Yesterday the embassy came under rocket attack. This has happened a number of times since our arrival last year. I never thought I would say this, but the infrequent rocket and mortar attacks we experience are among the smallest inconveniences we face in trying to carry out our daily missions.
Technical problems play a much larger role in our lives.
For instance, our network speed is usually slower than a dial-up connection would be back home. Since my job is to support, maintain, design and update the web site for the entire theater the limited bandwidth and constant network outages are a much greater stressor overall than the somewhat random threat to my existence presented by poorly aimed insurgent attempts to kill a few random people inside the Green Zone.
Our power situation leaves much to be desired as well. We’re on the Baghdad power grid, from what I’m told. That’s fair enough. Iraqis have to deal with generators and constant power problems, and we do too. Our generators overheat in the swelter of Iraqi summer. This results in our power going out multiple times daily. We don’t have enough battery backups to go around and the network only stays up about 3 minutes once the power goes out. We spend significant amounts of time redoing work in progress.
The sequence goes like this – power flicker. Exclamations of “oh shit!” Frantic attempt to save work. Power goes out. Exclamations of “damn it” and worse from my trailermates. Then we sit in the dark and wait for the power to come back on. Once it does, we see if our work auto saved or assess what needs to be recreated. Rinse, lather and repeat. End result – hours of lost productivity that occur at least several times a week. All because the most powerful government in the world cannot keep the power on after three years in the country and they’re stingy with network bandwidth. There may be very valid reasons for these inconveniences, but I’m not privy to them. All I know is that they compromise my ability to do my work and get some sleep.
Meanwhile, some government bureaucrat, in his or her wisdom, just spent what must be a million or more dollars to ensure that our conference room here looks identical to some other conference room somewhere else in the Green Zone or perhaps somewhere in the Pentagon. The conference room was just outfitted about six months ago and I’m sure that cost a pretty penny. From the bottom looking up, it appears that some people’s priorities are out of line.
Priorities differ depending who you are and how you spend your day, I suppose.
My problems are tiny and insignificant. A long work day is just that – a long work day. The rockets missed. The mortars haven’t touched me. My chair collapses backwards from time to time, sinking downwards and throwing me violently away from my keyboard towards the wall. The power goes out again. And that’s the universe reminding me I’m alive and that I have it easy compared to many of my brothers in arms.