apocryph.org Notes to my future self

Iraq's Dire Electricity Situation

An American close to the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity reconstruction efforts pointed me to an article in IEEE Spectrum which he says accurately summarizes the challenges facing Iraq’s electricity infrastructure. The article, Re-engineering Iraq, doesn’t paint a very happy picture.

Iraq Day 33

As expected, Baghdad and environs are still under curfew, and consequently the Iraqis didn’t come in today. Currently it’s expected that the curfew will lift tomorrow, but no one really knows what will happen when it does; if the violence explodes again the lockdown will continue.

My aunt emailed me a few questions she had after reading previous posts, so I’ll spend the rest of this post answering them.

Q: How do you fare without your Iraqi team during mouring?

A: We fare okay; our project more or less halts, which is actually a good sign in that it confirms the Iraqis are integral members of the team and not simply being dragged along for the ride as is the case with so many other reconstruction projects.

The main BE camp, however, suffers a bit more. While we have a Filipino staff to clean and generally keep the camp running, the BE camp uses Iraqis, who obviously cannot come in during the curfew; as a result, they have to pick up after themselves, which is not something many of them are used to doing.

The palace also uses alot of local labor, which is obviously absent. The DFACs are staffed by Bangladeshi and Filipino workers who live here w/ us, so they are not impacted. I would point out, however, that the security situation has prevented the food convoys from delivering food, so the DFAC selection has degraded somewhat over the last few days. They are out of my sausage/egg/cheese biscuits; war is hell.

Q: How does curfew change your day?

A: It slows it down. I have less to do, so I have fewer excuses to ignore the administrativa and sundry bullshit which I neglect during busier times. Generally speaking, I don’t like it, even if it allows me time for a nap.

Q: Is the weather getting warmer now?

A: Yes; yesterday and today were delightfully warm (maybe 80 degrees F), but that’s unusually warm for this time of year; the Iraqis expect it to cool off again, and not get consistently warm for another month or so.

Q: How do you get paid?

A: Via direct deposit into my American bank, through BearingPoint’s normal payroll process. I see two payments each period; one is my pay check, and one is the additional non-standard pay (NSP) which I receive for service in Iraq.

The one exception to this is the $11US/day we receive for ‘incidentals’, which is supposed to be toiletries etc. I’ve accrued roughly $400 which I’m owed for these ‘incidentals’, but due to a perpetually dire cashflow situation at the main BE camp, I’ve not actually been paid any incidental allowance since I arrived here.

Q: What is the monetary system there?

A: First, it must be understood that the IZ is for all intents and purposes a separate country from the rest of Iraq. Within the IZ, American dollars (in cash) are the coin of the realm. The only places in the entire country that I know of that accept credit cards are the AAFES PXs.

Outside the IZ, the economy is entirely cash, either Iraqi Dinars (ID) or American dollars; one American dollar is roughly 1400 ID. There are no credit card terminals or checks. Industrious Iraqis like those on my dev team sometimes use a prepaid Visa system called CashU to convert cash into a credit card number, which they use to order stuff online (mostly music and ebooks; stuff that doesn’t require shipping) from other countries.

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On an unrelated note, I’ve posted some new pictures, and re-posted some old ones which for whatever reason were corrupted when I posted them the first time. Check out the Iraq – First Month and Iraq – First Day albums.

Iraq Day 32

The violent fallout from the insurgent bombing of the golden mosque in Samara continues. We took more incoming on Thursday, but things have quieted down now. The Iraqi government announced three days of mourning, and a curfew has been imposed on Baghdad since Thursday to quell Sunni violence and Shia retaliation. As a result, none of our Iraqis have been in since Wednesday afternoon.

We’e just heard the curfew will continue at least through 6 AM Monday, with any cars on the roads or people with weapons automatically detained, though foot traffic within one’s own neighborhood is permitted. Thus, we’ll be w/o our Iraqi team for at least one more day.

Fortunately, they’ve been in contact w/ us and one another via the cell network; they’re all safe and hunkered down awaiting the lifting of the curfew. The bombing itself seemed to visibly disturb them, in particular one of the Shia. Fortunately, it appears unlikely now that this incident will tip the country over the edge into civil war, which is clearly the insurgents’ objective. Though Moqtada al Sadr and his ilk fell willingly into the insurgents’ gambit, fortunately the majority of Iraqis as well as Iraq’s political and religious leaders were restrained enough to resist chaos.

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Thursday night I joined some IJIP colleagues at the J-DAM/Beaver bar here on our compound. Unfortunately, it seems the ‘secret’ about our bar is out, as it was packed well beyond the point of my comfort. Despite this, I stayed until close at 2 AM, though it wasn’t the socially gratifying experience I’ve come to expect.

I learned just today that after close there was a ‘security incident’ in which a drunken bar guest stumbled into the trailer of a man who was apparently not in the mood for company, and helped the drunken bastard to the door w/ his fists. As a result, the reactionary security aparatus here at the camp has restricted access to the bar quite severely, which perversely helps me in that it ensures the bar will not be so crowded next week.

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On Friday I spent the morning asleep, and early afternoon relaxing. I then met up w/ another BE employee, a woman on the Economic Reconstruction project, for a delightful afternoon of Green Been coffee and conversation. After that I dug into my DVD collection, dispatching Disc 4 of Enterprise Season 2, plus Disc 1 of MI-5 Season 1. All in all, a wholly unproductive and therefore enjoyable day.

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Today has been unusual, in that the Iraqis didn’t come in due to the curfew, so it was rather quiet. We’ve also been without grid power since around 2AM; during the day our camp has run the generator, but it’s not designed for continuous use so we have to shut it down from time to time to avoid overheating, which makes for a rather unproductive time.

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The weather has turned warm; today it was easily 80 degrees in the sun. I’m told this is an unusual warm front, and that ‘summer’ doesn’t start in earnest for another month, but it gave me a taste of the fierce Iraqi summer to come. Unfortunately, the Electricity advisors I speak with assure me that the country’s power infrastructure has not been substantively rehabilitated during the cooler months due to various bureaucratic meddling and feckless management, and as a result ’06 will likely be the worst summer since the invasion.

I also learned, to my surprise, that our camp is powered from the Iraqi national grid, with a generator only as backup. Apparently the IZ is given ‘prime power’, meaning power that isn’t diverted, turned off, or subject to rolling blackouts; now I feel even more guilty about leaving my trailer lights on when I leave!

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Now that I’ve been in Iraq a month, I thought I’d revisit the initial questions I asked the project team here when I was considering joining back in November. Upon reflection many of them are absurd, but I think it may be instructive for me to address specific questions which seemed important at least to me at one time or another.

Q: What is the duration of the assignment? That is to say, how long would I remain in Iraq? During the assignment, how does vacation work?

A: The duration I committed to was six weeks, though I’ve since extended through May, and could very well extend again. Most of my co-workers are here on a one year commitment, though ex-pats are encouraged to pull the plug and return home if they can’t hack it.

Vacation is quite generous. We get three Regional Rest Breaks (RRBs) and two Rest and Relaxation trips (R&R) per year, with a prorated amount for shorter stays.

An RRB is a paid flight back to Amman, Jordan, and hotel and per diem for five days; you can (and most people do) fly and stay elsewhere once you reach Amman, but the company pays Amman per diem and hotel; any overage or additional flights are yours to bear. Since Iraq is pretty centrally located, trips to the wider Middle East, Eastern and even Western Europe are fairly straightforward.

An R&R is a two-week trip back to the US.

Q: What hours (start/end times if applicable; total hours otherwise) are generally kept at ‘the office’? How flexible is this?

A: This is a difficult question to answer. The ‘office’ is simply a trailer across a concrete courtyard from ‘home’, and the only reason I have to go into the office is to work w/ the Iraqis. However, the Iraqis are there from around 9 AM (depending upon the lines at the checkpoint, it may be as late at 10 or 10:30 before some of them arrive) to around 4 PM; after that, I often retire to my trailer.

We bill 10 hours per day, though if you add up time spent engaged in work activities we probably work more than that, but it doesn’t feel as draining as a 10 hour day in the Tower back in Tyson’s Corner would feel. It’s more like working all day from home, which I find much preferable.

Q: How do you get there? If by transport, are transports available at scheduled times? How often?

A: I flew commercial to Amman, spent the night at a nice hotel there, then took a commercial flight into Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). From there I had to take a middle-of-the-night military transport bus, the ‘Rhino’, but those more fortunate than I typically catch a helo ride directly into the IZ. The commercial flights are pretty frequent, though neither Arab flights nor helo/Rhino trips are reliably scheduled. The Arabs describe this situation with a single word: ‘inshallah’.

Q: What is the culture of ‘the office’? What is the dress code, the formality level of the interpersonal interaction, the rigidity of the hierarchy?

A: Before I answer this question, I must stress that IJIP is but one tiny project amidst an ocean of bureaucrats, soldiers, contractors, and sundry other actors. It’s become clear to me that my experiences on IJIP are not typical of Iraq reconstruction work, which tends to be mired in bureaucracy and incompetence.

That said, the culture is casual, the dress code is somewhere between business casual and weekend-at-the-range, with the exception of meetings w/ Iraqis or important American bureaucrats, who merit at least dress pants and a shirt, if not suit and tie.

Among the team, there is zero formality. The Iraqis are treated no differently than the other ex-pats; we all interact freely, and tease one another quite mercilessly. In fact, the Iraqis sometimes joke that they are glad they don’t have my life, what w/ my shitty car (92 Honda Accord; fuck off, it gets the job done!), no girlfriend (I have a cat though!), and days spent hacking code.

Though we do have management, there is no observable hierarchy most of the time; when decisions are made, they are almost always collective.

Q: What technology resources are available? Who controls the equipment and software you use? What are the specs on the machines? In general, are you starved for resources, lavishly indulged, or in between? To what extent can you specify technology or infrastructure requirements, and to what extent are they dictated to you? If I were to bring my own equipment (laptop, peripherals, etc) would I be permitted to use it on the project?

A: Tech resources are a mixed back. We’ve two very beefy dev machines, both used by Iraqis, while the other three devs have project-issue laptops of varying degrees of shittiness. I use my BE issue laptop, a Latitude D600, which is about as well suited to software development as I am to the underwear modeling industry.

I wouldn’t say we’re starved for resources ourselves, but neither are we lavishly indulged, and the Iraqi government is pretty starved for hardware and training.

We can dictate technology requirements to the extent we can satisfy them (writing for OS X would probably not be wise, for example), but infrastructure requirements are somewhat implied. If I brought my own hardware there’d be no one to stop me from using it.

Q: What is the nature of Internet connectivity, at the dormitory and the office? Is it fast/reliable enough for normal use?

A: Once again, our situation is different from those of other teams, but that said, we have a V-Sat (satellite) connection to the Internet, via Lunasat. The latency is bad but the bandwidth is pretty good; using a download manager I can get about 40KB/s file transfers, and it’s fast enough for a decent Skype audio/video chat.

It’s pretty reliable, as long as we have power (which we do most of the time; see above). Occassionally military choppers fly overhead (we’re in the flight pattern for approach to the CASH–Combat Area Support Hospital–and therefore get alot of air traffic) and block the signal momentarily, but that’s all. No rain fade yet.

Q: How often are you without power? Are any other basic facilities unreliable, such as water?

A: As above, we get power from the Iraqi grid, but it’s pretty reliable since we (the IZ) are a pretty high-priority user. Our camp has a backup generator, but we can only run it for about 6 hrs at a time before we have to give it a 30-60 minute break, but after a month of being here today is the first day we’ve had to use it that long.

Water is rock-solid, and food is rather reliable as well. No basic facilities are particularly unreliable.

Q: You mentioned that you’re immersed in the work most of the time. Why is that? Is the schedule overly aggressive? To what extent can you work from the dormitory? How much down time to you have each day?

A: First, the ‘dormitory’ is the ‘office’, but in a different trailer; that is to say, it’s not useful to make the distinction.

Second, I don’t think the workload is due to the schedule or incompetent management; it’s simply the primary focus of our lives here.

I get several hours of downtime; having no commute or household chores absorbs the extra time spent working, so I don’t feel at all overworked yet.

Q: Is the engagement managed well?

A: Yes and no. Our team is managed pretty well, though Iraq is a chaotic place and shit–bureaucratic, logistical, security, personnel–happens all the time. There are frequent impedance mismatches between our stateside handlers and those of us on the ground, but they are not particularly egregious, and usually amount to little more than an annoyance.

Q: You mentioned ‘programming’ and ‘writing code’. Is the project architecture already completed? If so, is it fixed in stone, or mutable? If not, who is involved in composing it?

A: The architecture was defined by my predecessor, but the first iteration is for a single site with no outside integration, so the ultimate architecture is not reflected in the code we’ve got now.

It’s definitely not fixed in stone, and will surely evolve with changing requirements, available infrastructure, and Iraqi capability.

Q: Does the project have requirements? Are the sufficiently explicit? Do they reflect reality? Do they change constantly?

A: Yes. Not really. Sometimes. Yes, as we discover bits of information about the users or real-world requirements that refines our conception of the problem space.

The project experienced nearly 100% turnover and a great deal of directional volatility early on, therefore the requirements aren’t as solid as they could be, but there’s a clear understanding of the objective of the project, and our users are pretty accessible to us (more so to the Iraqi developers) so requirements impedance mismatch is not a significant project risk.

Q: Is the position you’re considering me for currently or previously filled by someone else? If so, what happened?

A: Yes, it was filled by who I’m told was a militant open-source advocate with an abject disdain for Microsoft technologies. There was a culling, the details of which I am not privy to, which resulted in his departure, with prejudice.

Q: Apart from mentoring Iraqi developers, what explicit duties are performed by the position? How much multi-hat-wearing goes on in the engagement, in which staff perform tasks ‘outside their job description’?

A: Basically ‘IT stuff’. My most significant task apart from training Iraqis is what I think of as ‘technical project management’; making sure the development is proceeding apace, that we don’t run down too many ratholes, and that the product we ultimately produce in some way resembles what the Iraqis need.

There’s not so much multi-hat-wearing as simple self-starting. The project environment is too chaotic (primarily for external reasons) to have fixed tasks and schedules for all activities, so the team works primarily by engaging issues as they arise with whoever is best positioned to deal with them. It’s not the reactive management I feared when I asked this question; I think we respond rather well to the constantly changing situation, with a combination of discipline and flexibility.

Q: What is the political situation of the project? Does it enjoy high-level sponsorship and concensus?

A: Ever changing. It enjoys high-level sponsorship, but it also suffers high-level hostility from some quarters, and well-intentioned but damanging bureaucratic meddling from others. This is one of the most disillusioning things about my experience in Iraq, and leaves me with the conviction that if we as a nation are capable of large-scale post-conflict reconstruction, it is not with the aparatus we have currently deployed in Iraq.

Q: To what extent is the lack of any Arabic language skills potentially problematic? How fluent are the Iraqi developers in technical and conversational English? Tell me a bit more about the Iraqi developers themselves. How were they trained? Are they particularly passionate or interested in the work? What is their work ethic?

A: For the purposes of working w/ our Iraqis, lack of Arabic isn’t a problem, though it would be nice to get their inside jokes w/o one of them taking pity on me and trying to translate the Arabic humor. The Iraqis are remarkably proficient English speakers, with a decent mastery of many English idioms, and a wicked sense of humor.

Most are not formally trained, though they have varying degrees of intrinsic tech aptitude, and they are all competent as hardware techs. They’re all very interested, generally proud of their very prestigious jobs, and some are extremely passionate about working with technology as well.

They have a strong work ethic (you’d have to to risk death daily to wait in two hour queues only to be searched like a criminal before you can get into work) but sometimes they have trouble staying on task.

Q: Is the hazard pay taxed? If so, by which government? What other benefits are extended to BE personnel working in this environment?

A: Yes; all the non-standard pay (NSP), which totals to 70% of base pay, is taxed by the US government. However, if you spend 11 months out of the year outside the US, the first $80k of your gross salary is not taxed.

Q: You mentioned going to the gym. What are the gym facilities, what are the hours, and how often do you get to go? Are there any other facilities provided for your use?

A: The BearingPoint camp proper has its own gym, which I’m told resembles that of a hotel gym, but as we don’t live in the BE camp we don’t use that facility.

I and my colleagues use the gym in the palace, which is frequented by the US and coalition militaries, private security contractors, Embassy personnel, and every other imaginable expat in the IZ.

The gym is open 24 hours.

The facilities are reasonable; extensive cardio, middling weight machines, and a chaotic but comprehensive free weight section. My primary complaint about the gym is the crowding; going at anything resembling peak time means waiting for machines and pushing through crowds of very muscular men, so I end up going over at 9:30 or 10 PM.

I get to go daily; if I don’t it’s due to my choice (for example, I never go Thursday night).

Other facilites for our use include the many DFACs in the IZ where we can eat, the surprisingly nice Green Been coffee bar/cafe in the palace, and the bar in our camp.

Q: Where/when/what do you eat?

A: Day to day I eat at the DFAC in the palace, though occassionally we drive over to Camp Prosperity at the western edge of the IZ to use the DFAC there, which is bigger and sometimes has better/different food.

We have breakfast around 8 AM, I skip lunch, and eat dinner between 6 and 7. There is also a midnight meal which starts at 10:30, but I’ve only done that once to get an after-gym ice cream fix.

The food is diverse, with different stuff each meal and each day. There are some hardships in Baghdad, but food is not one of them.

Q: What sucks about the project? What’s great about it?

A: My number one complaint is the bureaucratic bullshit from across the street in the palace, from briefing bigwigs for the 100th time on what it is we’re doing, to defending our project against people whose sole contribution to the rebuilding of Iraq is copious bitching, we waste precious time and resources dick-holding our own government when we could be helping the Iraqis.

It also sucks having so few attractive women around, but as a programmer I’m somewhat acustom to the situation.

The best thing about the project is working daily with the Iraqi development team. I’ve felt immensely satisfied with my work many times before, but never has it been so rewarding as when I’ve sat in a cramped room w/ a team of Iraqis, C# code on the wall, making jokes about the Dog class implementing IDisposable and the need for an Arabic version of C# (we decided it will be called ‘C-Jelga’ where ‘jelga’ is the name of an Iraqi game like tic-tac-toe the board for which resembles the hash mark (#) which gives C# its name). When I think of what they go through, that they still hold out any hope for their country’s emergence from chaos and further that they are willing to risk their lives to participate in that emergence, I’m at once humbled and honored to be here helping them in some small way.

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Well, there you have it; not exactly a recruiting pitch for service in Iraq, but what I consider the unvarnished truth from where I’m sitting. It’s bed time now (I’m having a helluva time sleeping lately) so that’s all.

Iraq Pronunciation For English Speakers

If I were Iraqi, I would be somewhat irritated at the mispronunciation of my country name by Westerners living here in Iraq. If any of the actual Iraqis are bothered by it they don’t let on, so I’ll make the correction on their behalf.

If I ask one of our Iraqis what country we’re in right now, they do NOT say ‘EYE-rack’ or ‘ee-RACK’, they say ‘ee-ROCK’, though the Arabic name they use amongst themselves is ‘al Iraqya’.

If I ask them what they call the people who live in Iraq, they say ‘ee-ROCKEEZ’, not ‘EYE-rackeez’.

For perfect fidelity, the ‘R’ is rolled a little bit, as in Spanish, but there’s clearly no expectation of Westerners to master that detail.

Please, for my sake if not for theirs, say it right.

Iraq Day 29

This morning I went on my first trip into the red zone, to the MoI Criminal Records Directorate. I saw about 20 feet of actual red zone, then we arrived (CRD is just outside the Rasheed gate).

We met w/ the police Colonel in charge of CRD, and dropped off a couple of desktop computers which we were loaning/granting to replace a couple of ancient computers which are failing badly w/ age and neglect. Our hope is to keep them happy until April when we deliver our new application.

The visit was quite worthwhile, as it exposed a few holes in our plans/conceptions of the requirements. Based on the insights gained here I am more confident in our ability to deliver the right solution the first time. U and R met us there and set up the computers, ran some cat 5 to an Ethernet switch we brought, and showed the Colonel a demo of the application screens we have so far, to get his feedback.

There was a bit of a hitch w/ the transfer of hardware; we had prepared a letter for him to sign acknowledging the two desktops as basically a loan, with INL retaining title. This caused some problems, as he explained that MoI would expect all computers in his inventory to be owned by MoI, with stiff penalties for non-compliance. This makes sense, as I’m sure there would otherwise be rampant theft of MoI equipment.

In any case, we immediately acquiested, and hopefully will remember this lesson for future hardware deliveries.

Another insight I gained was the comparative rigidity of Iraqi bureaucracy; the Colonel’s boss wanted a report on what we were doing for CRD, but it must come through him, so we had to write something up for him to attach to his formal report, and so on.

I’m told this is more a vestige of the Baathist regime than of Arab culture generally, but nonetheless it requires special consideration for the purposes of our application. For example, they don’t want others to have access to their criminal records data w/o case-by-case approval, and will strongly resist any system which does not grant them this type of control.

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Yesterday the devs brought in two types of bread. The first was samoon, which is a light and soft bread backed in the shape of an elongated lemon. They like to eat it for breakfast, with Kiri (a Swiss brand name, not an Arabic word) cream cheese spread inside. The gus I mentioned previously was also in samoon, though in that case it was seasoned lamb and vegetables. Needless to say, it’s good.

The second, hubuz, is actually just Arabic for ‘bread’, though it was what I would call a pita only about the size of a medium pizza. I ate that w/ Kiri as well, tearing off chunks at a time. It was also delicious.

Today they brought falafel, which I’ve had before in the West but in this case the falafel was stuffed into samoon loaves with some sauce and shredded lettuce; the Iraqis felt it was bad quality falafel, but I enjoyed it.

They’re threatening to bring in a breakfast pastry composed of the same light flaky crust as baqlawa, the delicious Iraqi version of baclava, but that’s not happened yet. I love the opportunity to sample their local cuisine, and can only hope that there’s a decent Iraqi restaurant back home that can continue to provide me my fix when I return.

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This morning insurgents (presumably Sunni) detonated explosives inside the ‘golden mosque’ in Samara, destroying it’s beautiful golden dome and severely damaging the entire mosque. The mosque of the 10th imam, as it’s called, is the third holiest Shia site after Najaf and Karbala, so its violent destruction was bound to piss a few Shia off.

Now it’s afternoon, and the shit has hit the fan. There are reports of riots in Baghdad, we’ve sent our Iraqis home early and told them not to come back tomorrow, and the Embassy had taken incoming rocket and mortar fire. The ‘uniform posture’, which determines how much protective gear we have at any given time, has been moved up to U3, which means we must wear vest and helmet everywhere. Meetings outside the IZ are cancelled, and everyone’s generally hunkering down for a few days.

In the IZ we’re on edge; there was a ‘controlled detonation’ (intentional safe detonation of unexploded ordnance; probably the mortars and rockets that came in earlier) which we don’t know about in advance; we heard the huge explosion and moved quickly to the duck-and-cover bunker, only to learn it was the good guys and no cause for concern.

I’m not scared; more curious in fact. I do worry for our Iraqi coworkers; their lives just got even more dangerous. At any rate, I’ve got books to read if we have to run for the duck-and-cover bunker, and DVDs to watch if we don’t, so as long as the insurgents don’t land a million-to-one mortar shot within a few meters of wherever I am, I’ll be fine.

Iraq Day 28

Yesterday, R gave each of us ex-pats some gifts he brought from his travels to Kurdistan. They included walnuts and pistachios, both of which apparently grow in the north, and a confection made only in Sulimaniya called ‘manna semma’, which I’m told is literally translatted as ‘from the sky’. I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t an allusion to Biblical manna from heaven.

At any rate, it’s a white doughy substance wrapped around what seems to be sweet glazed nuts. It comes packed in a wooden box roughly the size of a brick, and inside the box the sweets are packed in flour, so when you slide open the lid of the box you see only tightly packed white flour. I had to dig around to find a piece, which of course sent flour flying everywhere.

In terms of taste, it’s a bit like eating sweet bread dough with nuts in it, which sounds perhaps more unpleasant than it really was. At any rate, the novelty of a distinctly Kurdish desert is worth it.

Today R and A brought in the two desktop computers they spent the last two afternoons shopping for. Despite the chaos and violence here in Iraq, there’s a thriving hardware trade with all the latest gear for considerably less than stateside. They finally came back w/ two custom-built boxes w/ P4 3GHz (I don’t know the series number, but it’s the HT EM64T flavor) based around a Gigabyte mobo w/ the i945 chipset, and an NVidia GeForce 6600 PCI-Express graphics board for good measure.

The team spent the day backing up our two existing dev boxes, repaving them, and setting up the new ones. We’re giving–erm, loaning–the old boxes to the Criminal Records Directorate at Ministry of Interior, which is where the first iteration of IJIP will be deployed. CRD is in very bad shape in terms of tech infrastructure, such that their Win98/WinME boxes are circling the drain, so we’re propping them up w/ some more modern hardware–somewhat selfishly I might add, as our project will not be particularly successful if they’ve no computers to run it on!

Longer term, there’s a big NATO initiative to acquire virtually any tech stuff the Iraqi ministries need, but that’s wrapped in a protective coating of bureaucracy which ensures it will not be available until it’s too late, so we’re left to fill in the gaps.

It was fascinating to watch the team today, as they were all contributing to the hardware and software work. I’m used to programmers who can’t set up Windows XP to save their lives, so it’s a novelty to watch the supposedly disadvantaged Iraqis whip our their personal multi-tools, pop off cases, argue in Arabic about RAM speeds and the quality of the stock heatsink, run through the BIOS settings, then install XP and the basic apps from the ground up. I just sat back and tried to stay out of the way, as they clearly knew exactly what they were doing.

Y was particularly excited about installing the 64-bit edition of XP; I’m afraid he may have unreasonable expectations about the performance difference of 64-bit Windows given the apps we’re working with, but he wouldn’t hear any of it. While we waited for the 64-bit ISO image to download off MSDN (a painfully slow process over our high-latency satellite link) I was sure Y was going to crawl out of his skin from the anticipation.

I have my first trip into the red zone proper this week, when we go to CRD. However, the CRD building is just a few yards outside the IZ, so it is not as ‘red zone’ as, say, the notorious MoI building. Nonetheless, we don our armor and take an armed convoy, so for the purposes of bragging rights it counts.

Yesterday afternoon one of the gates into the IZ was hit by a suicide bomber. Two of my devs, Y and E, were preparing to go through the checkpoint to go home when it happened; had they left the office a couple minutes earlier, they would likely be dead now. They didn’t even tell me about the incident; I found out from another Iraqi dev who gave them a ride and saw the explosion as he was leaving the other way. They didn’t seem at all phased by it; clearly that’s a part of life they’ve become used to here, but it’s difficult for me to comprehend how they could respond so calmly to such a close brush with death.

I also had a great talk yesterday with U, who is sort of the de facto leader of the band. We were talking about movies we had enjoyed, and it became clear that he has seen and appreciated more American movies than I. In fact, based on his recommendations I added a few new titles to my Netflix queue! I never would’ve expected I’d come to Iraq and be introduced to some American movie titles by local Iraqis, but sure enough it has happened. It seems daily they are surprising me one way or another.

It was also yesterday that I really noticed for the first time how congenial the work environment is here. Wherever I work I try to foster a laid-back atmosphere that takes nothing too seriously, but I didn’t expect that to work w/ the Iraqis, if for no other reason than their dire plight. However, it’s been quite the opposite; they all regularly joke and tease one another, and it’s often throughout the day that we’ll all six of us burst out laughing at a joke one of them made. It’s particularly amusing to hear E’s attempts at sarcasm since his English is not quite grammatically correct; it only adds to the humorous effect of his jokes.

At the risk of repeating myself incessantly, the courage and emotional fortitude of these five Iraqis continues to amaze me; I wish there was something more I could do for them, but maybe in some small way the skills and experience I impart on them will enable them to make a better life for themselves, elsewhere in the Gulf if not here in Iraq.

Iraq Day 26

Today is Saturday, our equivalent of Monday. I had a pretty good ‘weekend’ on Friday, and also had an enjoyable evening Thursday night w/ some coworkers and a few BE staff from other projects here in Baghdad.

It’s been cold the past few days, but sunny and clear. Today the wind has been blowing fiercly; the Iraqis don’t seem to like it. One of the devs, R, was in Kurdistan last week, and showed us a video on his RAZR cellphone of him outside amid falling snow; apparently it was the first time he was up there during an actual snowfall, and he rather enjoyed it.

On Thursday night I went w/ another IJIP team member over to the BE camp, where a few people had gathered for a ‘Mexican’ night of margharitas, quesadillas, and fajitas. It was a reasonably good time, though I found a couple of the personalities to be nearly insufferable. I was also pleased to note the bunker constructed for the many cats living in the camp has been fortified with sandbags for additional protection; all that remains now is overhead cover to protected against direct mortar impacts.

After BE camp I went w/ the same group to the Beaver/JDAM bar in the palace behind my trailer. I stayed there ’till close (0200), though most of my original group bailed around midnight. Among the more interesting people I spoke with there were one of the women from the BE Economic Reconstruction team, and perhaps the highlight of the evening, a Gurkha guard who was either very drunk, very gay, or perhaps both; in any case, he for whatever reason seems to like me alot, and gave me some sense of what it must be like to be a chic here.

Another high point of the night was the ongoing (and progressively worse) attempts at karaoke, a technology clearly devised for drunk people, by drunk people. Though I’m not entirely unwilling to try karaoke at some point in time, it is not as yet cold enough in Hell for me to do so.

For whatever reason, that night the bar was at least 5% women (I felt like I was at a software development conference, but with more chics), which means at least 60% of the women in the IZ were there! In this target rich environment, the men were surprisingly restrained, and in fact it was (some of) the women who were the most aggressive. Fortunately, most were clear on the gentleman’s agreement I have with attractive women, whereunder they do not interact with me more than strictly necessary, and I in turn extend the same courtesy.

At any rate, I continue to shake my head in wonder at who hooks up with whom, and who goes home alone; whoever extends biological determinism as the underlying explanation for human behavior need spend only one evening in an IZ bar as refutation of their theories.

Now, for the random stream of consciousness:

The water here–both local Iraqi water, and the ‘clean’ water in our showers, toilets, and sinks–is not drinkable by our standards. Iraqis drink the local water and don’t seem to mind it, but I’ve heard horror stories of westerners drinking either the local water or the tap water and suffering weeks-long bouts of the most horrible gastrointestinal malfunctions imaginable.

Consequently, we have a limitless supply of bottled water. I have a dozen or so in my little fridge in my trailer, which I use to drink, make tea, and brush my teeth. When I shower, I take care to keep the water out of my mouth and eyes, and never drink the tapwater.

I have a theory that the hot water is so incredibly hot as to sterilize any contaminants, but it’s not a theory I’m particularly interested in testing.

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I think most westerners would be surprised by the way Iraqi men–at least in Baghdad–dress. If there is a wintertime Iraqi uniform, it’s jeans (intact, not faded or torn), knit sweater, leather jacket (worn even indoors), and loafers. Younger Iraqi men sometimes dress more trendily, and I’ve also seen alot of what I would call track suits, emblazoned with Nike or Adidas logos or the names of popular soccer teams.

During the cold months alot of Iraqi men also wear a sort of scarf, which typically has a checkered pattern like the headresses one often sees on Kuwaiti or Saudi men, but either wrapped over the head or worn around the neck. I will definitely need to get myself one, though it’s not a look that would work for me.

Of course, the tribal robes (‘dish-dash’, I believe is the word) are worn in the provinces among rural peoples, here the dress is quite western.

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On Wednesday M gave me a token gift; a small plastic copy of a woven tapestry w/ a Koranic verse on it, which he said was ‘for protection’. I can’t read it, being as it’s in Arabic, but I rather like it, and would hang it up in my trailer but for lack of hangers.

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This past week I’ve been working with Y to set up a SourceSafe database, and establish automatic nightly archiving and backup to another machine. It’s taken some time, as he was not familiar with the concept of a command line tool (such as SSARC, the SourceSafe archive tool), and had trouble staying on task, but it’s finally done. I’m hopeful he’ll be able to take on some build engineering tasks, though I’m also planning to direct A2 to some of the same stuff.

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I’m getting to know E alot better, and find his to be a remarkable story.

He is nearly 40, trained as an MD here in Iraq, but from high school through medical school he’s nursed a hobby for computers. As he’s related to me the things he’s done (all self-taught) and the satisfaction he takes from programming, I can’t help but think back to my youth and early adulthood when I experienced the same ‘holy fire’ of enthusiasm and intellectual delight.

What makes his story so much more compelling is that he did all this in Iraq in the past 20 years, without any support or guidance, and has never had an opportunity to work professionally as a programmer, yet he abandoned the practice of medicine to join our team in the hopes of programming something meaningful.

He has a somewhat reserved personality, and is unmarried. He lives w/ his family according to the Iraqi custom, but he has a small building off the family home to himself.

He has related to me his frustration that he never completes his programming projects, and has created only three programs ‘of value’ (his term for worthwile projects that are distinctive and of practical use), all of which were done long ago. Again I’m reminded of myself, and the anxiety I felt over my persistent inability to complete my self-edification projects, and the fact that I’d never written any code anyone ever used.

In terms of abilities, he clearly has the intellectual configuration for programming; he intuitively grasps basic and advanced computer science concepts easily, and is held back only by his lack of practical experience with the technologies we’re using. Hopefully I can help him mature into a first-class software engineer.

There’s little doubt that E could do very well for himself in an economy with a significant demand for programming talent; I hope he gets the chance to code professionally after this project is concluded, and feel the satisfaction of developing software that is ‘of value’.