I can do this successfully, but I think if I stick to the boutique or smaller firms, there is not a lot of specialized knowledge about air quality, so I can help be the expert on LEED projects to do not only the testing, but also all of the paperwork as well as investigations if there are any problems. Or, I can recommend ways on getting more points as related to indoor environmental quality.

Last Friday, I had two meetings. Met with a Singaporean sustainable design firm that is quite impressive for their R&D know-how, deep knowledge of engineering science, and green building innovation. I thought I would have little to offer them, but apparently, in China, they are almost brand-new and don't really have a lot of knowledge. We were able to help each other, just through info transfer and through promises of joint intros to other people. I do think that this is how business is done in China. Then, I met up with a friend who has been helping me do website optimization, marketing, and other related work. Originally, she was supposed to do a lot with Google Adwords and search engine marketing (SEM), but this went on ice when Google Adwords inexplicably decided to blacklist us (whole separate blog post). But, we agreed that she would work until the end of January since she had other commitments and also we are really cash-strapped. She did make a difference. If nothing else, it's very good to be able to really toss around ideas and brainstorm with someone with a lot of initiative. It will be lonely in Feb back on my own with my interns!

So, on Friday, aside from these two positive outcomes, a few other very happy things happened:

1. I was given the green light to do a testing project with a very prominent, high end green architecture design firm

2. Had the same design firm suggest that I would be able to fulfill an IAQ role with a large property development project

3. A commercial company that Sarah introduced me to and has been a little bit of a black box, invited me to give a presentation to their finance director and facilities manager (this would be a great "reference" project)

4. An acquaintance I met last week (for whom I had made an introduction to someone else) returned the favor by introducing me to yet another architect

5. A request for a mold problem conversation turned into a formal meeting request

6. One of our website visitors contacted us through the form and was in the ideal target segment (couple with a baby on the way)

So, just as I am about to leave for 2 weeks in a couple days, we suddenly have a lot of stuff going on. I am thrilled of course, and very excited. If things keep up like this, I will really have to start looking for reliable help.

How is everyone else's New Year's going? Any resolutions you want to share since I didn't even think about making any?

Project Startup Update Week 27 - The name of the game is SEO

2010-12-12T22:41:00.003-05:00

Hey y'all - it's been awhile since I've blogged. Now that I am also blogging for the business website, chances to write are fewer and further in between. But, because this is not only a way to update some of you guys, but also a way to look back later and see how the business "grew up", I'm going to try to do at least one update a week.

Overall, up until the past couple of weeks, I've been still nailing down our operational model and figuring out processes -- the best way to follow up with sales leads, making sure our testing lab partner was using the right methods, tweaking the report analysis, creating invoice forms, etc. Most of that has been done, so now the emphasis is on getting the work out and creating awareness.

Nowadays, no business, no matter how small, can get by without a website. Especially for us, where credibility is key to customer acceptance, and in this market, where expatriates turn to the internet to find answers to their questions more than back at home, we had to create a very professional website, and one that would be current, relevant, popular, and most of all, highly ranked in searches. Enter SEO or search engine optimization. Up until two weeks ago, this was just a term. I had no idea what went into the mystical Google ranking algorithm. Then once the website launched and I started playing around with it, looking at what sort of traffic it was getting (or not getting), I figured I had to learn how to make the website more visible.

I sent out requests for help to a few local SEO service firms. These guys are experts at making your website show up higher in search results. After a solid week talking with them (having companies pitch to you is definitely the best way to quickly come up to speed), I have a little sense of the lay of the land.

How your website ranks is based on a number of things, a continuously changing algorithm that varies between different search engines. But in general, there are three things that affect this:

o Onsite factors – how well your website is built: the content, presence of a blog, the amount of keywords in the content, metadata built in, tags in the photos, etc.

o Off-site factors – the interaction of your site with the rest of the internet community: is it referenced by other sites and are those sites quality, is it indexed by the search engines so they can regularly “crawl” your site, is it present in directories, do you have guest blog content posted on other sites that reference your website.

o Search engine marketing (SEM) – you can simply and immediately improve your ranking by paying for advertising that increases your score

The results of running our site through a few free automated assessment tools (is a good one told us that the site was already built pretty well and didn't have a lot of room for easy technical improvement. That leaves content creation (mainly quality blog posts) and link-building as the main areas of work. But, the nature of SEO is that this takes a lot of time, so your rank comes up slowly even if you're doing all the right things. So, what I think we're going to do is to start by giving Google some money through buying some Adwords advertising and then using that to get us instant awareness and also find out what keywords are most effective. Then, we'll use that insight to inform our SEO efforts, and when we've organically built good links, content, and exposure on the internet, scale back inorganic SEM and use our own efforts to stay high on the rankings.

That's the idea anyways, and I think we have a decent shot at it because this space is pretty immature and there are not a lot of competitors who are seriously competing for page ranking in English for our kind of business. To illustrate, a week after the site launched, the first result of Googling "air testing shanghai" turned up a reference to our site from my friend's blog about air quality and our own site turned up at #6. This was without the site even being "indexed" by Google's automated web crawler or conscious efforts. So, by spending some time doing things right, we hopefully should be able to turn up on page one of search results for the main keywords we think people are searching for.

One cool thing happened today. I have some Google alerts set up to keep me up to date on any significant relevant news. In this morning's batch (keywords: China indoor air pollution), I found a blog post I wrote this weekend! Now, if I could only figure out how to get people to read those posts :) ....

Meet the newest member of our family

2010-11-12T11:55:00.004-05:00

(Guys at my regular fruit and produce stand)

Nope, not one of "those" emails :)

After 5 years of taking taxis, subway, bus, mototaxis, biking, and just plain walking, I broke down and bought a scooter. What made up my mind was not having income, paying 80rmb (~$12) round-trip 3x a week to go to jiujitsu, and seeing the taxi tolls add up.

So, I did a little research and found out that you can get electric powered cool Vespa-styled scooters for about 3400rmb or about $500. You get a lot of bike for that. Mine will do 55km/hr, is fairly zippy (any faster and I could get into trouble), comfortable, and has a range of supposedly over 50km with each charge. I chose the smaller of two models because I could get longer range and also to get something that is a little lighter and more maneuverable. Best, it's almost totally silent and gives off no emissions. Shanghai's moving to more of these and I think it's great.

I put on about 25km today and have the following conclusions:

1. A lot of crazy drivers (car and bike) out on the road. People turning left from the middle lane, running red lights, stopped in the middle of the road, trying to defy laws of physics... and this is just from day 1. I will definitely have to be driving defensively.

2. It's cold...I need a quality jacket and gloves. I also probably should get a filtration mask -- sucking in everyone's emissions not cool. I'm going to start wearing my skiing helmet. Pretty sure this breaks some sort of motorcycling etiquette rule, but hey, a lot of drivers wear velvet horse jockey helmets, so it's not that bad!

3. When you are riding on the road, you really feel alive. I was reminded of a college and Army buddy's description of riding his bike from Harvard to MIT back when we were going to ROTC -- "It's like a live frogger game!" I will definitely get to know the city a whole lot better this way and looking forward to it.

[Update: after 50km]

Discovered that the battery gauge is unreliable and that effective range is about 40km. Discovered that bike is difficult to push.

Project Startup: Business Launched Today!

2010-11-10T21:55:00.009-05:00

It took 5 months, but we finally had our official opening on Sunday's Wellness Works fair!

We set up the booth at about 10am -- most of the other 30 vendors had already finished setting up. It was tough to fit all the stuff needed for the booth in one cab so we took one of the Expo minivans. Fortunately, with 3 interns (plus a

boyfriend), and my wife there, we got set up in only about 15 min. I think the booth turned out fairly decently. Several people who came by the booth during the day mentioned that it looked well thought out and pretty professional :)

We had a good location -- central, with no one to our back and no one competing on either side for signage. Our booth had essentially a backdrop with our logo on a field of green, then two self-standing banners. On the 1.8m table itself, we had a display of 9 common household pollutants and a guessing game where people had to match the pollutant to the proper

name and health effects. Not probably the most fun game, but at least it was an easier way to break the ice than a straight sell. On the right hand side, we had a lucky draw where people could win gas-removing green plants (we brought a snake plant, a peace lily, and several aloe veras), vouchers for free lead testing, vouchers worth 250 or 500rmb, and one grand prize of a free complete home assessment worth 2000rmb (around $300). Also on the table, we had a fair promotion flyer, brochures in Chinese and English, frequently asked questions, and a sample of the completed report as well as a raw Chinese test company report.

There wasn't too much traffic in the morning. At first we found out that it wasn't that easy to get people to leave their personal information. This is probably that we just didn't ask for it. I had

initially planned to offer a lucky draw to people in exchange for them going through a quick little mini-assessment, but in the future, the better idea is probably to just get them to leave a business card and a sense of what they are interested in and then follow up later. I was one of four speakers to give a little talk ("Indoor Environmental Quality in China: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", but last minute the venue changed. I am not sure if that was the reason, but there was low turnout and only about 10 people (besides our staff) were there. Fortunately, there was pretty good interaction and people asked a lot of good questions and it generated 2 leads who later came to the booth. I also found that one of the best ways to quickly get people to understand the value we add is to show them the Chinese report, which is pretty bare and just has numbers, and then show them our report, which has an initial customer profiling and recommendations on what to test, then graphical test results based on both Chinese and international standards, and then analysis of problem sources and recommendations. People understood that much more than anything else we showed or explained. We really should show this more, but I would be careful to release it as an electronic source, because it could be copied.

Chinese Marketing 101: one big takeaway is that having young, overly formal-dressed, nervous looking Chinese staff hovering definitely drives away traffic. I watched expats literally look up at the booth then veer away. When Sarah, the blonde foreigner was there by herself, she got tons of traffic.

There were other competitors and potential

partners at the fair and I went over to meet some of them. There were air purifier representatives, a water purifier company, and a health retailer. Fortunately, still no sign of anyone else doing anything like what we are doing. It was interesting that several of the representatives from the other companies said that they had heard of us, and at least one rep said he wanted to meet up later to talk about working together. Really is a small community or else word spreads quickly.

At the end of the day, we had 7 potential customer leads, of which 3 are highly likely to convert into test projects. The most interesting one was a guy from sweden who is having a mold problem and was almost begging us for our help. Unfortunately, we don't know too much about mold outside of what I've learned in books. The good news is that there is almost no one else in China who does, so we can at least add some value. When I went into his apartment to take a look (he lived in the apartment complex that was hosting the fair), I felt like I was walking into a tropical jungle. Mold loves humidity, so it wasn't hard to be able to tell him that no matter what he does, it won't be successful until he can reduce the humidity.

Since Sunday, I have been able to meet with the retailers, who want to partner with us to certify their products and co-market, and will be meeting with an air purifier manufacturer tomorrow in order to work out some sort of referral relationship. The tough thing will be finding a balance between keeping our independent third-party position, while also offering downstream solutions and being able to make some money off of it.

I also did a lot of research on mold to be able to advise the customer with the mold problem. Followed up with a call today and we spoke for about an hour. He is very happy to have someone to talk to and is an "ideal" customer. Not only is he a good customer, but if we succeed with him, we can almost certainly get more business in that apartment complex and he will probably be a good advocate. I sent a proposal earlier tonight.

In the next few weeks, we will need to keep ironing out our processes, do good work to get a solid reputation, and then start expanding our marketing channels. Once we hit about 10 customers, I think it will be time to pull the trigger on full-time staff and some investment on test equipment.

The website is live too and that's a whole another animal -- adwords, blog maintenance, promotions, cross-marketing, search engine optimization... take a look and let me know what you think. Send me a message if you don't know the website address.

It's better to burn out than to fade away...

2010-11-09T14:00:00.001-05:00

Last night I went to feed the fish and tossed a couple pellets in. Normally, these are snapped up right away by "Jaws", one of our four fish, the one I've been training to be a goldfish piranha by giving him bloody mosquitoes I've slapped. He didn't bite. I looked around and couldn't find him. We have a lot of rocks and junk in our rock tank, so it's easy to miss a fish. The longer I looked, the more the sinking feeling grew. I didn't want to, but I looked down on the ground around the tank.

See, back when we got Jaws, he had er, a little too much bounce in his step. The first night, he jumped out of the tank twice. Then he seemed to settle down or realized that might be hazardous to his health. Every now and then though, we still heard the "bloop" sound of him doing a Free Willy. I looked around and was relieved to find no dead goldfish. Then I thought maybe our cats might have snagged him. Or the ayi (cleaning lady). No luck. Finally, I pull back the curtains, and there in the shadows of the corner, I see a shadow that looks like... a fish.

I wimped out. I made Sarah look and left the room. "It's him" she goes. I never thought I'd feel bad about a fish (we've probably flushed a dozen down the toilet in the past 18 months). But this guy was a survivor. It was a real bummer. And as I watched the other fish, I wondered what they were thinking. "Hey where'd that other guy go?" or did they think he escaped to freedom, kind of like in "The Running Man"?

Rest in peace little dude

Project Startup Update Week 19 - First customers!

2010-10-24T13:54:00.002-04:00

They say that one of the major milestones in starting a business is the getting the first customer. I guess you could say we achieved that this week (inked the deal but haven't taken payment yet). Although I initially thought that the first bite would be from a friend who would be a test customer, it turned out to be another company in the health & wellness space. This company has been operating in Beijing for a few years now, has done well in selling retail health products and recently expanded to water and air. They decided to private label a water filtration device (healthily priced at over USD 1000). Yet, amazingly, they didn't have any R&D or test results to show how well the filtration device was doing! Normally, when you certify a water purification device through an agency like the NSF (National Sanitation Foundation), you undergo rigorous testing for device quality, safety, marketing truthfulness, and most importantly, contaimination reduction claims. They didn't get this certified (it's not a requirement in China, surprise surprise), and so had no idea whether this was working or not. They had gone to a water testing company in Beijing and were not satisfied. When I pressed for details, they said that it was because the company gave them no guidance on what they should test, didn't seem to do it scientifically, and just gave them a report with no interpretation.

This was great because their experience is exactly what we are trying to address. So, I spent probably close to 20 hours either meeting with the product manager, giving them free advice about Shanghai water, different filtration systems, researching the certification process, advising on contaminants and health effects, then suggesting different courses of action. The good side effect of this is that I learned a lot in the process. Probably put together the only 6 page statement of work for a $1200 project in existence, hehe. Although it took almost 2 months, this week they finally gave the go-ahead on a fairly comprehensive water comparison testing. If we do a good job (which I'm pretty confident we can deliver), not only do we establish credibility with our testing partner that we are doing real business of a healthy size (~$1200 project), we also are building a future business partnership with this client. They've talked about selling or pushing our testing services in their retail store and we're also interested in them being the fulfillment partner for some solutions.

Today, we also had our first residential customer! It was my childhood best friend who's lived in SH for 6 years. Recently married and expecting a baby AND having just moved into a new apartment, he and his wife, had two good reasons for getting tested. Of course, even if he wasn't interested, I would have leaned on him pretty hard, since I was his best man :) I ran them through a questionnaire about their building profile, health conditions, symptoms, etc. They didn't raise any alarm bells, so I recommended a middle of the road sort of package, focusing on air particulates, VOCs (volatile organic compounds), and lead identification, which are all particularly relevant to expectant mothers. The inspection went smoothly, except that it was a little long (2 hours long). His results will be pretty baseline.

Over the next couple of weeks, we are running a friends and family special, which lets us fine tune our procedures, reports, etc, get feedback, and hopefully spread word of mouth. In exchange, friends and family get tested at near cost. I just sent out the brochure in an email on Friday, and the weekend has been pretty quiet, but hopefully there will be some nibbles in the next few days.

Last mini-milestone: we officially completed our business incorporation in HK last week! Why incorporate in HK? Setting up a wholly-foreign owned enterprise (WFOE) in China is a long, iron-bound process, and making any changes to equity ownership, etc is painful. So, many companies set up a holding company in HK and then make changes through that. The HK process only took about 2 weeks (and $1600 or so). Pretty cool feeling to have the corporate stamps and embossing tool. I went a little crazy and ran around embossing everything in sight :)

China taxes are weird

2010-09-13T12:55:00.000-04:00

I got a call from the agent who is helping me incorporate both the Chinese and the Hong Kong company. The HK company has to be set up as a shell company to own the Chinese company because trying to make any changes to the Chinese company equity ownership is apparently a pain in the ass. Also, there are some tax benefits. In any case, I'm shelling out an extra $1700 to set up the HK company and an extra $1300 in fees every year for accounting and business license. Not real happy about it, but it will leave me the option and I won't kick myself down the road if I need to get investors.

Anyhow the agent tells me that the business district she was going to register me in has arbitrarily changed its preferential tax policies. Despite the tax law change in 2008 that unified taxes between Chinese and foreign companies, each local govt still has the ability to do little dope deals. So, since their main objective is to attract investment, the govt of Fengxian had a sweetheart deal with my registration agent to refund 30% of my revenue tax (5% of revenues) and 15% of my business profit tax (25%) back to me. Quite a good deal and I wasn't expecting it at all.

Unfortunately, Fengxian decided to reduce this by half. So, now I'm asking the agent to go searching for greener pastures. The agent obviously doesn't want to do it because they have a special deal with that district, but they should be shopping around for their customers. It's really surprising that the agents don't bring this up as a selling point, because that could be VERY substantial over the long run depending on the size of the company.

But I guess it also makes sense because it's probably not something they want the central government to know is going on...

Pound of sweat

2010-09-06T14:47:00.001-04:00

I've just sent off draft one of content to my web page designer. I tell you what...I think anyone in marketing should have to go through the process of creating a website -- from layout to content. The content has taken me the most time -- probably close to 40 pages in content, complete with graphics, photos and source references (of which I am guessing I'll probably want to delete about half for skimmability) But, the layout has been the hardest.

Maybe I'm just totally left-brained, but doing the home page mockup kind of left me feeling really drained. I'm just not creative.

Back to the point -- this whole exercise forces you to think about who your customers are, why they give a rat's ass about your website, products, and services, and forces you to prioritize. It was actually a really useful process.

Let's see what the designer thinks though...

In other news, got intern #1 working, who although he's an undergrad senior, seems to be pretty sharp. Nice not to be a one-man band anymore. Two other master's candidates, both at Jiaotong's Environmental Studies dept, to call up tomorrow. I like how some Chinese students put their photos on their resumes. In some cases that works to their benefit. Other times.... heh

All work and no play makes me a dull boy

2010-09-05T22:36:00.001-04:00

A few days ago, I decided to take a day off and finally check out what the World Expo was all about. The Shanghai government gave every legal resident household a free ticket and 200rmb to thank them for putting up with the construction and preparation but the ticket expires in Aug, so I had to go by today. I didn't do too much homework - just went online to check out the buzz on some of the best pavilions and then printed put the schedule of events, which seemed to be pretty repetitive and small-time.

Took a cab to West Yanan Lu and wanted to catch Line 4 to Luban Lu, one of the Expo entrances on the Puxi side, but I forgot that two lines both run off the same track and lost about half an hour . Doh! At least this happened on a day when I wasn't in a rush. Might as well get used to waiting.

10 min walk from subway stop and I was there. Lots of space for queues but no lines, through security in 5 min (don't bring liquids or lighters).

Went to check the event calendar and found there was a Gracie Brazilian jiujitsu (what I train) demo at night!
Then I started wandering in a general direction in that area.

World Expo Museum - skip, just some audiovisual screens on past exhibitions, not even a narrative

Pavilion of urban footprint - not bad. Supposed to be the evolution of cities, but there are just a lot of static displays and no narrative our explanation of significance. Actually there are a few videos that had some text, but no one was reading. Kind of like drive-bys. Looking at how many cameras are going off around me though, I guess this is what the chinese market wants. Photo opps and cheesy disneyland-like displays. Been there, done that. It's a little depressing to see especially around the displays that atte explaining concepts like sustainability that more chinese could be exposed to.

Japan Commercial Pavilion - only had to wait 17 min for this one, even less than the 30 min posted. It was a series of about 7 short marketing pieces by japanese companies. Some were gee whiz (3D), others emotional, what's funny is that you had no options on what to see. Just had to watch all. The highlight was that a few (about 10%) of the visitors won an invite in their gift bags to visit the"worlds most expensive bathroom". My luck held out and I had one. Other than a solid gold toilet, however, this was no different than any nice Japanese office bathroom.

Next, I decided to go check out a different area. I went to Area B, Oceania and Asia, taking the free subway one stop.

Australia - impressive red block building very much in character with the Outback. I have been to Australia a few times and spent a fair amount of time there, but the line was short. the 360 theater was technologically nifty but lacking in content.

NZ - Virtually no wait. I was drawn by the polynesian/mauri dancing performance, but they actually had a decent pavilion. I thought it didn't do a good job capturing the amazing scenery and overemphasized the cities, but I guess that was intentional. to offset that though, they had this sort of landscape on top that even had a live wall of plants. air seemed cleaner.

Philippines - No wait either. given the recent killings of HK tourists due in part to police incompetence, I would have expected some backlash and one of the workers said that that there had been some response, but mostly not nasty. this pavilion was very accurate to how I know the philippines. Focused on music and disorganized. But one thing made this a favorite for me: free massage. Yep, masseuses from the Shangrila Hotel gave 10 min massages. was very nice.

Given how the lines were so light and after some food court workers told me that this was the fewest people they'd seen in awhile, I decided to go spend my remaining time this trip on the more crowded things.

Made my way to China. That building is imposing. Holy cow. Best place to take good photos is from the neighboring sky bridge that connects to all the retail and restaurants. Unfortunately I couldn't get in because I hadn't pre-registered. They give those out every morning at 9am at all of the gates. I asked one of the info booth volunteers which gate had the fewest people and she said gate# 2, on Puxi side. I also checked out Macau's pavilion from the outside but couldn't get a good photo. It is in the shape of a rabbit. As one China blogger put it, didn't a single person on the Macau committee stop and say, "Wait a second, it's a fucking bunny??"

Turkey - 10am min wait, nifty architecture, and almost like a museum inside. They are also the first I'd seen to use bluetooth to send details as you walked through the pavilion. Good idea.

Ireland - the "look how many famous Irish there are!" pavilion. I waited 15 min which was about 10 min longer than this exhibit was worth. nice grass on the outside.

England - I mainly went just to see the building architecture. There are fiber optic cables all on the outside, supposedly each with a seed inside. The net effect is that the pavilion looks like a fluffy koosh ball or maybe a dandelion. This is one design concept that must new seen to be believed. It really does look shiny and round from a distance and then hazy up close. My camera even had a tough time focusing! There was still a big line and I've seen enough of the UK, so have it a skip.

France - this was the last pavilion I had time for and it was worth it because I can definitely say that without a doubt it was the most impressive pavilion I saw all day. First, it looked nice outside. Sophisticated, classy, cubist. Wait was less than 20 min. Inside the courtyard, out looked a little like a French estate garden. The theme was the "sensual life" so obviously there was a lot of emphasis on indulging the senses. The thought that came to me as I was walking through was a science and technology museum (which I ve always loved). Lots of overactive exhibits, lots of pizzazz for a reason. There were booths that had smells, lots of surround sound, and one cool thing was that they had the kitchen of the attached french restaurant integrated into the exhibits.

After this, I had to get to the BJJ demo, so I got back over to E District. It was a pretty good show put on by another local school with attendance from fighters from Brazil and Abu Dhabi. They did have random dancers, doing everything from traditional Chinese dress to Brazilian Carnevale costumes to cheerleader outfits which was weird. Mixed in with bloody scenes of mixed martial arts, ultimate fighting championships and hard hitting demos, they also had some wushu and soft flowing taichi performances that really looked more like a dance performance. Weird.

So 9 exhibits in about 10 hrs plus watching two shows was a pretty good day.

Week 11 of Project Startup: Two steps backwards, one step forward

2010-09-01T10:31:00.001-04:00

I've just returned from a couple of chaotic weeks in Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, and then Taiwan again.

I was first in Taiwan for my grandpa's funeral. It was a short (20 hr) bittersweet trip. Although sad to see him like that and sadder to see how broken up everyone was, it was amazing to hear some of the stories about him and how he touched so many people's lives. I also got to meet relatives I never knew before.

Went on to Indonesia to spend a week with my cousin. She's just recently gotten certified as a scuba diver and I was excited to try to help introduce her to the underwater world. We spent 5 days doing the beach thing in Central Sulawesi at a German-run place called Prince John Resort in Tanjung Karung, and then decided to "rough it" a bit by going out to a remote national park. It was definitely an adventure and merits its own blog entry. I'll post it later :)

Then back to Taiwan for my high school best friend's wedding. I was the best man, but I think I actually took the duty more seriously than my friend! Typical exchange -- Me: "Hey K, what's going on with the rehearsal?" K: "Um, rehearsal?" It was in a gorgeous location, Taiwan's northeast coast, at a resort called the Leo. Other than some thunderstorms that interrupted the reception dinner at inopportune times, things went well. The afterparty went on pretty late and I didn't go the distance because we had an early morning flight the next morning and Sarah decided to call it a night early.

I came back to Shanghai ready to get a jump on the business again, and checked in with my assistant/intern as soon as I got back. She had two pieces of unwelcome news. First, the two local Chinese companies that I had met with before leaving and had counted on to be my subcontractors had both backed out. We had good meetings and I thought that they were both onboard to do the environmental testing for us. So it was a bit of a shock to find out how they had responded to the letter I asked my assistant to write to them. One company contact seemed impatient, like he couldn't be bothered to provide us the information we were asking for. The other guy, a young manager that I got along well with (we were both former military), inexplicably said that he had heard we had contacted many companies and didn't want to do business with us. Very disappointing news.

Then to pile on to this, my intern, H, who has been invaluable in every aspect, but mainly in dealing with translations and business development with Chinese partners, informed me that her Ph D advisor was putting her on a full-time project in Wuhan in a week and she'd be unavailable to continue with the project. Not good news.

So, that was the two steps back. Within the first couple of days after I returned, though, I did make some progress. I met with the website designing company and we hashed out a plan. Since the website is such a big part of marketing and customer education (and demand creation), I was happy to have a plan in place. For $1500, I'll be pretty happy if we can pull this off without too many complications. Second, I was able to get some more information on incorporation. Registering my company is actually a pain in the ass. In the US, you can easily incorporate for a couple hundred dollars. In China, it costs about $2000-10000, depending on what agent you use and where you incorporate. Also, many WOFEs (wholly owned foreign entities) first incorporate in Hong Kong and then make that holding company the parent company registered for the China WOFE. This is to givev more flexibility around changing equity ownership and in moving money around. However, this is an additional ~$2000 to setup and an additional ~$500/yr to do the accounting/tax filing, even if you don't even run money through the HK entity. So, I had to figure out whether the pros outweighed the cons. Usually, the best way to get answers is to ask potential consultants or agents who are hungry for your business, so I talked to about 5 of them, plus an accountant. I was left more confused than when I started. What complicates things is that since I'm a US citizen, the IRS taxes me on my global income. So, for most people, it makes sense to move profits to HK in order to lower their tax bill. However, as far as I can tell, it really doesn't matter if you're a US citizen because you have to report global income from dividends no matter where they're distributed. There's probably some way to game the system, but my tax guy in the US is a pretty straight shooter and won't tell me.

Anyhow, still a work in progress -- hope to have our first customers in about 3 weeks.

Trip report on WG / YeYe's funeral

2010-08-09T12:37:00.001-04:00

Hi everyone, thought I'd share my notes on how this weekend's funeral
went. Please excuse typos as I had to write this all on a mobile
phone (touchscreen keyboards suck).

Wai Gong funeral service trip
(7 Aug 2010)

Flew out on a direct flight from Pudong (less than 2 hours). TSA was
smaller than I thought. Caught Fang4 hang 2 bus to Keelung from bus
stop# 3 outside Terminal 1 and was in Keelung 30 min later. Getting a
cab was a little awkward because the cabby was an elderly guy who
couldn't read my street directions and I didn't have pinyin. I
eventually arrived comfortably before the service and it was nice to
see Mom and all the uncles.

The space for the service was pretty industrial and kind of loud, but
it was done up nicely with wreaths all around and seating set up for
about 100 people. Mom introduced me to a number of people. Zhong Hui
and San Shu Gong were the main people I remember. I changed into my
suit and then as the church choir rehearsed, the family had a small
service by WG's casket. He looked small and childlike, with only his
face showing. It bothered me a little that I didn't have a strong
emotional response, but I think its because it just didn't seem like
WG at all. During the private service, some of the uncles broke down.
It was hard to watch. Zhong Hui was particularly broken up.

The service started soon after, with about 70 people in attendance.
It was a Christian service with hymns, prayers, intermixed with
eulogies and testimonies. Mom gave a really good eulogy that touched
on his biography and how he was as a father and husband. I had the
chance to speak as well. Here's the English version:
_____
Greetings friends and family. I am HHW's grandson and am representing
the younger generation.

Many today have talked of Wai Gong's generosity, his great deeds, and
loyalty, so I'd like to speak of his humor and playfulness. There are
two short stories I want to share.

When I was a boy, I spent a year living in Taichung with WG and WP. I
was a very naughty boy. Not a lot of people in their 70s would be
willing to take on a 7 yr old boy, but I think WG really enjoyed
having a kid around. I would climb above a doorway and refuse to come
down until WG said, "I beg you to come to dinner." He always did this
in a joking way and it was a private joke between us for many years.

My cousin Stephanie also told me a story. She and my uncle HZ Ming
often would take WG shopping at the nearby grocery store. He loved to
cook and loved to go shopping. This time they got separated and they
couldn't find WG. After searching everywhere, they feared he had hurt
himself. Finally they decided to call Wai Poh at home to tell her
what was going on. Guess who answered the phone? WG. He said, "You
guys were so slow that I just came back myself."

We will remember WG not as a 100 yr old man, but as a grandpa whom we
liked to introduce to our friends because he was "cool". I am sure
that as WG is in heaven by WPs side he is surely teasing her with a
grin on his face like he did over a lifetime.
____

There was a really good slide show set to music that Uncle Larry and
Aunt Ann arranged. It demonstrated all different aspects of WGs life
during different phases, whether as a young man or in Yangzhou just
before he passed. The most memorable was a short clip of him playing
chess with an old friend. The friend was saying, "let's take a
break." WG looks at his watch and says, "stop stalling, let's go!"

Finally, Uncle Larry thanked by name many of the family and friends
who had helped out during the past few months. Yu Jiu Ma, Dr. Dong,
and Hsu Zhong Bo and Hsu Zhong Dao were singled out for contributions.

Following this, the family went to the casket to lay flowers on WGs
chest and say a final goodbye. It was heartwrenching. We formed a
line to say thanks to those who had come to the service. Then we took
the casket out to the hearse to go to the crematorium.

That night we had a big dinner. I got a chance to meet many of our
Taiwan relatives, from Zhong Yi, the baby faced 42 yr old youngest
brother who is building a camera distributorship in TW, Zhong Dao, who
retired as a lieutenant colonel in the Information branch of the Army,
and Sun, Zhong Hui's husband, who was a ordnance guy until he retired
as a full colonel.

As funerals tend to be, there was laughter and good memories. The
next morning, I had to head to the airport early, but the rest of the
clan headed to Taichung to see Tai Gong's grave.

It was a good way to go out and everyone contributed something to help
out. I was really proud of our family.

--
Louie Cheng

Hsu Heng Wen

2010-07-27T12:25:00.001-04:00

1908 (Jiansu Province, China) - July 27, 2010 (Taiwan)

I miss you Wai Gong.

Week 7 - Websites, branding, incorporation

2010-07-26T23:34:00.001-04:00

It seems that a lot of people around here in China are in some stage of starting a business. A business could be anything from an idea to an ongoing, revenue-generating company. It's therefore easy to continue "working on an idea" for a long long time. Of course easier if you have another source of income :) I didn't want to be like that and wanted to stay on a project timeline. Part of that was because of my own anal nature but also because I always kind of blew off people who used a business idea as an excuse to be a bum. Also, my business partner would only be around for 2 months and I needed to make sure that he was putting in as much as he could, which would only happen if I was driving and working harder.

So, we have had a rough project plan with some milestones, but mainly just continuing to move the ball. Then about 2 weeks ago, I saw a notice for the annual Shanghai Expatriate (Expat) Fair. Here's the description:

-------------

The Expat Show Shanghai is the biggest gathering of the foreign community with over 12,000 visitors set to attend. The show was created to serve as a platform for over 200 exhibitors to promote their services and products to make the lives of expatriates living in Shanghai easier, not only that but the show is host to many activities such as 'Live Performances', 'Mom and Babies Fair' and a 'Private Kindergarten' to allow for an enjoyable day for all the family. Already in its 4th edition, the 'The Expat Show Shanghai' is further expanding with the inclusion of the 'Cuisine Festival' which will bring over 60 exhibitors from the culinary world, it will bring prestigious restaurants, chocolate and wine tasting as well as the chance to cook with some of the best chefs in France. This year's edition is not to be missed, so make sure you attend!

-----------

The mark was on the wall. It seemed a little bit daunting. We have no partners. We lack clarity on our offerings. We haven't tested on customers. We have a company name but no branding, logo, or website. We are not incorporated. Hey, let's do it anyways.

So, now that's the pressure. Working pretty hard now. We have one intern, who is a finance PhD student at Jiaotong University and my business partner working part-time. He has a very similar job to what I used to have -- Director of Strategy and Business Development for a global firm. He's really good at networking and is an idea guy, but tends to shy away from actual hands on operations -- working with vendors, doing customer interviews, hunting down supplies, creating marketing content. My dad is in town for a month and also is helping. With a background in botany and as a former science teacher, he's a natural to help with questions around mold, water quality, etc, so I've given him a list of 4 things to focus on. He tends to get distracted easily, so hopefully, he can stay on target.

So, am knocking down the different requirements needed before launch one at a time. Yesterday was website and logo. I went to meet with a French-Chinese design company here in Shanghai yesterday. They were quite thorough and professional in walking me through the website creation process. My contact suggested a few page designs and will provide a full quote to me later today. Interestingly, he suggested that I move my hosting from GoDaddy.com in the US to a Hong Kong based server to improve search engine optimization. The thought is that most expats in China use google and google currently redirects through HK and HK-based websites get a higher score than those based in other companies.

Last night, I also took my brother's (and another friend's) advice to "crowd source". Instead of trying to design our own logo (impossible since I'm not creative) or go to a design company, you essentially post a reward and a community of designers submits ideas. For $200 ($270 with fees), you can get 20-50 ideas. It's a great way to get a wide variety of ideas. So I went to 99designs.com and posted a description of the company, our target market, and some of my preliminary ideas and the reverse auction will go for a week. That, in turn, will drive the website. You can also do this for website, but I think since our website is pretty simple, I may just go with a single local company that I can iterate with. Interestingly, when I brought up crowd-sourcing to the design firm I met with, I expected them to scoff at it or talk about how bad the quality would be. The guy did not. He sort of thought about it, said that he could not go as low as the design price at the bottom tier ($495), but that they wouldn't be that far off. Music to my ears!

Ok, onto trying to get a vendor slot at the fair now...

My three week US tour

2010-07-08T14:01:00.004-04:00

So, I've been in the US for the past week or so, going from city to city seeing friends and family, meeting with potential business partners, and still spending a few hours each day plugging away at the business prep. I am hoping that by mid-September, when school has just started, we will be ready for a "soft opening", meaning that we will have preliminary marketing materials ready, website up, business named, and partners in place and tested. We'll start with friends and family in Shanghai at cost.

This trip, I will be in the following places:

NH - Sarah's folks and brother and sis-in-law and their ultra cute kid Ozzy. Man, NH is beautiful!

Boston - Spent a scorching July 4th with Sarah B and her family up in their place on the water on the North shore. Two kids are doing great and I am amazed how much the little one, Eliza, can talk. Then couple days with my uncle and aunt in Lincoln. Last few days will be staying with my buddy John and his wife in downtown. Was hoping to go diving (even brought some of my gear), but my dive buddy Bill suddenly got busy with work and I'll probably stay dry (sad no lobster diving this time around). Instead, the old dive gang (Bill, John, and Don) will go shooting at the range and then grab dinner. Got to see college buddy Joe before he moves down to NJ. I'm also here for my friend Paul's wedding (after 8 years of engagement!) and did karaoke last night with him and some friends.

Work wise, Sarah and I went to check out the house, moved stuff out of the attic and basement to go up to NH, and cleaned up around the property. After 7 months on the market, we are ready to drop the price if that's what's needed to sell. Selling it for less than we bought it 8 years ago is a bitter pill to swallow, but it's just too painful a process managing from overseas and the longer it sits vacant, the more likely the house will continue to have things happen to it. Bright spot is that our neighbor, the 22yr old punk and part-time pot dealer, has bought a house in Roxbury and will be moving out. FINALLY.

I also visited a well-established environmental company started by a Harvard professor. I was referred to the Harvard professor through a recent grad I met in Shanghai. The company is doing pretty much what we're looking to do, though they are light years ahead. After meeting with two of their folks for about 2 hrs, we agreed that there was a potential partnership or some way of working together. I came back with some ideas and the next step is for us to provide them a concrete business plan, resumes and some references. It's new ground for me and a little bit scary, but also exciting.

New York: Will be taking the Chinatown bus to spend a few days with Isaac and Jaime. Might try and see one or two other old friends.

San Francisco: Last stop on the US tour. Will spend 5 days with brother Loren and finally get to hang out with his darling daughter, possibly the cutest 2 year old in the world. I'll also stay with cousin Lyz, although I'll see her in less than a month in Indonesia. And, will hang out with college roommate Anton. He's one of our regular college pack that does an annual roadtrip. But this year looks like the trip may be in jeopardy, so it will be good that I've been able to see all of them on this trip.

Grandpa's ups and down's

2010-07-08T13:54:00.004-04:00

I haven't updated on Wai Gong recently. After leaving Yangzhou (he was there for 6 weeks), he was in good shape -- potentially a slight lung infection, but he was alert and fever had broken. We were primarily moving him to Taiwan for better hospice care and physical therapy.

He was escorted there by two uncles. From that point on, I had to rely on email updates and the occasional phone call to Taiwan. Things started going downhill about 3 weeks ago. The stories about the elderly having a major surgery or stay in the hospital and never leaving seemed to be coming true. The lung infection developed into a type of pneumonia, and the difficulty in breathing led to pain and sort of a half-asleep, half-waking state. He also developed edema, a stomach ulcer, and even a fracture was identified in his neck. Doctors decided to move him to the ICU.

The whole family (mother's generation) managed to get out to Taiwan to be with him in case it was time for him to go. Displaying his typical spirit however, he refused to go so easily, and has sort of bounced back. The latest is another uptick for the better:

"This is a milestone day for yeye; doctor removed the breathing tube this afternoon without any problem. He had a couple days of "practice" before this. When I saw yeye at 2, and again at 7, he was breathing normally with oxygen mask and the O2 sat was 98%. Doctor said he is doing fine and if everything goes well he will move yeye out of ICU to regular floor on Monday.

He had the dialysis yesterday late in the day. This morning doctor told us that 5 kg of fluid was removed from his body, and the chest x-ray showed much improvement. Based on that the doctor made his decision for removing the tube. Except for his left hand, he does not show much sign of edema. His left hand (paralyzed from the stroke?) still is pretty swolllen and the skin is shiny. I will ask the doctor in the morning if there is anything can be done since dialysis apparently did not work on the left hand.

Yeye is still very weak, but he would open his eyes (barely) when we tell him who we are. He can not talk yet. At one point tonight, he gestured with his hand and we thought he wanted to write. We put a pen in his hand but he was too weak to even hold the pen. Nurse wants us to continue to work with him moving his joints, which is what Isaac and I did every time we visited him.

Tomorrow I will leave yeye and head back to US. I am hesitating telling him that in fear that he might react badly. Since there will be at least one family member at his bed side for the next couple weeks, I may decide not to tell him that I am leaving. If he asks (hope), whoever is with him can just tell him that chung ping had to go back home to take care of Billie."

A lot of people pulling for him, but we've also come to the conclusion that we just want the pain and suffering to be minimized and don't want to push our desire for him to go on onto him if it involves more trauma. In the past, he's indicated many times his desire to go. It's in divine hands now.

Powerpoint Ranger no longer

2010-06-28T14:12:00.001-04:00

I was doing some financial projections on the company (seductively easy to do when you haven't even chosen a company name yet!) and wanted to do a projected value of the company in 3 years. I had to refer back to notes from business school on how to do this and popped open an old powerpoint. I then realized that it has been over 3 weeks since I've opened Powerpoint. I don't think I've gone that long since college!

And I ain't complain'.

Wanted: Advisor or subject matter expert

2010-06-17T03:27:00.002-04:00

Hey guys,

My top priority right now is to find a subject matter expert who I can ask questions and who has experience being in my shoes. Ideally, it is someone who runs his own company doing indoor air quality testing and remediation, but could also be someone who is in the business as a customer (ie. a building management company, facilities management, a developer, etc).

Ideally it's also someone who has few ties to China and wouldn't consider taking this idea and running with it themselves. I'm willing to pay a consulting fee for the right person who could serve as an advisor.

If you guys know of anyone who might fit the bill, please let me know... or if you have suggestions on how to find someone.

Thanks!

Goodbye corporate life

2010-06-17T02:08:00.002-04:00

This marks the second week of being self-employed. I guess I should say "self-unemployed" to be more accurate. Although I am still officially on the payroll until the end of the month, my last day at work was a little more than a week ago.

That I walked away from my comfy job as Director of Strategy and Business Development (Asia) for a Fortune 100 global information company without another job lined up might be a little surprising to some of you who know me. Since graduating from college, I've always been part of a big organization, a cog in the wheel, making my way up the ladder. It's probably in my nature to like groups where it's clear where you stand and where you have a place and can see how advance. Heck, it surprises myself, but this isn't something I came to lightly.

I hadn't felt passion for my job for awhile. Despite the nice title, being in senior management, and being able to travel around the globe on the company dime, I just didn't feel that I was making a tremendous impact. At the risk of sounding corny, I've never had a clearly defined career track -- I've only felt that as long as I was learning something new each day, and could justify my paycheck at the end of the day, I was on the right path.

I wasn't feeling this, and the deployment last year made me feel it even more acutely. Last year at this time, I was helping in a tangible way to improving the rebuilding of Iraq and getting our guys out of a war. People were coming up to me, commenting on the value of the information I was getting out or the training sessions, and despite some of the conditions, I was having fun and looking forward to more days than not.

I hoped that coming back to work, I'd be more refreshed and ready to go. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case -- within a few days, it felt like I had never left. When you start thinking that you wish you were back in a war zone, it usually means that something is wrong. Part of this was just the nature of the function I did -- strategy guys are usually happiest when they accept the fact that they are advice providers, not doers. If they can deal with the fact that they can't control what gets implemented, they're ok. I didn't like that and tended to try to get my hands dirty. Being in a regional role is also tough -- you're squeezed in the middle between the global business unit that makes the product strategy and the country owners who choose what they want to execute. So, frequently, I felt like I was either relabeling strategy and just repackaging stuff, or if I came out with a particular direction, I would sometimes find that the countries were actually doing something totally different. Covering so many different country markets in my job also meant that I tended to be spread pretty thin. It was all pretty unsatisfying.

I had intended on giving notice in June, but a talent review forced my hand, since I didn't want to make my boss look stupid by not giving him a heads up. It went very quickly. Once I confidentially told one person in the company (the global HR head), I had taken a step that couldn't be taken back and it was a big relief. From then, I had to have the conversation with my boss, which was pretty painful, but in the end I just told him that my heart wasn't in it and it was better for him to find someone who could better meet his expectations.

The last 3 weeks was essentially transitioning and tying up loose ends. I was looking forward to taking a couple months off to travel, work on personal projects, and figure out what I wanted to do, but it was weird. As soon as i decided to leave my company, a lot of other opportunities started popping up from all directions -- headhunters, friends, relatives. It was a relief -- I didn't even really remember how to job search. But, I decided that I wanted to go all the way to the other end of the spectrum and try something entrepreneurial. I always had a lot of respect for people who went their own way, and having missed the whole internet boom in the late 90s, I thought that if I went to some corporate post during the China wild rush, I'd never forgive myself, especially while I didn't have a big family to rely on me and Sarah could be my sugar mommy.

So what instead? I sat down and brainstormed one day on a plane. I made a list of growing market trends (Chinese domestic tourism, real estate values, the education market), what I had to offer (consulting skills, services know-how, insight into the expat market), and what I was interested in (travel, operational roles, socially-redeeming activities). A few ideas popped up, but nothing breathtaking.

Then, on the way back from a golf trip in the Philippines with a good buddy (also a b-school classmate, though a few years earlier), he brought up an idea he had come up with but had never put into play. The idea was basically around being an indoor environmental (air, water) testing and remediation (correcting the problem) company serving the expat market. He had come upon this idea when he himself was trying to get his apartment tested and found no good companies that could help him navigate the different environmental hazards, recommend what tests he needed to get, and help tell him how to fix the problem.

I enjoy discussing business ideas (screening good and bad ideas was a big part of my job before), so we went at it at 20k feet (literally) and by the time we landed, I was pretty excited. There was an good market opportunity, it was not capital intensive (therefore not very risky), and I had someone who I could work with for a couple months before he went back to the states.

So, over the past month or so, we have been doing all the groundwork of building a business, from coming up with an offering document, doing market research, scanning for partners, understanding business incorporation options, preparing marketing, talking to potential customers, and pricing. Some of this was what I might have done before, but only on a project plan for someone else to do, and now that this is for myself, it's really a lot of fun. There will be a lot more to do, but succeed or fail, I will learn a lot from this venture, so I'm quite excited and have few regrets about making the leap.

I'll continue to make updates to this -- it might serve as a record to myself later on of the lessons I'm learning! Please weigh in with comments or suggestions, especially from anyone with experience in doing their own business or who might know something about the indoor environmental testing business.

Things I learned about the Chinese Medical System

2010-06-12T15:04:00.000-04:00

So, over the past month, I've had the chance to make some first-hand observations about medicine in China. Some of it is good, some bad, some just comical...

1. Incredibly cheap - 30 days of inpatient care in a semi-private room, total hip replacement surgery, all drugs, and stroke care cost only about $7000 US.
2. That said, You sometimes get what you pay for
3. Concept of PT and rehab doesn't really exist here
4. Most hospice care comes from the patient's family, not nurses. Feed patients yourself, have to call when IV bottles are complete
5. Don't understand what doctors have to do. Dr. Dong was always around, then also went home for long lunches.
6. Learned how to move patients around on a bed, clean them, put a bedpan in, use a pee bottle and catheter, give an enema, and use a tube to reduce gas buildup

Catching up on lost time - PT 1, Grand Dad's woes

2010-06-10T23:35:00.005-04:00

I'm long overdue for an update, as a few significant events have happened in the past several months.

First, my grandfather on my mom's side (Wai Gong) came for a visit to China and had some major medical incidents while here. He had done this trip many times, as recently as just a year ago. My mother was also here. They all wanted to see the World Expo and to go visit our distant relatives in Yangzhou, about 4 hours' bus ride from Shanghai.

It was great to see Wai Gong -- he had been a big part of my childhood, raising me for a year in Taiwan when I was 7. For a 102 yr old guy, he was still getting around on a cane, and had a razor-sharp mind. It was also great for him to see Sarah -- she hadn't seen him (or the rest of my family) in probably 5 years or so.

Then in Yangzhou, WG slipped in the bathroom and broke his hip. Not only was it broken, it was seriously crushed (as I saw from the xrays). Most people know that a broken hip is a serious injury for elderly people, due to the complications from surgery, possible infection during bedrest, and likelihood of further reduced mobility even if everything goes right. Adding in his age and worse, the fact that this was happening in a third tier Chinese city, and our worst nightmares seemed to be unfolding.

Fortunately, one of our relatives (the husband of my mom's uncle's daughter), a young, serious guy by the name of Dong Xiancheng, is an orthopedic doctor at Yangzhou's best hospital, a large new hospital built in the past several years. The Chinese guanxi system kicked in to our benefit as he was able to fast track WG to get surgery that night, with two department heads doing the surgery and anesthesia.

The surgery was a huge success. They did an entire hip replacement and WG was not only conscious afterwards, but quite alert and even cracked a joke or two. The next few days were tough as the pain set in, but WG was handling it. I did learn that the Chinese medical system operates quite differently than the hospitals in the US, but it was nothing we couldn't overcome and will many family members there to help out, we managed ok.

Mom and I left 4 or 5 days after the accident. WG was stabilized and we had set up care and funding for the Yangzhou family to start rehabilitating him. I had to get back to work, but arranged to come back in about a week. While I was in Shanghai, I was in daily contact with the YZ family and handling correspondence for all the worried family back in the US.

WG was making real progress -- he had managed to start walking again, and I was able to speak with him on the phone (surprising given that he's pretty deaf now). Then, the helper noticed that WG was simply spacing out, and she called the doctor. WG was unresponsive and they diagnosed a stroke. I arrived the day after this and everyone had long faces -- WG had lost movement in his left side and was in a haze.

During the next week, we stayed with him night and day and he passed in and out of lucidity. Nighttime was particularly bad, as he would wake up yelling for me, just to ask a question, or say he had to pee, etc. He even lost control of basic bodily functions and I became pretty good at being a hospital orderly :)

It was very depressing to see him like this. It was hardest not knowing whether there was more that we should be doing for him. Although my initial mission going back to YZ was to ensure he was getting physical therapy (without which he could be crippled for the rest of his life), it soon became clear that this was not the priority. WG had a high fever and the doctors could not figure out what the cause was. We also didn't trust the conflicting opinions and advice like, "Just have him eat porridge" (which has very little nutritional value). Eventually, we decided to evacuate him to Taiwan when he was stabilized for better care and the challenge was trying to get the airline to accept an invalid and also on how to minimize the risk of something happening to him while in transit.

Uncle Steve and Larry worked that angle, while I worked the China side. On the day I was to leave (had a long planned business trip I couldn't avoid), Steve was to arrive. I got the best surprise. Overnight, WG's fever broke and he was much more alert. He not only was asking a lot of questions, but he could actually move his left leg (not his hand though). It was so amazing and unexpected that I felt like crying. He was very mentally sharp -- remembered where I was going for my business trip, remarked that he felt much more alert, asked for specific foods (complained about the boring porridge), and waved to a little boy in the elevator when he was going to get his CT scan. The CT scan confirmed the stroke, but the doctors were quite happy and were hopeful for a recovery.

At this point, I left WG in the uncles' hands. They got him to Taiwan, where WG was diagnosed with a minor infection (perhaps pneumonia) in his lungs, edema in his feet. He now had better nursing, though it is not certain that the medical advice or diagnosis was necessarily better. He was taking his PT seriously and was able to increase the strength in his left leg significantly (though not much improvement in his left hand still).

He complained of neck ache and still had slight fevers, and then the doctors prescribed colchichine, some drug, which seemed to relieve all of these symptoms. So, other than his left hand, WG has made all in all, a remarkable recovery. With all these ups and downs, it has been a lot of trials and tribulations for the family, but everyone has found a way to pitch in, whether from Mom managing a running tab of expenses, to Uncles Steve and Larry putting their very busy work lives on hold to come to take him to Taiwan and take care of him there, to Uncle Ark and Aunt Agnes scheduled to watch him for the next several weeks. One other person, who I had never met before, Yu Shi Hua ("Yu Jiu Ma") has been amazing. She is 78, but is incredibly energetic and caring. She was helping me arrange the whole family visit to Shanghai, but stepped up big in the crisis and has consistently shown up in a low-key way to help out. I'm really glad I met her and hope to become closer to their family. The family in Yangzhou, Uncle Zhong Bo, his wife, and Uncle Zhong Ning, have been tireless in their efforts, and of course Dr. Dong...to this day, i don't know what kind of medical system allows him to spend so much time at the bedside of a family member. I often wondered what happened to his own patients!

So, WG will remain in Taiwan for the next several months recuperating and doing physical therapy. I can only hope that he continues to surprise us in the way he has been.

Bank of China sucks!

2010-04-14T09:29:00.001-04:00

So, like many Chinese banks that are threatened with foreign banks entering the market (or just want to tap expat customers), my local bank, Bank of China, has set up an English language website for online banking. It sucks in so many ways. The cursor not changing to a different icon when you hover over something clickable, the fact that passwords using capital letters mysteriously freeze the system, the bad English translation, etc.

The last time I was on, I noticed that some hacker had apparently felt the same way as me and took out his frustration by adding a little bit of editorial comment to the landing page after log-in. I had a good laugh and then forgot about it. Tonight, about 2 months after seeing that, I logged in again and IT'S STILL UP THERE! The funniest thing about this is that someone's job is to watch this site or maintain it.

Oh well, here's the screen shot for sh*ts and giggles.

Some of the worst offenders of being "not global"

2010-04-12T06:14:00.001-04:00

Are "multinational" banks headquartered in the US. No joke. You would think that Citibank and Chase Manhattan, multibillion dollar financial institutions, could get their act together and support customers that don't live in the US. Nope. It's taken 5 calls and 3 months to get a replacement card and I still don't have one yet. For Chase, I've been trying to get a replacement refund check since they sent one to me while I was deployed last year.

The problems?

1. Legacy computer systems that don't allow you to update with addresses that have a foreign country (no foreign country dropdown box) and make you call in

2. In-house database systems that don't have sufficient fields. With both systems, they kept running out of space or told me that if I wanted a zipcode, I could only use one street address line

3. Call center people who don't know where or what Shanghai is and how to take dictation when a romanized Chinese street name is spelled to them. I swear, I was so hoping that an Indian call center guy would answer my call

4. Stupid fraud detection process that automatically flags and freezes your card when you make online purchases. This happens regularly no matter how many times I call them and tell them that I am living in China and frequently traveling in Asia. Their systems are set up against the average American who never leaves the country.

4. Ok, this one's not their fault. Either the US or China postal system sucks when it comes to receiving foreign mail. 1 month is average, and success rate of arrival is about 50%

So, these "multinationals" actually are only global in the sense that they have presence in multiple locations. If you're looking for consistent service or portability of your account, etc. they suck. Sorry, America, but you're really not helping yourself out here -- I think the international banks (HK, UK, etc) are much better at dealing with customers that actually move around the world.

Thanks for listening to my Monday suck.

Kitty is loud

2010-04-09T06:02:00.001-04:00

The new kitten went through 4 days of being called "kitty" until we settled on "Chloe". She's really skittish, not as playful as kittens usually seem to be, has this soulful look about her, and meows loudly at nothing all the time. Based on that, she didn't really fit any of these other candidate names: Anya, Bella, Kasia, Makita, Rina, Sloggi, Sydney.

Although I still like Sloggi.

Danger of pet stores

2010-04-05T03:40:00.001-04:00

It's a well-known rule that you never go grocery shopping when hungry. Well, there is a similar rule that I should have known about. Never go shopping at a pet store with a wife or girlfriend. My goldfish started going tits up, so I went to the pet store to find out what I needed to do and buy some replacements for the floaters. While I was discussing pH levels, air filters, and aquarium vs. household salt, Sarah wandered off and I find her minutes later with a grey hairball with huge eyes. Price is 4500rmb, which is pretty high, but then when you compare to prices in the states, is not actually ridiculously high. This is actually quite a good pet store with employees who really know their stuff and actually seem to care and enjoy their jobs and helping customers, which is really hard to find in retail in China.

The next day we're back in the pet store to buy some other fish stuff (having already dropped over $100 the prior day on 6 fish). I make an offer on the kitty. The store seems to give its employees significant control over pricing, and the 4500 rmb drops to 3500. I counter with 3200rmb, feeling a bit guilty because this isn't an air filter we're talking about, but after all, it is China. He thinks about it, then, says ok because he wants to see the kitty go to a good home. I'm a bit jaded, but then I see him go over to the kitty later and seem to say goodbye to it and he seems a bit sad. The kitten had been in the store for about 2 months (it's almost 5 months old), so I guess he did get attached to it. The store only had a couple kittens and puppies for sale at a time.

The good ones always die young

2010-04-04T08:59:00.001-04:00

It's possible to find almost everything you might want in Shanghai, from western food, to Skippy peanut butter, to Marmite to El Paso Taco Shells. Strangely though, good Vietnamese food, namely a decent bowl of pho, is nearly non-existent in Beijing or Shanghai. Start a conversation with a foodie in either of these two cities and inevitably the topic will turn to Vietnamese and the lack of genuine places.

In the past, there have been a couple okay places -- Pho 54 in Beijing, Bamboo in Shanghai, but nowhere really good, even at inflated prices.

About a year ago, we stumbled across Pho King, a little place that we found through ShBite.com, a local food delivery company. Aside from having a kickass name, they had great pho -- good amounts of thin sliced rare beef, tasty broth, and plenty of the fixins -- lemon, bean sprouts, Thai basil...

Nothing good lasts. I just found out that Pho King closed down, victim of some landlord lease dispute. There are plenty of bad restaurants in this city, why this one??? Looking for new suggestions

On the Iraqi elections and a China Taxi scam

2010-03-14T07:17:00.000-04:00

I've been back to China for a few months now -- actually, close to 6 months! Amazing how time flies. By now, the 34ID has redeployed back to Minnesota and a much smaller contingent from the 1ID has fallen in on the old battlespace. I've been following the Iraqi elections with interest. How the elections went were really the acid test of success for the military and civilian reconstruction strategy. When all was said and done, 38 Iraqis lost their lives in expected voting violence, but a full 63% of eligible voters turned out and there was no landslide victory (unlike in the staged Afghan elections), which indicates that there was some amount of true democracy going on. In other words, things worked out better than expected.

I think it's a great result, but I'm no longer there and so I sent a note out to one of my friends, an Iraqi Air Force captain, with whom I spent a lot of time when I was there. I'll share his thoughts when he gets back to me.

Meanwhile, I wanted to share a lesson I learned recently. Here in Shanghai, you have these RFID commuter cards that store value. They can be charged up with cash, etc. and used for convenience in taxis, subways, buses, etc. I had recently charged mine up to over 700rmb (~USD 100+). One day, I was getting out of a cab and gave my card to be swiped. The taxi driver said that there was no value left. I thought, "WTH? I just charged and used it this morning!" He swiped it a few more times and each time, it came up empty. I assumed that there was a technology issue -- his card swiper or my card might have lost charge, so I just paid with cash. Fortunately, I was able to find a receipt from the last time I successfully used it that showed it still had a lot of stored value. Yesterday, I went to the customer service station to investigate. They told me that the card did in fact have no value on it and that the number didn't even match the receipt print out. The guy asked me if I had carefully watched the driver. I honestly don't recall. Turns out that what likely happened is that the driver saw that I had so much value on mine and pulled a switcheroo on me, giving me an empty value one and holding onto my own. Really sucks, but there is no real way that I can prove anything. The receipt means nothing because he could easily say that he gave it back to me and I lost the cards or confused them later.

Lesson learned, keep an eagle eye on the card to make sure you get it back. Even better -- mark the card with something indelible, like a sticker or some writing, so you can identify it easily when it comes back to you and also to prevent someone from even trying.

Back home

2009-10-26T02:30:00.002-04:00

Well superfriends, I'm home. I've actually been home for about a week now, but didn't update the blog. Strange, I wrote as often as I could while deployed, but didn't write much about the coming home process. I don't know why exactly, but I don't think I'm the only one. Even in my own community of embedded observers, there's plenty written about the deployment process and the actual tour itself, but very little on the return trip. Part of it could be that people are "smelling the barn door" and reluctant to take on new work as they start thinking of home.

But, I think there's a part of me that feared that writing about it could somehow jinx it. Military folks are pretty superstitious and I'm no exception. But now that I'm back, I can say that it was a long process and involved a lot of waiting. The route home was: Iraq, Kuwait, Ireland (just a quick layover), Ft. Benning, Georgia, Ft Leavenworth, Kansas, LA, San Francisco, then finally Shanghai.

Seeing Sarah again was not something I was apprehensive about, like some soldiers are. It had only been about 7 months and we had been in regular contact. No kids or routine to worry about messing up. Getting my head back into the game to return to work will be a little tough. Things have changed, market conditions have changed, projects have moved on, and a lot of my role has been taken up by others on the team. I'll have another week of break and then will ease back in, but am counting on some understanding from my boss and the guys.
It is strange to not be in uniform every day, have fewer restrictions on daily life. I've woken up several times and experienced a sense of not knowing where I am. I am glad not having to worry if today will be the day where a random act of violence will touch me or someone I know. But, civilian life also has plenty requirements and sometimes it's almost easier not having choices.

I count my blessings - I stayed safe during this deployment, I learned a lot, I have a wife who is strong and independent, an employer who supported my absence, and a group of friends and family who kept my spirits up. But not everyone is as lucky. Suicide and divorce rates in the military continue to climb. A good friend of mine confided in me a couple days before I left that his wife told him that their marriage was over. Three deployments in 5 years did that. He will probably get to go home early to try and solve things, but I don't envy him.
If you come across any spouses or family members of deployed servicemembers, keep in mind the challenges they face and if you can, say or do something nice. Many people don't know what to say or are afraid it'll come out like a cliche, but it is always appreciated.
So that's it for now! Thanks for sticking with my first blog during this little journey and I've dearly appreciated all the contact and words of support. I'll continue to update with life in China and elsewhere, so stick around if you like.

Lessons in Iraqi culture part 2

2009-09-13T14:27:00.001-04:00

Last night, I'm having one of those dreams where there is a repeating sound, and it gets louder and more insistent until you finally half-wake to figure out that it's coming from real life. CLANG-CLANG-CLANG....CLANG-CLANG-CLANG. I heard this repeat 4 or 5 times, then resigned myself that it wasn't going away. Usually, when there is an indirect fire attack, they use the "Big Voice" or loudspeaker warning system that blankets the base. I figured that either it was broken, or the Iraqis were running a drill. If it was a drill, I thought as the sole American representative, I was duty-bound to set a good example and play along.

Back in the days when we thought that all our enemies were going to use nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, we had it pounded into our heads that the sound of metal on metal meant an imminent attack. I don't know if that also applies to rocket attacks (which is the common threat in Iraq now), but I assumed so.

I stuck my head out and saw an Iraqi guy running around sounding the alarm. I got his attention and mimed a rocket coming in. He nodded. So, I got my body armor and helmet on and headed out towards the bunker. They had fenced it off since I was last there. I had to walk all the way around, wondering the whole time why I didn't see any other Iraqis. I got to the concrete bunker and there was no one in it. That was not totally surprising, since Iraqis tend to blow off alarms.

I tracked down the guy ringing the alarm and repeated my rocket pantomime. THis time, he shook his head and responded with the universal fingers together pointing at his mouth. I looked down at my watch which read 3am and it all made sense. He was signalling the last meal before sunrise for Ramadan. They just happened to pick the same sound that means chemical attack to us. I had to laugh and went back to sleep for a few hours.

Day 150: "Building whose foundations create terror"

2009-09-07T18:22:00.004-04:00

I've been at my "second home" for the past few days for a conference set up by this brigade to share its insights and recommendations on being one of the first specially designated "advise and assist" brigades. My own organization, the Center for Army Lessons Learned defines this as: "a modular brigade combat team augmented, based on the requirements of the operational environment, with enabling assets and capabilities to support a distributed security force assistance mission." It's all the rage right now.

When you strip away the hype, all this really means is that an AAB, about 3000-4000 soldiers strong, is no longer focused on fighting a counter-insurgency fight, but on stability operations and advising and assisting a host nation's own security forces (army, police, border security) and its government. It is really a difference in mindset -- in the words of the average joe -- from "blowing up sh*t" to teaching the Iraqi (or Afghan or [insert third-world country we've defeated here]) forces how to train themselves and the Iraqi government how to run itself and be legitimate. It's a pretty far step from where we saw the Army's role in 2003, which was to defeat the Iraqi Army and then go home. It's also the next evolution from the seize, hold, and build strategy used in previous years.

The problem? It takes us very far from our core competency and has us doing things that historically the military has never really been doing. When field artillerymen and tankers are learning how to be administrators of reconstruction funding and serving as project oversight for rebuilding projects, it necessarily takes them away from their ability to shoot big bullets when we need them to. And in Afghanistan, there is this need. The idea is that AABs will support the civilian Provincial Reconstruction Teams (6-15 person teams of specialists) from the State Department who will lead the stabilization effort. However, I've seen that the State Department right now isn't able to field the experts who can do this job. Despite being paid salaries ranging between $200-400k, some of these spots go unfilled or are filled with contractors who are unsuitable -- imagine an econ PhD who has no actual business experience.

Anyhow, the brigade did a good job of putting together a 3 day conference, which probably could have been 2 days. First day was good -- lots of multifunctional team discussion, but the final messages that were briefed to the big shots were mostly taken from a few dominant voices and some of the opposing viewpoints never made it. That's the military way -- makes me wonder if during some of the civilian breakout groups that I've organized, if I've ever been one of those voices that overpowered the others.

Enough boring stuff....I took around some of the Division and Corps folks to see the biblical Ziggurat of Ur, which is just outside the camp's security perimeter. Built an estimated 4000 years ago with similar characteristics as the Tower of Babil, the ziggurat actually means, "building whose foundations create terror!" The ancient Babylonians were big into buildings that reached to the skies and the ziggurat was the momma one of them all. The ancient city of Ur where it was situated was also the birthplace of the prophet Abraham. Although we couldn't actually get to the site, I took them along the fenceline to a security tower (manned by our friendly Ugandan contract security guards) where they could climb and take some good shots in the setting sun. One group even had a photo op with a pair of Apache helicopter gunships flying overhead. When I was getting ready to return with the second group, one of them pointed out that we had a flat. It was almost a joke -- took 6 senior officers and non-coms almost a half hour to get the tire changed because no one was familiar with where everything was on an armored Suburban. Finally we got it done and I was a little red-faced to return a borrowed vehicle with a flat tire in the back.

I had dinner with TL, the deputy team leader of the Dhi Qar provincial reconstruction team. We had met on a previous visit, when I interviewed him to gauge the military-civilian interaction, and this was a follow up visit (depressing, but a topic for another day). This was more of a social chat too... T is a career State Department guy and had been posted all throughout Asia. His Indonesian wife and two kids were actually in Beijing right now. So, we got along the way you do when you meet another expat. He returns in Feb, but departs China to go back to Indonesia in June of next year, so we traded info and hope to meet up in a different place. Small world.

Day 145: Mr. Culturally Sensitive

2009-09-03T07:18:00.001-04:00

So, I thought I would be a good citizen, try and contribute something besides misery to the Iraqi military community that I'm a part of, and get a little cross-cultural exchange going, so I invited the Iraqis to the Army 10-Mile race that I'm running in tomorrow. The Band commander also was very interested to do some sort of music exchange with them, so I suggested that as well.

As I finished chatting with the Deputy Commander, another truck with my pals, LT Mohammed and the medic, "Doc" SA, pulled up. I said hello, then asked them if they had eaten yet. They both said no. I asked them if they wanted to get some lunch (and added, "with lots of ice cream") Doc SA says, almost regretfully, "Sorry, I am fasting."

Doh. I knew that, but it didn't process. I felt like a dick.

No more packages, please!

2009-08-30T07:11:00.001-04:00

I've been traveling so much and am getting ready to start shipping things back home, so please hold off on sending any more packages. I really appreciate everything you all have sent already to send a little taste of home!

Day 136: Last day of freedom

2009-08-26T16:07:00.007-04:00

Ah, tomorrow morning will be a sad day. We fly out tomorrow to go back to the real world. We were delayed by one day. That's actually pretty good. There were groups here that had been "stranded" for a week. That means their 4 day pass turned into close to two weeks off.

But, work doesn't stop and I had told one of the units I was supporting that I would be there 2 days ago, so I'm actually glad to be going. Plus, with Ramadan going on, and no trips going out other than the mall, I end up going a little stir crazy. The equivalent is if you went on vacation, but were under house arrest. At a big house with a bowling alley, club area, and movie theater, but a big house still...

I did have the good fortune of being sponsored to go off post. A chaplain's assistant saw me walking to the chow hall and offered me a lift and then asked if I wanted to go into town. The deputy garrison commander and I went -- just in the right place at the right time. We went to the Gold Souks (markets) and the tourist quarter -- beautiful at night and even though it was after sundown, there still were not many locals there. I found that Qataris get something like $8000/month for nothing other than being citizens. Men get more than women, so women go to university more than the men.

The old city markets didn't have much to offer that was really unique. The exception was a falconry training center that had a few falcons just chillin with little gimp-style hoods on. Their hearing was so sharp that they would cock their heads wherever we were moving in the store. I felt bad for the shop owners. They have to know that everytime an American enters the store that they'll ask the same stupid questions and won't buy anything.

Even the pearls here were from Dubai or Tahiti, though a long time ago, apparently there were actual pearl divers here.

We had dinner at a nice Qatari restaurant. The place was nearly empty, but good atmosphere and attentive service. I had the mixed grill and some banana yogurt -honey drink.

I heart poodles

2009-08-26T15:54:00.003-04:00

There are no words to describe this.

Maybe, "why?"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208913/The-poodles-transformed-pandas-horses-snails-creative-grooming-dog-shows.html

Day 134: Qatari Beach Day

2009-08-23T16:29:00.000-04:00

So, this morning, I was able to secure a spot on the inland sea picnic. For $27, it was an excellent deal. The 20 of us split amongst 5 SUVs and drove out to the coast. Although we had to wear long sleeves, long pants, and closed toe shoes, the drivers did not. Go figure. It took us about 45 min to get out to the sand dunes. On the way, we got to see a little bit of some of the apartment complexes from a distance. Lot of construction going on, pretty clean and nice Arabian architecture that reminded me of the Alhambra in Spain.

The sand dune driving was a trip. Our driver, Shyam, from Sri Lanka (the other drivers were from Ethiopia, Egypt, and Pakistan) was really good and took us ripping across the dunes at angles that I was sure were going to make us rollover. We finally ended up on a bluff overlooking the coast -- impressive.

Then we drove down to a semi-permanent camp with A/C tents, volleyball court (that no one used), showers, and an eating area. For the next 3 hours, we did whatever we wanted there, but mostly, people just swam, laid out (but the sun was extremely hot and anyone who was follish enough to suntan will pay the price tomorrow), ate, or read.

The water was beautiful. Light shade of blue, then turned into a dark turquoise when it got deeper. What was most unique about it was the salinity, which was so high that some of the women were able to lay back and just float. I tried and failed, getting a nose full of super salty water. I highly recommend you not try this.

I felt sorry for the two bored looking camels that had been there all day, so paid $5 to ride one and get some pictures.

When we came back, the entire carfull of people was really subdued because people were just worn out and sunburn-fatigued. Good day.

I had hoped to make the evening trip to the mall, but no luck - already full. Apparently, it's a place where you can ice skate.

Hell is bad karaoke

2009-08-22T16:31:00.002-04:00

Now I understand why karaoke has such a bad reputation in the US. People are allowed (or feel they are allowed) to sing when they should not be singing.

Maybe just military folks sing worse than the average person?
Maybe military have less inhibitions?

Whatever it is, they need to take a page from the asians who practice and when they don't have anything nice to sing, stay away from the mike...

Day 133: In Qatar on 4 day R&R pass

2009-08-22T11:02:00.007-04:00

The military has an old tradition of giving R&R (rest and recuperation) for soldiers in combat theaters. This has changed significantly over time. Back in the Civil War, soldiers would just take off and go visit their families, etc. Then in Vietnam, it was a little more formal -- there were bases in more secure zones with some of the amenities of home, made nice for soldiers to take some time off, but you could still go out on the town and get in trouble. The version today, is a little sanitized for my taste (nightly curfews, lots of paperwork, little contact with the locals, and lots of rules), but it's still a welcome break.

Soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait go to Qatar, an oil-rich emirate that has been tolerant of US bases in it since the first Gulf War. It's a Sunni Muslim state, but expats actually make up the majority of the residents and enjoys the 2nd highest per capita income in the world. It borders the Arabian Gulf and has a reputation for very clean, nice cities.

Unfortunately, my group won't ever know. Our pass just happened to coincide on the 1st day of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting, in which participating Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, smoking, and indulging in anything that is in excess or ill-natured; from dawn until sunset. What this meant for us was the cancellation of most activities. The city tours, shopping market tours, boat cruises, golf, and water sports, were all nixed. Only thing left were the inland sea picnic and stupid mall tours. I don't know why they didn't find some other events that started after dusk, but I'm not in charge.

So, after a day-long journey of flying from Basrah to Tallil to Kuwait and then finally on to Qatar, we got here at 3am. Went through customs (were told repeatedly not to swear at the Qataris -- apparently, enough people have been kicked out of the country for doing so), then got picked up 2 hrs later to go to the R&R camp.

This airbase really has a lot of creature comforts. Big gym, USO with many computers, Orange Julius, pizza place, burger joint, pool, bowling alley, even a putt-putt course and small driving range. Some babysitting rules in effect -- maximum of 3 drinks per day (though I understand this one), women can only wear one-piece swimsuits and no Speedos for men (I have those European style boy-shorts good for diving, didn't know if those were kosher), and no flipflops.

We stay in big bays with bunks and wall lockers. 20 bunks to a room for officers (01-05), private rooms for SGMs and O6 and above. No schedule during those 4 days -- eat, sleep, when you want, and show up for the trips. I was a little amazed that some of the soldiers I spoke with since I've been here who are finishing up their pass chose to spend their time just playing Xbox and lounging by the pool instead of going out to see the city, when they had the chance.

She's so romantic, that wife of mine

2009-08-17T14:16:00.002-04:00

I woke up today, day like any other except that I had a text message saying, "Happy Anniversary!" That Sarah....she really knows how to melt a guy's heart...

So, this is probably the 3rd anniversary we've spent apart. Kind of a miserable day actually -- was supposed to have hopped on a flight to get to Qatar for a 4 day pass, but apparently the plane was last night and no one mentioned the news to any of the 18 people scheduled to be on it. Welcome to the Army, please sit down and shut up.

So, we'll try again tomorrow. At least I didn't waste any time sitting in some hot passenger terminal waiting for a bird that might or might not show. Unfortunately, I figured I'd be doing a lot of waiting, so I was up late last night and didn't get a lot of sleep.

So dear, if you die, I will not flush you down the toilet. That's how much you mean to me.

Happy A

Day 125: Case closed, sad chapter

2009-08-14T10:51:00.001-04:00

So the night I informed the Iraqi chain of command, I decided to file a report with our own MPs. They came over around 9pm, and we dropped by the dining hall and the Deputy Commander and the security chief were both there. I had asked the two MPs to be low-key because this was not our backyard. They were two specialists (junior soldiers), so weren't going to throw around a lot of weight anyhow. COL Nazzir said that the MAJ Jabbar had tossed a few rooms on that row, but found nothing. I asked whether they had taken my suggestion to look for the distinctive squeegee that had been taken along with the phone. My logic was that the guy would have hidden the phone, but wouldn't have thought to hide the squeegee. Find the "smoking squeegee," finger the culprit.

They hadn't, but COL Nazzir directed MAJ Jabbar to do so and the MPs went to join him. 15 min later, they came back with the squeegee. They found it just a few rooms away in the room of one of the young soldiers that was in the group that liked to hang out with my roommate -- this was the group I suspected, but didn't want to believe to be guilty. When they asked where it came from, nobody would own up to it, but one of the guys had just left that morning to go on his 10 days' leave that every soldier gets each month. At that point, there was a bit of headscratching as the soldiers' commander and MAJ Jabbar tried to figure out what to do next. I wanted to tell them that they needed to segregate the buddies immediately before they had a chance to cook up a story, lean on them and see who they fingered and how the stories varied. He told me he would bring the soldier back and then compare his story to mine. That didn't make sense to me because of course our stories would be different and then it would be my word vs. his. But, this wasn't our show, and I couldn't force him to run his investigation. Very frustrating -- in a way, this is exactly what we are going through in the entire country. We want to do things a certain way, but have to go through the Iraqi forces now and they're going to do it their own style.

They decided to recall him. Last night I got a knock on my door. There were the two MPs there and the US Air Force Master Sgt who is the liaison officer training the Iraqis. He said that they had found the guy and had the phone and were waiting at the dining hall to meet me. We walked on over. General (retired) Falah was there, the senior man, and someone I knew. He expressed that they were very embarassed by this and wanted to set an example and that the culprit already had his papers stripped, would be drummed out of the Iraqi Army, and was now in jail, where he would be locked away "for years."

We went over to the security chief's office and he told us what had happened. They brought the soldier, Sabouri, back from leave and MAJ Jabbar questioned him closely for an hour. He denied everything, but after awhile, MAJ Jabbar told him to tell the truth and that nothing would happen. He then fessed up and said the phone was in Baghdad. They sent him all the way back (about a 5 hr drive) to fetch it. Sure enough, it was him. Then, MAJ Jabbar sent him to jail.

So, on the one hand, I'm happy to get my phone back. I'm glad they found who it was and that an example was made. There have been thefts before, but they'd never caught someone. But, that night, I couldn't sleep. I was really bothered by the fact that the thief was someone I had invited into my room and shared drinks and I thought, friendship. We talked about families. Even more, I was bothered that his life was probably ruined. In jail, how would his wife and two kids (unless he lied about that) get by? Would he become bitter and vengeful and turn into a criminal, when he could have been turned right? Did the punishment fit the crime?

I don't know... I understand the reason for administering a harsh sentence and making a statement, but I don't want all this on my conscience. I think after this simmers down, I will go and ask for leniency. It will, after all, shortly be Ramadan, and that is a time for charity.

Day 121: The other shoe drops

2009-08-10T11:13:00.001-04:00

Someone broke into my room last night between 11pm and 1am when I was at the gym. They didn't take too much -- my mobile phone, and oddly, a bathroom squeegee and some toothbrushes. The impact though was the big hit. I feel angry, disappointed, and most of all, betrayed. The timing tells me that clearly it was not an outsider, but someone who knew I was out. Chances are good that it was one of the young bunch that my former roommate hung out with. They had been in the room and were able to explain why they'd be inside the outside door.

When I realized it, there wasn't much I could do last night. This morning, I woke up early and hoped to find Gen Falah, who I am familiar with. He wasn' t around, so I found the deputy instead, a COL Nazzi. His response was as I hoped -- he was mad and got the security officer and ordered an investigation.

I haven't gotten the official outbrief yet, but I dropped in at noon to supervise the lock replacement (they busted the lock). Someone wandered by and mentioned that the "investigation" hadn't revealed anything. I'm not counting on getting my phone back (though getting all the numbers and notes that I've stored on there over the years would be worth it). But, I do want a precedent set so that there will be some sort of deterrent from this happening again.

Guess I am the bounteous breasts for this Iraqi military to suckle at....

Proof that Facebook is taking over the world

2009-08-09T07:53:00.001-04:00

Of the 8 public computers that I can see around me in this morale, welfare, and recreation center, 5 are open to a facebook screen. Wow.

Day 120: The bounteous breasts of America

2009-08-09T07:19:00.002-04:00

I don't know how much of a buzz this has created back home in the mainstream media, but a high ranking officer here whose role was to advise the entire command leadership on Iraq policy recently released (some say it was leaked) a memo stating that US forces need to go home.

It has a lot of detail and supporting examples of why we have overstayed our welcome and that by staying longer, we run the risk of becoming targets, both kinetically (in the military sense) and politically. Many folks with Iraq experience agree with the points he makes, but the word is that up in Baghdad, the big cheeses are either too committed to the path they have chosen (and admittedly, nothing turns on a dime and things are thought out for a reason), or fundamentally disagree. Buzz is that the emphasis is on finding out and controlling the leak of non-official, yet attributable opinion pieces instead of whether the logic has merit. This is the second such "leak" in the past couple of months.

Take a look if you want to understand what some of the frustrations are. This is a very different Iraq deployment than even one or two years ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/world/middleeast/31advtext.html

Can anyone tell me how to post entire articles as originally formatted in as blog posts?

----------

So I just got back to Basrah two nights ago after 3 weeks on the road. Never thought I'd think it, but it's nice to be "home" in Basrah. Fortunately, all my stuff was intact at my desk, but in my room, all the stuff was gone from the bathroom....again. Lesson learned is to not put anything there when I'm gone for extended trips. I now have to cover down on my colleague at another brigade, so I will probably split my time between there and here.

Thinking about that memo again and my earlier comments I shared about creating a dependent culture, I am a little sad. A bunch of young Iraqi soldiers came out to greet me the first night I got back. These were the bunch that my roommate, a captain, hung out with. I tend to stick with a few of the older, quieter guys. Within 2 minutes of chatting with them, one of them goes, "Give me DVD." I figure that this is his learned, broken English and he doesn't understand the nuance between "may I" and "give me." I kind of beg off, giving a white lie that all of my movies can only be played on the computer. But, it's pretty clear that it's not just choice of words -- we go through the same game with, "Give me drink," "Give me bandage," and the next morning, "Give me black t-shirt." It really did bum me out. We created this.

BBQ corn nuts

2009-08-02T07:37:00.001-04:00

oh how i love you, my bbq corn nuts

Day 111: A typical day in paradise

2009-07-31T03:46:00.002-04:00

Today was a good day -- sort of representative of the things I'm doing here, so thought I'd share...

Yesterday, I left the Regional US Embassy compound in Babil province, which is not far from the biblical hanging gardens of Nebuchanezzar. Unfortunately, I was only there for an overnighter, so I did not get to go see the ruins of the gardens or the palace that Saddam built right on top of some other archaelogical city foundation. I also did not get to take a dip in the pool that the embassy has. I was there to meet the Provincial Reconstruction Team, debrief the outgoing and incoming military support elements, and talk to the civil affairs teams to get input for the series of recommendations I'm writing about how to improve the way the Army and the civilian reconstruction teams work together.

Anyhow, that night, we had another indirect fire attack -- nothing as effective as the rockets in Basrah. The embassy is protected by contracted guards (Blackwater), not the military, so they went up to the roof with snipers while we waited downstairs. I felt pretty useless with the civilian contractors protecting us.

I jumped in with a convoy coming out to Kalsu, also in Babil province, but further north and much larger. This area is notorious for dust, and it was so thick, visibility was limited to two cars ahead, so we kept the speed down. Last week an MRAP driver fell asleep and hit a Iraqi car headon. 18 tons vs. 2 tons -- the civilians didn't have a chance.

The civil affairs guys took care of me and put me in a room in their compound. The room looks like a cross between a 10 year old's playroom and a college dorm. Two beds on milk crates, homemade furniture constructed from 2x4's, snacks and wrappers all over the place, kiddie sheets on the bed, a stuffed teddy bear in the corner, and Maxim's all over the place (man, I thought I had outgrown those, but they're pretty addictive...even if they are from 2003). Best part was that someone routed an internet cable through the wall.

I slept fairly well, and then woke up at 5:30am to get ready for a mission. I ate breakfast and then linked up with the CA guys and the infantry platoon that was providing security. The mission was to check on some issues with the farmer's market that this team had poured over $2M to build. We took the MRAPs, which was unusual, because those things are so big and have such an aggressive, military appearance, which is something we're getting away from. We also did not use an Iraqi police or Army escort, which is also pretty standard after the June 30 security agreement, which requires most movement to be escorted.

We arrived, met the 8 man "management board" mostly composed of the local sheiks and a few other influential people. They explained that they wanted to expand the market stalls because trucks could not get in all at once. They didn't come out and say it, but they wanted money. Before seeing the problem, the project leader said the right thing, which was to ask them if they'd considered getting a loan, adding an investor, or increasing the stall rent. They looked at each other like they really hadn't. I suggested we take a look because it might just be an operational problem. We walked outside and there were two large permanent overhead stall covers about 25' apart. I could see how it could get congested. But, with some established traffic patterns and a couple traffic cops, it could get a lot better. The iraqi traditional way is to just let anyone come in at all times, leave their trucks there, basically chaos. So, who knows if they'll do it. But, asking for money to expand after only 2 months of operations and when they haven't even gotten the liquidity to pay their own salaries, tells me that they're still learning to do things for themselves. We are in the business of helping them take care of things themselves. That's why it's a little annoying to most everyone in the civil affairs community to be told that an additional $500M had to be spent this year.

Anyhow, we told them we had confidence in them (the equivalent of, "Yeah, you got it taken care of.") and then rolled back to camp. Just had enough time to drop my gear, grab some lunch and then went in to interview the brigade commander and his deputy. This is a typical interview with broad questions about what they've learned to pass on to other units and leaders. Generally, I have no problem securing these interviews because commanders love to talk. But they usually have pretty good insights, so it's valuable. The deputy gave pretty ho-hum answers, but the commander was very opinionated. Unfortunately, he was from West Virginia and talked a mile a minute, so I had problems keeping up. Some people use an audiorecorder, but I prefer to just write.

After the interview, I sat in on an intelligence synch meeting to see how the different staff share information. The group here is doing better than most. Usually, everybody is pretty silo'd. The intelligence guys just want to focus on threat intelligence about bad guys, while the civil affairs guys just care about civil information on schools, who runs the electricity grids, etc. But there is a lot of potential for cross-over. For instance, one PRT team leader was talking with a Brigade commander about a deputy governor who was seeming to be very uncooperative and driving a wedge between the rest of the local govt and the PRT. Turns out that this guy was actually implicated in the murders of two Iraqi policemen and was giving information leading to the emplacement of IEDs against our patrols. With that info, she could now plan her strategy to try to isolate him.

I had a few more informal conversations with people who wanted to share some observations from their time there. Like my civilian job, I end up hearing a lot of the frustration of people, and it's tough because I can't influence everything and can't promise anything. But, at least input allows me to prioritize the messages and once in awhile, I can talk to the right people to fix things.

Went back to the room to crunch the past several days' notes into updating my drafts and then sent them out back to Ft. Leavenworth in preparation for a conference call meeting tomorrow where we are going to try to deconflict what everyone is doing. Apparently, a lot of people are working on this topic of civil capacity building, and it's good not to be duplicating efforts.

Finished about 9pm, did a quick check-in call with my analyst back in the US, and then off to the gym for a quick workout before bed.

So that's a typical day in the life...little bit sweat, little bit writing, and a lot of talking. 4 provinces down, 2 to go. I should be back in Basrah in about a week.

Day 104: Scrappin' with the locals

2009-07-24T16:31:00.003-04:00

Just a quick post to let you all know i'm fine and correct the impression I may have given that I was in the ER for an extended period of time. Nope, I was in and out -- just a quick check that all my bits and pieces were in the right place. My neck feels fine now.

Strange timing, because today I had lunch with one of Iraq's top wrestlers. Gaz is only 23, but has trained for 16 years, both here and in Iran, and hopes to train in the US as well. I met him through the provincial reconstruction team leader for the Diwaniya province, who met him through the nephew of a local sheyk who is a wrestling enthusiast. He didn't speak English, but we chatted through an interpreter and he said that he really was interested in learning some brazilian jiujitsu. The PRT team leader is trying to set up a wrestling tournament just to increase interaction with the locals. No, Sarah, I won't go near it...

I'm on 3 week trip outside the wire this time, covering 5 provinces. Started in Baghdad with a couple of conferences and am making my way down to the units I haven't met with yet. Coordination has been kind of painful, since there's so many parties involved.

This morning, I used the phone of an empty office and when the PRT civilian came in, my greetings and self-introduction was met with a "Who are you and what are you doing in my office?" (no smile). Yup, definitely a culture gap between the military and the civilians, but I thought that usually the guys wearing the green suits were supposed to lack social skills??

kare11.com | Twin Cities, MN | Three MN soldiers killed in Basra attack

2009-07-20T09:17:00.001-04:00

kare11.com | Twin Cities, MN | Three MN soldiers killed in Basra attack

Shared via AddThis

Day 99: Lives lost for what?

2009-07-19T10:14:00.002-04:00

Sorry, haven't blogged in awhile, haven't been in a terrific mood. Several nights ago, we lost 3 soldiers in a rocket attack.

These guys were not on patrol, they were not going into insurgent territory, and our base is not in a controversial location (in a city). They were just like you and me, probably getting ready to go eat late dinner, take a shower, go workout, or standing around talking about what they're going to do when they get back home.

Then, some insurgents who liked life the way it was before, fired off 5 rockets from outside the camp walls. 4 hit within the camp footprint. They were unusually accurate or lucky this time.

One hit near the living area, and those guys were gone. How do you tell their families that is how they died?

We need to quit "liberating" countries where we sink billions of dollars into the government, sheiks, and militaries, only to have celebrations when we leave (but keep the dollars coming, please) and where people watch insurgent cowards indiscriminately shoot at us from cover of night. And now we have our hands tied when we want to defend ourselves.

Just my personal opinion of course.

Day 91: Got put in the emergency room

2009-07-11T00:54:00.002-04:00

But it's not what you think. Since I've been in Baghdad this week, I noticed in the gym that there are classes and one was combatatives (Brazilian jiu-jitsu). Since I was training before I deployed, and really enjoy it, I was psyched to check it out. At Basrah, not only are there no classes, there's not even a mat in the tiny gym we have to work out in.

So, the first night, I go in and it's just open mat, meaning you show up and do free sparring ("rolling") with anyone else who shows up. I went, met a few people, and did a little rolling for about an hour. There was really no pussyfooting about it. No going in slow -- you just wade right in. The first guy I matched up with probably outweighed me by about 90 lbs. He did submit me twice in the few times we rolled, but it felt good and I think he expected it to be easier from his first comment, "F*ck, you're annoying!"

Then, I sought out a smaller guy, who was hanging out in the wings, who turned out to be really good. The guy was doing leg and ankle locks on me, which beginners usually don't know. This was better because he wasn't just using his weight and sitting on me like the first guy -- and I was a little more technical. He submitted me 3 times, but taught me some stuff too.

The next morning, I was so sore I had a hard time getting out of my bunk.

The following evening, there was another session, but this time with instruction. We did basics like passing guard. That was followed with more rolling, and I learned that in gi-less (no uniform) fighting, there's few advantages in offense, but makes it much easier to escape -- because you're so sweaty and slippery and also because it's tough to grab onto clothing.

Then, the third night, I went back for more open mat and ended up matching up with the really experienced guy. We started easy, then got a little more aggressive -- maybe when I got him in a choke he didn't expect. He stacked me, which means he had my entire body up on my bent neck, and then he suddenly put more weight on me and twisted me at an odd angle. I felt a sharp pain shoot through my neck and heard a series of pops. Not good. I called him off, and froze -- I did not want to move.

To make it short, I ended up going to the post medical facility to get an x-ray and check things out. The doc said it was just a bad sprain and gave me all kinds of horse tranquilizers and muscle relaxants. And Sarah says that I'm too old to do this stuff anymore.

It's weird -- when I turn my head one way, I feel tingling in my scalp on the other side.

Let's hope this is the only time I'll have to see the ER this tour...

Oh, happy birthday to my brother !

Say it loud! I'm American and I'm proud!

2009-07-03T10:57:00.001-04:00

Happy 4th of July everyone, especially my Yankee friends living overseas. Get those MC Hammer pants out (you know, the ones with the flag screen-printed on them.) Match them with a Three Wolf Moon t-shirt (http://www.amazon.com/Three-Official-T-Shirt-Cotton-Sleeve/dp/B000NZW3IY) and show the locals who's the ugly American.

What did you do today for the holiday weekend???

Day 83: TGIF!!!

2009-07-03T10:26:00.001-04:00

Just kidding... it's easy to lose track of what day is what because there's no real weekend. Most people take it easy on Sun, but there's definitely no sense and excitement on Fri afternoon. Actually, some people are giving their sections Sat off because it's the 4th of July, but since there are no real celebrations or parties, all you can do is really sleep longer, watch some DVDs, or go work out. I may try to get the Iraqi guys out to play some football or ultimate frisbee.

Ah, crud. Going back to Baghdad for the 4th to attend a conference. Maybe it being such a big post, there'll be some festivities like more cheerleaders!

So, here's a few random thoughts and observations that came to me as I sat in on an assessment of the sector this morning:

* One of the key things we're moving towards here is a professionalized law enforcement and judicial system based on evidence, not just witness statements and confessions. So, a big part of this is building warrants, getting them approved by a judge who's got enough balls to not worry that someone will try to kill him or his family, and then partner with the Iraqi police or Army to go execute the warrant ("snatch the guy"). Problem is that after all of this, a lot of the suspects claim that they are not the ones on the warrant! There are endless variations of names and it's all real confusing, but the bottom line is that some dirtbags slide because of that technicality. So, the lifesaver is using biometrics (retina scans, fingerprints) to get people's identities right. The effort is around getting people into the database, and then getting a hit when they come up for a violation, etc. Since people tend to stay near their hometowns, if you get some guy who's not from his "hood", it's a good indication that he may be up to no good.

* The extremist groups have tried to increase their attacks on coalition forces as we moved combat forces out of the cities. Why? To try to claim credit for us leaving. Kind of the equivalent of the skinny loudmouth kid saying, "Yeah, that's right...better get your ass out of here." as the big guys are already leaving the room.

* It's tough to be the Iraqi Police. They already have a bad reputation because they are much more likely to either be corrupt or infiltrated and tied to the gangs or extremist groups. But, now, an IP chief can lose his job based not only on either of those two claims, but also if he doesn't go along with the politicians' political agendas.

* One major difference we're doing here is to consciously shift power from the traditional centers of influence -- the tribal sheiks -- to the elected officials of the Government of Iraq. It's the right move because we want to build legitimacy of the government. But, it feels a little forced -- is it really our job to meddle and change the shift of power? The mechanism is reconstruction funding. The US has done this for years....interestingly, there is little mention of this "soft" or non-kinetic power, which is really where the fight is now. The scary thing is what is the role of the sheiks now? If they become marginalized, there is the risk of them becoming anti-govt and therefore anti coalition force. The friend of my enemy is my enemy...

* The Iraqis dropped leaflets over Basrah yesterday celebrating the pullout and also urging residents to support the government. What is amazing is not the message or the delivery method, but that they did this without our urging and actually, without even coordinating with us. At initial blush, I'm sure some people were a little prickly about that, but when you think about it, that's really a good step. Goes back to that comment I mentioned about a week ago where a senior ranking American officer was given the door in his face when he tried to go to an Iraqi meeting. "Thanks but no thanks. This is an Iraqi meeting."

* In the immediate several weeks after the very important 30 June pullout which is going smoothly so far is addressing any report that we are violating the security agreement because this can be used to justify terrorist actions and attacks our credibility if not addressed immediately. So far, there have been several claims in the Iraqi media that so and so saw American troops in so and so neighborhood without Iraqi Army or Police around. So, it is important to have a battledrill ready to quickly respond and stand with the Iraqi security forces and say, "BS -- we did not do that." In the past the battle drills were just to respond to indirect and direct fire, now words and perceptions are just as damaging. Things like this really make me think that today's junior leaders have to be much more savvy and adaptive. No more lugheads going "Me like break. Me kill."

* My old friend Mike S would get a big kick out of the fact that I have now seem the word "nefarious" used in at least two briefings. So zany!

Day 80: American combat troops are out of the cities

2009-06-30T14:31:00.002-04:00

So, although Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett's deaths have pushed Iran's democratic protests and the US "drawdown" out of the cities to the back pages, today was the Big Day. So far, there has been one terrorist attack -- up north in Kirkuk, where the Kurds have been asserting their autonomy and fighting not only with the Sunnis, Shi'as, but also the Turkish people.

Honestly, I don't know if it was Obama's push, or if that was just the impetus, but if so, I am already glad he's in power because putting some dates and some heat really got people from the momentum of stretching this out to being another Bosnia or Kosovo. Actually, someone should call me out on this because it was actually the security agreement and I think that was signed before the presidential campaigns.

Anyhow, I was in Baghdad today, but only in the Green Zone, so did not get to see any of the parades or ceremonies or "street parties." We took off from Baghdad to come back home around 2pm, so had a birds eye view from the helicopter, but still did not see anything. Strangely, the main roads were actually empty -- maybe a security measure?

This is a good thing folks.

Oh one funny incident. The chopper ride from Basra to Baghdad is one hot, unpleasant 3 hr experience. Maybe the first time, it's sort of cool. Maybe for about 20 min at most. You pass over some pretty incredible terrain -- mud houses with no power lines anywhere in sight, marshes, even some open water, then baked desert. But, having the hot wind and sand in your face for that long while your ass goes numb doesn't rank real high on my list of fun things to do. So, I was amused when the political advisor (POLAD) for our division, civilian equivalent to a general, pulled out a Amazon Kindle to read on the flight. I kidded her for awhile, and then right when she was started to get annoyed, I showed her mine. So we both had these geek toys and when the pilot came over during a refueling stop, he was shaking his head. I wrote on my hand, "Because no inflight magazines"

Day 79: Americans pull out of Baghdad = Iraqi Victory?

2009-06-29T15:01:00.001-04:00

Caught this on Yahoo News (my choice of premiere, unfiltered, high quality news)...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – U.S. troops pulled out of Baghdad on Monday, triggering jubilation among Iraqis hopeful that foreign military occupation is ending six years after the invasion to depose Saddam Hussein.

Iraqi soldiers paraded through the streets in their American-made vehicles draped with Iraqi flags and flowers, chanting, dancing and calling the pullout a "victory."

Read the whole thing here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090629/ts_nm/us_iraq

I agree that this is a good thing. It answers the doubters (both in the US and in Iraq) of whether we are serious about this pullout. Heck, any one who has spent 5 min talking with anyone who is in Iraq now or has been there in the past year could tell you as much that we are turning things over and getting the heck out of Dodge.

But what bugs me not just a little bit is when the guys you defeated, then built back up, trained, and pushed towards getting a plan to take over their own country, now drive around in the Humvees that you (the American public) bought them (and are having a helluva time teaching how to maintain) and say that it is their "victory."

Just a minor irritation of course. Totally irrational, I know.

Day 77: Few images from the Iraqi Army

2009-06-27T12:13:00.003-04:00

Short post -- got back from my trip, this time, didn't take 7 attempts, just one, and I walked into the passenger terminal and directly onto the waiting helicopter. Of course, that was only because I was in the Deputy General's party... life is a little different when you have those stars on your collar.

Little more excitement this trip -- our living area got rocketed (wasn't close to where I was sleeping), chopper got shot at, and the electricity went out, so I spent one night sweating my ass off and wishing I was dead. I somehow attracted some sort of insect, so had what looked to be about 80 bites on me -- turns out it was some sort of allergic reaction.

The complaints of the Iraqi locals about the electricity not being reliable becomes a lot more real when you are laying a pool of your own sweat, hoping it is daylight soon, but also not wanting it to be because it will be hotter...

Day 73: Iran's woes = good for us

2009-06-23T02:09:00.002-04:00

Over here, all the televisions in the dining facilities have been tuned to the anti-government protests in Iran that were sparked when charges of election fraud were leveled against the current President Al...

It started as a peaceful, massive rally. No one really knew how the regime would react. We soon found out. Rhetoric about banning the protests led to police and the army being readied, to the on-air killing of a female student protester by a militiaman's bullet, to the latest -- violent confrontation by both sides.

I certainly think that if I were Iran I would have played this with a little more savvy. Allowing statements to go out like, "We will crush this protest" (from a leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard) don't really help legitimize your nation in the international arena. Many have clamored for more aggressive public support by the US government (mainly the Republicans), but I think that would play into Iran's hands. When your enemy is destroying himself, sometimes the best course of action is to stay out of his way.

This is definitely helping in the Iraq theater though, where anything that can distract the Iranians from their covert influence over Iraqi goings on -- whether anti-coalition force propaganda, economic influence (through cheap imports, for instance, which destabilize domestic Iraqi agriculture), and the smuggling of lethal aid to insurgencies, is welcome.

Day 72: Seventh time's a charm

2009-06-23T02:08:00.002-04:00

It only took seven tries (and countless wasted hours), but I finally caught a flight out. This time it was on a Blackhawk -- it had been years since I'd been on one, and I forgot the rush you get from lifting off quickly, the ground only about 6 ft from your face, the "whup-whup" sound of the rotors, and the hot wind hitting you through the open windows. We flew over blue-green water, and it really did remind me of that scene from Apocalypse Now, where the Air Cavalry flies over Da Nang Beach with Wagner playing in the background. "I love the smell of napalm in the morning!" Quick 45 min flight and we touched down.

I'm on another sector visit, this time to the provinces of Dhi Qar and Muthanna, which are sort of in the center of our area of operations. This belt has been fairly quiet in terms of violence, but there have been attacks that flared up recently and a few days ago a soldier was killed in an IED attack during a routine route patrol not far from here. The patrol had elements of the Iraqi security forces mixed in, which is our marching orders as we increase the force drawdown and try to legitimize the Iraqi police and Army who we have been training for the past few years. I can't relate the details, but apparently someone in the Iraqi police element snitched, leading to the patrol being targeted. Things like this make it very frustrating to hear dissatisfaction from both people who want us to stay around and those that want us to leave. For those of you that may think that the military is gung-ho and wants to stick around, I wish you could spend some time here. The planning around responsibly pulling out is not at all haphazard and consumes the waking hours of a lot of people here, whether in terms of what do we do with all our bases and equipment and hazardous materials, to what happens to the civil capacity building projects we leave behind, to probably the most important -- setting up the Iraqi security forces to enforce and defend the rule of law and defeat the insurgency.

Everyone wants to get out of here, but the military leadership has decided that we are not going to just run and leave even if that would be the easy thing. Trying to give up control of how we believe things should be done is probably the toughest thing to do. Even if we have a perfect plan, part of this working is that the plan must be bought in by the Iraqi leaders. Even better, it needs to come from them. That's our primary mission right now, is to be advisors and try not to step in unless asked. It sure is frustrating though.

On this trip, I am spending more time visiting the provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) and civil affairs troops to get a rounder perspective on how the civil capacity building mission is going and whether we are organized the right way for the Army and the civilians to work together. This is, as we'd say in business school, "soft, squishy stuff", but it's very important and there are lessons to be learned that we can implement to improve. At least I hope so, because I'm spending a lot of time talking to people about it.

I'll give you an example. The PRT teams typically are about 10 people, consisting mostly of subject matter experts, some project managers, and a couple bilingual bicultural advisors. They don't have admin and logistical support, security, or the resources to move around the sector to do their mission. Yet, they administer and "take the lead" for as much as $100M in projects. So, they depend on the Army to partner with them and provide these services. A common sentiment heard from the PRTs are, "We need help from you." In response, the Army sent them what's called a Movement Support Element (MSE). These are about 8-10 soldiers who act as a staff for them and provide logistical support. At one PRT that I met with today, the PRT leaders kept 2 of the 8 soldiers they got and "fired" the other 6. This action certainly must confuse leaders on the Army side who are now scratching their heads saying, "You said you wanted help and now you say you don't want it. What gives??" Instead of just scratching this up to personality or culture conflict, it's helpful to look deeper. The reason the PRT didn't want the MSE was because what they got didn't match what they needed. The MSE, while good in theory, actually was a non-cohesive group of individual soldiers thrown together, without a leader, clear mission, equipment, and worst of all, few specialist skills. So, the PRT had to spend a lot of time explaining to them what to do, only to start losing some of them a few months later. The management overhead was too much of a headache.

So, the simple lesson here is that someone really needed to sit down and spend time with the PRTs to understand where there gap was and then put together a solution that was didn't have a lot of management drag, yet really freed up the PRT principles to focus on doing what they do best -- get the Iraqi leadership to come up with their own ideas and then turn them into feasible projects.

There are lots of other stories around managing expectations... an extreme one being the civilian woman who showed up to her first patrol wearing a skirt and heels, a more minor, but common one being civilian's lack of understanding why the military needs so much information so far in advance. So, another recommendation I am making is to require an inbrief for both soldiers who will be working with civilians and also for civilian PRT members who are coming to work with the Army. The content would be drawn from the experience of what both sides have said most surprised them or what they wish they knew coming in. There is no silver bullet, but I think common understanding of roles and expectations and clarity in a common goal really makes a difference, and where we help is recommending what mechanisms are good tools to make that happen.

I never really had an organizational design background or did much of org change projects, but now I wish I did. It's not rocket science, but after this, I don't think I'll necessarily take lightly some of those challenges.

Day 68: Blown out

2009-06-18T13:13:00.002-04:00

When I first heard about average time to do an air medevac extraction (by helicopter) for Iraq and Afghanistan, I thought there was a typo. It was about 30 min in Afghanistan and 2-3 hrs in Iraq. Seemed backward because in Afghanistan, our forces are spread thinner and the combat outposts are more remote and less built up.

After being "snowed out" for 2 days and having had 4 flights cancelled on me, I now understand why. In early summer, the dust storms in this area are legendary. Looking outside, it's hard to see 100'. A brown haze hangs everywhere and people with any breathing problems are sucking hard. At night, when you turn on a flashlight, it looks like a light saber.

I'm trying to go back out to check out 3 PRT teams -- they're coming together for a key meeting tomorrow morning, and unfortunately, looks like I'm going to miss it.

At the end of that trip, I am going to piggyback along with one of the generals to observe a mutual "show and tell" -- he's bringing two of the Iraqi Army division commanders together to look at one of their camps first, and then we'll all fly over to the other commander's camp. The tricky thing is to not give the impression of this being an inspection and also not making it a direct comparison, which could lead to some loss of face/honor. It will be really interesting. I spoke with one of my counterparts who works 70% of his time with Iraqis and the main advice he gave me was: talk as little as possible, don't have your agenda that you push through, and yield to them. Again, as with civil capacity building, they must confront and work through their own problems.

I read in a local Iraqi newspaper today (translated) an interesting episode:

"In a sign of the need for Iraqi officials to show their independence, a senior American military officer was turned away from a major meeting in Baghdad between Iraq's civilian and military leaders. 'We apologize to you, but this is an Iraqi meeting and you're not invited,' an Iraqi general told the American."

You go girl.

Day 64: A clash of civilizations

2009-06-14T09:48:00.001-04:00

Today is Sunday and it's the half day out of the week that I take off, so I have a bit of time to share a little bit of a subject that I've been investigating for awhile now: the cultural clash between civilians and the military. This is nothing new. Since ages past, soldiers, airmen, marines, and sailors have used the word "civilian" in tones that are usually used to described snails and other things that crawl along on their own slime. Similarly, ask most human resources professionals what they think of when they think about career military guys joining the civilian workforce and they'll usually use the words, "inflexible," "domineering," "no sense of humor," and "puckered tight."

Times have changed however. First, the role of citizen-soldiers has increased since 2001 to a vital part of the war effort. Used to be that the stereotype shown in the movie "Stripes" was pretty accurate. Reservists were weekend warriors who were untrained, didn't look like soldiers, and didn't act like them. You wouldn't send them into war and for a hard-charging active duty soldier, telling them that they would be sent to the reserves was like a death sentence. I enlisted into the Army National Guard in '92 and remembered that during my first several drills at my unit, a lot of people didn't bother showing up and the admin NCO would call them and politely ask where they were and didn't they want to come in to drill this weekend? No significant training -- just some PT, a lot of admin work, and then ceremonies and dinners.

Then 2001 came and suddenly we had 360,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army, stretched near capacity, had to draw upon its reserve and national guard component. Funny how knowing that you are going into combat makes you suddenly get your mindset turned around. The first couple years I'm sure there was a lot of adjustment as well as the active duty vs. reserve attitudes. By 2005, because of the way that different units were mix and matched and thrown together, you could not tell who was a reservist and who wasn't. As much as 70% of the deployed forces left their civilian jobs to spend 12-18 months fighting a war. I was no longer surprised that some of the most experienced and competent NCOs and officers were reservists or guardsmen. You just cared that they did their jobs well, not whether they were active or reserve. In fact, in the type of mission we're in now, where the emphasis is no longer on breaking and blowing stuff up, and we are focused on civil-capacity building and the training/advising of Iraqi security forces, reserve components bring their civilian experience to the fight. Just imagine -- how can a 23 year old lieutenant mentor his Iraqi police chief counterpart? On the other hand, a 32 year old Reserve lieutenant, who's been a state trooper for 9 years would bring a lot more experience to bear.

So, in addition to the reserves getting a lot better and integrating into the overall Army, the role of civilians has come to the forefront as well. In most of Iraq, we know that the end is near -- we are no longer working towards a defined endstate objective where we will leave when security forces are trained, the rule of law has reached a certain level of adoption in the judicial system, and clean water, electricity, and sewage treatment is available to everyone. Now, we are leaving at a certain time and we just need to do the best we can before we pull out.

We as "green suiters" have to leave because we are a very visible reminder of conquering occupiers and that strikes a certain religious and social chord that has been played on by extremist and religious and political groups. As an aside, if you read the newspapers and ask anyone publicly whether coalition forces should leave the cities by the end of this month per the Security Agreement, the universal response will be "yes". However, one on one and privately, most local Iraqis do not want us to leave. They know that when one of theirs is taken away by a coalition forces soldier, he may be charged, he may be locked up, but he will be seen again. They are afraid of another sectarian civil war.

However, civilians can continue working and overseeing reconstruction. This happens through Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). To borrow from my friend Wikipedia, a PRT includes a military component (Civil Affairs/Force Protection, etc.), civilian police advisors, and civilian representatives of US (or other national) government foreign affairs agencies. In a US-led PRT, this generally includes a representative from USAID, the Department of State, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Justice. They are assisted by public diplomacy and reporting staff.

An Afghan PRT is commanded by a military officer, generally of the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He is supported by a civil affairs team and platoon of National Guard soldiers for security. The staff generally numbers between sixty and one hundred persons. There is no lead agency or department; the US government civilians and the military commander form an executive committee of equals which develops a strategy for the PRT, drawing on the expertise of all contributing agencies. Activities in Afghanistan focus on extending the reach of the central government into the provinces.

In an Iraq PRT, the Team Leader is a civilian who reports to the US Department of State, and his deputy is generally a military officer. While civil affairs members are present on the team, there are more civilians than military personnel on the team. Functional areas include rule of law, reconstruction and development, agriculture, and governance. Some Iraq PRTs are embedded into the Brigade Combat Team (BCT) with which they are colocated (ePRT). The BCT retains responsibility for providing security for the civilian team members. In contrast to Afghanistan, Iraq PRTs focus on building the governance capacity at the local levels of government.

So, if you read a lot of the mission statements of units here now, the main efforts are keeping security, training the Iraqi Security Forces (Army, local police, national police, and border enforcement), and building civil-capacity. The last line of effort is led by the PRT with the Army supporting.

This briefs well. However, in practice, it's often ugly. Imagine if you threw the schoolhouse tough with the Montessori kid and told them that they needed to play together. What usually happens? Either they resent each other, try to screw each other up, or in most cases, end up doing their own thing and ignoring the other as much as they can. I saw that this seemed to be the case in one province, but also heard that in another province, the PRT team leader and the brigade commander were as tight as frat brothers and I really wanted to see why that was the case. Plus, maybe I thought that my being a reservist would help me see both sides. Oh, and I wanted to be able to say that getting a degree in social studies paid off somehow.

So, I spent time with both sides, and as you might have read, came back from spending nearly two weeks with a team that worked fairly well together.

In my next post, I'll share some of my preliminary findings (those that I can share).

Funny

2009-06-11T11:39:00.001-04:00

For the past 3 weeks, I've been trying to get in on the Chief of Staff's calendar. It's been ridiculously difficult. Part of the reason is because he has a gatekeeper adjutant who guards his time like it's gold. Probably a good thing he has that. Plus, I've been busy enough without having to go ask for more things to do.

So I finally went in today and sat down with him. We talked about priorities, all in all, he was pretty supportive and interested. There was one thing which made it hard for me to concentrate though.

When I first arrived in the room, he was with someone else. Didn't recognize him. Looked like a generic mid-grade officer. CPT, MAJ, or LTC. White, average height, glasses, unremarkable.

I waited outside and after a few minutes, he left. When I went in, I had a seat and there was a coffee table there. On it was a PPT slide with some text on it and some notes on the sides. I didn't really pay attention, but my subconscious did. It was a sign that had been posted in the latrines (bathroom) in each stall that said, "Please take care of this place, etc. etc." Anyways, people get bored and write on those. I myself was carrying on a bit of dialogue. It's kind of fun. You write and then you come back a day or two later and there's more community input. Kind of like a Toilet Wiki. Yeah, low tech, but effective.

Anyhow, yesterday, it disappeared. I was pretty disappointed, since the conversations were increasing along different threads. I assumed that they had all been taking down.

Only after my meeting with the Chief did I realize that the sign that was on his coffee table (and probably the topic of his discussion with the poor dude before me) was none other than the one I'd been drawing on! I am trying to think, but I really don't think there was anything explosive -- (no pun intended). No names, no vulgarity, no dirty drawings. Pretty highbrow as far as graffiti goes.

So, that is the big mystery that will haunt me. Maybe on the last day that I leave here, I'll ask him what it was that got it selectively removed and turned into an asschewing accelerant.

So high school. So fun.

Day 61: Never get on Big Brother's bad side

2009-06-11T11:18:00.002-04:00

Arghh. I messed up and did the wrong thing at the wrong time. One of the things that has been a little difficult to get used to has been the level of security working here. You are not allowed to bring in USB thumbdrives, PCs, cameras, recording devices, or cell phones. There is actually an entire section that is called "Information Assurance" -- what they actually ensure is that you will get hosed if you come afoul of them. They are more popularly called the "Security Nazis".

I understand that they need to set guidelines and rules. I took my phone the other night and charged it. Had not even turned it on since I left Kuwait. Anyhow, on the way out of the hooch, I grabbed it and stuck it in my pocket and came to work. Well, as I was sitting at my desk, the alarm went off (it was an embarassing new agey soothing tune too). I had the misfortune of being right by the security representative, a zealous 1LT. He called me on it and said I needed to bring it over to the security systems officer. I went over there and they said I should bring it to the front and leave it there. No problem.

Well, the SSO comes over later to ask about it. Says that they need to do a scan on it. "Ok" says I. A civilian comes over an hour later, asking for the password. I give it up with a little hesitation. Sarah would never have given up her privacy rights, but I'm the trusting sort. I ask when it will be available and the civilian hesitates and says that he got an email that the phone was brought into a secret briefing.

I don't see it that day. Today, in the afternoon, I go to see what's going on. Well, in their little super secret squirrel hideyhole room tucked away behind a locked vault, it's like the exciting news. Like their version of catching a spy. They say that the scan came up clean, but they still want to wipe the blackberry clean. That would really suck, since it's my work BB and much of the info has not been saved. This, my friends, is what happens when you are in staff, you're overmanned, not busy enough, and don't have enough indirect fire landing on your ass. You spin little stuff up into high drama.

To make things worse, I had just been in the middle of a formal request to authorize a camera for bringing into the HQ. Great..... wonderful way to show you're responsible and capable of bringing a recording device into a secure location by doing something boneheaded like this.

So, not too optimistic about that request having any legs. Best I can hope for now, is that these boy scouts let me keep my data.

Oh, and Candice my dear, the only karaoke going on here is in the shower. (Actually, there is a "Basrah's Got Talent" show coming up sometime...)

Day 60: Messed up

2009-06-10T04:41:00.000-04:00

Just came across this article. What is wrong with this picture?
I suppose it's too much to hope that there was a serious ass-kicking
somewhere in this chain of events?

Grenade thrower wounded, treated by U.S. forces
Tuesday, 09 June 2009
Multi-National Corps - Iraq
Public Affairs Office, Camp Victory
APO AE 09342

Grenade thrower wounded, treated by U.S. forces

Multi-National Division - North

FORWARD OPERATING BASE MAREZ, MOSUL, Iraq - U.S. Soldiers in Mosul
provided medical aid to an enemy combatant who had attacked them with an
improvised grenade, June 6.

"Rendering aid to someone one who just wounded one of your own is a
testament to the strong sense of duty and honor displayed everyday by
our Soldiers serving their nation in Iraq," said Col. Thomas Guthrie,
Multi-National Division - North chief of staff. "The Soldiers on patrol
that day upheld Army values in a difficult, stressful situation, and we
are proud of their service."

The individual threw the grenade at a combined patrol in the Al Jededa
South neighborhood. The Soldiers immediately used small arms fire
against the attacker in an act of self-defense, wounding the individual
in the abdomen and thigh.

The improvised grenade detonated, wounding one U.S. Soldier and causing
damage to a vehicle.

After the blast, U.S. forces provided medical aid to the wounded enemy
as well as their own Soldier, and conducted casualty evacuation for both
to a nearby combat hospital.

"Not only was the act of providing medical aid to the enemy combatant
the professional thing to do as U.S. Soldiers, it was simply the right
thing to do," said Col. Gregory Maxton, deputy commander of the 3rd
Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division in Mosul.

-30-

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT THE MULTI-NATIONAL DIVISION - NORTH PUBLIC
AFFAIRS OFFICE AT: MNDNPAO@25ID.ARMY.MILThis e-mail address is being
protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it OR DSN
318-856-0218.

FOR THIS PRESS RELEASE AND OTHERS, VISIT WWW.MNC-I.COM

Oil fires burning at night

2009-06-07T14:02:00.004-04:00

One last image -- this is what I see as I go to bed at night -- oil wells burning -- 8 years later, they still burn. I don't know why this is and whether it is wasteful. On some nights, the smell comes through the doors and windows into the room while you try to sleep. It's thick, tar smell, almost like when you drive by fresh asphalt that is being rolled.

But, it's quite a sight when you first get here and is a constant reminder of one of the underlying reasons that we're here. Draw your own conclusions...

Day 57: Few more images of Al Kut (the "Iowa of Iraq")

2009-06-07T13:49:00.002-04:00

On the rare occasion that I am able to get on a public computer (while waiting for the phones to free up so I can call Dad and Dad-in-law for Father's Day), I thought I'd upload some photos taken on my last trip out.

This town is Al Kut -- it's not the most prosperous, nor the poorest, and actually is quite stable and secure. It's gotten sort of a reputation as where we want to go. Lots of construction going on and lot lot of Iraqi police and Army presence. They don't seem to actually patrol like we do. They just stand at checkpoints. The Iraqi Police and Army don't get along so you sometimes see checkpoints 100m apart from each other (instead of integrated to cover more ground). Some of it is cultural because of the roles that they played under Saddam. Also, the Army, like ours is from all over the country and is far less sectarian than the police, which are comprised of locals. The challenge with the police is that we often train them, not knowing who is on the take with local militias. I don't think we'll ever be able to win that fight. It's frightening knowing that sometimes the same guys you train to defuse IEDs are actually the ones at night who may be helping the extremists place them or at least looking the other way.

Despite all of this, and the question of what our legacy will be, I see the bright shining looks of hope on the children's faces and it is all worth it.

No, just kidding. I don't care about that. I just was going to say that the river that runs through the city is pretty.

Day 56: Happy Days

2009-06-06T12:18:00.001-04:00

Back to Basrah. Got back two days ago and found that there was a new
Sergeant Major in charge of the section, and he had not passed along the
commitment to save me a spot in the new office area to his replacement.
So, all my stuff was piled in a corner, and no empty slots in sight.
Not a nice feeling -- I didn't expect a welcome back party, but a place
to sit would have been good.

The new SGM is more of an admin type -- maybe I'm reading him wrong, but in an admin environment, maybe that's what's needed. In any case, he is more approachable. Although he didn't know anything about my situation,
he made some calls, looked around and bingo, there was a nice desk still
in that area. It's around the Air Force folks, but that's not a problem
-- I'll play with any of the playground kids.

What was strange was that there were none of the packages that I expected. By now, I thought there should be about half a dozen that had arrived. Only three letters were waiting for me. Happy to have gotten those, but nothing else.

Today, I was calling about a finance issue and I noticed that the finance SGT was also listed as a mail NCO, so I asked. She knew me by name and said, "Sir, we've got some things down here for you. A LOT of
things." So I sent the mail guys back over to pick them up, and a guy
came back with an armload of boxes. He said that there was more in the
truck. All in all, about 20 boxes (a lot were small stuff that I
ordered online and shipped separately), but still, it was a surprise.

So, now I feel like the fat spoiled kid at Xmas. I never went hungry, but I don't think I ever had so many presents before at one time, except at our wedding and even then, most of the stuff was boring house stuff that Sarah had requested. (ooh, look, a silver ladle!!!) Well, except for the radar detector...and the golf practice net....um, yeah.

So, I think I'll sort of treat them the way I treat cards, which is to
packrat them and open them one at a time later on to stretch it out. If they've waited this long, any food will have gone bad already.

I just opened the first one, from my little bro. Lots of office supplies and a super cool stapler. Did you buy the stuff at Staples? Awesome -- thanks Is!

About my living situation -- I got back and although I don't think anyone even lives in my compound anymore, my stuff was still there. It's pretty lonely. The best equivalent is if you lived in a crappy trailer park and then one day a mass eviction notice came saying that
the place was going to be demolished. Most people left. You held out with a handful of holdouts. Then you went away for a while. When you came back, no one was left. That's me right now. Probably also not the safest thing, since I'm right by the Iraqi Air Force and Iraqis come and go all the time. The first month I was here, two soldiers were kidnapped while on base. But, I just found out that a room has opened
up, so I'll be out of Ghost Town tomorrow. Sweet. Will have a roommate, don't know whom yet, but it will be better than what I have now. Plus, my next door neighbor is going to be someone who is probably the cutest person in the division headquarters (this is a test to see if Sarah reads this blog).

So I broke my earlier rule and opened up another package -- one from Susannah. Seaweed and Dunkin Donuts coffee! I don't think I'll have a lot of competition for the seaweed, but the coffee will be perfect for helping sweeten up my new neighbors in the office. Susannah, thank Gao
Ya for me!

Have a great weekend everyone.

Day 53: Tales of Military Flights in Iraq

2009-06-04T03:45:00.002-04:00

So, you may ask, how is it that I could manage to be stranded in a place
for 5 days, barring an invasion of the airport by rebel forces? Well, let me use a few true stories to illustrate why it is that many
call Air Operations "Demon Spawn".

1. One of the PRT old hands was at Baghdad, trying to get back to Camp Delta. A flight operations person came out and said, "Sorry, the flight has been cancelled -- come back later tonight (6 hrs later) to standby for a different flight." Since he didn't have anywhere else to go, he
stayed there in the terminal, while everyone else went to get something
to eat or to the PX. 5 minutes later, the crew chief ran in and said,
"Where's everyone? We're leaving!"

2. On my flight into Delta, my host, the Civil-Military Operations
Chief was going to pick me up and take me to my quarters. The flight
was delayed by two and a half hours. I felt bad, but there was no way
for me to contact him. We finally boarded and arrived around 4am.
There was no one waiting for me and instead I found out that the air
operations crew there didn't track the flight and had told him that no
more flights were coming in. When I asked what would happen if the
aircraft went down, they had no answer, since apparently, the outbound
and inbound terminals don't talk.

3. On the same flight, after waiting the 2.5 hrs, we finally got onto the C-23 Sherpa flight. It's a small aircraft, so weight limit is enforced. Apparently someone's math was bad because after the crew
chief rechecked the weight calculation, a poor translator trying to get
home got bumped after being seated in the aircraft. 5 hrs of waiting
only to be told to try again the next day.

4. I get manifested ("reserved" seating) on a Chinook utility helicopter flight. I show up one hour early as required. The flight is 2 hrs delayed. I wait, but 2 hrs later, the operations NCO announces that the flight is cancelled. I find a ride back and unpack everything.
45 minutes later, I hear the Chinook arrive. Again, air operations has
failed to do the highly complicated task of tracking where a flight is.

5. Another PRT principal is at Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). He
needs to get to Liberty Camp, which is a satellite location. Since it
is only a 10 min flight, he stays on the chopper. The bird goes to
another base, stops there, then returns to BIAP. Then it takes off
again and goes to a different base (still not Liberty) and returns to
BIAP and refuels. By this time, he's paranoid and is convinced that
he's on the wrong shuttle. Finally, it goes to Liberty and he arrives
exhausted, 3 hrs later. The bus would have taken 30 min.

Lesson learned? Pack as if you were going to be stranded. Walk or ride
when you can. Carry a sense of humor and a book.

Day 50: Save the Cheerleader, save the world

2009-05-31T07:25:00.005-04:00

Helicopter flight to get back home got scrubbed again, but I wasn't too disappointed because the provincial reconstruction team was hosting a barbecue cookout and the Raiderettes were coming on base to perform. On my previous deployment, I was on a smaller post, so we kind of got skipped by most of the USO morale type shows. Comedians, TV stars, athletes, and other celebrities come and do a little show and then a meet and greet. What is pretty cool about this is that they really are pretty happy to come and don't seem to have any prima donna attitudes. Tonight, six cheerleaders from the Oakland Raiders (American football team) came to perform for us.

I was having lunch at the dining facility with some of the team here and I passed two women wearing pink T-shirts. I didn't think anything of it. There aren't very many female contractors on this post, but they're not terribly unusual and these ladies didn't seem super special. When I sat down with the team, someone speculated that they might be the cheerleaders performing tonight. I said I didn't think so and I was convinced once I saw them go to the ice cream case. Cheerleaders don't eat ice cream. A couple minutes later, another three women walked in wearing the same t-shirts and they definitely looked like cheerleaders -- very athletic, wore makeup and looked, well, flashy I guess.

The barbecue was going on when their show started, so I didn't catch the first bit, but when I got there, they did some dance routines and interspersed them with little contests with participants from the crowd (dance-off, pushup contest). They also read some letters from kids and people back home. For their last dance bit, they came out in fairly skimpy outfits. I think that's just cruel and unusual punishment to put attractive, young women prancing around half-dressed in front of an almost entirely male crowd who hasn't had any for half a year or more.

I know, you guys aren't probably pitying me too much right now, but not every night is like this :)

Day 48: Almost a trifecta in the Axis of Evil!

2009-05-28T16:13:00.002-04:00

So the most interesting destination out of my recent missions in northeast Iraq has been the border area with Iran. This spot, a desolate patch of arid desert, actually used to have fruit orchards, crops, and supported a community of 150 people.

During the Iran-Iraq War, this was the site of some of the bloodiest fighting and all the farmers in the area were either killed or fled. All that is left is some destroyed farm equipment, dangerous holes that used to be wells, and some twisted vehicle chassis. We were there to assess the site and propose a windmill irrigation system that could restore agriculture to the area.

Very close by were a range of small mountains. When I asked what they were, the sheik said that it was Iran. He went on to say that within the past year, Iranians had claimed that the ground we were on belonged to them and was inside their boundary. Though it really wasn't, it's close enough that I'll consider that I've been to Iran. So, all I have to do is visit North Korea when I get back to China (not difficult), and I will have won Axis of Evil bingo.

In 2002, UN Ambassador John Bolton coined the phrase "Beyond the Axis of Evil," adding Cuba, Libya, and Syria to the extended evil family. Since I've only been to Cuba, looks like my next vacation will have to be Libya or Syria...

Day 47: Long Day

2009-05-28T15:54:00.002-04:00

Sorry I haven't written anyone in awhile. Since arriving at this forward operating base in Wasit, I've been out everyday on missions, either with the civil affairs teams, or with the artillery battalion here that has been turned into infantrymen and run joint operations with the Iraqi Army. I just got back tonight and have a day tomorrow to just meet with the Brigade staff here on post.

If I haven't mentioned it yet, one of the most important things we are trying to do is to train up and legitimize the Iraqi security forces to maintain stability on their own. As we frequently do with foreign forces, we are partnering with them to not only not appear to be doing things unilaterally (in this case as an occupying force), but to also train them or to ensure that the mission is being done to a high standard.

For the past 9 months since the Georgians left, this artillery battalion has run three Joint Security Stations (JSS), which combine a platoon of soldiers (~20) with up to 40 Iraqi soldiers. They live, eat, and patrol together. I sort of wish that I was a young platoon leader again who got to do that. They learn more than any of us staff types that only meet the Iraqis occasionally.

As part of the drawdown and transition strategy, we are turning these JSSs over completely to the Iraqis. Today was the first one to be handed over so there was an actual ceremony attended by the battalion and brigade commanders, high ranking Iraqi counterparts, and media.

It was a short ceremony -- both platoons facing each other were in formation, the national anthems played with each side saluting. Man, it felt weird both saluting the Iraqi national anthem and then watching the Iraqi soldiers saluting while ours played. I just still don't know
how we came to be training and funding our former enemies. In any case, this was followed by a reading from the Quran and then short speeches by both senior commanders.

Not more than a half hour after the ceremony, all American soldiers were gone for good from that outpost. That is the real deal -- I hope (along with all of the US forces), that the Iraqis will not go back to their old infighting and really use the lessons learned to build a strong, respected fighting force to protect the nation against terrorism. Oh, and if they also stop the Iranians and are friendly to our administration, and buy $3B in M1 Abrams main battle tanks, well, that's an unexpected and totally unanticipated bonus.

The biggest shortcoming right now is probably their ability to plan for logistics and maintenance. This is partially a cultural tendency. For instance, we use just in time principles as the basis for understanding that less inventory is usually good if you have high parts cycle throughput because it means you are getting parts out where they're needed without having a lot of inventory tied up in a warehouse. The Iraqi mentality, however, is that the more the better. Having a full warehouse means you have power. One commander was plugged into the national power grid (so didn't need generators), but had two, while sister units had no electricity. He would not give them up, claiming that he had to have a backup. Very frustrating.

We followed that by a trip up to another outpost in the north to check on the soldiers there. It was surprisingly well-appointed for such a barren location way out there. The commander gave the battery a safety award for not having had any accidental injuries in the past 3 months. He finished with a short speech on how the unit had to be just as careful in the last 100 days of the deployment as they were during the first 100 days (usually the most dangerous, while you are trying to figure things out).

By the time we got back, we had been on the road for 3.5 hrs, so I was pretty beat, but still had interviews lined up, panel-style with about 10 of the unit's staff. Pretty good sessions -- a lot of typical griping that you would hear anywhere else in any theater, any time. The higher headquarters doesn't help us plan... they hoard information.... Equipment we request takes forever for us to get.... Still, some things they said were helpful and surprising. Always nice to get viewpoints from opposing sides.

It's late, and I missed dinner, so going to grab "midnight" chow.

Oh, just added some pictures. In case you are curious, that last photo is what happens when your butt sweats. I thought this was a phenomenon only capable of people with big heinies.