The building affectionately known as Castle Greyskull, named after the ‘Masters of the Universe’ TV cartoon. It is one of the offices that I work in, heavily protected by T wall, large upside-down T shaped concrete pillars standing on top of concrete blocks. The roof is shipping containers part filled with concrete. These structures are designed to withstand a direct hit from a mortar or rocket. Beneath the shipping container roof and within the T wall outer is a Portacabin type office complex where I spend most of my working hours. The tower that you can see in the distance is Basra Airport.
Well this picture shows a typical meal that I have here on the base. The catering is very good and I have not had a bad meal yet and I doubt I will. There is always salad on offer and I have at least half a plate full with every meal. Then I have a look at the hot mains on offer and try to pick whatever I think is the healthiest at the time, on this occasion it was fillets of white fish with some boiled rice and sweetcorn. I seem to be eating more fish as well, probably because It always seems to be on offer.
I had some ‘Om Ali’ yesterday, I did not know at the time, I thought it was rice pudding until I started eating it and noticed there was no rice in it. It was very very nice but not good if your on a diet. I now know that it is typically made with puff pastry, milk, sugar, cream, cashew nuts, coconut and sultanas. There seems to be variations on the recipe depending on where you look.
While I have been out here in these sunny parts I have been under attack from flying insects. I have been bitten a few times now by Mosquitos which have come up in red itchy lumps. So I had an idea to get one of those electronic bat shaped swatters that zap these things and a guy here said that he had one that I could have. Well I got it last night and it turned out to be better than expected.
This thing is probably not legal in the UK, I don’t think I will be fetching it home but we’ll see. It plugs into the mains to charge, so I charged it up overnight and then this morning I went on a rampage. Zap Zap Zap, there were smoking flies everywhere. I even took it out on site with me and gave the flies there a zapping too. It was very satisfying.
In the end I had a smiley face, Just like my bat.
Well a couple of days ago I put some items into the laundry bag and chucked it into the large wheelie bin outside the laundry place on my short walk to work. I was under the impression that it would be collected from my block/room and delivered back but that does not seem to be the case. I guess you can’t get the staff these days and I will just have to put up with the service the way it is. Joking aside, I was impressed today. I went and collected my laundry bag this morning and fetched it back to my room. I opened the neatly wrapped bin bag parcel inside to reveal washed, pressed and folded items of clothing with no socks missing and at a total cost of zero to me I shall be using the service again, tomorrow in fact.
More of what I see on the commute to site. I take photos of the burning gas because there is not a lot else to take photos of and they fascinate me. When you think that these things have been burning for years, chucking out plumes of black smoke into the atmosphere, it makes you wonder about all that pollution. Maybe it’s not that bad.
